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AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

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Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#101

Post by barrkel »

petra wrote: post #88
barrkel wrote: post #37

The lack of robotics mention somewhat undermines this article. I don't think it's intrinsically wrong, we are in a late stage of a transformation. Software is eating the world and AI is (so far) most profitably an automation of software. There is plenty of money to be made along the way. I don't really buy the article's seeming confusion about where the money is going to come from. Anthropic is making billions and si…

The question is whether robotics will look like a some number of platforms with little development to adapt to different scenarios, or a million types of machines that are highly fit for purpose. Because the first situation won't create that many jobs. The second one might.

I expect hybrids. Something general has to be adaptable for what will be an expensive capital purchase.

The human form factor - torso up anyway - is probably easier to bootstrap on a general basis; keyed off of human data. But I don't like the failure modes of bipedal robots - imagine a robot flailing around trying to regain balance, in any setting with humans around.

I'm no expert of course, just pontificating.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#102

Post by BirAdam »

techteach00 wrote: post #22

I sort of agree with the premise of the article. I ask myself, did more non-technical people pick up AI chat bots when they were invented than picked up personal computers in the late 70s/early 80's? I think probably. From my conversations with others.

The very first personal computers came out in 1972. In 1978, we got several. The PC came out in 1981. The computer boom didn't begin until 1992.

My wife is absolutely not technical, and she began using ChatGPT before me.

This is to say, I believe you to be correct here. The LLM adoption rate is many times the computer adoption rate. Non-technical people are immediately seeing the benefit of LLMs where they did not with computers in the 1970s.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#103

Post by awongh »

dodu_ wrote: post #32
awongh wrote: post #16

I think it's clear to me that AI will be both things: 1) as in the article it's a contraction of work- industrialization getting rid of hand-made work or the contraction of all things horse-related when the internal combustion engine came around but- it will also be 2) new technologies and ideas enabled by a completely new set of capabilities The real question is if the economic boost from the latter outpaces the los…

> do people really believe no novel things will be unlocked with this tech? Yes. It's a mostly shitty but very fast and relatively inexpensive replacement for things that already exist. Give your best example of something that is novel, ie isn't just replacing existing processes at scale. It's been 3 and a half years now since the initial hype wave. Maybe I genuinely missed the novel trillion dollar use case that isn…

The most obvious thing is bio-tech, protein folding, drug discovery, etc. As in, things that have an actual positive effect on humanity (not just dollars).

I don't really get people who are dismissive about this aspect of AI- my original question wasn't about cost-efficiency of developing these things, but just that the technology itself is creating things that wouldn't have been possible before. It seems hard to refute.

Whether or not it's worth the cost is a different debate entirely- about how tech trees are developed and what the second order effects of technology are. There are so many examples- the computer itself, nuclear power, etc. I think AI is probably on the same order as these.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#104

Post by intended »

eru wrote: post #53
intended wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It a side effect of using AI. People using AI for tasks (essay writing in the MIT study linked below) showed lower ownership, brain connectivity, and ability to quote their work accurately. > https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872 There was a MSFT and Carnegie Mellon study that saw a link between AI use, confidence in ones skills, confidence in AI, and critical thinking. The takeaway for me is that people are getting into…

> [...] and ability to quote their work accurately. I guess that's an advantage? People shouldn't have to burden their memory with boilerplate and CRUD code.

The task was essay writing, and the three 3 groups were No tools, search, ChatGPT.

The people who used chatGPT had the most difficulty quoting their own work. So not boilerplate, CRUD - but yes the advantage is clear for those types of tasks.

There were definite time and cognitive effort savings. I think they measured time saved, and it was ~60% time saved, and a ~32% reduction in cognitive effort.

So its pretty clear, people are going to use this all over the place.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#105

Post by marliechiller »

acedTrex wrote: post #92
neals wrote: post #15

I had to code something on a plane today. It used to be that you couldn't get you packages or check stackoverflow. But now, I'm useless. My mind has turned to pudding. I cannot remember basic boilerplate stuff. Crazy how fast that goes.

If this was me you couldn't waterboard this info out of me.

Why? Is this is because of shame or fear of losing your job?

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#106

Post by pixl97 »

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #12
jemmyw wrote: post #8

The question it raises is if this is the fake surge, the one we see, what is the real one we don't see? Renewable energy comes to mind. Robotics too but maybe that's too tied up with AI.

I think robotics will be the next surge for sure. But I don't think it's really tied up with the LLM stuff either and it could be decades away. In the end, it'll probably require something like model-based RL like Yann LeCun talks about and that's totally different to the LLMs.

Eh, robotics is going through explosive growth right now with the same computing power that's being used on LLMs. You can take human motion capture of a task, dump it in a robotics simulator for a few hours and get a model that can operate autonomously better than something that would have taken a half a year to teach just a few years back.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#107

Post by coldpie »

Zealotux wrote: post #4

I'm currently looking for sort of niche clothes for an event and it's the first time I had to give up on buying online because of the sheer amount of AI-generated pictures. Going to a physical store was just a much better experience, I can't recall the last time this happened, almost all sellers on Etsy are using AI for their pictures.

I do woodworking for a hobby and wanted to find a nice "intro to routers" article. After skimming past the obvious SEO crap on google I clicked the first likely-seeming link and was greeted by an AI slop image of two misshapen routers being operated by three disembodied hands with seventeen fingers each. I immediately threw my laptop out the window, watched it shatter into five hundred pieces, walked across the street to the library, and checked out a goddamn book.

I was already getting disillusioned with the Internet as a learning resource during the SEO spam era, but the AI era has completely destroyed it.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#108

Post by SkyBelow »

bilekas wrote: post #80
XCSme wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess writing code is now like creating punch-cards for old computers. Or even more recently, as writing ASM instead of using a higher level language like C. Now we simply write our "code" in a higher language, natural language, and the LLM is the compiler.

> Now we simply write our "code" in a higher language, natural language, and the LLM is the compiler. No we don't and we never should actually, compilers need to be deterministic.

It needs to be something stronger than just deterministic.

With the right settings, a LLM is deterministic. But even then, small variations in input can cause very unforeseen changes in output, sometimes drastic, sometimes minor. Knowing that I'm likely misusing the vocabulary, I would go with saying that this counts as the output being chaotic so we need compilers to be non-chaotic (and deterministic, I think you might be able to have something that is non-deterministic and non-chaotic). I'm not sure that a non-chaotic LLM could ever exist.

(Thinking on it a bit more, there are some esoteric languages that might be chaotic, so this might be more difficult to pin down than I thought.)

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#110

Post by olmo23 »

dwedge wrote: post #66
neals wrote: post #15

I had to code something on a plane today. It used to be that you couldn't get you packages or check stackoverflow. But now, I'm useless. My mind has turned to pudding. I cannot remember basic boilerplate stuff. Crazy how fast that goes.

Will you do anything differently knowing this? Does the risk of LLMs being unaffordable to you in the near future make you wary about losing the skills?

I don't think it would take very long to regain those skills either.
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