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AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

ludic.mataroa.blog

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Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#41

Post by fzeroracer »

ElProlactin wrote: post #34
Aurornis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you read the footnote, they follow up to say they've rejected 100% of the AI projects brought to them. Go to their home page and one of their consulting selling points is recovering struggling projects. One of their front-page selling points is that they use "ancient techniques" from books written prior to the year 2000, because presumably everything newer than that is bad? > For non-executive management who might…

The prominent "Business Owners" link on this company's website is broken. "Not Found". Perhaps this will get downvoted but I personally take with a grain of salt anything written/stated by a company that can't even get the most basic functions (like running a simple website) correct. And the even bigger irony here is that the author has a ranty blog post in which he claims he saved his employer $500,000 by clicking a…

I don't think this is surprising at all. I'm pretty sure I've saved my employers similar amounts in the past, because what happens is something gets configured months or years ago, the dev leaves, everyone forgets and assumes things are how they are.

I've had to delete some really silly code that would slow things down or just force waits as a result of either dealing with legacy APIs or some other arcane reason. Not without testing or making sure it wasn't there for a reason mind you, but these inefficiencies can sometimes be hidden big problems.

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#42

Post by jauntywundrkind »

A1kmm wrote: post #16

> All of the AI projects we have observed as a team are failing. Every single one – we have seen 0% success in a year and a half, not only amongst projects we have been asked to participate in, but even within projects that we have observed in passing while doing totally unrelated work. That's got to be hyperbole, which blows out their credibility. They chose to say 'AI' rather than, for example, LLM, or Transformer…

Their previous article on AI shows a pretty strident ham-handedness. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48002795

In general I find their submissions tend towards extreme grandiosity. I find I really appreciate people who have some nuance about the world, can see some duality, and the many many many submissions here are (I admit) often quite fun and enjoyable, but spoken much more from a bully pulpit perspective, with a zeal and self certainty that I find rarely coincides with truth-seeking.

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#43

Post by ElProlactin »

Aurornis wrote: post #39
ElProlactin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The prominent "Business Owners" link on this company's website is broken. "Not Found". Perhaps this will get downvoted but I personally take with a grain of salt anything written/stated by a company that can't even get the most basic functions (like running a simple website) correct. And the even bigger irony here is that the author has a ranty blog post in which he claims he saved his employer $500,000 by clicking a…

This is an interesting strategy for trying to impress potential customers. Most consultants try to impress you by talking about the great companies they've worked for. This blog post screams, "Look how dumb my past coworkers were!" from top to bottom, then expects us to be impressed with their experience?

[flagged]

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#44

Post by darth_avocado »

A1kmm wrote: post #16

> All of the AI projects we have observed as a team are failing. Every single one – we have seen 0% success in a year and a half, not only amongst projects we have been asked to participate in, but even within projects that we have observed in passing while doing totally unrelated work. That's got to be hyperbole, which blows out their credibility. They chose to say 'AI' rather than, for example, LLM, or Transformer…

> And who hasn't seen productivity gains from more established AI technology

You have to be very careful about claiming productivity gains. There may have been some instances of gains in a specific part of a workflow but does it slow down others or result in overall gains is yet to be empirically measured and validated. We’re seeing metrics like more lines of code, better unit tests, documentation, faster PRs etc. but the actual gains of businesses are still a question mark. Do more PRs lead to faster features being shipped or does it lead to slower reviews or bug ridden code that breaks user experience? I’ve see a lot of companies tout their metrics around more code being shipped but the same companies aren’t talking about how that translates to an actual dollar amount.

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#45

Post by ElProlactin »

fzeroracer wrote: post #41
ElProlactin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The prominent "Business Owners" link on this company's website is broken. "Not Found". Perhaps this will get downvoted but I personally take with a grain of salt anything written/stated by a company that can't even get the most basic functions (like running a simple website) correct. And the even bigger irony here is that the author has a ranty blog post in which he claims he saved his employer $500,000 by clicking a…

I don't think this is surprising at all. I'm pretty sure I've saved my employers similar amounts in the past, because what happens is something gets configured months or years ago, the dev leaves, everyone forgets and assumes things are how they are. I've had to delete some really silly code that would slow things down or just force waits as a result of either dealing with legacy APIs or some other arcane reason. Not…

The point isn't that this stuff happens. It's that a person who is trying to sell consulting services with ranty "this industry is a sham" and "it's a disgrace that it was even possible" blog posts has a website with just 5 major navigation links...and one of them is 404.

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#46

Post by Retric »

Aurornis wrote: post #40
Retric wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s some selection bias involved especially based on their marking, but you’re misreading what they are saying. > even within projects that we have observed in passing while doing totally unrelated work. The kind of companies with failing projects seem to be very bad at using AI. That’s different from the normal mix of success and failures at most large companies.

Companies with projects that are doing well don't try to hire consultants who specialized in saving failing projects. No company with a good AI strategy is going to go to the Hermit Tech website where text written in Ye Olde Font explains that they'll use ancient techniques from the 80s and 90s to make your software work and thinks, "These are the right people for our AI job!" These people are trying to carve out a n…

> Companies with projects that are doing well don't try to hire consultants who specialized in saving failing projects.

Large companies where every project is going well are rare.

I agree companies with good AI strategies are unlikely to use these people, but excluding failures is just as much a bias as excluding winners. AI lets you shoot your sold in the foot even faster shouldn’t be surprising, but it’s still something to consider.

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#48

Post by bluefirebrand »

slopinthebag wrote: post #11
bobthepanda wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s also a bit of a dilemma; if your boss has AI mania, and you buying into it or not is the difference between being promoted, keeping your job, passed up or even fired, the rational course of action for self-preservation is to also buy into the mania.

Yeah but that doesn't explain the people on anonymous forums talking like they have a brainworm.

Something I think about quite often with HN is there are probably people on this forum that have friends / family who work at AI companies or are highly monetarily invested in AI themselves.

I don't think everyone on this forum is as objective as we'd like to think. I know I'm not. A large part of why I dislike AI is because I view it as making my life, personally, worse. It has completely fucked up the career I've been building for going on two decades

And all I hear is "adapt or die" from assholes who are chugging the AI koolaid by the bucketfull

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#49

Post by andai »

A1kmm wrote: post #16

> All of the AI projects we have observed as a team are failing. Every single one – we have seen 0% success in a year and a half, not only amongst projects we have been asked to participate in, but even within projects that we have observed in passing while doing totally unrelated work. That's got to be hyperbole, which blows out their credibility. They chose to say 'AI' rather than, for example, LLM, or Transformer…

>semantic search

I'm doing fundraising for my tf-idf startup. It's named after a very big number!

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#50

Post by ajkjk »

danilocesar wrote: post #37

Interesting how op describes his own experience and then assume that every other company around the globe experience exactly the same. He generalizes CEO's behavior but provides no evidence. Cool.

What do you expect from a person other than the generalizations they see from the experiences they have had...? What 'evidence' could possibly be given other than extensive anecdotes?
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