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Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

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Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#181
post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can you be sure Eric Schmidt is telling “the truth” and Wozniak is lying? What’s your rationale and on the basis for such a claim?

The economy

And famously, the economy never changes course. Something, something, stocks always go up.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#182
post #52
post #34

Actual intelligence is useless when decision makers send new weekly AI rules to be better employees. It’s race to the bottom. Race to an endless technical debt. Some companies will implode when codebases stop being manageable. The small minority will thrive. But majority not. I see it used in hardware world. Clever dudes without prior experience with software craft working Python scripts, automate tests, control hard…

Companies that use AI well will replace the companies that use AI badly. There is no world in which AI is not used extensively in all employment going forward.

You've somehow confused using AI well with using it extensively.

Sometimes using something well involves not using it at all.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#183
post #107
post #33

Unsurprising he'd be cheered for saying what they wanted to hear. But perhaps whether or not his stance is correct, the students needed to hear this. They (we) have to believe human brains still have value and find a way out; for otherwise there'd be no point to try anymore.

> They (we) have to believe human brains still have value and find a way out; for otherwise there'd be no point to try anymore. Our value isn't predicated on our utility. The simple fact that we are sentient beings, capable of joy and suffering, gives us value. This is why we continue to support and care for the elderly and the disabled - we value them regardless of any practical utility we may derive from them. If y…

> Our value isn't predicated on our utility.

In the moral sense, sure.

But our modern day capitalist hellscape has made it extremely clear that if you aren't capable of providing value for shareholders, your life literally has no value. That's the reason the US government keeps cutting welfare programs, why union suppression exists.

The fact of the matter is that unless you are producing value for shareholders, you don't get to participate in society and are left to starve to death. No amount of flowery language is going to feed and house the unemployed. And we are running full speed into a situation with the explicit and overt goal of cresting as many unemployed people as possible while simultaneously ensuring that there are no resources or help offered to those unemployed people.

Flowery language will cover up the starving bodies in the streets the same way a can of febreeze will cover up a landfill. This is an enormous problem and if we don't fix it, people will die. Whether or not a human has intrinsic moral value by simply existing, we require money to survive in this society. A human life may be a mystical beautiful and valuable concept, but our society has determined that if you don't have money, you literally do not deserve to live.

That's what these students are so angry about. They're being pushed into a world that refuses to employ them and which delivers a death sentence for the crime of unemployment.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#184

The man is hailed as a brilliant nerd in our circles. I didn't realize he's a great public speaker. He really read the room. The "McKenzie"-style lady and Schmidt from Google (who really seemed to resent the pushback and chided graduates), can go to hell. I'm happy that someone is telling the young people who are likely to suffer because of this tech that they matter. I can't imagine how much angst much exist after t…

* * *

As much as it costs Woz nothing to be AI sceptic, Erich Schmidt has to loose much if AI investments don't deliver.

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/21/eric-schmidts-family-office-...

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#185

The man is hailed as a brilliant nerd in our circles. I didn't realize he's a great public speaker. He really read the room. The "McKenzie"-style lady and Schmidt from Google (who really seemed to resent the pushback and chided graduates), can go to hell. I'm happy that someone is telling the young people who are likely to suffer because of this tech that they matter. I can't imagine how much angst much exist after t…

* * *

I agree Woz is a sweet lie how everyone is unique and a snowflake. But regarding "you can be anything you want to be if you just work hard and apply yourselves, the world is your oyster, etc", I think the problem is the work hard part.

Plenty of people have the wrong dreams, like being an influencer, but how many actually work hard. Like spend 60 hours a week analyzing youtube videos to find the perfect thumbnail or spend time learning every aspect of production from design, lighting, pacing and everything in between. Probably not a lot. And chances are if you do spend the time (on even a vapid dream like being an influencer), you'd do pretty well and learn a very valuable set of skills.

My experience is the bar is pretty low. It's hard enough to find someone that's competent in their field of expertise and is easy to work with. A lot of people are just missing the basics. They don't put in the work or are willing to take instruction.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Auto-complete on steroids, is still my favorite analogy for AI. I don't mean that in a negative way either. Autocomplete is very good, but that never stopped me from learning English grammar and spelling.

Quite right. I'm worried about the impact that LLMs will have on the learning process, especially in programming, but also in writing. Programming and writing are both skills that seem simple, but take an absolutely staggering amount of practice to master. Think about how much your own writing (and programming, if you were lucky enough to start early) evolved from, say, age 12 (when a lot of smart kids start to tackl…

One angle I'm exploring, as a non-dev who nonetheless works in tech, is using Claude as a professor. Make learning timelines for me for Leetcode, break it down in phases, start with theory, ask me questions, then give me a coding challenge. Save that to an html artifact I can export and read on my phone.

It still gets things wrong, I can tell as I get through problems.

But it was either that or that dreary 'Cracking the Coding Interview' book. At least I'm learning fundamentals by asking question after question and making it track the concepts I had trouble with.

That's one use. Will most people use it to learn? Probably not. But most people are ... most people.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#189
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies that use AI well will replace the companies that use AI badly. There is no world in which AI is not used extensively in all employment going forward.

You've somehow confused using AI well with using it extensively. Sometimes using something well involves not using it at all.

not using it at all is no longer an option, companies that are not using it at all will die slow/fast death but death nonetheless.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

* * *

As much as it costs Woz nothing to be AI sceptic, Erich Schmidt has to loose much if AI investments don't deliver. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/21/eric-schmidts-family-office-...

Which, one might argue, shows he believes it.

He's putting money where his mouth is.

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