On AI regulation and messaging • Hacker News Board

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#21

Post by mschuster91 » Mon, Aug 17, 2026, 8:37 AM UTC

petesergeant wrote: post #15

I think that Dario is intelligent, incisive, has good judgement, and is well-intentioned. I hope he continues to wield influence. I think Sam is also most of those things, but I think power has a One Ring-like effect on him. My most contrarian view is that I think Elon’s problems are primarily appalling judgement when it comes to areas outside of tech, and has the emotional regulation of a child, although somewhat in…

> I think Sam is also most of those things, but I think power has a One Ring-like effect on him.

That's putting it mildly, very mildly. The guy all but wrecked the entire world's DRAM supply chain by using negotiation tactics that, if there were any semblance of regulatory authority left in the US, would lead to criminal charges for market manipulation.

Arrest Sam Altman, he is one of the most dangerous people on the planet. Not a single shred of respect for the 99% and the consequences his actions have on them. (And similar things apply to the other controversial figure you mentioned, Elon Musk actively enjoys hurting people by the looks of it.)

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#22

Post by Depurator » Mon, Aug 17, 2026, 8:38 AM UTC

It will be interesting to see what kind of progress in biology and medicine they will preview during the fall. He does make a good point that most of the progress so far have not been material in the sense of providing real positive outcomes for ordinary people.

Or even for the HN crowd, when will we see e.g. "Mythos aided research discovers 10 new viable battery technologies"

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#23

Post by glimshe » Mon, Aug 17, 2026, 8:40 AM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #18

glimshe wrote: post #13

One thing Dario said is important reflecting on (but from another angle): where's the big deliverable from AI? If AI makes us 10x more productive, the 3 years since its popularization were enough for a product that would have taken 30 years to build without AI, for instance. I'm an AI advocate but that question makes me feel that AI is simply "very useful" rather than being a historical game changer for humanity.

> If AI makes us 10x more productive, the 3 years since its popularization were enough for a product that would have taken 30 years to build without AI, for instance. A product still requires a lot of handholding and human thinking, at least if one does not want everyone even throwing a glance at it to immediately be repulsed by the usual AI slop tells. > I'm an AI advocate but that question makes me feel that AI is…

Not disagreeing with you, but adding to my argument. Despite the human handholding, I feel that 3 years would have been enough for 18 months of thinking about the product plus 18 months where a team could get 3-5 years worth of coding/development done. Yet, we haven't seen anything big yet, like a new Youtube/Instragram, an amazing videogame, a major cure etc. Maybe they are coming, but every day that passes is an indication that the net productivity positive of the technology isn't as big as advertised. In my own personal use of AI, I experienced a 30-50% increase in productivity, but no more than that.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#24

Post by zxexz » Mon, Aug 17, 2026, 8:41 AM UTC

axegon_ wrote: post #14

Called it! He was bound to squeal after the release of QWEN 3.8 in one way or another and here it is. I wasn't even a teenager but I'm getting so much Jobs/Ballmer flashbacks with internet explorer and microsoft office. Edit: Does anyone else notice the switching between dashes and em-dashes between paragraphs? Tells you a lot about the man, doesn't it.

> Edit: Does anyone else notice the switching between dashes and em-dashes between paragraphs? Tells you a lot about the man, doesn't it.

That he doesn’t know how to use basic word processing, or even agent SKILLS.md or whatever it’s called now. Or maybe it’s just the next generation of vagueposting.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#25

Post by onion2k » Mon, Aug 17, 2026, 8:41 AM UTC

glimshe wrote: post #13

One thing Dario said is important reflecting on (but from another angle): where's the big deliverable from AI? If AI makes us 10x more productive, the 3 years since its popularization were enough for a product that would have taken 30 years to build without AI, for instance. I'm an AI advocate but that question makes me feel that AI is simply "very useful" rather than being a historical game changer for humanity.

I think it's more that it shifts the thought process from "If this is going to take 30 years then we won't bother, because the investment can be spent on things that pay off sooner" to "If we can do this in 3 years then we'll make that investment because that's a good bet."

