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As Rocks May Think

evjang.com

71–80 of 86 posts

Re: As Rocks May Think

#71

This person doesn't understand how LLMs work.

Not sure how you could read this essay and come to that conclusion. It definitely aligns with my own understanding, and his conclusions seem pretty reasonable (though the AI 2027/Situational Awareness part might be arguable)

Absolutely:

> In order to predict where thinking and reasoning capabilities are going, it's important to understand the trail of thought that went into today's thinking LLMs.

No. You don't understand at all. They don't think. They don't reason. They are statistical word generators. They are very impressive at doing things like writing code, but they don't work the way that is being inferred here.

Re: As Rocks May Think

#73
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the only point is distributing money, then the pointless bullshit job is an unnecessary complication.

It's not unnecessary to the person who uses it to pay their bills.

I think GP meant that the money could be distributed directly without the job in between, i.e. UBI.

Of course that comes with its own set of problems, e.g. that you will lose training, connections, the ability to exert influence through the job or any hope of building a career.

Re: As Rocks May Think

#74
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The previous post in this blog is titled "Leaving 1X". So your wait is over!

Unrelated, but it seems his previous company, 1x, was initially named Halodi and was located in Norway. And eventually, it was moved with all employees in Silicon Valley. How the hell does that work? That sounds like a logistical nightmare.Do you upend all those people's lives? Do you fire those who refuse? How many norwegians even want to go to the US? Sounds crazy to me.

Did they actually move or is it just a "remote-first" company now?

(Or even just registered in SV but still physically in Norway?)

Edit: Seems like a mix of all of it:

> I joined Halodi Robotics in 2022 (prior name of the company) as the only California-based employee. At the time, we were about 40 based out of Norway and 2 in Texas.

Re: As Rocks May Think

#76
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It can code in an autocomplete sense. In the serious sense, if we don’t distinguish between code and thought, it can’t. Observe that modern coding agents rely heavily on heuristics. LLM excels at training datasets, at analyzing existing knowledge, but it can’t generate new knowledge on the same scale, its thinking (a process of identification and integration) is severely limited on the conscious level (context window…

> It can code in an autocomplete sense. I just (right before hopping on HN) finished up a session where an agent rewrote 3000 lines of custom tests. If you know of any "autocomplete" that can do something similar, let me know. Otherwise, I think saying LLMs are "autocomplete" doesn't make a lot of sense.

That’s neat, but it’s important to note that agentic systems aren’t just comprised of the LLM. You have to take into account all the various tools the system has access to, as well as the agentic harness used to keep the LLM from going off the rails. And even with all this extra architecture, which AI firms have spent billions to perfect, the system is still just… fine. Not even as good as a junior SWE.

Re: As Rocks May Think

#77

Biggest update I see is that he thinks AI 2027 is actually going to happen.

We’re going to see all talk of AI 2027 quietly disappear as folks realize how out-of-touch with reality it is. I have no idea why people take that crap seriously.

Re: As Rocks May Think

#78
This research process is the same as what I've been doing.

https://cmpr.ai/hutter/archive/

Claude does the research, like having an army of very fast but forgetful grad students working for free.

The individual paper doesn't make much incremental improvement but once you get a pipeline of results building in a particular direction it's powerful.

Re: As Rocks May Think

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why you're being downvoted. This is a topic worth discussing. Like every previous invention that improves productivity (cf. copiers, steam power, the wheel), this wave of AI is making certain forms of labor redundant, creating or further enriching a class of industrialists, and enabling individuals to become even more productive. This could create a golden age, or a dark age -- most likely, it will…

Considering the usage of LLMs by many people as a sort of friend or psychologist we also get to look forward to a new form a control over people. These things earn peoples "trust" and there is no reason why it couldn't be used to sway peoples opinions. Not to mention the devious and subtle ways it can advertise to people. Also, these productivity gains arent used to reduce working time for the same number of people,…

People need to develop memetic immunity to AI flattery. It's exactly like how conspiracy sites on the Internet worked. A lot of people get one-shor in the beginning, but 10 years later mostly everyone understands that you can't just believe what you read on the Internet.

Re: As Rocks May Think

#80
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It doesn't seem to be all that useful for real, productive work. Even the most pointless bullshit job accomplishes a societal function by transferring wages from a likely wealthy large corporation to a individual worker who has bills to pay. Eliminating bullshit jobs might be good from an economic efficiency perspective, but people still gotta eat.

The logic of American economic policy relies on a large velocity of money driven by consumer habits. It is tautological, and it is obsolete in the face of the elite trying to minimize wage expenses.

How is it obsolete? If everyone is unemployed and a few AI barons are obscenely wealthy, the velocity of money will be low.

Seems to me like that's still a worthy goal.

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