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Bored of It

paulrobertlloyd.com

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Re: Bored of It

#161

Post by flappyeagle »

lm28469 wrote: post #139
terhechte wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the moral dilemma of employer-controlled brain implants or eugenics equal to AI? The reason the quote can be applied is because it is a genuinely useful technology to lots of people. That's not the case for eugenics robots. Did you grow up watching Data (Star Trek), C3PO (Star Wars), KITT (Knight Rider) thinking "Who comes up with these violent sadistic ideas"?

> How is the moral dilemma of employer-controlled brain implants or eugenics equal to AI? Well it's just a technology, don't you love technology ? Technology is progress and progress is good! > it is a genuinely useful technology to lots of people. That's not the case for eugenics robots. Eugenics would objectively solve a lot of suffering though, your AI might even come to that conclusion > Did you grow up watching…

Are you being obtuse on purpose?

Re: Bored of It

#162

Post by eddd-ddde »

mapt wrote: post #58
latexr wrote: post #17

> The best minds of my generation I’m tired of that line. I remember first seeing it on “the best minds of our generation being employed to sell you ads”. Making a computer go brrr doesn’t qualify anyone for a “best mind”. I’d hope a “best mind” would be, above all, empathetic. Concerned about the well being of their fellow humans. Philosophical about the state of the world. Patient. Curious. Wise and not just smart.…

On that specific quote - I feel like this is offensive on more than one level. The waste of our best minds... sure. Fine. But - "to sell you ads." Marketting has the dubious distinction of being one area of human endeavor where technological advances serve mostly to make your life worse, make your mind less focused, make your wallet more empty. The spherical-cow "ideal" 100% efficient perfect marketing campaign/tacti…

I disagree. The spherical cow of marketing is a system that connects consumers with EXACTLY what they are looking for. What you are describing is the capitalist spherical cow.

Re: Bored of It

#163

Post by sgarland »

teekert wrote: post #40
DontchaKnowit wrote: post #7

It is legitimately like the least interesting topic of convo. When someone says "maybe they could use Aai to...." I tune out immediately

Recently I had a convo starting with: "Maybe we can use AI to infer whether we are dealing with an experiment or a control based on the metadata of these public studies." These data are tables, people call "controls" anything from "control" to "ctrl" to "ctr" to "t0", either in the file name, a random column, etc etc etc. It worked well and I'm glad we tried it. In time I think we will derive value from deciding to u…

I mean, it sounds like you could’ve had a few if/else statements and accomplished the same thing.

Re: Bored of It

#164

Post by nsagent »

terhechte wrote: post #71

I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the na…

I'll bite.

I received my PhD in Computer Science focused on NLP and creative text generation last year and I think the hype around LLMs is ridiculous (academics are no better than industry on chasing hype). They're trained to predict the next token given a context, and that's exactly what they're good at.

How old do you think I am?

Re: Bored of It

#165

Post by zwnow »

mdp2021 wrote: post #152
zwnow wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Success is a value if the only thing that matters in my life is my own life. Tell me, how do I benefit from having empathy?

That you see trampling as a value does not mean it is; if you have to move the point to the value you attribute to your own life the issue is with your perspective over your life. It is correct to see that you have that one life, so you have to use it wisely. The issue will remain about what is "wisely". > how do I benefit from having Did anybody tell you you should? You should develop adequate understanding instead…

Why would I put in the effort if I dont benefit from it though?

Re: Bored of It

#166

Post by TeMPOraL »

latexr wrote: post #17

> The best minds of my generation I’m tired of that line. I remember first seeing it on “the best minds of our generation being employed to sell you ads”. Making a computer go brrr doesn’t qualify anyone for a “best mind”. I’d hope a “best mind” would be, above all, empathetic. Concerned about the well being of their fellow humans. Philosophical about the state of the world. Patient. Curious. Wise and not just smart.…

> I’m tired of that line. I remember first seeing it on “the best minds of our generation being employed to sell you ads”. Making a computer go brrr doesn’t qualify anyone for a “best mind”.

It's the other way around. It's not just, or primarily, about run of the mill software devs. It's also about the would-be top mathematicians and physicists and psychologists and others - best minds in various domains, that in a better world would be busy solving real problems, but due to quirk of the economy end up working on ruining lives of other people, at scale, because adtech pays well while almost all useful work pays a pittance.

I remember this quote not as judging or categorizing people by smartness, but as lamenting a world which mismanages humanity's potential so badly, by literally directing our best problem solvers to work on creating problems for everyone.

Re: Bored of It

#167

Post by biophysboy »

skrebbel wrote: post #31

Remember, being terminally online is a choice. There's nothing to be bored of you don't choose to be constantly confronted by it. The current thing is only the current thing if you choose to surround yourself by people who deeply care about the current thing.

Yes, but people (like this writer) want a better community. A person can abstain from the internet entirely, but they still have to live in a terminally online world.

Re: Bored of It

#168

Post by lapcat »

Whether you agree or disagree with the sentiment expressed by the submission, the quality and utility of it is very low, so it's unfortunate that the submission has reached #1 on HN.

I suspect the brevity of the submission has made it easy comment fodder.

Re: Bored of It

#169

Post by Havoc »

Opportunity blindness imo.

Yes the hype is a bit tedious, but this is a new IT building block/primitive we didn't have before. How can you not be even a little bit excited?

Re: Bored of It

#170

Post by n4r9 »

diggan wrote: post #120
jsheard wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The younger generations do seem to be embracing AI more, but mainly because it can do their homework for them without requiring them to learn anything. For now at least, until curriculums have time to adjust to this new reality.

I initially picked up programming because I wanted to create things (well, initially break things, but moved on from that), and the programming was one way of doing that. I only learned how to structure my programs, because they became hard to change. I only learned testing and refactoring, because I noticed I was faster when the code was better and more tested, even if the upfront cost was slightly higher. If I was…

> would I have been able to learn even more and faster, since I wouldn't have been all alone banging my head against some trivial problem for weeks?

Would even that have some downsides in the long-term, since the process of banging one's head could be crucial to rewiring your brain to understand new concepts.

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