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"People who don't use AI will be left behind"

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Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#151

Post by DonaldPShimoda »

vehemenz wrote: post #131
DonaldPShimoda wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I thought people here got excited about technology. I am passionately excited about technology that serves people , but the current hype around AI is not that. LLMs are, fundamentally, a super cool development. That we can now generate large regions of text that are statistically likely to be perceived as accurate is phenomenally neat. But that's all they are: statistical text prediction engines. They do not think…

> But that's all they are: statistical text prediction engines. They do not think or reason; they generate next tokens based on prior context[1]. Unfortunately, because they predict really convincing text, a lot of people are willing to believe them to be more capable than they are. As a consequence, the companies developing these technologies have chosen to lean into rhetoric that exacerbates these beliefs because i…

> The reductionist, mechanical explanation of what AIs do is not the full picture

It is the full picture, to a first approximation. The statistical models involved are incredibly complex, and the mechanisms used to tend towards better outputs have improved drastically, but it is still fundamentally just statistics. I don't understand why you would try to argue otherwise. "Just statistics" is not a pejorative; if anything, I think it's incredibly impressive that we can do so much by using statistical models to predict things based on a context. But that means there are inherent limitations, and this is where my concern lies.

> AIs know more and can reason better than most humans

They do not "know" things; they do not "reason". They generate statistically likely outputs based on a huge and complex training set. The distinction is that it is still possible to get even modern cutting-edge models to contradict themselves or express "thoughts" in a way that a self-aware "reasoning" person would never do.

That said, yes, the statistical models have been tuned to generate output that imitates reasoning processes very realistically, and the training data includes copious quantities of "facts" that reflect human knowledge, and this has even led to neat and surprising outcomes. I'm not suggesting otherwise. I just fundamentally do not believe it is the same process that humans use for cognition, and I think the fact that LLMs generate text that appears to follow these processes is misleading to many people.

> The easiest way isn't with rhetorical tricks or sycophancy—it's arguing compellingly, solving difficult problems, and producing good code.

This depends greatly on what you think "easiest" means. The trade-off here is that we have invested a huge amount of compute to get here, which came with a significant cost vis a vis available resources.

Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#152

Post by DonaldPShimoda »

keithnz wrote: post #148
DonaldPShimoda wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think anywhere I said they weren't useful tools; I said that a lot of people fail to recognize the limitations, and that even aside from limitations/utility there is a discussion to be had about broader impact. LLMs are not hype, but "AI" is. AI is a marketing term, and always has been.

what makes you think that people are failing to recognize the limitations? Seems to me that's the most obvious thing when you try to build things with it.

Have you... talked to people? Like, people generally, not domain experts using these tools to augment their existing process.

Tons of people think AI is significantly more capable than it is. We've known for the better part of a century that generating text that merely pretends competence is enough to convince a significant portion of the population that it is competence.

Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#153

Post by JeremyNT »

sshine wrote: post #110
giancarlostoro wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The better you are at architecting or even directing a junior developer, the better your output too. Dont let AI make decisions, its supposed to take your decisions and turn those into code. When AI makes decisions, well the unexpected outcome is always on you.

> Dont let AI make decisions, its supposed to take your decisions and turn those into code. I let the AI make decisions all the time. I often approve them, and I sometimes revert them. Most of the time they’re really good decisions based on my initial intent, but followed by analysis I didn’t make but agree with.

I think there's a spectrum of where to draw the line.

There's clearly some level where you want a human making decisions for even the most vibey of project, because without some kind of a spec about what you're trying to build and what features you want you'd get nonsense.

But like... maybe don't stress the details too much.

Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#154

Post by kylecazar »

d_silin wrote: post #32
kylecazar wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think balancing AI use with creativity and thought is a matter of IQ. It comes down to how you use the tool.

In my practice, I found AI are more useful in adversarial mode ("criticize this concept, "find a possible bug in this code", "challenge me", "quiz me on the knowledge"), because the knowledge found adds up to your own skills.

100%. One of the things I use it for most is to steel-man an argument I hate or criticize a conviction I have.

Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#155

Post by raffael_de »

dsiegel2275 wrote: post #92
jerhewet wrote: post #87

Thank ghod I'm retiring in six months. I'm very thankful I came of age during the golden age of personal computing. I was able to own my own computer(s) and earn a living writing software on them and for them. Fifty years was a good run, and I consider myself lucky to have participated in it. IMO we've gone full circle: dumb terminals chained to mainframes and the whimsey of someone else's rules, restrictions, and re…

Take me with you, please.

Where he goes, he has to go alone.

Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#156

Post by saltcured »

joe_mamba wrote: post #102
tristor wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not what the GP said at all. I am definitely not a Boomer, and I fully agree with them. They are lamenting the loss of control over your own general purpose computing system, and how our capitalistic society run by oligarchs is enforcing that through economic pressures. There is nothing in their comment that praises their hard work, intelligence, or claims younger people are incapable.

> our capitalistic society run by oligarchs is enforcing that through economic pressures. Which the people retiring soon, like the one I'm replying to, helped build with their labor, funded with their investments to get rich and enjoy their 401ks, leaving the current generations holding the bag. Nobody's innocent here. When Zuckerberg brought out his checkbook to poach engineers to build the Spybook 9000 social netwo…

> Nobody's innocent here.

I'm not as old as the GPP who is thankful to be retiring, but that's absurd. What would it take, in your mind, not to be complicit in this? Would we have to form militant groups who fire bomb datacenters and social media operators..?

We didn't all work for Facebook, nor any FAANG, nor embrace or hype the crypto scams. Hell, I abstained from using Facebook due to my principles.

I spent my career writing open source software, at academic salary levels. Though I'm not happy to end my career today, the AI agent stuff may well be the hill I retire on, if the mass delusion spirals hard enough and employers demand that I bend my principles.

Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#158

Post by dude250711 »

simonw wrote: post #146
sdevonoes wrote: post #62

Any engineer (any person actually) can “learn to use AI” in a couple of days. It’s not rocket science; there’s no chance of left behind. If you haven’t use LLMs at all, a weekend would be enough to be on par with everyone else in the industry

Firmly disagree. Learning how to use these tools effectively is unintuitively difficult. They're great at some stuff and terrible at other stuff in ways that are very hard to predict. I'm figuring out new and better ways to use them in a daily basis, and I've been an almost daily user for nearly three years.

If these tools stopped drastically improving, what justifies the crazy valuations?

Re: "People who don't use AI will be left behind"

#159

Post by akomtu »

bluegatty wrote: post #123
newobj wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

all those words and not one concrete claim made. in other words, FUD. the whole point of the article.

I made very concrete claim: that AI will be universal and widespread - embedded within all of the technology and systems we use. It's so completely obvious, that anyone denying it has to be living in some kind rhetorical bubble. It's truly a feature of 'online rhetoric' like HN/Reddit where people can consider these asymptotic postures and take themselves seriously. We will use AI like you use plastics, cars, electri…

"Hand writing" your own thoughts is the only true way, though. If some entity does your thinking, then it's no longer you.
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