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AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage

theguardian.com

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Re: AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage

#101

Post by johnnyanmac »

baron816 wrote: post #44

It’s so strange to see people accusing tech companies of using AI to concentrate power and wealth when thus far, AI has almost entirely been all consumer surplus. You have crazily high competition in the industry that allows you the consumer to use SOTA models for free, or even run them yourself. My prediction is that this will keep going all the way to the AGI stage. Someone will release (or leak) an AGI capable mod…

> when thus far, AI has almost entirely been all consumer surplus.

Tell that to the 2025 job numbers. Who do you think benefits from a millipn+ layoffs? The consumers? The new grads who can't even get their career started?

Re: AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage

#102

Post by takeda »

stephc_int13 wrote: post #67

How ironic would it be if the AI productivity miracle ends up being negative growth because of the cost of cleaning up of slop?

Honestly I think it already is.

A lot of people who talk about massive gains seem to forget about code review.

Then in a company someone who has to review is is f*cked because that code is much more complex and takes much longer to review.

Re: AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage

#103

Post by daxfohl »

The whole AGI industry is like one of those projects that claims "90% finished" from the time of the first demo, then for the next N years, all the way up until the project is eventually canceled.

Yeah we can spew out millions of lines of unmaintainable slop code! Now we can even write a slop unusable browser!

All this shit looks like progress, but it's all really a cover for lack of progress. And now we've got the entire economy as a bet on it.

None of this is to say there's nothing useful coming out of the industry. I use it productively for a ton of things. But, the reverse centaur thing is a great analogy. The money getting ploughed into it is assuming reverse centaur will be the final outcome, not a set of useful productivity tools. Once investors start to realize that all we're going to get out of it is the latter, we'll be in for a world of hurt.

Granted, one nice thing about the AI wave is that I bet it'll be able to keep slinging new and idiotic slop for decades that'll keep successfully unburdening investors from their money, because, "hey look, it's 90% finished!" Who knows, maybe that's the point.

Re: AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage

#104

Post by kalkin »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #97
kalkin wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the commenter to whom you're replying is any more aggressive than, e.g., this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46668988 It's unfortunately the case that even understanding what AI can and cannot do has become a matter of, as you say, "ideological world view". Ideally we'd be able to discuss what's factually true of AI at the beginning of 2026, and what's likely to be true within the next few ye…

>any more aggressive than, e.g., this one Frequency is important too. >independently of whether the trends are good for most humans or what we ought to do about them. This whole article is about the trends and of they are good for humans. I was pleasantly surprised that this was not yet another argument of "AI is (not) good enough" since people at this point have their fences set on that. I don't think it's too late…

Neither in my previous comment nor in my actual views do I dismiss the human element or expect to isolate myself from societal effects.

> I was pleasantly surprised that this was not yet another argument of "AI is (not) good enough"

The article does assert that, and that's important for its argument that ordinary workers just need to convince decisionmakers that things will go poorly if they replace us.

"Now, if AI could do your job, this would still be a problem... But AI can’t do your job."

This isn't ambiguous.

Re: AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage

#105

Post by johnnyanmac »

kalkin wrote: post #104
johnnyanmac wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>any more aggressive than, e.g., this one Frequency is important too. >independently of whether the trends are good for most humans or what we ought to do about them. This whole article is about the trends and of they are good for humans. I was pleasantly surprised that this was not yet another argument of "AI is (not) good enough" since people at this point have their fences set on that. I don't think it's too late…

Neither in my previous comment nor in my actual views do I dismiss the human element or expect to isolate myself from societal effects. > I was pleasantly surprised that this was not yet another argument of "AI is (not) good enough" The article does assert that, and that's important for its argument that ordinary workers just need to convince decisionmakers that things will go poorly if they replace us. "Now, if AI c…

Sure you do. I already quoted it

>independently of whether the trends are good for most humans or what we ought to do about them.

Saying "the writer shouldn't talk about this" is about as dismissive of a topic as you can be. You could have simply said "this topic isn't as interesting to delve into", but the framing that "the article to which we're all responding does not contribute positively." suggests that.

>This isn't ambiguous.

It's also talking about the present. The article already made clear it is not going to predict the future of tech in the very beginning. Its looking at the here and now for AI and the human element for any possible futures on whether or not that remains the case or not.

Also note this response. It is again trying to focus on the tech arguments. This isn't the focus of this argument

Re: AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage

#106

Post by kalkin »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #105
kalkin wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither in my previous comment nor in my actual views do I dismiss the human element or expect to isolate myself from societal effects. > I was pleasantly surprised that this was not yet another argument of "AI is (not) good enough" The article does assert that, and that's important for its argument that ordinary workers just need to convince decisionmakers that things will go poorly if they replace us. "Now, if AI c…

Sure you do. I already quoted it >independently of whether the trends are good for most humans or what we ought to do about them. Saying "the writer shouldn't talk about this" is about as dismissive of a topic as you can be. You could have simply said "this topic isn't as interesting to delve into", but the framing that "the article to which we're all responding does not contribute positively." suggests that. >This i…

That two things can or should be discussed independently doesn't mean either is unimportant. And insisting that you know what I meant better than I do is not a good way to have a productive conversation.

As for the Doctorow article, I don't understand exactly what you're trying to say about "focus", but it's incoherent to read the discussion about replacement of your current job as talking purely about the present - since the job is currently yours, the replacement must happen in the future.

Re: AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage

#107

Post by ninkendo »

pixl97 wrote: post #79
ninkendo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has been three years and these tools can do a considerable portion of my day to day work. Agreed. > Unfortunately I think that many people’s jobs are essentially in the “Coyote running off a cliff but not realizing it yet” phase or soon to be. Eh… some people maybe. But history shows nearly every time a tool makes people more efficient, we get more jobs, not less. Jevon’s paradox and all that: https://en.wikiped…

Right, cars lead to more horses... except it didn't.

Of course cars wouldn't lead to more horses, because horses were the thing being replaced. But cars sure as hell lead to a lot more drivers, which is more akin to the analogy.

To take a software engineer for an example, Jevon's paradox would say that since software engineering is now so much easier due to LLM's, the demand will increase due to the reduced cost, which will lead to more software needing created, which paradoxically leads to more software engineers. There's no equivalent of the "horse" in the analogy, because the same people who were coding before ("driving" the horse) will be aided by LLM's in the future ("driving" a car.)

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