Wozniak is a man of the people.
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
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its not a rambling but sad fact of life, one of the failures of mankind so far. And we don't need to talk about some backwater 3rd world country (actually we do) - US has big issues allowing basic science to be taught to kids, because of some set of stories and anecdotes from various people gathered over centuries together about some potential events around one mason who started yet another sect 2k years ago, and the…
Religion is a lot broader than Christian fundamentalism and zealots. It's sort of like applied philosophy: how do you live a flourishing life in relationship to other people and to the god(s). Modernity has an implicit materialist worldview (matter is all that is) and an explicit rejection of the divine. However, if matter is all there is, then there is no meaning in the world. This is not a way to flourish in the wo…
Yes, life has no inherent meaning in and of itself. It's up to you to find what's meaningful. If that's praying to the FSM, father of all pastas, hoping his sauce never goes bad, so be it, if it's a more mainstream religion, or something else entirely that's all on you. I don't understand how you connect that to not flourishing though.
Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
I imagine how you intended your comment to come across and I get it to some level. But I can't help feeling that there's something a bit dystopian in a world where all friction is removed just to more quickly get to the juicy bits.
You’re still free to walk to your destination instead of driving, it would just be a lot of time friction. Funny how reducing the friction with technology eventually increased the friction of the older transportation methods.
Your analogy is apt in more ways than one. It comes down to how often the point of a journey is to get to the destination. Most old wisdoms teach that the latter is more often just a MacGuffin to embark on the former. If they're right, AI offers tremendous potential for new adventures, but also as a catalyst for completely missing the plot. Yes, we're "free" to choose, but I'm skeptical that a culture conditioning us to eschew friction necessarily equips us to distinguish when the grind and frustration might be "good" for us.
I once made a travel friend who just didn't get the point of me taking eight hours to slow travel by train or by bus across a country that we were both visiting, when she could just hop on a plane and get to the next city in an hour. Earlier in my youth, transportation choices were economically motivated, but what I got from it would influence all future visits to other countries. When chilling with other travelers, exchanging tips and stories, it was as if my friend was visiting a completely different place. She left the country shortly after, confiding to me in the end that she really didn't see what the big deal was with it and that she would probably never be back.
I understand that some people may not resonate with this outlook -- and maybe it's just me getting older -- but I've grown to see that there's indeed such a thing as going through life in a hurry. I do think that the jury's still out as to the overall impact of AI on what I would label "useful friction".
Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence
#394Earlier quoted context omitted.
Religion is a lot broader than Christian fundamentalism and zealots. It's sort of like applied philosophy: how do you live a flourishing life in relationship to other people and to the god(s). Modernity has an implicit materialist worldview (matter is all that is) and an explicit rejection of the divine. However, if matter is all there is, then there is no meaning in the world. This is not a way to flourish in the wo…
>However, if matter is all there is, then there is no meaning in the world. This is not a way to flourish in the world. Things like this really make it hard, as an atheist, to receive the argument that my problem is with Christianity, and not with religion. You're saying that my beliefs mean there's no meaning, and are incompatible with flourishing in the world. I understand you feel the need to defend your beliefs a…
> I personally don't find religion necessary to live an ethical and fulfilling life
"I personally don't find science necessary to live a modern and fulfilling life"
(I say, as I type using a computer on the internet)
People love to remove attribution when it suits their short-sighted view.
Just as you can attribute something I enjoy today to science, I can attribute something you enjoy today to religion.
Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pray elaborate.
Because, in practice, it turns telling people what they want to hear into a first-class virtue. >> "We told him about how our land had been stolen and our people were dying. When we finished he shook our hands and said, 'Endeavor to persevere!' ... We thought about it for a long time, 'Endeavor to persevere.' And when we had thought about it long enough, we declared war on the Union."
Depending on what the event is and why you were asked to speak telling the audience what they want to hear may be appropriate. If you're a consultant giving a presentation on how a business needs to change it's operations some hard truths may be necessary. At a graduation where students are going into an uncertain job market while loaded with debt... maybe save the hard truths. A little encouragement may be appropriate in that circumstance.
Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence
#396Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence
#397This title makes me feel he cheered, not that he was cheered at.
Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence
#398Actual 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…
This too shall pass. Among my software engineering friend group bubble: Every single individual (~12 of us) are actively and seriously tokenmaxing. We have middle-managers who have been given an AI mandate, upper-managers saying "uhh...maybe that brush stroke was too broad" when they look at the bill every month, and zero people in that chain have the authority or even ability to roll it back. This week one of my fri…
In case this anecdote is not made up, I would implore you or your friend be a bit more subtle at tokenmaxing (ugh). At $JOB, I'm under the same mandate, and it turns out that every prompt is logged and aggregated. When someone else at $JOB asked the team PM who's in charge of the logging, s/he replied that the log is only used to correlate with commits, and nothing else, trust us (wink). I doubt this is unique to my $JOB.
Therefore, sigh burn those tokens, but make sure your prompts are at least superficially defensible, in the unlikely event that you get audited. Use multiple models for the same prompt / task, for instance. It's well know that LLMs are prone hallucinations, so it's only prudent to double / triple cross-check the results with multiple models.
Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence
#399Earlier 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…
Every year half a million children die of diarrhea. There are so, so many people in the world, who are capable of joy and suffering, who "we" don't care much at all. However I have a feeling that "we" might be joining that group eventually.
Yea, and I will take it a step further; it is really easy to start to worry about the “worth of a human life” when it’s yours. When we are in the position to not care about the worth of a human for our gain(such as children working to make iPhones for us to use cheaper) we call it economics.
Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence
#400He also said he's not impressed by LLM, which I totally agree.
I don't know what to say. I may not like it, you may not think it's actually intelligent, you may not think it's going to change the world - but how can you not see that this is revolutionary?
No. Nondeterministic output is not revolutionary. Technology forced down our throats by a few companies and executives who are licking their lips at the idea of laying off people, even if laying those people off means garbage products, is not revolutionary. Slop is not revolutionary.
Perhaps what people forget is that every great product builds on the past in a way to improve it. Buggy software and lame copywriting and kids not learning is not revolutionary. The people continuing to prioritize quality will be the revolutionary ones. Garbage is not revolutionary.