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Where does next-token prediction leave us?

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Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#141

Post by zombot »

anematode wrote: post #3

> The compartmentalisation that must be required by the scientists and engineers to reconcile with the fact that their work being used to bomb and kill people must be crazy. I think about a related question pretty often: What proportion of people working at these companies are "true believers", that their work will be a net benefit for humanity? And for those people (if they are at all numerous), how do they plan to…

I guess Upton Sinclair applies: It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#142

Post by zozbot234 »

soco wrote: post #133
zozbot234 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We will never see 50% of people lose their income, they'll just gradually transition into newer AI-powered roles. Their income will grow rather than shrink. The people who are at risk of losing their income will be those who reject working with AI entirely, but that's because they will be gradually made uncompetitive.

What are these newer AI-powered roles? Let's get to the specifics, please. I'm open to transition, or learn new, give me please a few starting points. I know AI and agents and skills.md already, so let's skip the basics, indicate me a few new jobs I could take.

The specifics is that AI just isn't good enough and there's a huge amount of viable human white-collar work. We're just speculating about what might happen in a future where AI gets good enough to perform most current white-collar jobs.

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#143

Post by shinycode »

selcuka wrote: post #119
shinycode wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Completely, we even added Claude and Cubic in our ci that drop comments on their own. It’s laziness and/or « I don’t care » on his part

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#144

Post by shinycode »

gspr wrote: post #121
shinycode wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 feel the same as you. But at the same time: do you not think your CEO will be proven wrong? Maybe I'm delusional, maybe I'm just rationalizing, but surely code quality, and code understanding, does matter? And if your CEO is right, then surely their business is doomed? If they don't understand, or can't maintain their own product, what's to stop their customers from just "making it" themselves? How is anyone happy…

I’m in a similar line of thinking and actually some customers are making their own version of our tool. It’s nowhere near feature complete but it suits their needs.

Code quality does matter it’s just marketing people being shortsighted because their job is to react to the market. LLM gives a sense of « it’s kind of easy to build stuff, why bother loosing time with quality when I’m there at 80% in 20% of the time ? ».

There is compounding effects where given any big enough system this won’t scale, even Google did talks this week on this topic. So I guess you’re right, time will prove who’s right or wrong and what bet was the best with which consequence

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#145

Post by kergonath »

gspr wrote: post #125
exfalso wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree on the knock-on effects. My prediction is deflation. Money will be worth more and more. As a consequence governments will have to step in to ensure inflation(with e.g. universal income), otherwise the economy stops. But honestly I'm not sure this will be enough for people to spend on e.g. restaurants or activities or oh I don't know, children. I think this will imply a freezing or even stepping back on the Masl…

> What I'm mostly concerned about is not even economic, it's psychological. With nothing to do, people will not have purpose, and bored people are a gunpowder keg. I'm not so sure about this one. The powerful in a society like the one you describe would surely know about that potential powderkeg and supply ample cheap entertainment to dull the edge. Then we'll have a society of mostly dull, idle, useless people with…

> Then we'll have a society of mostly dull, idle, useless people with no purpose.

See Brave new world.

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#146

Post by skor »

overgard wrote: post #19
mmilunic wrote: post #8

> Non-technical middle managers who have not written a line of code in their lives, now feel that the biggest obstacle between them and greatness has lifted. I find it interesting how this is almost the “democratization” you mentioned that AI provides. While AI “democratizes” certain technical ability, in some ways the democratization of things can actually be bad, in that this “democratization” pushes us towards a s…

I hate the term "democratization". It's putting a respectable face on something that shouldn't be respectable at all. In the age of the internet, coding and other creative skills have always been largely democratized to people that care enough to learn. Nothing is being "democratized" by AI, there's simply (an attempt) at driving the value of actual skill to zero so the skill-less and stupid can purchase their way to…

I am against how its being used as well, in fact Authoritarianism is literally "central power to preserve the political status quo" - and that is what you have folks: OpenAI/Anthropic/Google/Facebook/etc are all central powers.

Coding was always power that you can have if you just read the freely available info but having access to a computer and internet is not free - if we can change this it would make democratized.

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#147

Post by weatherlite »

soco wrote: post #136
jusssi wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When we continue this line of thought far enough, we get to ask who's going to pay for the hardware and the electricity to run the AI that's taking all the jobs.

This is exactly the missing long-term perspective. All AI creators are focused either on the projected wins or the shiny technology, ignoring societal effects. Not that they should, they are engineers or MBAs after all, but somebody should. Somebody like us, or better somebody with better reach and better knowledge, should figure out a way to offer a future also to former clerks.

I don't get how this didn't become yet a major election topic in most democracies. It's business as usual mostly.

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#148

Post by csomar »

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…

Wealth is largely distributed by luck, though it has become more concentrated over the last 30 years or so. Most wealthy people aren't particularly smart in the intellectual sense but they tend to think they are, because what other explanation do they have?

Admitting you were just lucky, rather than exceptionally hardworking or talented, is something very few people are willing to do. In all my years, I've met almost no one who genuinely attributes what they have to luck rather than their own effort.

> Shit, even the cynical people that think their wealth is going to protect them are probably ignoring that if unemployment hits 50+%, society is just going to stay stable and they're going to be safe?

Most people can't see two steps ahead. Most people believe the mainstream narrative and think they are outsmarting everyone else in the process. See how Trump tweets still work despite proving time and again that he's full of s**. These people will keep doing what they were doing until they are completely emptied out.

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#149

Post by weatherlite »

soco wrote: post #135
weatherlite wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will so many people switch to plumbing though ? Really depends on how old you are when you get canned (I don't think its realistic for most 40 year olds to start a plumbing career), how good you are with your hands and physical things and whether you can survive the switch psychologically; I don't see many investment bankers or software devs survive such a switch. I'm 42, even if I was very good with my hands (which…

So people will not all switch to plumbing, indeed. But then to what? There's only so much need for tattoo artists and geriatric care - which your customers must also afford to pay.

Yep. I don't have good answers and neither do our politicians. Things will have to change rather radically.

Re: Where does next-token prediction leave us?

#150

Post by 6510 »

birdland wrote: post #134

What are these complaints really other than "I had a nice position in the previous system and I'm afraid of losing it"? Many felt disposable and not valued already, maybe it was a good system for you but not for many. You have a valued skill and you enjoy working in a field using that skill, well for 90+% of people that isn't what work is, you're lamenting the loss of something that the vast majority never had access…

There is nothing new about machines displacing jobs and it will happen the same way as before.
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