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After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

blog.robbowley.net

131–140 of 489 posts

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the difference is the impact of crypto was always hypothetical, chatgpt can be used, explored, and if you are creative enough, levered in ways as the ultimate tool

You've done nothing but reuse the Sam Altman/Elon Musk playbook of making wild and extremely vague statements. Maybe say something concrete? What's a positive real world impact of LLMs where they aren't hideously expensive and error prone to the point of near uselessness? Something that isn't just the equivalent of a crypto-bro saying that their system for semi-regulated speculation (totally not a rugpull!) will end…

they speak in generalities because the models are profoundly general, a general learning system. below someone asked me to list the capabilities, its the wrong question to ask. its like asking what a baby can do

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're mostly solid state parts. The parts that do wear out like fans are easily replaced by hobbyists.

I swear during the earlier waves of bitcoin mining (before good ASICs came out) people ran them overclocked and did cause damage. Used GPUs were pretty unreliable for a while there.

1. Miners were clocking them beyond the factory approved speeds - something not needed for AI, where the bottleneck is usually VRAM, not clock speed.

2. While comprehensive studies were never done, some tech channels did some testing and found used GPUs to be generally reliable or easily repairable, when scamming was excluded. https://youtu.be/UFytB3bb1P8

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#133
The AI "bubble" won't burst just like the "internet bubble" didn't burst.

the dotcom bubble was a result of investors jumping on the hype train all at once and then getting off of it all at once.

Yes, investors will eventually find another hype train to jump on, but unlike 2000, we have tons of more retail investors and AI is also not a brand new tech sector, it's built upon the existing well established and "too big to fail" internet/ecommerce infrastructure. Random companies slapping AI on things will fail but all the real AI use cases will only expand and require more and more resources.

OpenAI alone just hit 800M MAU. That will easily double in a few years. There will be adjustments,corrections and adaptations of course but the value and wealth it generates is very real.

I'm no seer, I can't predict the future but I don't see a massive popping of some unified AI bubble anytime soon.

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What will be the next thing eating all GPUs, after crypto and now AI?

The autonomous drones fighting in the next war (let's hope not...).

IMHO, it will be autonomous robotics - one way or another.

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define "make decisions" such that an 'if' statement does not qualify but an llm does. LLMs may be a stepping stone to AGI. It's impressive tech. But nobody's proven anything like that yet, and you're running on pure faith not facts here.

i mean, if given the choice between using a coding agent like the codex ui, or a CS intern, I would take the coding agent every time. to me its self evident whats going on

Well frankly your lack of concrete arguments makes it seem a lot like you don't actually understand what's going on here.

I'm enjoying the new LLM based tooling a lot, but nothing about it suggests that we're in any way near to AGI because it's very much a one trick pony so far.

When we see generative AI that updates its weights in real time (currently an intractible problem) as part of the feedback loop then things might get very interesting. Until then it's just another tool in the box. CS interns learn.

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#136
post #4

I cant believe people still arent grasping the profound implications of computers that can talk and make decisions.

In my case I fully grasp what such a future could be, but I don't think we are on the path to that, I believe people are too optimistic, i.e. they just believe instead of being truly skeptical. From where I look at it, LLMs are flawed in many ways, and people who see progress as inevitable do not have a mental model of the foundation of those systems to be able to extrapolate. Also, people do not know any other forms…

symbols and concepts are just collections of neurons that fire with the correct activation. its all about the bitter lesson, human beings cannot design ai, they can only find the most general equations, most general loss function, and push data in. and thats what we have, and thats why its a big deal. The LLM is just a manifestation of a much broader discovery, a generalized learning algorithm. it worked on language because of the information density, but with more compute, we may be able to push in more general sensory data...

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#137
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The neural net was invented in the 1940s, and LLMs were created in the 1960s. It's 2025 and we're still using 80yo architecture. Call me cynical, but I don't understand how we're going to avoid the physical limitations of GPUs and data to train AIs on. We've pretty much exhausted the latter, and the former is going to hit sooner rather than later. We'll be left at that point with an approach that hasn't changed much…

they didnt have the compute or the data to make use of NNs. but theoretically NNs made sense even back then, and many people thought they could give rise to intelligent machines. they were probably right, and its a shame they didnt live to see whats happening right now

> they didnt have the compute or the data to make use of NNs

The compute and data are both limitations of NNs.

We've already gotten really close to the data limit (we aren't generating enough useful content as a species and the existing stuff has all been slurped up).

Standard laws of physics restrict the compute side, just like how we know we will hit it with CPUs. Eventually, you just cannot put things closer together that generate more heat because they interfere with each other because we hit the physical laws re miniaturization.

No, GAI will require new architectures no one has thought of in nearly a century.

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#138
post #4

I cant believe people still arent grasping the profound implications of computers that can talk and make decisions.

Computers have been able to talk and make decisions from the beginning. Maybe you meant mimicking humans?

mimick is quite a loaded word

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The self checkout machines at the supermarket can talk and make decisions. I don't see them revolutionising the world.

This is the most perfect troll comment I've ever seen. Bravo.

I think it's worth engaging with even if this guy's a troll (not saying he is) because it's not that freakish a view in the real world. What are the arguments to counter this kind of blind enthusiasm?

Re: After the AI boom: what might we be left with?

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The self checkout machines at the supermarket can talk and make decisions. I don't see them revolutionising the world.

> I don't see them revolutionising the world. They revolutionized supermarkets.

Unless you happen to be some sort of rodent that feeds off of discarded grains, the supermarket is not the world.

And for small baskets, sure, but it was scan as you shop that really changed supermarkets and those things thankfully do not talk.

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