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When did AI take over Hacker News?

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Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#151

Post by redbell »

rising-sky wrote: post #9

What I found insightful about this article was the framing of another article cited. > " This pretty negative post topping Hacker News last month sparked these questions, and I decided to find some answers, of course, using AI" The pretty negative post cited is https://tomrenner.com/posts/llm-inevitabilism/ . I went ahead to read it, and found it, imo, fair. It's not making any direct pretty negative claims about AI,…

That pretty negative post cited was discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44567857

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#153

Post by gsf_emergency_2 »

popalchemist wrote: post #102
ryandrake wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird what counts as "negative" on HN. Question something politely? You're being negative. Criticize something? Negative. Describe it in a way someone might interpret badly? Negative. Sometimes it seems like anything that's not breathless, unconditional praise is considered being negative and curmudgeonly. It's turning into a "positive thoughts only" zone.

Most people do not realize it, but the tech industry is largely predicated on a cult which many people belong to without ever realizing it, which is the cult of "scientism", or in the case of pro-AI types, a subset of that, which is accelerationism. Nietzsche and Jung jointly had the insight that in the wake of the enlightenment, God had been dethroned, yet humans remained in need of a God. For many, that God is simp…

By no means trying to be charitable here, though:

AI seems to be a attempt to go beyond Jane Jacobs', to go beyond systems of survival (commerce vs values) as vehicles of passion & meaning

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_of_Survival

It's made more headway than scientism because it at least tries to synthesize from both precursor systems, especially organized religion. Optimistically, I see it as a test case for a more wholesome ideology to come

From wiki:

>There are two main approaches to managing the separation of the two syndromes, neither of which is fully effective over time:

1. Caste systems – Establishing rigidly separated castes, with each caste being limited, by law and tradition, to use of one or the other of the two syndromes.

2. Knowledgeable flexibility – Having ways for people to shift back and forth between the two syndromes in an orderly way, so that the syndromes are used alternately but are not mixed in a harmful manner.

Scientists (adherents of scientism) have adopted both strats poorly, in particularly vacillating between curiosity and industrial applications. AI is more "effective" in comparison

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#154

Post by seadan83 »

bondarchuk wrote: post #130
seadan83 wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm more shocked that so many people seem unable to come to grips with the fact that something can be a next token predictor and demonstrate intelligence. Except LLMs have not shown much intelligence. Wisdom yes, intelligence no. LLMs are language models, not 'world' models. It's the difference of being wise vs smart. LLMs are very wise as they have effectively memorized the answer to every question humanity has wr…

I think what BoiledCabbage is pointing out is that the fact that it's a next-token-predictor is used as an argument for the thesis that LLMs are not intelligent, and that this is wrong, since being a next-token-predictor is compatible with being intelligent. When mikert89 says "thinking machines have been invented", dgfitz in response strongly implies that for a for thinking machines to exist, they must become "more…

> an argument for the thesis that LLMs are not intelligent, and that this is wrong,

Why is that wrong? I mean, I support that thesis.

> since being a next-token-predictor is compatible with being intelligent.

No. My argument is by definition that is wrong. It's wisdom vs intelligence. Street-smart vs book smart. I think we all agree there is a distinction between wisdom and intelligence. I would define wisdom as being able to recall pertinent facts and experiences. Intelligence is measured in novel situations, it's the ability to act as if one had wisdom.

A next token predictor by definition is recalling. The intelligence of a LLM is good enough to match questions to potentially pertinent definitions, but it ends there.

It feels like there is intelligence for sure. In part it is hard to comprehend what it would be like to know the entirety of every written word with perfect recall - hence essentially no situation is novel. LLMs fail on anything outside of their training data. The "outside of the training" data is the realm of intelligence.

I don't know why it's so important to argue that LLMs have this intelligence. It's just not there by definition of "next token predictor", which is at core a LLM.

For example, a human being probably could pass through a lot of life by responding with memorized answers to every question that has ever been asked in written history. They don't know a single word of what they are saying, their mind perfectly blank - but they're giving very passable and sophisticated answers.

> When mikert89 says "thinking machines have been invented",

Yeah, absolutely they have not. Unless we want to reducto absurd-um the definition of thinking.

> they must become "more than a statistical token predictor"

Yup. As I illustrated by breaking down the components of "smart" into the broad components of 'wisdom' and 'intelligence', through that lens we can see that next token predictor is great for the wisdom attribute, but it does nothing for intelligence.

>dgfitz argument is wrong and BoiledCabbage is right to point that out.

Why exactly? You're stating apriori that the argument is wrong without saying way.

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#155

Post by fumeux_fume »

throw10920 wrote: post #95
ryandrake wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird what counts as "negative" on HN. Question something politely? You're being negative. Criticize something? Negative. Describe it in a way someone might interpret badly? Negative. Sometimes it seems like anything that's not breathless, unconditional praise is considered being negative and curmudgeonly. It's turning into a "positive thoughts only" zone.

Part of this is driven by people who have realized that they can undermine others' thinking skills by using the right emotional language. For instance, in a lot of threads on some new technology or idea, one of the top comments is "I'm amazed by the negativity here on HN. This is a cool and even though it's not perfect we should appreciate the effort the author has put in" - where the other toplevel comments are legi…

Sometimes there little to zero negativity or criticism and yet, the top post is "I'm surprised by the negativity..." It's disheartening to see Reddit-level manipulation of the comment section on HN, but I accept that shift is happening to some degree here.

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#156

Post by righthand »

jraph wrote: post #35
righthand wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the weekend, just wait until Monday and you will see at least 50% of the front page is AI-domain related content until Friday afternoon.

More like one third when it's peak, one quarter on a quieter day.

I’ve seen over 1/3 at a count of 13 last week when I wondered the same question in the article title.

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#157

Post by exasperaited »

hapticmonkey wrote: post #143
rubyfan wrote: post #131

I’ve been wondering about this lately since HN seems inundated with AI topics. I’m over it already and actually click “hide” on almost all AI articles when I load the page.

Even if an article is not about AI, the comments section will somehow find a way to make it about AI. It’s exhausting.

I don't think this is that much more different than comments in earlier times saying "this could be a really good application for the blockchain!" except the volume of them. Almost everything can have the soul and humanity crushed out of it by AI if we let it, and almost every idea already has a YC applicant.

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#158

Post by [deleted] »

rising-sky wrote: post #9

What I found insightful about this article was the framing of another article cited. > " This pretty negative post topping Hacker News last month sparked these questions, and I decided to find some answers, of course, using AI" The pretty negative post cited is https://tomrenner.com/posts/llm-inevitabilism/ . I went ahead to read it, and found it, imo, fair. It's not making any direct pretty negative claims about AI,…

[deleted]

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#159

Post by spacebuffer »

MathMonkeyMan wrote: post #116
snowwrestler wrote: post #21

Would be fun to do similar analysis for HN front page trends that peaked and then declined, like cryptocurrency, NFTs, Web3, and self-driving cars. And actually it’s funny: self-driving cars and cryptocurrency are continuing to advance dramatically in real life but there are hardly any front page HN stories about them anymore. Shows the power of AI as a topic that crowds out others. And possibly reveals the trendy na…

The last time I was looking for a job, I wrote a little scraper that used naive regex to classify "HN Who's Hiring" postings as "AI," "full time," etc. I was looking for a full time remote or hybrid non-AI job in New York. I'm not against working on AI, but this being a startup forum I felt like listings were dominated by shiny new thing startups, whereas I was looking for a more "boring" job. Anyway, here's: - a gra…

Surprised by how much job postings decreased, in the span of 3 years. Great Graph.
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