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The AI Great Leap Forward

leehanchung.github.io

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Re: The AI Great Leap Forward

#41

Post by busterarm »

e3df wrote: post #24
deklesen wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This also seems to implicitly assume that ai models won't get better - a bet I am not willing to make currently..

Models get better with money (reinvestment). But if there aren't enough returns soon the money will eventually dry up for OAI and Anthropic and Google will not be trusted with their cash balance. Its amazing how people here think that money is a play-thing and this dance can go on forever. It cant and wont and the fear-induced marketing doesnt work forever either.

This is a false equivalence. Models get better with more & better data.

Both more data and better data are very expensive. Procuring... Handling... All of the above...

You can spend bottomless piles of cash and by not doing the right things not get there. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen business/investor incentives line up with r&d incentives.

There's no guarantee that there is enough or good-enough data, regardless of how much money you have.

Re: The AI Great Leap Forward

#42

Post by busterarm »

tim333 wrote: post #31

Comparing AI to steel production in the Great Leap Forward seems unfair. It's not some communist plan - it's a capitalist free for all similar to the industrial revolutions in the UK/US. It won't lead to a famine, it'll lead to the chaotic creative destruction capitalism usually produces.

You're mistaking communism/capitalism as economic systems for communism/capitalism as organizational structures. The latter is what the argument centers around.

It's been argued frequently that families and tech companies are structured like socialist states. Central planning, flatter structures, division of labor...I'm not starting down that thread or opening up that debate.

This only is not a capitalist structure but capitalism itself doesn't really offer any ideas about structure or governance beyond encouraging the free movement of capital.

Re: The AI Great Leap Forward

#43

Post by cindyllm »

cynicalsecurity wrote: post #27

Oh god, don't get me started on this. The article goes full opera-level tragedy, like we're all marching into some corporate gulag where AI eats our souls and the lights go out forever. "The famine comes later" my ass. It's peak doomer porn, written to make you feel like the sky is falling instead of just another round of executive circle jerking. The corporate world has always been 80% lies, fake KPIs and theatre. "…

[dead]

Re: The AI Great Leap Forward

#44

Post by bluefirebrand »

busterarm wrote: post #40
gck1 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I left my last company job just before "AI-first engineering" became mainstream, and you confirmed what I was feeling all this time - I have absolutely zero idea how teams actually manage to collaborate with LLM-managed projects. All the projects that I'm working now are my own and the only reason why I could do this is because I had unlimited time and unlimited freedom. There's no chance I would be able to do this i…

I agree and commiserate. In the near term my picture is pretty grim. There's fantastic uses for these tools but they're being abused. I was big on correctness, software safety (think medical devices, not memory) and formal proofs anyway, so I think I'm just going to take the pay cut and start selecting for those types of jobs. Your run of the mill SaaS or open source+commercial companies are all becoming a death marc…

> Your run of the mill SaaS or open source+commercial companies are all becoming a death march.

Most of them already were death marches to begin with, now they are firing squads

Re: The AI Great Leap Forward

#45

Post by skybrian »

e3df wrote: post #26
skybrian wrote: post #11

If you want to show that that there's a risk of disaster you need to do better than making a silly analogy. Companies will often start expensive projects that fail and then they pick themselves up and move on. Big, profitable companies can afford bigger failures. Google has had a slew of failed projects, and Meta's metaverse stuff tanked, and they're still fine. They can afford to experiment. So which companies are b…

"Google has had a slew of failed projects, and Meta's metaverse stuff tanked, and they're still fine. They can afford to experiment." Only with the blessing of shareholders. Frankly Google's search box and ad-tech has been carrying all of its failed bets but at some point people will start questioning if Google is returning enough cash given the results of new investments. Google's management does not own the cash -…

Which shareholders do you mean? Mark Zuckerberg holds >50% of voting rights for Facebook. Sergey Brin and Larry Page hold >50% of voting rights for Google. That means management gets to do what it wants, within very broad legal limits.

On the other hand, how the stock does will matter to other employees because they’re shareholders and they have a stake in the outcome.

Re: The AI Great Leap Forward

#46

Post by patch_dev »

vidarh wrote: post #35
hperrin wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AIs don’t produce well organized code. They duplicate effort, which is tech debt. Maybe one day they will be able to clear their own tech debt. And who knows, maybe they’ll still be heavily subsidized by VC money then.

Having them clear it is trivial. I have my harness refactor automatically on a steady cadence, something I could never afford to take the time to do manually.

So you have an AI refactor AI generated code? What am I missing here, if AI is the cause of the tech debt because it doesn't write great code, won't you just end up with more tech debt if you ask AI to refactor it?

Re: The AI Great Leap Forward

#47

Post by sinuhe69 »

The organisation where my wife works ordered all mid-level leaders and above to take a mandatory AI course, mostly remote with two days on-site to present their capstone projects, costing 2x K USD (not including flights). The capstone projects sounded impressive, and the course was celebrated as a resounding success. However, one year later, as far as I know, none of the capstone projects have been implemented, including my wife's and other ones I know of.

Having looked at some of the project descriptions, I realised that they would need to invest far more manpower, special expertise and time if they wanted to implement them with a moderate chance of success.

I believe this is not uncommon in large organisations worldwide.

BTW, it’s great that somebody has drawn a comparison with China’s Great Leap Forward. Not many people know about it and it always serves as a stark reminder of how crazy state-ordered “progress” could be.

Re: The AI Great Leap Forward

#48

Post by aaztehcy »

cynicalsecurity wrote: post #27

Oh god, don't get me started on this. The article goes full opera-level tragedy, like we're all marching into some corporate gulag where AI eats our souls and the lights go out forever. "The famine comes later" my ass. It's peak doomer porn, written to make you feel like the sky is falling instead of just another round of executive circle jerking. The corporate world has always been 80% lies, fake KPIs and theatre. "…

[dead]

Re: The AI Great Leap Forward

#49

Post by vidarh »

patch_dev wrote: post #46
vidarh wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having them clear it is trivial. I have my harness refactor automatically on a steady cadence, something I could never afford to take the time to do manually.

So you have an AI refactor AI generated code? What am I missing here, if AI is the cause of the tech debt because it doesn't write great code, won't you just end up with more tech debt if you ask AI to refactor it?

If a human produces tech debt, do you think a human can't refactor?

Most of the time a human works over code multiple times, and still produces tech debt.

Give an AI agent enough time, by prompting it multiple times, and explicit instructions to look for and address tech debt of various forms, and it will.

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