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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

#131

Post by dgellow »

Aurornis wrote: post #21
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…

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…

I mean, that line regarding ancient techniques is very obviously written as satirical. I read it as „we are serious professionals, not young trend following folks“

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#132

Post by layer8 »

inigyou wrote: post #105

It should be possible to exploit a rich person's poor decision making to make them poorer and myself richer. But I don't see how. Why not? It sounds like the writer of this article could benefit from starting another brand which is the same product but with AI. That brand would make all the delusional AI chatbot sales and absorb the reputational damage when the chatbot destroys companies.

It seems that the writer has standards other than “getting richer”.

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#133

Post by neuronic »

My hunch is that AI tools are probabilistically good enough to deceive most casual users in the beginning, so beliefs are built on these foundations. LLMs handle simple tasks reasonably well so their perceived 'intelligence' is easily convincing for many users (often managers and executives).

However, this illusion immediately falls apart during actual stress-testing like writing code for a complex, battle-tested production environments. Non-technical folks can effortlessly spin up simple web apps or tweak a frontend so now they conclude that software engineers are becoming redundant.

And even if there are obvious examples of all of this backfiring no one believes it...

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#134

Post by nfg »

hliyan wrote: post #127
nfg wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

« it's telling that you perceive any criticism of AI code reviewer burnout as "sticking your fingers in your ears" »

Go back and re-read the quote from your comment - which I responded to: “ 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’m not overreacting to some nuanced take here. I’m not sure how to characterise quitting as a response to over-enthusiasm / slop as anything other than the career equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears. I’ve been there, I’ve had the arguments, I have little sympathy for staff/principal engineers or above who react like this - their job is to fix the organisation, put a yoke around the beast of AI and find a way to tap the benefits and use the problems (like those 2000 line PRs) as a golden signal for where you need to educate and improve process and planning.

Again - I’m not selling anything here, I just have found it an interesting challenge over the last year and one where I’ve been happy to make progress organisationally despite the frustrating moments. If someone’s response to a problem like this is to throw their hands up in despair or to engage in whatever the logical opposite of AI-hype is (which the article resorts to repeatedly) then yes I’d worry about being laid off. If you’re in an organisation where you don’t have the agency to fix problems then absolutely - start looking for a new job.

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#135

Post by ungovernableCat »

ifwinterco wrote: post #96
slopinthebag wrote: post #7

The AI mania has been really fascinating to witness because on the surface it’s surprising that so many otherwise intelligent people have fallen into it. But I suppose intelligence as a concept is multifaceted and doesn’t include wisdom. I also wonder if it has to do with personality, where the people whose personality best suits leadership roles are more susceptible to this psychosis. I think there is also an archet…

It's the bell curve meme every time - very, very often stupid people end up being "wiser" than moderately intelligent people. Meanwhile the really intelligent people end up with beliefs surprisingly close directionally to the stupid people who've barely thought about an issue, just fleshed out with 100x the detail. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

I've seen both variants of this where the midwit is enthusiastic about the impending singularity and where the midwit is saying it's all a bubble.

Everyone's just portraying a strawman of the other side with new formats.

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#136

Post by dgellow »

lioeters wrote: post #52
zkmon wrote: post #18

You are basically calling out the fact that the Emperor has no clothes. Many said this before. While it is a true statement, it is not going to help. Because, as you rightly said, it is a mania - like the tulip mania of 17th century or the manias of many forms today. The mania continues to evolve and flourish through it's peak and then go down. For that matter, there is hardly anything that is not a mania. Think of a…

This mania can also be called "herd behavior" or "crowd psychology". There was that book a while ago about the intelligence of crowds, but far more common is the stupidity and insanity of crowds. Business and politics are mainly driven by it, but the tech industry routinely falls to hype, trends, and decades-long mistakes that seem obvious in hindsight.

For what it’s worth „Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds“, while entertaining, isn’t considered a reliable source as it bases most of its story telling on satirical descriptions and reporting of past events and doesn’t do a good job of digging into the actual historical context and dynamics

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#137

Post by inigyou »

layer8 wrote: post #132
inigyou wrote: post #105

It should be possible to exploit a rich person's poor decision making to make them poorer and myself richer. But I don't see how. Why not? It sounds like the writer of this article could benefit from starting another brand which is the same product but with AI. That brand would make all the delusional AI chatbot sales and absorb the reputational damage when the chatbot destroys companies.

It seems that the writer has standards other than “getting richer”.

The writer appears to run a company whose job is extracting money from other companies whose executives fucked things up.

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#138

Post by moepstar »

noodletheworld wrote: post #93
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…

Look, if they have data and it says 0%, and you have vibes that say that can’t be true, who should we believe? Do you work with lots of companies and see large AI success stories? Or do you just vibe that you personally find AI useful so it must also be a business success? Look, I honestly don’t care, but I think “it must be false” is also unsubstantiated hyperbole. If an agency says they see no AI success, I see no…

...especially considering someone has to justify their token spend...

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#139

Post by dgellow »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #48
slopinthebag wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

FWIW I have multiple friends in the AI world and was very close to joining it full time, and still feel exactly like you

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#140

Post by chung8123 »

neuronic wrote: post #133

My hunch is that AI tools are probabilistically good enough to deceive most casual users in the beginning, so beliefs are built on these foundations. LLMs handle simple tasks reasonably well so their perceived 'intelligence' is easily convincing for many users (often managers and executives). However, this illusion immediately falls apart during actual stress-testing like writing code for a complex, battle-tested pro…

There are a lot of simple web apps out there that haven't been built because of the cost and many more that have been built but cost a lot to maintain. AI seems to work on those and fill in a pretty large space.
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