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After Math

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Re: After Math

#131

Post by matherial »

svara wrote: post #62
matherial wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might feel that way, but I'll ask again: where's the payoff? Where's all the amazing software that everyone is now supposedly shipping 10x faster than before? If I look at the software I'm actually using day-to-day, or that my friends are using, all this stuff looks exactly the same as it did in 2021. Not a single product release from Google, Microsoft, or more scrappy companies in the past 6 months made me go "wo…

This has a clear answer in systems theory; the ability to bang out code was never the limiting factor for Google et al.; large organizations are limited by coordination costs. It's the small teams you need to pay attention to, the organizations that really were limited by engineering capacity. These are by definition also less visible - for now.

That "for now" has been going on for ~10 months. That was enough for some startups to make a splash in the pre-AI era; now that they can move 10x faster, shouldn't we be seeing evidence left and right? All the contenders stealing lunch from Big Tech by offering better products or exploring new frontiers?

Re: After Math

#132

Post by KolenCh »

yazaddaruvala wrote: post #12

I think as a civilization we need to postulate a new term: “purpose death” Defined something like: temporary state of complete loss of personal purpose and the experience of existential dread from never achieving self-actualization in spite of the tremendous time commitment towards excellence in a now automated intelligence. I truly think because of the pace of innovation this will be a universal feeling for every hu…

[dead]

Re: After Math

#133

Post by nunez »

matherial wrote: post #11
stabbles wrote: post #7

Wouldn't AI make the field of mathematics more ambitious? In software development it feels that way: there are often tasks I can take on that would have been too risky in 2025, because it was unclear if they were worth it. Now you generate a prototype and can make much better judgement calls what is possible and what is worth pursuing.

It might feel that way, but I'll ask again: where's the payoff? Where's all the amazing software that everyone is now supposedly shipping 10x faster than before? If I look at the software I'm actually using day-to-day, or that my friends are using, all this stuff looks exactly the same as it did in 2021. Not a single product release from Google, Microsoft, or more scrappy companies in the past 6 months made me go "wo…

I'm not a huge fan of AI, but there _are_ examples of mostly-AI generated software that are being used by real people:

- Nourish is a nutrition coach/food diary that is recommended by dieticians. It's mostly AI generated, but logging food is easy even if it's not correct (it's better to log and have it be slightly off than to not log at all --- I've been doing it for almost 20 years now)

- Cronometer isn't AI generated but its photo logging feature, which I use heavily, definitely uses a vision model to guess at what you're eating. This is SUPER STUPIDLY HELPFUL when I'm out with friends at, let's say a Korean BBQ joint, and don't have the time to log everything that I'm eating as I eat it. (The right thing to do is pre-plan your meal, but this isn't always possible.)

- Feeling Good! is a CBT therapy app that was written mostly by one of the creators of CBT with Claude. My therapist recommended it to me recently. I haven't used it yet but I'll find a way to.

- The creator of SparkPeople is re-releasing it as an almost completely AI-generated platform written by Claude. He's super upfront about this (on the landing page, in the privacy policy, in the onboarding docs), which I highly respect, but I actually hit him up on LinkedIn because the landing page was on Vercel and looked so suspect.

- Boris has said multiple times that Claude Code is increasing writing/maintaining Claude Code, which I deeply respect as a person who's a fan of compilers compiling themselves (like Go, which has since 1.4).

- Have a look at /r/apple on Reddit on a Sunday or even here on "Show HN" threads. Most of the stuff coming out is vibeslop, but some of what's being published looks like solutions to real problems.

Re: After Math

#134

Post by yazaddaruvala »

raphman wrote: post #70
yazaddaruvala wrote: post #12

I think as a civilization we need to postulate a new term: “purpose death” Defined something like: temporary state of complete loss of personal purpose and the experience of existential dread from never achieving self-actualization in spite of the tremendous time commitment towards excellence in a now automated intelligence. I truly think because of the pace of innovation this will be a universal feeling for every hu…

I don't think that "death" is the perfect word here - it typically describes a permanent state. FWIW, what you describe ("temporary state of complete loss of personal purpose") is called "Sinnkrise" in German (crisis of meaning/purpose). (And because not everybody might know: the comment references Kübler-Ross' five stages of grief (when confronted with a tragic outlook)¹: denial → anger → bargaining → depression → a…

Thanks for the German word. I can’t read most of the literature, but initial glance it does indeed seem the same.

FWIW I never enjoy naming things lol. I agree death and temporary seem at odds. “Purpose Loss” didn’t have the same gusto. I mostly riffed the vocabulary and definition off “Ego Death” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ego_death

Re: After Math

#135

Post by bonoboTP »

encyclopediai wrote: post #44
coderenegade wrote: post #39

The problem with the article's line of thought is that mathematicians can't control what others do with models that are capable of generating proofs for hard problems. Sure, maybe there's a career in taking known proofs spat out by the oracle, and translating them for mortal digestion, but I'm not sure that's what most mathematicians signed up for.

