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Please stop the AI confidence theater

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Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#171

Post by skydhash »

heresalexandria wrote: post #137
tines wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no brainer An excellent epithet for people who depend on AI!

The same attitude has been directed at points through history for people "who depend on the internet," "who depend on computers," and "who depend on machines." I was told growing up "you won't always have a calculator in your pocket" and yet now my phone has an offline LLM on it.

> I was told growing up "you won't always have a calculator in your pocket" and yet now my phone has an offline LLM on it.

But does your world stop when the phone is out of power? And does every task require a roundtrip to the internet?

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#172

Post by lowsong »

heresalexandria wrote: post #107

My observation is that a lot of folks still discounting the capabilities or impact of AI either aren't working with frontier intelligence or aren't using it right. While the coding horse has been beat within an inch of its life already, I'd recommend throwing Codex on 5.5 high thinking with Computer Use + auto approve at the next thing you're about to spend 5+ minutes on to start to get a feel for how well it handles…

Why do all arguments from AI boosters boil down to this same cycle:

A new model is released, AI fans hail it as huge shift in whatever metrics the AI vendor has gamed this time, and all criticism is shrugged off as "not up to date" and met with "try the new model!" Then, once level heads actually put the claims to the test and find it wanting, criticism is met with "you're just not using it right, you have to learn how to prompt/context/loop engineer for best results" until the next model comes out and this argument repeats.

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#173

Post by heresalexandria »

overgard wrote: post #152
heresalexandria wrote: post #107

My observation is that a lot of folks still discounting the capabilities or impact of AI either aren't working with frontier intelligence or aren't using it right. While the coding horse has been beat within an inch of its life already, I'd recommend throwing Codex on 5.5 high thinking with Computer Use + auto approve at the next thing you're about to spend 5+ minutes on to start to get a feel for how well it handles…

You know, people could just put their money where their mouth is. IE go build something amazing instead of talking endlessly about how they're going to build amazing stuff. That's why this feels like so much theatre.

That's exactly what the people in my orbit and whom I'm watching are doing, and some of their outputs are fueling the excitement.

If you aren't seeing remarkable things being done with this tech, I'd argue you aren't looking hard enough. I understand there's a lot of noise obscuring the signal, but that's always the case with a "big thing."

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#174

Post by earthnail »

CPLX wrote: post #77
AaronAPU wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve long considered marketing to be one of the purest forms of evil in existence. It truly does envelop and destroy everything good.

Marketing is just an attempt at persuasion. It's the most fundamental form of communication. It's intrinsic to being human and interacting with other humans, and drives the reproduction function for basically all living things. You have, in fact, just engaged in it in your comment by offering an opinion in hopes that others will read and adopt that opinion. In fact, you posted your comment on the marketing website of…

The difference being that this site is built for this kind of exchange, and parent poster is engaging exactly in the way it is designed for.

A lot of outrage in marketing comes when it stands in the way of your product experience. Think TV ads that interrupt. Or fake ratings that abuse a platform.

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#175

Post by heresalexandria »

lowsong wrote: post #172
heresalexandria wrote: post #107

My observation is that a lot of folks still discounting the capabilities or impact of AI either aren't working with frontier intelligence or aren't using it right. While the coding horse has been beat within an inch of its life already, I'd recommend throwing Codex on 5.5 high thinking with Computer Use + auto approve at the next thing you're about to spend 5+ minutes on to start to get a feel for how well it handles…

Why do all arguments from AI boosters boil down to this same cycle: A new model is released, AI fans hail it as huge shift in whatever metrics the AI vendor has gamed this time, and all criticism is shrugged off as "not up to date" and met with "try the new model!" Then, once level heads actually put the claims to the test and find it wanting, criticism is met with "you're just not using it right, you have to learn h…

It shouldn't be a surprise that the baseline for "best" shifts as better tech comes out, but that doesn't make dated models any less capable than they were when they came out.

