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Everyone in Seattle hates AI

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Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#801

Post by marginalia_nu »

Rebuff5007 wrote: post #760
p0w3n3d wrote: post #752

Someone wrote on HN the (IMO) main reason why people do not accept AI. AI is about centralisation of power So basically, only a few companies that hold on the large models will have all the knowledge required to do things, and will lend you your computer collecting monthly fees. Also see https://be-clippy.com/ for more arguments (like Adobe moving to cloud to teach their model on your work). For me AI is just a natur…

But why not? AI also has very powerful open models (that can actually be fine-tuned for personal use) that can compete against the flagship proprietary models. As an average consumer, I actually feel like i'm less locked into gemini/chatgpt/claude than I am to Apple or Google for other tech (i.e. photos).

Economies of scale makes this a space that is really difficult to be competitive in as a small player.

If it's ever to be economically viable to run a model like this, you basically need to run it non-stop, and make money doing so non-stop in order to offset the hardware costs.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#802

Post by adamhartenz »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #796
p0w3n3d wrote: post #752

Someone wrote on HN the (IMO) main reason why people do not accept AI. AI is about centralisation of power So basically, only a few companies that hold on the large models will have all the knowledge required to do things, and will lend you your computer collecting monthly fees. Also see https://be-clippy.com/ for more arguments (like Adobe moving to cloud to teach their model on your work). For me AI is just a natur…

You can still run your local cloud and AI providers will be heavily consolidated to a few. While for programming task I do use Claude currently, local models can be tuned to serve 80% of the time reduction you win by using AI. Depends a bit on the work you do. This will improve probably, while frontier models seem to hit hard ceilings. Where I would disagree is that joining concepts or knowledge works at all with cur…

Local models are fine for the way we have been using AI, like as a chatbot, or a fancy autocomplete. But everyone is craming AI into everything. Windows will be an agentic OS whether we like it or not. There will be no using your own local model for that use case. It is looking like everything is moving that way.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#803

Post by ACCount37 »

isodev wrote: post #797
ACCount37 wrote: post #761

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then what do they have? Is the siren song of "AI effect" so strong in your mind that you look at a system that writes short stories, solves advanced math problems and writes working code, and then immediately pronounce it "not intelligent"?

It doesn’t actually solve those math problems though, does it? It replies with a solution if it has seen one often enough in training data or something that looks like a solution but isn’t. At the end, the human still needs to proof it. Same for short stories, it doesn’t actually write new stories, it rehashes stories it (probably illegally) ingested in training data. LLMs are good at mimicking the content they were…

Oh, I remember those talks. People actually checking whether an LLM's response is something that was in the training data, something that was online that it replicated, or something new.

They weren't finding a lot of matches. That was odd.

That was in the days of GPT-2. That was when the first weak signs of "LLMs aren't just naively rephrasing the training data" emerged. That finding was controversial, at the time. GPT-2 couldn't even solve "17 + 29". ChatGPT didn't exist yet. Most didn't believe that it was possible to build something like it with LLM tech.

I wish I could say I was among the people who had the foresight, but I wasn't. Got a harsh wake-up call on that.

And yet, here we are, in year 20-fucking-25, where off-the-shelf commercially available AIs burn through math competitions and one shot coding tasks. And people still say "they just rehash the training data".

Because the alternative is: admitting that we found an algorithm that crams abstract thinking into arrays of matrix math. That it's no longer human exclusive. And that seems to be completely unpalatable to many.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#804

Post by encyclopedism »

p0w3n3d wrote: post #752

Someone wrote on HN the (IMO) main reason why people do not accept AI. AI is about centralisation of power So basically, only a few companies that hold on the large models will have all the knowledge required to do things, and will lend you your computer collecting monthly fees. Also see https://be-clippy.com/ for more arguments (like Adobe moving to cloud to teach their model on your work). For me AI is just a natur…

> AI is about centralisation of power

I do not believe this is the main reason at all.

The core issue is that AI is taking away, or will take away, or threatens to take away, experiences and activities that humans would WANT to do. Things that give them meaning and many of these are tied to earning money and producing value for doing just that thing. As someone said "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes".

Much of the meaning we humans derive from work is tied to the value it provides to society. One can do coding for fun but doing the same coding where it provides value to others/society is far more meaningful.

Presently some may say: AI is amazing I am much more productive, AI is just a tool or that AI empowers me. The irony is that this in itself shows the deficiency of AI. It demonstrates that AI is not yet powerful enough to NOT need to empower you to NOT need to make you more productive. Ultimately AI aims to remove the need for a human intermediary altogether that is the AI holy grail. Everything in between is just a stop along the way and so for those it empowers stop and think a little about the long term implications. It may be that for you right now it is comfortable position financially or socially but your future you in just a few short months may be dramatically impacted.

