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Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis

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Re: Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis

#121
post #53

If you manage 500+ people organization, most of the headaches with agents already exists with you - you set directions, ask people to go run fast in those directions, check in frequently and course correct on results without actually understanding those people do. Those aren't the deal breakers. They entirely rely on the competence of the folks they hired and cross-match enforcers with the drivers they have - they de…

Also, this is why investors and CEOs are so in love with "LLMs are the route to AGI!"

When some rich/powerful person says "I have to go to Davos, figure it out" their workers know so much context that no LLM is going to ever be able to incorporate, because it isn't written down and is idiosyncratic. (Really, though, the assistant will just say "you're going to Davos next week, the helicopter will pick you up at 3p on Friday" but you know..)

The rich person's assistant knows who else is on the corporate jet, and that X doesn't like Y, and so they should take a different plane. Or get a different accommodation. Oh, Person X doesn't like to fly on an empty stomach, so they should eat first, and that changes all sorts of other downstream implications. Oh, your best friend lives in this city, and I know you love to see them, so I'm going to send you a day or two early so you can meet up with them. etc. etc. etc.

The investor dream of "AGI" is modeled off of the army of employees that make investors/ceos/etc lives easier, and there is a nearly insurmountable gap between what LLMs can do, context they can get, and the availability of all of that information. (To me, the magnitude of this investor fundamental reality gap is the entirety of the "bubble". I love AI coding, but it's never gonna do the things investors think it can, to justify the crazy valuations)

Re: Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s absolutely lazy, because it’s not psychosis.

Correct, it's addiction.

I'm not sure that's a good term either, unless we're also saying that nail guns and microwaves are addictions.

Re: Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis

#123

whats being described is in no way unique to ai. " In other words, Levie’s theory posits, CEOs don’t really understand processes well enough to know what really can and can’t be automated. But that lack of knowledge doesn’t stop them from acting on their beliefs. " i have been in the workforce for a long time. this "theory" has been theorized since as far back as i can remember. its the premise of undercover boss. it…

What's unique to AI is that CEOs now have a robot that supports that disconnect. Our CEO recently announced that he has now started doing frontend programming, by which he meant that he had told ChatGPT to output some HTML. No doubt it also told him how smart and clever his ideas were and what a great engineer he was. This kind of thing only increases the disconnect between what CEOs think employees do and what they…

Some people have surrounded themselves by yes-men instead of LLMs, and it seems to me that it comes to the same thing.

Re: Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis

#124

It's hardly a tech CEO thing, and I dunno if "psychosis" is a fair or accurate way to talk about it. I worked with someone who was kind of a Shopify power user, managed the store, could do a lot of things, but wasn't a programmer. She showed me how Shopify does that AI block generator now to deliver something that was like 65% done in a minute. I also have a friend who knows enough code to be dangerous in WordPress:…

AI psychosis just a lazy term, much like Trump Derangement Syndrome. It sounds hostile while also removing any scope for productive discourse. Once you call someone a 'psycho', they are less likely to engage with you, and more likely to double down on their views.

It has always been ok to talk about psychosis in the general public, known as a "mass psychosis". Why is that suddenly a problem for CEOs?

Re: Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis

#127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quote literally from Levie is "CEOs are uniquely prone to AI psychosis because they’re sufficiently distant from the last mile of work that still has to happen to generate most value with AI".

The author calling it "psychosis" discredits the author.

Whether or not it's actually a kind of psychosis, it has become common terminology. You see it used about people that have LLM boyfriends or girlfriends, and some that have started new religions based around their LLM gods. There are also a group that believe they have "awakened" their LLMs and have instructions for others to do the same thing.

Re: Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Github? Windows? Ibm? Intel? Boeing?

Github and Windows aren't companies. A more productive view would be looking at an index of tech companies - try QQQ.

There is a great deal of ruin within a nation - and a company.

Re: Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe slightly unrelated, but I've done a lot of road trips throughout the US, and there is so much land that is used unproductively, it's really incredible. Land that could be used for energy, food, or housing, just sitting empty or with abandoned structures. Imagine if we just paid people to coat their properties in solar panels - throw them on your roof, lawn, wherever you have the space. We could drive energy pri…

> We could drive energy prices down to nothing. Not when you're paying people to coat their properties in solar panels. As you noted, that would cost plenty. Solar panels also degrade over time. By the time the "free" electricity has paid for the installation, you'll need to replace it.

How often do you think solar panels need to be replaced?

Re: Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI psychosis just a lazy term, much like Trump Derangement Syndrome. It sounds hostile while also removing any scope for productive discourse. Once you call someone a 'psycho', they are less likely to engage with you, and more likely to double down on their views.

It’s absolutely lazy, because it’s not psychosis.

It might be psychosis.

> Psychosis is the term for a collection of symptoms that happen when a person has trouble telling the difference between what’s real and what’s not[0]

For many seemingly intelligent, rational, competent humans AI has become a layer between them and reality that has absolutely sabotaged their ability to know what is real.

[0] https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/23012-psychos...

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