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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

#211
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?

Economic, market and product results. Schmidt took Google to the moon financially, speareding projects like Chrome and Android that cemented Google as THE tech titan(couch monopoly cough), whereas Woz was a top HW engineer of his time, but Apple would have quickly failed if he was at the helm calling the shots, instead of Jobs. From which would you take advice, the successful entrepreneur/investor, or the nice hacker…

> From which would you take advice, the successful entrepreneur/investor, or the nice hacker geek [?]

The nice hacker geek? By the way, the Woz has a net-worth of 140MM, so he's more wealthy that the vast majority of "successful entrepreneur/investors", and also vastly more beloved than virtually all of them.

In any case, that's a false dichotomy and actually the wrong question entirely.

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

#212

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…

* * *

>Would you prefer the harsh unpopular truth of Erich Schmidt, or a sweet lie of Wozniak?

What Erich Schmidt is doing is not about describing hard reality. He is trying to make a particular version of the future come true by painting it as inevitable. It's literally a propaganda technique.

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

#213
post #82
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…

> internal memo requiring all code to be produced from prompts That is absolutely insane. Thing is I can honestly believe that it happens, which makes it even more insane.

Oh it happens all right.

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

#214
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The problem with public policy is that it allows other countries to get ahead of you. 'AI' isn't just a tool, it's also a race.

Why should we care about that? Even if you wanted to argue our individual fates are tied to our country's, we don't all live in the same country, so how, actually, could we all care? Are you really convinced its so zero sum like this?

We collectively spend decades and decades creating a sophisticated global capitalism, huge networks and infrastructures of trade and travel, just to find ourselves in some dark forest-esque race with everyone else anyway? Is this really consistent to you? What was the point of anything in the last, like 40 years to you if we just need to act like we are still in a cold war, except this time its a war with everyone?

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

#215
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in infrastructure (backups, networking etc) and no longer in software. I just don't see llms being that useful right now. If I have a problem and ask an LLM the answer is either fabricated or useless, rarely does it know what it's talking about. And yes I know how to describe the problem so that it has a chance to give an useful answer. Also even with agents, you can't just try and error your way out of some (…

Well Coding agents are being tackled. Infrastructure agents that would read your host event logs, device configuration, ilo, etc, etc - that is probably the missing piece. Having a chat with chatgpt may give you clues or ideas when you have gone throught your own checklist of what could have went wrong, but can go only as far. Agent on the other side will decompile .dll to find out issues if needed to go deep enought…

Providing access to the data is easy. It is just an MCP or equivalent, and coding such CRUD is cheap now.

Applying the actions is unsolved. Unless you YOLO the LLMs, taking stateful actions automatically requires a lot of protective infrastructure, solid testing infra etc.

It’s all just more code, but a “create me a shopping website” LLM is likely not going to be doing the infrastructure level thinking required to handle it for now.

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

#216

One perhaps unpopular opinion: Could it be that the current AI is beneficial for young people in the sense that it is making them stop looking at their phone for a bit, and realize that certain tech is not that important for human well beeing? The change is in their/our hands after all, we just need to become aware, believe and vote with our wallet and the whole society will change in the blink of an eye. The hard pa…

My experience as a parent is that gen alpha took note of the fact that their parents being on their phones means less attention, so it's possible they'll have a more sober view of the entire thing.

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

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economic, market and product results. Schmidt took Google to the moon financially, speareding projects like Chrome and Android that cemented Google as THE tech titan(couch monopoly cough), whereas Woz was a top HW engineer of his time, but Apple would have quickly failed if he was at the helm calling the shots, instead of Jobs. From which would you take advice, the successful entrepreneur/investor, or the nice hacker…

> From which would you take advice, the successful entrepreneur/investor, or the nice hacker geek [?] The nice hacker geek? By the way, the Woz has a net-worth of 140MM, so he's more wealthy that the vast majority of "successful entrepreneur/investors", and also vastly more beloved than virtually all of them. In any case, that's a false dichotomy and actually the wrong question entirely.

>By the way, the Woz has a net-worth of 140MM, so he's more wealthy that the vast majority of "successful entrepreneur/investors",

So are a lot of people who invested(gambled) early in Bitcoin and Tesla, that doesn't mean people should take career advice from them just because they managed to make a lot of money.

But if you design and developed several successful tech products in your career, I think people should at least listen because it's a pattern rather than just luck.

>and also vastly more beloved than virtually all of them

So is Taylor Swift, that doesn't mean people should take career advice from her.

When I look for people to take advice from I want to see a pattern of home runs, that they can deliver successful products repeatedly, like Erich Schmidt or Steve Jobs, not one trick ponies like Woz who managed to get lucky once in a completely different era, then coast the next 50+ years on past glory giving speeches.

Again, I really like Woz as a person, he's my spirit animal, but that doesn't mean he's correct and in tune on the status of the tech market, the challenges people and entrepreneurs will face today. His experience being a HW tinkerer in his garage in the 1970's isn't relevant anymore today. The world has changed massively since then.

A more modern day woz would be Palmer Luckey of Anduril. Love him or hate him he's more up to date on what the industry rewards today if you want to be a garage tinkerer made billionaire entrepreneur founder than Woz.

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

#218

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.

Up until the reality of the technology doesn’t align to the expectations and promises. That’s when true belief shifts to hype and lies in an effort to salvage the investment. I think that’s where we’re at now.

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

#219
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well Coding agents are being tackled. Infrastructure agents that would read your host event logs, device configuration, ilo, etc, etc - that is probably the missing piece. Having a chat with chatgpt may give you clues or ideas when you have gone throught your own checklist of what could have went wrong, but can go only as far. Agent on the other side will decompile .dll to find out issues if needed to go deep enought…

Might be but I just can't imagine a customer being fine with a loose cannon agent in their environment. E.g. coding agents are ignoring instructions. Who is to say that Claudes solution to a, say, slow backup isn't deleting the backup?

Imagine an agent shadowing all your terminals, providing ideas and asking to run commands that will let it verify the hypotheses it comes up with, while at the same time doing research on vendor docs, etc...

Quite safe, and already a force multiplier - this would be a harness. Maybe have it be able to write to a shadow system with similar (ideally same) hardware to verify it's hypothesis on how the system works, etc...

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

#220
There's been a massive mask-off shift amongst elites* the last few years where displaying open contempt and hatred towards normal people - employees, students, public servants, etc. You can see this most clearly near the epicentre of the SV executive class where layoffs are celebrated and the life of the remaining employees is made as shitty as possible (ie, Meta's keyloggers), but it is everywhere. Speakers gleefully mocking and chiding graduates about how fucked they are due to AI, opinion columns from oligarch-owned mass media about how ungrateful everyone is towards the president, democratic senators (!!) mocking their constituents for wanting health insurance, just absolute disgust and hatred dripping everywhere.

* Here I'm using the alternate definition of elite - someone with money, power, position, or privilege - and not the conventional "barista with hair colour".

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