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"Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

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Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#171

Post by RGamma »

jplusequalt wrote: post #161
Aerroon wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not going to get worse than now though. Open models like GLM 5 are very good. Even if companies decide to crank up the costs, the current open models will still be available. They will likely get cheaper to run over time as well (better hardware).

>Open models like GLM 5 are very good. Even if companies decide to crank up the costs, the current open models will still be available. https://apxml.com/models/glm-5 To run GLM-5 you need access to many, many consumer grade GPUs, or multiple data center level GPUs. >They will likely get cheaper to run over time as well (better hardware). Unless they magically solve the problem of chip scarcity, I don't see this happ…

I mean it would make sense to see this as a hardware investment into a virtual employee, that you actually control (or rent from someone who makes this possible for you), not as private assistant. Ballparking your numbers, we would need at least an order of magnitude price-performance improvement for that I think.

Also, how much bang for the buck do those 3090s actually give you compared to enterprise-grade products?

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#172

Post by dxxmxnd »

> is it really work if all you're doing is telling the computer what to do and then reviewing it to make sure it didn't do anything wrong and also babysitting it all hours of the day?

It’s funny because this is what we do already at many jobs but now its just telling a computer to tell a computer what to do. A higher level of abstraction.

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#173

Post by beepbooptheory »

ctoth wrote: post #11

The gambling analogy completely falls apart on inspection. Slot machines have variable reward schedules by design — every element is optimized to maximize time on device. Social media optimizes for engagement, and compulsive behavior is the predictable output. The optimization target produces the addiction. What's Anthropic's optimization target??? Getting you the right answer as fast as possible! The variability in…

You may have a point but either way: immediately taking it personally like this and creating a whole semi-rant that includes something to the effect "I've been doing this since before you were born" really makes you sound like a person with a gambling problem.

Trust me, we all feel like the house is our friend until its isn't!

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#174

Post by meta_1995 »

HolyLampshade wrote: post #151

I know I'm running a bit late to the party here, but maybe someone can provide some color that I (on the slightly older end of the spectrum when it comes to this) don't fully understand. When people talk about leaving their agents to run overnight, what are those agents actually doing? The limited utility I've had using agent-supported software development requires a significant amount of hand holding, maybe because…

Not a dev but doing some side projects.

As i build with agents, i frequently run into new issues that arent in scope for the task im on and would cause context drift. I have the agent create a github issue with a short problem description and keep going on the current task. In another terminal i spin up a new agent and just tell it “investigate GH issue 123” and it starts diving in, finds the root cause, and proposes a fix. Depending on what parts of the code the issue fix touches and what other agents ive got going, i can have 3-4 agents more or less independently closing out issues/creating PRs for review at a time. The agents log their work in a work log- what they did, what worked what didnt, problems they encountered using tools - and about once a day i have an agent review the worklog and update the AGENTS.md with lessons learned.

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#175

Post by mikemarsh »

TZubiri wrote: post #84

Not sure if the original post is satire, but it reads like an alcoholic's submission to https://xkcd.com/1227/

Always interesting how this kind of snark never seems to go to bat for modern man's average patience and self-control, thus actually proving the naysayers wrong, but always just assumes that "everyone knows" modern times are best and those silly past naysayers are thus wrong.

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#176

Post by wordpad »

shafyy wrote: post #120
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It only matters if the rivals have same performance. Opus pricing is 50x Deepseek, and like >100x of small models. It should match rival if the performance is same, and if they can produce model with 10x lower token usage, they can charge 10x. Gemini increased the same Flash's price by something like 5x IIRC when it got better.

I bet that the actual "performance" of all the top-tier providers is so similar, that branding has bigger impact on if you think Claude or ChatGPT peforms better.

Performance or perception of performance

Potato potato Tomato tomato

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#177

Post by RamblingCTO »

ctoth wrote: post #11

The gambling analogy completely falls apart on inspection. Slot machines have variable reward schedules by design — every element is optimized to maximize time on device. Social media optimizes for engagement, and compulsive behavior is the predictable output. The optimization target produces the addiction. What's Anthropic's optimization target??? Getting you the right answer as fast as possible! The variability in…

Thank you! I don't get how so many people want to see dark patterns everywhere. All arguments miss the big counterargument: in a world where you have competitors, even free ones, you can't fuck around. You need to get it working. it's not a slot machine for me. How on earth are people using it? And if it would be I'd take my money elsewhere (kimi for example, openrouter or whatever). It needs to do my work as correct as possible. That's the business they are in. Tech folks talking about economics is so cringe. It's always just "corporations bad". As if they exist in a vacuum.

Re: "Token anxiety", a slot machine by any other name

#180

Post by forgetfreeman »

wordpad wrote: post #170
forgetfreeman wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sigh We're doing this lie again? Quality of Outcome is not, has never been, and if the last 40 years are anything to go on will never be a core or even tangential goal. Dudes are trying to make the stock numbers go up and get paid. That's it. That's all it ever is.

You're just being pedantic and cynical. Goal of any business in principle is profit, by your terms all of them are misaligned. Matter of fact is that customers are receiving value and the value has been a good proxy for which company will grow to be successful and which will fail.

I'm being neither pedantic nor cynical. Do you need a refresher on value proposition vs actual outcomes on the last few decades of breathlessly hyped tech bubbles? Executive summary: the portions of tech industry that attract the most investment consistently produce the worst outcomes, the more cash the shittier the result. It's also worth noting that "value" is defined as anything you can manipulate someone to pay for.
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