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AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

theguardian.com

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Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#141

Post by dwpdwpdwpdwpdwp »

wat10000 wrote: post #118
jmalicki wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see AI pass the turning test all the time, since humans are constantly falsely being accused of being an AI. It doesn't mean that AI got good, just that humans are thinking other humans are AI, which is a form of passing the test. The adversarial version with humans involved is actually easier to pass because of this - because real actual humans wouldn't pass your non adversarial version.

In one study, GPT-4.5 was judged to be human 73% of the time, which means that the actual human was judged to be human only 27% of the time. More human than human, as Tyrell would say. Edit: folks, the standard Turing test involves a computer and a human, and then a judge communicating with both and giving a verdict about which one is the human. The percentages for the two entities being judged will add up to exactly…

The implication would be that GPT-4.5 was not judged to be human 27% of the time. You can't determine how often humans were judged correctly as humans from that data point.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#142

Post by nradov »

lostlogin wrote: post #103
vachina wrote: post #83

This is what happens when humans give, in this case, bots full write access (via natural language) to their brains. Humans have not evolved to block this.

The end of the article is wild. “I experienced a mental breakdown at 22. I had panic attacks and severe social anxiety… …I still use AI, but very carefully”. It reads like an alcoholic describing their new plan where they only drink a little bit.

Is that really so crazy? People who overcome addictive eating disorders still have to eat a little bit. LLMs are going to be pervasive in all aspects of human society so avoiding them will be much harder than avoiding alcohol.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#143

Post by nitwit005 »

throw18376 wrote: post #98

my inclination when hearing these stories is that these were people who just happened to have a first manic episode (which can strike anyone at any time with or without mental health history). blowing up finances by starting an ill-advised entrepreneurial business, while also destroying a marriage, is very common behavior for someone experiencing a manic state. in the past such a person might have gotten obsessed wit…

Possible, but people generally seem prone to delusion. You don't seem to need any significant mental illness for it to be an issue.

Just look at all the scams that seem to rely on people deluding themselves in various ways.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#144

Post by leptons »

entropyneur wrote: post #108

Not a mental health crisis like the guy in TFA had, but I've definitely experienced states I would characterize as overexcitement while calibrating my expectations of these new tools to their abilities.

That could explain the glut of AI hype on HN. Some people think it's magic, when it's just creating a lot of barely-functional slop. If they actually looked at the code it creates, they probably wouldn't be shouting about it from the rooftops. It almost seems like AI has its own "reality distortion field".

I often give the AI a task to produce some code for a specific thing. Then I also code to solve the same problem in parallel with the AI. My solution is always 1/4 the code, and is likely far easier for another real human to read through.

I also either match or beat the AI in speed, Claude seems to take forever sometimes. With all the coddling and revisions I have to do with the AI, I'm usually done before the AI is. It takes a non-negligible amount of time to think through and write down instructions so the AI can make a try at not fucking it up - and that's time I could have used for coding a straight-forward solution that I already knew how to produce without needing to write down step-by-step instructions.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#145

Post by 0x3f »

joe_mamba wrote: post #111
pigpop wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts exactly when I read "Instead of taking on IT jobs, Biesma hired two app developers, paying them each €120 an hour" like holy shit bro, you already have a subscription, you could have prototyped your idea for essentially zero additional cost and tested it for PMF. He wouldn't even have needed to turn down contracts since it doesn't take full-time effort to steer a coding model. Would have been much better…

> paying them each €120 an hour Those must be some of the best programmers in Europe at that rate. Anyone know how one can get one of those sweet €120 an hour gigs? Whenever I talked to recruiters they say their customers pay way below that, so there must be some scam I'm not in on.

Pretty normal senior contractor rate in London.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#146

Post by Melatonic »

wat10000 wrote: post #118
jmalicki wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see AI pass the turning test all the time, since humans are constantly falsely being accused of being an AI. It doesn't mean that AI got good, just that humans are thinking other humans are AI, which is a form of passing the test. The adversarial version with humans involved is actually easier to pass because of this - because real actual humans wouldn't pass your non adversarial version.

In one study, GPT-4.5 was judged to be human 73% of the time, which means that the actual human was judged to be human only 27% of the time. More human than human, as Tyrell would say. Edit: folks, the standard Turing test involves a computer and a human, and then a judge communicating with both and giving a verdict about which one is the human. The percentages for the two entities being judged will add up to exactly…

Those stats dont necessarily line up that way. Do you have a link?

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#147

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

joe_mamba wrote: post #111
pigpop wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thoughts exactly when I read "Instead of taking on IT jobs, Biesma hired two app developers, paying them each €120 an hour" like holy shit bro, you already have a subscription, you could have prototyped your idea for essentially zero additional cost and tested it for PMF. He wouldn't even have needed to turn down contracts since it doesn't take full-time effort to steer a coding model. Would have been much better…

> paying them each €120 an hour Those must be some of the best programmers in Europe at that rate. Anyone know how one can get one of those sweet €120 an hour gigs? Whenever I talked to recruiters they say their customers pay way below that, so there must be some scam I'm not in on.

My experience was that recruiters tried lowballing me, because they wanted to set up a system, where they ran the contract, and I subcontracted with them.

They wanted to pay me $50/hr, but they would charge the customer $150/hr.

It got quite insulting. They would dis my capabilities to me, but I’ll bet I walked on water, when they talked to the customer.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#148

Post by 0x3f »

joe_mamba wrote: post #119
alibarber wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably includes circa 30% employer contributions to various taxes (employer side, the employee will be paying their own of course). And possibly VAT.

Still an amazing deal compared to the rates I got quoted by recruiters. I'm guessing you must first live in Amsterdam for that. In Vienna you get laugh if you asked for 120, and there you pay even more in taxes than NL.

Perhaps, but Vienna has better QoL so maybe it balances out at this level. If you want to just maximize income, there are better places for that than Amsterdam.

Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion

#149

Post by keybored »

iainctduncan wrote: post #131

There are an awful lot of programmers here essentially mocking this person for being naive and gullible, and yet the things I read programmers who are all in on vibe coding say are not that different, just a little less extreme. I'm seeing cases online nearly daily of people thinking their app is ground breaking or amazing when it's honestly a piece of barely thought out garbage and if they hadn't made it in a rush o…

HN has a 10X persona bias. (A bias. There are many personalities etc.) In turn one of the recurring memes is the AI-enabled Senior Developer who gets superpowers based on their experience. The junior developer, curiously, does not get superpowers, because they just lean on the machines and learn nothing. But the senior developer by the power of pre-AI experience (doing stuff) gets wings to fly with.

Regular people are just, I don’t know, I guess they are token whales waiting to get washed ashore.

Born just in the right time to both get experience doing stuff and also to experience wearing their wings. It’s that simple.

That’s the biggest thing for HN folks to at least be aware of.

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