Skeptics continue to move the goalposts on what constitutes this mattering, but the fact that frontier systems are making novel maths & sciences discoveries and I can run an LLM on my phone for simple tasks that would've been unthinkable a few years ago are testaments to the directionality of the tech.

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#176

Post by Djrichsjdjdnxkd »

She touches on the main problem but most everyone here seems to miss.

Marketers exist because every company, every VC, and every stock holder (Wall St. and every person that has money invested for retirement or to pay for their kids college tuition, etc), demands perpetual growth. Till this changes, and it won't any time soon, marketers will exist.

No one is working on changing that. Anyone?

Startups are the worst. No one is hiring a marketer at a startup to drive 25% yearly revenue growth, the expectation is 10X or 100X. How is that supposed to happen without pushing advertising, hard?

We can blame the marketers, but this is structural problem.

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#177

Post by egr »

AaronAPU wrote: post #38
algoth1 wrote: post #14

As someone who has worked closely to the marketing space, there’s a saying that goes something like: ‘then the marketers found about it and ruin everything’. Quick example: when amazon launched kindle self publishing, there was a golden age where wannabe writers could self-publish their books, and let the market dictate what survived and became successful. Eventually, some people got good money out of it. Then market…

I’ve long considered marketing to be one of the purest forms of evil in existence. It truly does envelop and destroy everything good.

I love this observation and this thread in general.

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#178

Post by clydethefrog »

heresalexandria wrote: post #173
overgard wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know, people could just put their money where their mouth is. IE go build something amazing instead of talking endlessly about how they're going to build amazing stuff. That's why this feels like so much theatre.

That's exactly what the people in my orbit and whom I'm watching are doing, and some of their outputs are fueling the excitement. If you aren't seeing remarkable things being done with this tech, I'd argue you aren't looking hard enough. I understand there's a lot of noise obscuring the signal, but that's always the case with a "big thing."

Can you share concrete examples of the outputs that are fueling your excitement?

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#179

Post by heresalexandria »

skydhash wrote: post #171
heresalexandria wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same attitude has been directed at points through history for people "who depend on the internet," "who depend on computers," and "who depend on machines." I was told growing up "you won't always have a calculator in your pocket" and yet now my phone has an offline LLM on it.

> I was told growing up "you won't always have a calculator in your pocket" and yet now my phone has an offline LLM on it. But does your world stop when the phone is out of power? And does every task require a roundtrip to the internet?

Offline models are becoming increasingly more capable - merely a few years ago it would've been unthinkable to run the LLM I have on my phone even on my MacBook Pro.

Are you suggesting that losing electricity in the modern age (entirely absent AI) doesn't upend one's world?

You seem to be saying "we should avoid this thing because we'll become dependent on it," but we're highly dependent on all manners of technology for all sorts of things and would seem to be better for it.

Re: Please stop the AI confidence theater

#180

Post by lowsong »

heresalexandria wrote: post #175
lowsong wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do all arguments from AI boosters boil down to this same cycle: A new model is released, AI fans hail it as huge shift in whatever metrics the AI vendor has gamed this time, and all criticism is shrugged off as "not up to date" and met with "try the new model!" Then, once level heads actually put the claims to the test and find it wanting, criticism is met with "you're just not using it right, you have to learn h…

It shouldn't be a surprise that the baseline for "best" shifts as better tech comes out, but that doesn't make dated models any less capable than they were when they came out. Skeptics continue to move the goalposts on what constitutes this mattering, but the fact that frontier systems are making novel maths & sciences discoveries and I can run an LLM on my phone for simple tasks that would've been unthinkable a few…

Ironically it is you who is most at risk from the direction this is taking.

When this house of cards collapses, AI research dries up, and companies pivot to the next hype cycle there will be a generation of people left with atrophied skills and lingering addiction and psychosis. The most flexible will bounce back just fine, but many will never recover from this damage.

Sincerely, I hope you're in the former category.

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