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Where does next-token prediction leave us?

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Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#111

Post by weatherlite »

typon wrote: post #54
mmilunic wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps this is a form of Gell-Mann Amnesia (but kinda inverted) where everyone views AI as too inaccurate for their own niche , but perfectly fine for every other field that they know comparably little about.

Actually I think AI will largely automate software and math and really not much else in the short to medium term. (speaking as a computer/math person)

I thought the same but i dont think so anymore. My wife is a senior manager at a big 4 consultancy gig and she says copilot became freaking good at understanding tax, multinational company structure etc etc. Even if you need a few partners and experts at the top to validate things you can cut huge amounts of workers.

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#114

Post by shinycode »

Melamune wrote: post #75

LLMs reveal an important truth that we were already deeply aware of. With this cognitive offloading, the interests that drive us lose their meaning. If friction disappears, there is no longer any desire, pleasure, longing, obstacle, or demand. It is indolence, and it goes by the name of apathy. All these promises without even reaching an ideal! Could it simply be that this ideal is becoming impoverished? The prevaili…

That’s exactly part of the feelings I have. I always loved to learn, dig subjects, debug, create. Now I feel something has been taken away and has no value. I feel indolence and apathy. In my company the CEO explicitly says that code quality does not matter. He doesn’t care as long as we ship fast and iterate.

I am genuinely sad and feel I’m losing something and if I do everything like I used to do, I am pressured that I waste time.

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#115

Post by weatherlite »

dyauspitr wrote: post #57
overgard wrote: post #40

I have a more depressing theory. I think class is part of it, but I'm starting to suspect that a shockingly large number of people lack the critical thinking skills needed to think out the implications of this stuff. I say that because I've met so many people of the managerial class that seem to think it's going to replace the annoying people they have to pay, but somehow they don't think it's going to come for them…

[flagged]

> I think it’s small minded people like you, only preoccupied with your small little niche that can’t see why more open minded people see so much potential in the technology, whether it directly benefits them or not.

Ah yes the small minded people worrying about their mortgages, purchasing power, and basically identity and social status. You know those small things we all work towards all of our lives.

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#116

Post by keybored »

dyauspitr wrote: post #57
overgard wrote: post #40

I have a more depressing theory. I think class is part of it, but I'm starting to suspect that a shockingly large number of people lack the critical thinking skills needed to think out the implications of this stuff. I say that because I've met so many people of the managerial class that seem to think it's going to replace the annoying people they have to pay, but somehow they don't think it's going to come for them…

[flagged]

No one would respect a parent who offers up their children to be eaten up by Progress. Here Timmy, step into the meat grinder. No, don’t be afraid, don’t be selfish; mommy wants to see what happens once we step through.

The same holds for the individual without any dependants. It’s just less immediately apparent. Small-minded self-preservation is more respect worthy and rational than big-minded foolishness.

This doesn’t even get into how this is not about being against Progress but about being under the thumb of Capital. The entity that is holding the Progress mask.

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#117

Post by harrouet »

AI has already replaced a lot of workers, but there is still no AI-managed business out there, regardless of doomsday PR.

I think that there is a misconception about what money is. It is a vector of value, and value comes from the work of the people. If less people can work, this will lead to deflation, something that capitalists would avoid. But remember that AI is hardware and energy, and that requires more workers. Your token price pays for electricity and hardware GPUs -- only marginally for AI science. Sure, developers have to be more like architects than code monkeys, but I am not sure if it is a bad thing.

Also, I have this contrarian view that the LLM tech will now plateau. They are not a path to AGI. Look at how they work, and you'll understand that they are unable to innovate. Models are like a compressed version of Internet knowledge, and that's what they are spitting out. That's already pretty good. But I don't think that we'll see another leapfrog innovation on LLMs anytime soon. After all, OpenAI happened by accident.

In the future, we will all have today's frontier AI on our laptop to automate our lives. There are still many things to invent out there, and I see LLMs more like an enabler than a competitor.

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#118

Post by selcuka »

weatherlite wrote: post #103
kjkjadksj wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does average joe afford the tools and parts they need with no job employing them?

How does he afford a plumber then ...?

That's the point. Plumbers will be broke, too, because people who are supposed to hire them will not have jobs.

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#119

Post by selcuka »

shinycode wrote: post #114
Melamune wrote: post #75

LLMs reveal an important truth that we were already deeply aware of. With this cognitive offloading, the interests that drive us lose their meaning. If friction disappears, there is no longer any desire, pleasure, longing, obstacle, or demand. It is indolence, and it goes by the name of apathy. All these promises without even reaching an ideal! Could it simply be that this ideal is becoming impoverished? The prevaili…

That’s exactly part of the feelings I have. I always loved to learn, dig subjects, debug, create. Now I feel something has been taken away and has no value. I feel indolence and apathy. In my company the CEO explicitly says that code quality does not matter. He doesn’t care as long as we ship fast and iterate. I am genuinely sad and feel I’m losing something and if I do everything like I used to do, I am pressured th…

I'm in a similar boat. Today I commented on a junior developer's pull request, and he pasted the answer he got from Claude Code, verbatim.

Ignoring how disrespectful that behaviour is, I can't understand what value he thinks he brings in. Were you hired to be an interface between me and Claude? Because I don't need you. You are just accepting that you are redundant by doing that.

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#120

Post by est »

> The founding tenet of AI, “saving us” from all sorts of difficult things: climate, disease, poverty, conflict is falling, fast

No those are just marketing slogans. The founding tenet of AI is to best match next token according to a reward model.

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