Live data from Hacker News

Shunning AI is the human choice

thehandbasket.co

351–360 of 572 posts

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know or particularly care what “anti-AI” thought leaders think. I don’t get my views from a camp. The person above believes that in a year, or 3 years, or 10 years that they will remain an “operator” of the AI, and that their creativity will be amplified at the expense of the dumb luddites who will be left in the dust. Very common in tech, more disappointing in the arts. This is incorrect - we will in short o…

> I don't know You said it. > or particularly care what "anti-AI" thought leaders think. I don't get my views from a camp. You said this: "they had a point." So, "I don't know or particularly care what "anti-AI" thought leaders think." is clearly a lie. > I don't get my views from a camp. But you speak on it? Gotcha. > we will in short order on the current trajectory see cognitive "dark factories" announced by hypers…

I made a specific point, you didn’t like it. I’m not saying this from some sort of inferiority complex, it is literally a product category that is probably going to be announced in an OpenAI blog post in the next 12-24 months or at the next Google IO.

> why do you welcome this?

I… don’t…

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it’s only that. I personally hate AI not because of CEOs and co, but because the tech is intrinsically born out of theft, and is still, to this day, evolving thanks to theft. And that’s even before the ecological considerations.

I've been on the free information train my entire life, back to my little hacker punk days in the 90's, so my opinion on that isn't worth much. I do think that the ecological considerations are also entirely the fault of the aforementioned CEOs. Machine learning research has been ongoing in good faith since the 40's. Blaming the technology is kind of silly. Imagine if we had banned trains because the robber barons we…

> is going to drive some incredible discoveries in all of STEM

No it won't. Natural language manipulation is never a bottleneck in STEM.

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#353
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife is a former journalist and was beginning her career when the web began to take off. All the old editors and reporters in her industry blew off the Internet, blogs, and web publishing in general. They thought no one will ever quit buying papers, it was a staple of modern life! She tried to clue them in but hit a brick wall ever time. I feel like history is repeating. I use AI regularly, where it works it works…

Getting people into coding is both cool and also not specific to AI.

yes i agree, but keep in mind they're not getting into coding. They don't have the time for that, they just want to get something to work for a need they have. These two aren't building control systems for a nuclear reactor so don't panic, they're just getting something to work for themselves. Even the most simple use case is very empowering for them.

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#354

Historians will tell you that in many ways, agriculture was the worst thing that ever happened to humanity. Agriculture meant hard, back-breaking, monotonous labor; it meant pests and disease due to population concentration; it meant a bland diet that did fully meet nutritional requirements; it meant social hierarchies of kings and priests. But societies that did not adopt agriculture were outcompeted and eventually…

Follow this reasoning to its conclusion: once humans are no longer part of the most efficient military-industrial "meta build", states that keep them alive will be outcompeted and eventually destroyed by those that do not.

Yep, it's all driven by Moloch, and nothing but.

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This technology is going to drive some incredible discoveries in all of STEM. We could do without them.

We could probably do without computers too, but that would be idiotic because they speed everything up. There's a good chance that the next pandemic is swatted down by LLM-powered vaccine development much faster than COVID-19 was. "We could do without them." is not a great take when it comes to people dying prematurely. In fact, I would bet that this particular technology will lead to climate change solutions eventua…

> LLM-powered vaccine development

Good lord!

I hope somebody is documenting all these bombastic LLM-related public statements. They're going to be a neverending source of cringe and laughs for the next 50 years.

(I've heard one C-level dude say with a straight face that LLMs were a "more significant invention than writing".)

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#356
post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it? It's a technology, not an artifical belief system to just disappear because people got tired of it. Hype might go away, along with some of today's usages, but the fact that we know about the technology means it will stay in one fo or another.

Swords, bows and arrows, castles were all here to stay. Technologies fade away when they are no longer useful, cost/benefit ratio is too high or something better comes along. It is question of when.

What tech can you imagine that would make the conversion of electricity into thought 'no longer useful'?

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other words, it’s a thought terminating cliche. Why say it? The Juicero is here to stay! There’s no putting the genie back in the bottle.

Comparing it to Juicero is also thought terminating.

No. You're not thinking it through well enough.

The technology involved in Juicero (or Pets.com, or many others) didn't go away. We could rebuild them any time we wanted to. Those things went away because they weren't able to make enough money to be an ongoing business.

Will AI? That is at least an open question at this point. (I mean, in fairness, Amazon's was an open question for many years too.)

The tech isn't going anywhere. Is there a path to a sustainable business model that uses that tech?

You may have an answer to that question. Can you prove it to someone who doesn't already agree with your answer?

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Short of societal collapse, there's no way the technology is going to go away or fade out of existence (unless it's replaced by something even better), that's just not how technological progress works. It's useful , probably in ways we haven't even thought of yet.

Building those datacenters and keeping them operational involves massive amounts of highly skilled blue-collar labor.

You seem to suppose the building of those datacenters - even the power plants behind them - won't soon be automated. Almost as if robotics isn't happening.

Re: Shunning AI is the human choice

#359
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, there isn't. At this point you would have to wipe out humanity to get rid of AI. And then hope nothing else ever evolves intelligence.

You'd have to wipe out, like, at MOST about ten executives and star engineers.

Do you think that's going to erase every copy of "Attention is all you need"?
Post reply on HN