The way it changes the game is by lowering the cost of making radical bets so we end up trying more moonshots.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#26

Post by darkwater » Mon, Aug 17, 2026, 8:41 AM UTC

eru wrote: post #17

darkwater wrote: post #3

Why the comment submitted by jacquesm, who posted the link and it's not exactly an anonymous poster, that said "Apologies for linking to X but this is worth reading." has been flagged to death??

You can 'vouch' for a comment, if you think it shouldn't be flagged.

I'm more interested in why somebody would suddenly flag that post. It's not spam, bot, offensive or anything else. Maybe you could downvote it if you don't like the take on X - it still would be childish but at least would be proportionate.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#27

Post by ReptileMan » Mon, Aug 17, 2026, 8:42 AM UTC

glimshe wrote: post #13

One thing Dario said is important reflecting on (but from another angle): where's the big deliverable from AI? If AI makes us 10x more productive, the 3 years since its popularization were enough for a product that would have taken 30 years to build without AI, for instance. I'm an AI advocate but that question makes me feel that AI is simply "very useful" rather than being a historical game changer for humanity.

Right now we are in the golden age where we do the same and take time off. Employers have not yet fully caught up with the workforce. I can't think of people that are not putting less hours this year for the same salaries.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#28

Post by onion2k » Mon, Aug 17, 2026, 8:42 AM UTC

axegon_ wrote: post #14

Called it! He was bound to squeal after the release of QWEN 3.8 in one way or another and here it is. I wasn't even a teenager but I'm getting so much Jobs/Ballmer flashbacks with internet explorer and microsoft office. Edit: Does anyone else notice the switching between dashes and em-dashes between paragraphs? Tells you a lot about the man, doesn't it.

Tells you a lot about the man, doesn't it.

The CEO of Anthropic not using AI extensively would be news.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#29

Post by blfr » Mon, Aug 17, 2026, 8:43 AM UTC

glimshe wrote: post #13

One thing Dario said is important reflecting on (but from another angle): where's the big deliverable from AI? If AI makes us 10x more productive, the 3 years since its popularization were enough for a product that would have taken 30 years to build without AI, for instance. I'm an AI advocate but that question makes me feel that AI is simply "very useful" rather than being a historical game changer for humanity.

First, it's not three years since. The real improvements in programming ability arrived in the last 6-8 months.

Second, the Internet didn't show up much in GDP and similar measures either!

But your point stands. Where are the amazing digital products/stuff? I get that it might take time to arrive as we scale up compute and learn new paradigms. But so much infra already exists (deployment pipeliens, everyone reachable on a smartphone) that we should be seeing something.

Re: On AI regulation and messaging

#30

Post by ben_w » Mon, Aug 17, 2026, 8:45 AM UTC

glimshe wrote: post #13

One thing Dario said is important reflecting on (but from another angle): where's the big deliverable from AI? If AI makes us 10x more productive, the 3 years since its popularization were enough for a product that would have taken 30 years to build without AI, for instance. I'm an AI advocate but that question makes me feel that AI is simply "very useful" rather than being a historical game changer for humanity.

Anyone saying 10x as a serious claim is clearly using a round number and vibes; however, even if it were so, AI getting popular 3 years ago does not mean what you say.

The earliest used models in this category would easily 10x (what did I just say) the creation of one-off short scripts, but you're not writing a 30-year app out of just a bunch of short scripts.

The METR time horizons graph suggests we can now get 10x (ahem) speedup on solving most coding problems that take us a few hours and about half of problems that take 2 days. Amdahl's law bites: even infinity speedup on half your problems is only 2x overall.

If you let an LLM loose, with a huge budget, what's the biggest artefact it can make before it drowns under the weight of bad decisions? The C compiler and web browser headlines a while back? The maths papers we see now that solve problems which stumped the maths world for decades?

But this is the other side of the same coin: teamwork. One person getting a thing made in twelve months vs a team of a hundred, you can scale up fast with money when you have a proof of concept, and an LLM can make a lot of proofs of a lot of concepts even in free accounts.