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I love LLMs, I hate hype

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Re: I love LLMs, I hate hype

#21

Post by atomicnumber3 »

hamandcheese wrote: post #10

> where’s all this new magical software that the productivity improvements should imply? It's running, privately, in my homelab. I think we are entering what I call the "have it your way" era. If an open source project doesn't do exactly what you want it to do, fork it, or create a new version. It's too easy. This makes me a bit concerned about the future of open source. Upstreaming used to be worth it, since maintai…

Remember: code is free as in "free puppy". FOSS communities were never valuable because of the code. It was the shared written and oral traditions that make the software useful, usable, and updated.

Re: I love LLMs, I hate hype

#22

Post by ToValueFunfetti »

sigmar wrote: post #3

>One, this constant bullshit about some window closing, or the perpetual underclass, or falling hopelessly behind. This is negative valence hype, not only is it not true, it’s mostly designed to make you feel bad about yourself and move to shitty San Francisco where everything really does suck like how these people claim. It's possible to use LLMs without logging onto twitter to be exposed to the people spouting off…

Agreed. There's sort of this spiteful anti-hype here that I find very offputting, and ultimately I think it's because a lot of folks are going out and encountering opinions I never see. I hear wild conspiracy theories about data centers and the financials of involved companies that make their way to me from bluesky or instagram, often through here, but never the unstoppable tide of hype that people are allegedly[1] railing against. I do read Scott Alexander, but he's a lot more reserved than people make him out to be on this.

[1] Allegedly because I have no firsthand experience, not to imply doubt.

Re: I love LLMs, I hate hype

#23

Post by cautiouscat »

jacobgold wrote: post #12

As soon as we started unironically calling LLMs "AI" we went down the hype path. That has plenty of downsides, like stressing out the entire world and attracting cryptocurrency bros, but also the major upside massive of funding/acceleration. So far, all we have is more software running on computers. It's powerful, and it's amazing, but it's not magic. Calling it "AI" was possibly a net-negative but we don't know yet.

> Calling it "AI" was possibly a net-negative but we don't know yet.

I’m not sure it’s net negative or not. I’ve found that it’s reductive though. We have this really broad field of artificial intelligence reduced down to at worst a “slop machine” and at best a single tool.

Imagine being a CS professor that studied AI in the 90s and how you have to over explain you don’t mean LLM chatbots to a layman.

Re: I love LLMs, I hate hype

#24

Post by markasoftware »

apsurd wrote: post #5

Your SF hate isn't a good look. There are many things to be critical about but shoehorning an entire metro into the echo-chamber you're supposedly beyond yet can't help but orient your entire world view as the anti-SF-tech-bro all while running a startup and discussing AI on HN. TLDR: SF is more than Paul Graham worship parties. EDIT: Think I'm being misunderstood! author goes out of his way to blame shitty San Franc…

the vast majority of the target audience of this blog post would only consider moving to SF because of the tech scene. This isn't a mountain biking or asian food blog.

Re: I love LLMs, I hate hype

#25

Post by Razengan »

I recently realized, that ever since I've had AI to "talk" to, I haven't had a stuck or "downtime" moment; there's always something to at least brainstorm on.

In the past when I couldn't figure out something, I'd take a break for a couple days, while going through Google → Stack Overflow → Reddit, and by the time you got to that point you rarely got useful answers, usually either trolls or silence.

Now I can just ask AI about fleeting ideas and always have a starting point for some area of some project to work on.

A lot/some of the concerns about the AI Age could be alleviated if people got UBI and a 4-day workweek.

like if AI's supposed to be so great why do we still have to work so much??

and if we don't have to work, how do we pay for food and bed?

Re: I love LLMs, I hate hype

#26

Post by lukan »

jacobgold wrote: post #12

As soon as we started unironically calling LLMs "AI" we went down the hype path. That has plenty of downsides, like stressing out the entire world and attracting cryptocurrency bros, but also the major upside massive of funding/acceleration. So far, all we have is more software running on computers. It's powerful, and it's amazing, but it's not magic. Calling it "AI" was possibly a net-negative but we don't know yet.

"It's powerful, and it's amazing, but it's not magic"

But since its creators and as of my knowledge everyone else totally did not see it coming, that you can now give a vague prompt full of spelling errors - and get returned a working program - I would say it is pretty close to magic (as in we don't really understand why it works so good).

I also don't see how you cannot call it AI. Especially since simple chess engines and alike were called AI long ago. So it is not general strong AI and has no consciousness and no mind and is pretty dumb too often - but the general concept - getting from a some vague text to a working program has some connection to intelligence to me.

Re: I love LLMs, I hate hype

#27

Post by ToValueFunfetti »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #17
sigmar wrote: post #3

>One, this constant bullshit about some window closing, or the perpetual underclass, or falling hopelessly behind. This is negative valence hype, not only is it not true, it’s mostly designed to make you feel bad about yourself and move to shitty San Francisco where everything really does suck like how these people claim. It's possible to use LLMs without logging onto twitter to be exposed to the people spouting off…

Does Xitter still have people complaining about class divisions? (Genuinely curious, I hadn't ever seen that there though I don't go there much any more.)

"Permanent underclass" is the notion that people who get involved at the ground floor will essentially get infinite wealth relative to the ones who don't. It's a little goofy, but more of the capitalism you'd expect from today's X than the communism you're imagining in yesterday's Twitter.

Re: I love LLMs, I hate hype

#28

Post by andy99 »

password54321 wrote: post #20

Yeah I don't think any of the labs have some secret sauce for intelligence either. It seems most of the advancements are still coming from hardware, making LLMs more efficient and throwing more compute and data at problems. And even those problems still require a lot of prompt engineering: https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/04d1d1e4-bc75-476a-97cf-49055cd98...

The secret sauce is training data. They’re not just taking advantage of more compute (which obviously is necessary but as mentions basically a commodity). They are paying billions to data labelers and making judgements about the nature of the training data they best need to make the product they want. This seems to get pushed aside as a minor point but it’s the primary differentiator of the big labs.

Re: I love LLMs, I hate hype

#29

Post by kenforthewin »

I felt the same way in 2024-2025. Then Sonnet 4 was released, and things started feeling different. Opus 4.5 was another step change for me. Everything feels like it's accelerating, and timelines are getting crunched. I guess in some ways I envy OP, who would "bet everything" against ASI - the truth is I don't know, and I don't think anyone knows, where this ends.

Re: I love LLMs, I hate hype

#30

Post by apsurd »

NetOpWibby wrote: post #14
apsurd wrote: post #5

Your SF hate isn't a good look. There are many things to be critical about but shoehorning an entire metro into the echo-chamber you're supposedly beyond yet can't help but orient your entire world view as the anti-SF-tech-bro all while running a startup and discussing AI on HN. TLDR: SF is more than Paul Graham worship parties. EDIT: Think I'm being misunderstood! author goes out of his way to blame shitty San Franc…

False equivalency

ooh I like your site: https://webb.page

false equating that author's AI hate is hating SF tech-bros? Oh I think I am being misunderstood, that makes me feel better about the insta-downvotes. Author states it plainly:

> This is negative valence hype, not only is it not true, it’s mostly designed to make you feel bad about yourself and move to shitty San Francisco where everything really does suck like how these people claim.

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