I can well imagine the blood draining from peoples faces, the graduate coder who can no longer get on the job ladder. The law secretary whose dream job is being automated away, a dream dreamt from a young age. The journalist whose value has been substituted by a white text box connected to an AI model.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#805

Post by redwood »

mips_avatar wrote: post #681
redwood wrote: post #278

He describes his startup as an ai-oriented map... to me that sounds amazing and totally at my alley. But then it's actually about trip planning... to me is too constrained and specific. What I would love is a map type experience that gives me an AI type interface for interesting things in any given area that might be near me and worth checking out. And not just for travel by the way... I love just exploring maps and…

So actually that’s what I’ve been working on. It’s been taking so long because I’ve been building my own ai focused geocoder to do just that

Look forward to trying it!

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#806

Post by jacquesm »

afavour wrote: post #520
mjr00 wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are many valid critiques of AI, but “there’s not much there” isn’t one of them. "There's not much there" is a totally valid critique of a lot of the current AI ecosystem. How many startups are simple prompt wrappers on top of ChatGPT? How many AI features in products are just "click here to ask Rovo/Dingo/Kingo/CutesyAnthropomorphizedNameOfAI" text boxes that end up spitting out wrong information? There's cer…

IMO if the market is going to punish anyone it’s the people who, today, find that AI is able to do all their coding for them. The skeptics are the ones that have tried AI coding agents and come away unimpressed because it can’t do what they do. If you’re proudly proclaiming that AI can replace your work then you’re telling on yourself.

> If you’re proudly proclaiming that AI can replace your work then you’re telling on yourself.

That's a very interesting observation. I think I'm safe for now ;)

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#807

Post by jacquesm »

senordevnyc wrote: post #363
handstitched wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me, any software engineer who tries an LLM, shrugs and says “huh, that’s interesting” and then “gets back to work” is completely failing at their actual job, which is using technology to solve problems. I would argue that the "actual job" is simply to solve problems. The client / customer ultimately do not care what technology you use. Hell, they don't really care if there's technology at all. And a lot of softw…

Again, AI isn’t the right tool for every job, but that’s not the same thing as a shallow dismissal.

It is however much less of a shallow dismissal of a tool than your shallow dismissal of a person, or in fact a large group of persons.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#808

Post by jacquesm »

andrei_says_ wrote: post #546
senordevnyc wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been an engineer for 20 years, for myself, small companies, and big tech, and now working for my own saas company. There are many valid critiques of AI, but “there’s not much there” isn’t one of them. To me, any software engineer who tries an LLM, shrugs and says “huh, that’s interesting” and then “gets back to work” is completely failing at their actual job, which is using technology to solve problems. Maybe AI…

My dismissal I think indicates exhaustion from the additional work I’d need to do to make an LLM write my code, annoyance at its inaccuracies, and disgust at the massive scam and grift that is the LLM influencers. Writing code via a LLM feels like writing with a wet noodle. It’s much faster and write what I mean, myself, with the terse was and precision of my own thought.

> with the terse was and precision of my own thought

Hehe. So much for precision ;)

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#809

Post by jacquesm »

justatdotin wrote: post #605
senordevnyc wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve been an engineer for 20 years, for myself, small companies, and big tech, and now working for my own saas company. There are many valid critiques of AI, but “there’s not much there” isn’t one of them. To me, any software engineer who tries an LLM, shrugs and says “huh, that’s interesting” and then “gets back to work” is completely failing at their actual job, which is using technology to solve problems. Maybe AI…

I would've thought that in 20 years you would have met other devs who do not think like you? something I enjoy about our line of work is there are different ways to be good at it, and different ways to be useful. I really enjoy the way different types of people make a team that knows its strengths and weaknesses. anyway, I know a few great engineers who shrug at the agents. I think different types of thinker find eng…

This is the correct viewpoint (in my opinion, of course). There are many ways that lead to a solution, some are better, some are worse, some are faster, some much slower. Different tools and different strokes for different folks and if it works for you then more power to you. That doesn't mean you get to discard everybody for whom it does not work in exactly the same way.

I think a big mistake junior managers make is that they think that their nominal subordinates should solve problems the way that they would solve them, without recognizing that there are multiple valid paths and that it doesn't so much matter which path is chosen as long as the problem is solved on time and within the allocated budget.

Re: Everyone in Seattle hates AI

#810

Post by viking123 »

assemblyman wrote: post #269

I am not in Seattle. I do work in AI but have shifted more towards infrastructure. I feel fatigued by AI. To be more precise, this fatigue includes several factors. The first one is that a lot of people around me get excited by events in the AI world that I find distracting. These might be new FOSS library releases, news announcements from the big players, new models, new papers. As one person, I can only work on 2-3…

I hate scammers like many of the Anthropic employees that post every other week "brooo we have this model that can break out of the system bro!"

"broo it's so dangerous let me tell you how dangerous it is! you don't want to get this out! we have something really dangerous internally!"

Those are the worst, Dario included there btw, almost a worse grifter than Altman.

The models themselves are fine except Claude that calls the police if you say the word boob.

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