Most mathematicians do compete for funding, based essentially on how many articles they can publish and where. Publication strongly favors problem solving. Universities are ranked on the same criteria. What we see is a panic reaction to the fact that problem solving is "easy", which affects the future of the management of mathematics, not of mathematics itself. Mathematicians are not luddites afraid of AI, is the aca…

The academic system developed in the last ~50 years will crumble. On the broad scale of human intellectual history, this was a blip and not even the most productive phase. But it provided mass office employment and so this is all much more about the general knowledge work job replacement issue than anything specific to math. All desk/computer/office jobs will face the same fate. Math is just easier to verify. But engineering design, architecture, lower levels of lawyers and accountants where the selling point isn't charm and connections, they will all have this moment soon.

Re: After Math

#136

Post by bonoboTP »

awr-asjkt wrote: post #112

It is curious that the academics discuss their own narrow issues and are completely silent on the broader issues of copyright violations, energy usage etc.

What copyright violation? Training is free use. Anthropic was fined for torrenting books, not for training. The price of legally obtaining those books was peanuts too. Energy usage has to be compared to the value of the output.

Re: After Math

#137

Post by archagon »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #68

This kind of argument is always dangerous, because it essentially resorts to moving goalposts. "Oh, AI can now do X? Sure it is amazing, but it can't do Y yet, so we're totally safe!" Just because humans can't process the proof or see the advancements, it doesn't mean that it will remain that way in the future or that it will not change the field. If you only define yourself by things AI can't do yet , you're about t…

Fundamentally, the question is this: what is a large language model, what is it capable of, how does it differ from human cognition, and what can humans do that it cannot do?

A lot of people seem to believe that with more time and training, LLMs will surpass human intelligence. But they are fundamentally not like human intelligence. They do not reason, learn, conceptualize, think creatively or abstractly, even though we have some hacks to mimic these behaviors.

I posit that treating LLMs like GPU-powered brains that will eventually surpass us in most fields is pure science fiction if you know anything about how they work. I think they will remain astronomically powerful in some areas (pertaining to fuzzy deep search and recombining existing knowledge) and hilariously bad in others.

Re: After Math

#138

Post by bonoboTP »

jdw64 wrote: post #58

I think one of the traits of people who feel a sense of loss about AI is that many of them value the bond that comes from discussion within their field. You could call it a sense of comradeship, or a shared sense of purpose.

Old timey mining, or the more romantic eras of seafaring also provided more camaraderie than what modern jobs provide. There may be some longing for those more pure and valiant days, but we moved on. You can still discuss about AI assisted results with your peers. I guess it's like how people miss the days of heated arguments about factual questions whereas the smartphone era led to someone just pulling out their phone, googlimg and settling the question. Or heated discussion about Maradona's handplay, and today we have slomo VAR replay. Better at the task, takes away from the romance and the spirit. It's like beautiful winged hussars in the military vs people in an office piloting drones in VR and soon just prompting the AI piloting the drones. I get it. But this should be talked about head on, not just about petty academic career stuff, which of course matter to those involved but are not a society wide issue.

Re: After Math

#139

Post by yazaddaruvala »

OroPla wrote: post #52
yazaddaruvala wrote: post #12

I think as a civilization we need to postulate a new term: “purpose death” Defined something like: temporary state of complete loss of personal purpose and the experience of existential dread from never achieving self-actualization in spite of the tremendous time commitment towards excellence in a now automated intelligence. I truly think because of the pace of innovation this will be a universal feeling for every hu…

> temporary state of complete loss of personal purpose and the experience of existential dread from never achieving self-actualization in spite of the tremendous time commitment towards excellence in a now automated intelligence > this will be a universal feeling for every human for the rest of existence As someone that has accepted a very long time ago that nihilism is the only self-consistent philosophy, I've made…

I’m glad you found something that works well for you. For me, nihilism is much like ice cream: I don’t want it in my fridge - not because I think it’ll taste bad, but because I think it’s gonna taste real good.

Re: After Math

#140

Post by yazaddaruvala »

rdedev wrote: post #75
yazaddaruvala wrote: post #12

I think as a civilization we need to postulate a new term: “purpose death” Defined something like: temporary state of complete loss of personal purpose and the experience of existential dread from never achieving self-actualization in spite of the tremendous time commitment towards excellence in a now automated intelligence. I truly think because of the pace of innovation this will be a universal feeling for every hu…

> AI will run and trample anything that stays in front of it. Right now that entirely depends on the whims of a few people. We can try to make it not be that but I don't have much hope in that area. See climate change > As a software engineer, I myself have only recently recovered from it Can I ask you how you came here? Right now I am getting closer to "purpose death" as you call it. Software engineering is one of t…

You might also be going though purpose death which is an emotional concern related to thriving, but I think your bigger emotional concern is related to survival. This answer is the same as ever - race to financial freedom. Live under your means. Invest wisely. Survive till you hit your milestones.

Meanwhile, I really don’t believe the narrative about fewer jobs.

As long as you’re curious, as long as you continue learning, the new tools and focus on the parts of your current job that involve judgment you will continue putting food on your table as long as you are alive.

Use any and every tool you have to save the people around you time, and the C level will continually fight to keep you.

When AI gets good at something you are good at - great use the time (accelerated by using AI for self help) to find another thing you’re good at the AI isn’t yet. Make sure you have 3-4 things you’re good at at any given time so as AI gets good you have redundancy.

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