Does anyone actually believe that anything these people say has any relationship to reality? As far as I can tell it's 90% just saying whatever they think will make them the most money, with maybe 10% of self-delusion thrown in because their brains are addled by spending all their time in a bubble world where AI is the be-all and the end-all. Maybe AI will cause a jobs apocalypse, maybe it won't, but I sure as hell wouldn't trust anything Sam Altman says on the matter.
Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions
161–170 of 196 posts
Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, the GPUs used in AI data centers don't have the capability to do normal graphics. They're completely useless for games and content creation. Additionally, B200s can consume up to 14kW of power. There are no consumer power supplies that could power such a thing. The sad thing is all that silicon will basically be worthless.
Prediction: it's not gonna be worthless for games. This is what's gonna make cloud gaming really take off. True, you can't use these as desktop GPUs, but they can be installed in data centers for purposes of video game streaming rather than AI.
The physics of latency disagree fundamentally here.
Gaming, as a market, dislikes Live Service games, and many recent ones have basically flipped right out of the gate.
Stadia was the exact flop everyone predicted, and simply throwing bigger compute won’t help. That market, simply, does not want that product offering.
Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
Prediction: it's not gonna be worthless for games. This is what's gonna make cloud gaming really take off. True, you can't use these as desktop GPUs, but they can be installed in data centers for purposes of video game streaming rather than AI.
The physics of latency disagree fundamentally here. Gaming, as a market, dislikes Live Service games, and many recent ones have basically flipped right out of the gate. Stadia was the exact flop everyone predicted, and simply throwing bigger compute won’t help. That market, simply, does not want that product offering.
I think you're just wrong on this. Stadia did flop, but that's a Google problem, not a tech problem. I play online games with multiple people who only play through GeForce Now, and they've never complained. Especially in an era of increasing hardware prices, this is just gonna grow.
Also, do you know much about the games space? There's an enormous difference between a live service game, and a cloud game streaming platform.
Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions
#164I have to admit LLMs are actually quite useful at generating code for me, but I am experienced enough to know what I want. I use it as a next-generation autocomplete.
This is the "whole thing" in a nutshell for me too. It's useful, speeds some things up, but I've been doing this a long time. The state-of-the-art or medium-term future of the tooling doesn't feel apocalyptic in itself, but the macro forces, implications of scaling, and general reactions to it on all sides are a different story.
It's apocalyptic to the people who previously clocked in, did mediocre work, and clocked out. For those of us willing to put in a little effort, it's just another tool. Though I think there's still a disconnect at the managerial level where they think firing half the team and giving the rest AI is going to 10x revenue.
Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you think there is even a 2% chance you're going to need a government bailout over the next decade, you simply cant be calling your product the grim reaper.
Especially when the chance they'll get that bailout is around 99.9999999%. That bag has already been got. Doesn't matter if AI ultimately turns out to be useless for anything but children's toys because the productivity it adds to IT work is exactly offset by the amount of bugs it both adds and has to find. The psychopaths that are pushing it will be arguing over who gets to be president of the world in 2044. This ar…
> The psychopaths that are pushing it will be arguing over who gets to be president of the world in 2044.
I’m suddenly reminded of Metal Gear Solid 2’s plot …
In 2044, “the Patriots” AI will monitor the internet and the media, and “guide” humanity via manufactured consent with an unprecedented level of effectiveness.
Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
It tells you a lot about your execs and how little they care, either for their employees or their customers. The quarterly profits are their God and they will worship at the altar of the stock price. Instead of finding ways to make AI enhance their employees and make them more productive, they immediately jump to ways to eliminate employees. It's the opposite of a growth mentallity. I'd love for these executives to s…
I've never seen a company punished for doing the right thing, caring for humans and providing a good work environment. We’ll see how this goes over but I disagree. You don’t have to look hard in tech, especially a few years ago, to find groups of coddled “workers”, doing very little or at least doing what they want instead of what a business and customers want. This paradoxically ended up creating toxic work environm…
that was driven by seemingly endless amounts of cheap money being thrown at whatever and whoever, which is not at all what "caring for humans and providing a good work environment" means.
Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions
#167Unfortunately it will take longer for our bosses to walk it back. I feel like I'm fighting the battle daily, telling execs what kind of work LLMs do not replace... it's very slippery, they keep on doing the rhetorical texas two-step - I don't think they even realize they're doing it. We communicate that LLM is amplifying, they hear it can replace. "No, we need humans to help with specs" "But AI can help with that." "…
> "But only help, they can't come up with the idea." "Sure they can, we can just ask them." I've had multiple instances now where AI left to it's own devices has solved a tricky problem that I honestly didn't think it was capable of. I routinely have them design their own experiment loops, learn from each round and iterate on the process. Multiple times it has lead to a needle moving change with no need for human int…
if it helps - i strongly agree with you
Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I've had multiple instances now where AI left to it's own devices has solved a tricky problem that I honestly didn't think it was capable of. Who cares that you've had multiple instances? Everyone has had multiple instances. The question is whether that happens in EVERY instance. Because when someone's laid off, that's what the exec believes, that the person isn't needed at all. I'm not arguing that AI won't replac…
I'm not sure I follow your logic: if everyone has "multiple instances" of being able to fully automate part of there job, than the number of people in that role can be reduced in proportion to the amount of work automated. Further, to your original point, because these human bottle necks exist and are not parallelizable that means you cannot choose to increase your productivity (since the bottle neck will slow things…
That's not what OP was saying, they were saying they experienced multiple instances of LLM handling some tricky problem. But just because it can solve Tuesday's problem doesn't mean it can solve Thursday's.
And this:
>the number of people in that role can be reduced in proportion to the amount of work automated.
Components of humans are not fungible. If one fifth of my job is easier but the other 4/5ths require my specialized human judgment, you can't remove one person out of five and pretend everything will be okay. That's what I mean by the two-step; you just did it yourself.
> How do you determine that this will incorrectly lead to a reduction in the workforce?
This gets back into Theory of Constraints. Identify the constraint. Alleviate the constraint, not the symptom. If you're in a factory, and transmogrifiers are building so many widgets that your whatchamaflorpits starts falling behind, you don't scuttle 20% of your transmogrifiers, you buy more watchamaflorpits!
Instead people are like, "oh gosh, my developers are idle, guess we have to lay them off."
Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions
#169The betrayal was more closer to home than CEOs nutting themselves out. Your employer got enamoured with AI. And despite knowing you (or not) what you're capable of, they started shoving AI down your throat. Your job title has effectively been changed to 'AI operator'. White collar jobs, if not fully eliminated, have surely been transformed. White collar workers, who were once pets, have now been turned into cattle.
Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think its as big of a deal as its made out to be. They are human after all and have overestimated the capabilities of LLMs. What's more important is that this signals product market fit.
No. This is a ridiculous take on the recklessness Altman and Amodei have stated. Both men flat out lied, kept lying and continue to lie about their numbers and capabilities. They have literally destroyed markets that aren't coming back anytime soon (consumer hardware). They should be held accountable, not let off the hook like "Oh well, they fucked our economy long term. Guess they're just human." Literally fuck them…
> They have literally destroyed markets that aren't coming back anytime soon (consumer hardware)
Ram is more expensive it's not the apocalypse for consumer hardware.
> "Oh well, they fucked our economy long term. Guess they're just human."
Not sure what this is a reference to.