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AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

ludic.mataroa.blog

121–130 of 320 posts

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of us on some level felt confident that AI would completely revolutionise our society. Seriously? Maybe I’m just getting old, but having lived through the dot-com hype in the 1990s, the XML hype in the 2000s, and the cloud hype in the 2010s, this has been an utterly predictable hype cycle around AI. This does not mean that AI is completely useless. It will impact the world but not in the ways the snake oil sal…

Manias go back a long way. The history of the UK's railway mania in the 1840s is worth researching, because it's uncannily similar, with a stock bubble, fraudsters and chancers, huge hype, cutthroat competition, boardroom intrigue and drama, miles and miles of unnecessary infrastructure in the wrong places, and eventually a technology that became useful, but could have been developed more intelligently.

And manias are so foundational to the relatively young field of AI that they made the term “AI winter”. We should brace for the third (I think) AI winter soon

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#122
post #65

This part toward the end of the article resonated with me: > If you’re being asked to review huge volumes of terrible AI code, just assume that the organisation is going to burn you out and fire you. You will not convince the person drowning you in 2000 line PRs to stop. Start looking for a new job as if you have already been fired. I have seen this happen many times now I suspect we will see this phenomenon more and…

I don’t buy it - if you’re an engineering leader and this is happening it’s your responsibility to get out there and fix the problem through education, process improvements, improved automated quality checks, better planning. Sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting “no!” is not a sustainable strategy. Figure out what would allow your throughput to double, triple etc and go organise it. Focus on bottlenecks and the most difficult pieces. I’m speaking from active experience here.

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#123
post #94

Most of us on some level felt confident that AI would completely revolutionise our society. The singularity made sense to me, at least. It hasn't worked out like that, but rather than accept the crushing reality of our mistake and take a second to re-evaluate, we've decided to LARP out the future we promised ourselves by crowbar-and-vaselineing AI into every crack and crevice we can find and loudly proclaiming progre…

We are still in time for the "revolution" ... but it will take longer and won't look like than most thought.

We still need a bubble pop to drive out all nonsense ideas and paths.

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#124
post #114
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It seems quite premature to say that. We're 3 to 4 years into the LLM revolution and the rate of progress is still impressive. When we were 3 to 4 years into mobile phone revolution it was already abundantly clear that it's changing the way people leave. Ditto when mobile phones became smartphones, and for many other tech items we got in the past decades. As for LLMs... outside of a few precious professions you cou…

This isn't accurate. The first mobile phone came out in 1983. It took at least a decade before they started to become common.

Mobile phones at that time were 800g and cost $4000. Using your logic you could say we are almost 20 years into the age of LLMs because Cleverbot was released in 2008.

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#125

Incredible skill issue selecting for profit instead of fun. Why does everyone need to make money?? What about like... shareware? Remember shareware?

You mean the software that marketed trials of itself in the hopes you'd pay for it?

okay, beerware, then.

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#126
post #94

Most of us on some level felt confident that AI would completely revolutionise our society. The singularity made sense to me, at least. It hasn't worked out like that, but rather than accept the crushing reality of our mistake and take a second to re-evaluate, we've decided to LARP out the future we promised ourselves by crowbar-and-vaselineing AI into every crack and crevice we can find and loudly proclaiming progre…

> It hasn't worked out like that It seems quite premature to say that. We're 3 to 4 years into the LLM revolution and the rate of progress is still impressive. The recursive self-improvement aspect that is necessary for the actual singularity is something we're only really starting to get into this year. If the singularity is 5 years from now, that is still much sooner than most people (including me) previously expec…

It's clear that while LLM progress is continuing, it's at something like a linear rate, or slower.

The singularity requires exponential improvement. That's not happening. Maybe we will develop something that sets that off, but there's no indication of that right now.

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#127
post #122
post #65

This part toward the end of the article resonated with me: > If you’re being asked to review huge volumes of terrible AI code, just assume that the organisation is going to burn you out and fire you. You will not convince the person drowning you in 2000 line PRs to stop. Start looking for a new job as if you have already been fired. I have seen this happen many times now I suspect we will see this phenomenon more and…

I don’t buy it - if you’re an engineering leader and this is happening it’s your responsibility to get out there and fix the problem through education, process improvements, improved automated quality checks, better planning. Sticking your fingers in your ears and shouting “no!” is not a sustainable strategy. Figure out what would allow your throughput to double, triple etc and go organise it. Focus on bottlenecks an…

Thankfully it's not happening in my organization because we happen to have a sane, incremental strategy. But it's telling that you perceive any criticism of AI code reviewer burnout as "sticking your fingers in your ears". Perhaps you might benefit from a closer read of the article.

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of us on some level felt confident that AI would completely revolutionise our society. Seriously? Maybe I’m just getting old, but having lived through the dot-com hype in the 1990s, the XML hype in the 2000s, and the cloud hype in the 2010s, this has been an utterly predictable hype cycle around AI. This does not mean that AI is completely useless. It will impact the world but not in the ways the snake oil sal…

Manias go back a long way. The history of the UK's railway mania in the 1840s is worth researching, because it's uncannily similar, with a stock bubble, fraudsters and chancers, huge hype, cutthroat competition, boardroom intrigue and drama, miles and miles of unnecessary infrastructure in the wrong places, and eventually a technology that became useful, but could have been developed more intelligently.

I recommend the book/audiobook „ Boom and Bust A Global History of Financial Bubbles“, it does a great job covering various bubbles, with historical context, and going through the details of regulatory and economic factors

https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/boom-and-bust/D09C2E3BE...

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Manias go back a long way. The history of the UK's railway mania in the 1840s is worth researching, because it's uncannily similar, with a stock bubble, fraudsters and chancers, huge hype, cutthroat competition, boardroom intrigue and drama, miles and miles of unnecessary infrastructure in the wrong places, and eventually a technology that became useful, but could have been developed more intelligently.

And manias are so foundational to the relatively young field of AI that they made the term “AI winter”. We should brace for the third (I think) AI winter soon

When the current mania ends that will be more like a tech/software winter than just AI. I expect the public to have a complete distrust for tech companies and politics to push for strict regulations

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#130
post #94

Most of us on some level felt confident that AI would completely revolutionise our society. The singularity made sense to me, at least. It hasn't worked out like that, but rather than accept the crushing reality of our mistake and take a second to re-evaluate, we've decided to LARP out the future we promised ourselves by crowbar-and-vaselineing AI into every crack and crevice we can find and loudly proclaiming progre…

The thing i never got about the singularity is that its just one concept that was suggested by a few notable people over time. There is so many different ways AI can go, some which we wouldn't have foreseen.
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