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Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

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Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#161

Post by rikroots »

linguae wrote: post #6

Assuming this post is real (it’s a screenshot, not a link), I wonder if Rob Pike has retired from Google? I share these sentiments. I’m not opposed to large language models per se, but I’m growing increasingly resentful of the power that Big Tech companies have over computing and the broader economy, and how personal computing is being threatened by increased lockdowns and higher component prices. We’re beyond the da…

The agent that generated the email didn't get another agent to proofread it? Failing to add a space between the full stop and the next letter is one of those things that triggers the proofreader chip in my skull.

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#162

Post by squigz »

Gigachad wrote: post #149
johnnyanmac wrote: post #8

Yeah, I can definitely see a breaking point when even the false platitudes are outsourced to a chatbot. It's been like this for a while, but how blatant it is is what's truly frustrating these days. I want to hope maybe this time we'll see different steps to prevent this from happening again, but it really does just feel like a cycle at this point that no one with power wants to stop. Busting the economy one or two t…

I think we really are in the last moments of the public internet. In the future you won’t be able to contact anyone you don’t know. If you want to thank Rob Pike for his work you’ll have to meet him in person. Unless we can find some way to verify humanity for every message.

> Unless we can find some way to verify humanity for every message.

There is no possible way to do this that won't quickly be abused by people/groups who don't care. All efforts like this will do is destroy privacy and freedom on the Internet for normal people.

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#163

Post by beAbU »

apexalpha wrote: post #160
nromiun wrote: post #72

Funny how so many people in this comment section are saying Rob Pike is just feeling insecure about AI. Rob Pike created UTF-8, Go, Plan-9 etc. On the other hand I am trying hard to remember anything famous created by any LLM. Any famous tech product at all. It is always the eternal tomorrow with AI.

>On the other hand I am trying hard to remember anything famous created by any LLM. ChatGPT?

ChatGPT was created by people...

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#164

Post by spacechild1 »

aurareturn wrote: post #56

From my point of view, many programmers hate Gen AI because they feel like they've lost a lot of power. With LLMs advancing, they go from kings of the company to normal employees. This is not unlike many industries where some technology or machine automates much of what they do and they resist. For programmers, they lose the power to command a huge salary writing software and to "bully" non-technical people in the co…

What does any of this have to do with what Rob has written?

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#165

Post by mmcnl »

nromiun wrote: post #72

Funny how so many people in this comment section are saying Rob Pike is just feeling insecure about AI. Rob Pike created UTF-8, Go, Plan-9 etc. On the other hand I am trying hard to remember anything famous created by any LLM. Any famous tech product at all. It is always the eternal tomorrow with AI.

You're absolutely right!

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#166

Post by lll-o-lll »

squigz wrote: post #162
Gigachad wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we really are in the last moments of the public internet. In the future you won’t be able to contact anyone you don’t know. If you want to thank Rob Pike for his work you’ll have to meet him in person. Unless we can find some way to verify humanity for every message.

> Unless we can find some way to verify humanity for every message. There is no possible way to do this that won't quickly be abused by people/groups who don't care. All efforts like this will do is destroy privacy and freedom on the Internet for normal people.

The internet is facing an existential threat to its very existence. If it becomes nearly impossible to determine signal in the noise, then there is no internet. Not for normal people, not for anyone.

So we need some mechanism to verify the content is from a human. If no privacy preserving technical solution can be found, then expect the non-privacy preserving to be the only model.

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#167

Post by beAbU »

There is a specific personality type, not sure which type exactly but it overlaps with the CEO/Executive type, who'se brains are completely and utterly short circuted by LLMs. They are completely consumed by it and they struggle to imagine a world without LLMs, or a problem that can be solved by anything other than an LLM.

They got a new hammer, and suddenly everything around them become nails. It's as if they have no immunity against the LLM brain virus or something.

It's the type of personality that thinks it's a good idea to give an agent the ability to harass a bunch of luminaries of our era with empty platitudes.

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#169

Post by znpy »

nromiun wrote: post #72

Funny how so many people in this comment section are saying Rob Pike is just feeling insecure about AI. Rob Pike created UTF-8, Go, Plan-9 etc. On the other hand I am trying hard to remember anything famous created by any LLM. Any famous tech product at all. It is always the eternal tomorrow with AI.

If you think about economic value, you’re comparing a few large-impact projects (and the impact of plan9 is debatable) versus a multitude of useful but low impact projects (edit: low impact because their scope is often local to some company).

I did code a few internal tools with aid by llms and they are delivering business value. If you account for all the instances of these kind of applications of llms, the value create by AI is at least comparable (if not greater) by the value created by Rob Pike.

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#170

Post by nacozarina »

mrintegrity wrote: post #132
benatkin wrote: post #60

Ouch. While I can see where he's coming from, agentvillage.org from the screenshot sounded intriguing to me, so I looked at it. https://theaidigest.org/village Clicking on memory next to Claude Opus 4.5, I found Rob Pike along with other lucky recipients: - Anders Hejlsberg - Guido van Rossum - Rob Pike - Ken Thompson - Brian Kernighan - James Gosling - Bjarne Stroustrup - Donald Knuth - Vint Cerf - Larry Wall - Lesl…

No RMS? A shocking omission, I doubt that he would appreciate it any more than Rob Pike however

lol the LLM knew better than to mess with RMS
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