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AI is slowing down

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Re: AI is slowing down

#111

Post by themafia »

dkobia wrote: post #9

Zitron is begging for a collapse at this point. Yes, his macro analysis correctly identifies a massive financial risk but his incessant pessimism completely misses the incredible ground-level utility that many of us on HN celebrate every day through undeniable, massive productivity gains. At this point I'm trying to believe there's a middle ground where the level of individual capability this unlocks, leads to major…

> through undeniable, massive productivity gains.

And where are those? They seem particularly hard to actually observe and only appear in anecdotes.

> I'm trying to believe

For every exponential increase in compute capacity you see linear gains in output accuracy. This is a death spiral. Anyways, you see "massive productivity gains" so why is "belief" a function of your viewpoint?

Re: AI is slowing down

#112

Post by themafia »

zachthewf wrote: post #15

Before you spend 20 minutes reading this article, it's worth understanding that the writer has been posting popular but consistently wrong takes for 2+ years (e.g. https://www.wheresyoured.at/peakai/ from March 2024) arguing that AI is failing, is a waste of money, is bad, will never work, etc.

> Before you spend 20 minutes reading this article, it's worth understanding that the writer has been posting popular but consistently wrong

So, judge the book by it's cover?

> arguing that AI is failing, is a waste of money, is bad, will never work, etc.

Then the opposite should be easy to prove. AI is succeeding, is efficient, is universally good, and is working everywhere it's tried. Are those true?

Re: AI is slowing down

#113

Post by binyu »

AI has been slowing down relatively, considering its trajectory over the past 20-30 years. For one, even if LLM may have plateaud in terms of intelligence-parameters ratio, research is on-going on new frontiers for ML, including (but not limited to) world models. Other research directions are studying backpropagation and its physical analogies, such as equilibrium of chaotic states.

In addition, there's a lot of research on the hardware angle and actual prototypes are already being built such as AI-on-chip Cerebra and Taalas for one.

Re: AI is slowing down

#114

Post by slopinthebag »

frisbee6152 wrote: post #106
solomatov wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> progress was slowing Do you think it's not slowing? Do I miss anything really important? My understanding is that we have now is incremental improvement on thinking models which appeared more than a year ago. Of course, a breakthrough might happen, but I don't see one yet.

The most important thing I would point to is Mythos et al and the wave of vulnerabilities that have been discovered in the past couple months. It’s a completely unprecedented event, brought forth almost entirely by improvements in the models themselves. That said. keep in mind, I’m talking about over the past two years. With Claude code and the capabilities gained since December of last year, there have been incredib…

Do you have access to Mythos?

Re: AI is slowing down

#115

Post by vanuatu »

alexashka wrote: post #34
dkobia wrote: post #9

Zitron is begging for a collapse at this point. Yes, his macro analysis correctly identifies a massive financial risk but his incessant pessimism completely misses the incredible ground-level utility that many of us on HN celebrate every day through undeniable, massive productivity gains. At this point I'm trying to believe there's a middle ground where the level of individual capability this unlocks, leads to major…

[flagged]

i don't think this comment contributes much to the discussion. can you elaborate more than saying "no"?

Re: AI is slowing down

#117

Post by PedroBatista »

dkobia wrote: post #9

Zitron is begging for a collapse at this point. Yes, his macro analysis correctly identifies a massive financial risk but his incessant pessimism completely misses the incredible ground-level utility that many of us on HN celebrate every day through undeniable, massive productivity gains. At this point I'm trying to believe there's a middle ground where the level of individual capability this unlocks, leads to major…

> undeniable, massive productivity gains.

The jury is still out on that.

Re: AI is slowing down

#118

Post by toasty228 »

dkobia wrote: post #9

Zitron is begging for a collapse at this point. Yes, his macro analysis correctly identifies a massive financial risk but his incessant pessimism completely misses the incredible ground-level utility that many of us on HN celebrate every day through undeniable, massive productivity gains. At this point I'm trying to believe there's a middle ground where the level of individual capability this unlocks, leads to major…

> undeniable, massive productivity gains.

Take any stock index, remove AI stocks, what do you see? That's right! Nothing...

So where is all the productivity going? Where is the value? Where are the massive unemployment stats or the millions of new startups making big $$$?

Re: AI is slowing down

#119

Post by pluto_modadic »

spmurrayzzz wrote: post #82
dkobia wrote: post #9

Zitron is begging for a collapse at this point. Yes, his macro analysis correctly identifies a massive financial risk but his incessant pessimism completely misses the incredible ground-level utility that many of us on HN celebrate every day through undeniable, massive productivity gains. At this point I'm trying to believe there's a middle ground where the level of individual capability this unlocks, leads to major…

He has also consistently demonstrated, at least to me, that he doesn't really understand how inference works from a technical perspective, which weakens much of his core thesis for why there should be a collapse. I do value having some naysayers in the mix generally, because we do need balanced critique in what is otherwise a very frothy hype cycle. I just don't think he's making sound arguments, and that's even assu…

I think he doesn't need to understand the technology to point out the books are cooked. a business can sink in either way: the technology flops or the finances flop. he's arguing the /finances/ would flop. he doesn't argue that the /technology/ would flop, only that they can't come up with the money to pay their debters.

Re: AI is slowing down

#120

Post by asveikau »

zachthewf wrote: post #15

Before you spend 20 minutes reading this article, it's worth understanding that the writer has been posting popular but consistently wrong takes for 2+ years (e.g. https://www.wheresyoured.at/peakai/ from March 2024) arguing that AI is failing, is a waste of money, is bad, will never work, etc.

Not sure where I heard this, but I'm reminded of a story about someone predicting the dotcom crash early, circa 1998. For 2 years they were demonstrably crazy, and missed out on massive stock market gains. Then they were right. (And yes, tech slowly bounced back after that.)

Predicting the timing of such a thing is notoriously difficult. I don't think being wrong about timing 2 years ago means there won't be a correction.

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