Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

This time is different

shkspr.mobi

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 400 posts

Re: This time is different

#161

Post by edent »

stnmtn wrote: post #134
edent wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the most recent time. But I've bounced around all the LLMs - they're all superficially amazing. But if you understand their output they often wrong in both subtle and catastrophic ways. As I said, maybe I'm wrong. I hope you have fun using them.

Have you tried a coding agent such as claude code or codex?

Yes. And, again, they look amazing and make you feel like you're 10x.

But then I look at the code quality, hideous mistakes, blatant footguns, and misunderstood requirements and realise it is all a sham.

I know, I know. I'm holding it wrong. I need to use another model. I have to write a different Soul.md. I need to have true faith. Just one more pull on the slot machine, that'll fix it.

Re: This time is different

#162

Post by graemep »

pedalpete wrote: post #132
senko wrote: post #122

The post nicely lists a bunch of failed hyped tech: > 3D TV, AMP, Augmented Reality, Beanie Babies, Blockchain, Cartoon Avatars, Curved TVs, Frogans, Hoverboards, iBeacons, Jetpacks, Metaverse, NFTs, Physical Web, Quantum Computing, Quibi, Small and Safe Nuclear Reactors, Smart Glasses, Stadia, WiMAX. ...conveniently doesn't list a bunch of hyped tech that hasn't failed: > microchips, PCs, the internet, ecommerce, cl…

Exactly! If this post had been written 20 years ago it would have started with Internet, handheld computers, electric cars...The problem is the same dudes. Putting beanie babies in with Quantum Computing and Nuclear Power completely ignores the potential life changing elements of some technologies, even if they don't work. Oh, and smart glasses he put in there, so he'll be eating his words in 2 years.

No-one thought the internet was a failed technology in 2006. It was a vital tool by then.

Handheld computers were an expanding market, dominated by Blackberry.

EVs were an immature technology but hybrids like the Prius were selling.

Re: This time is different

#163

Post by jibal »

cogman10 wrote: post #100
tomlue wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This time is different" has been correct for every major technological shift in history. Electricity was different. Antibiotics were different. Semiconductors were different. Gen AI reached 39% adoption in two years (internet took 5, PCs took 12). Enterprise spend went from $1.7B to $37B since 2023. Hyperscalers are spending $650B this year on AI infra and are supply-constrained, not demand-constrained. There is no…

The problem is in the middle of such a change it's hard to recognize if this is a real change or if this is another Wankel motor. Plenty a visual programming language has tried to toot their own horns as being the next transformative change in everything, and they are mostly just obscure DSLs at this point. The other issue is nobody knows what the future will actually look like and they'll often be wrong with their p…

I once owned a Maxda RX2 ... my second car, IIRC. The Wankel motor wasn't revolutionary, but it was pretty good.

Re: This time is different

#164

Post by senko »

graemep wrote: post #162
pedalpete wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly! If this post had been written 20 years ago it would have started with Internet, handheld computers, electric cars...The problem is the same dudes. Putting beanie babies in with Quantum Computing and Nuclear Power completely ignores the potential life changing elements of some technologies, even if they don't work. Oh, and smart glasses he put in there, so he'll be eating his words in 2 years.

No-one thought the internet was a failed technology in 2006. It was a vital tool by then. Handheld computers were an expanding market, dominated by Blackberry. EVs were an immature technology but hybrids like the Prius were selling.

You may remember this video featuring Facebook with a ridiculously high $15B valuation, Skype, YouTube and other failures: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I

Re: This time is different

#165

Post by Jensson »

tomlue wrote: post #143
spidersouris wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gen AI reached 39% adoption in two years Source?

https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/sep/rapid-ado...

So about 10%, using it less than once per day means you didn't find it useful for most tasks.

Re: This time is different

#166

Post by bigstrat2003 »

tomlue wrote: post #90
seertaak wrote: post #87

To my mind at least, it is different. I lean heavily on AI for both admin and coding tasks. I just filled out a multipage form to determine my alimony payments in Germany. Gemini was an absolute godsend, helping answer questions in, translate to English, draft explanations, emails requesting time extensions to the Jugendamt case worker. This is super scary stuff for an ADHDer like me. I have an idea for a programming…

"This time is different" has been correct for every major technological shift in history. Electricity was different. Antibiotics were different. Semiconductors were different. Gen AI reached 39% adoption in two years (internet took 5, PCs took 12). Enterprise spend went from $1.7B to $37B since 2023. Hyperscalers are spending $650B this year on AI infra and are supply-constrained, not demand-constrained. There is no…

> The real debate isn't whether AI is transformative.

No, the debate is very much whether AI is transformative. You don't get to smuggle your viewpoint as an assumption as if there was consensus on this point. There isn't consensus at all.

Re: This time is different

#167

Post by esperent »

> 3D TV, AMP, Augmented Reality, Beanie Babies, Blockchain, Cartoon Avatars, Curved TVs, Frogans, Hoverboards, iBeacons, Jetpacks, Metaverse, NFTs, Physical Web, Quantum Computing, Quibi, Small and Safe Nuclear Reactors, Smart Glasses, Stadia, WiMAX.

Agreed, these things all failed to live up to the hype.

But these didn't:

Electricity, cheap computing, calculators, photography, the internet, the steam engine, the printing press, tv, cars, gps, bicycles...

So you can't really start an article by picking inventions that fit your narrative and ignoring everything else.

Re: This time is different

#168

Post by bigstrat2003 »

parliament32 wrote: post #123

When I look at LLMs as an interface, I'm reminded of back when speech-to-text first became mainstream. So many promises about how this is the interface for how we'll talk to computers forevermore. Here we are a few decades later, and we don't see business units using Word's built-in dictation feature to write documents, right? Funny how that tech seems to have barely improved in all that time. And, despite dictation…

Yeah this is exactly my view. We've had several years of work on the tech, and LLMs are just as prone to randomly spitting out garbage as they were the first day. They are not a tool which is fit for any serious work, because you need to be able to rely on your tools. A tool which is sometimes good and sometimes bad is worse than having no tool at all.

Re: This time is different

#169

Post by time2buybitcoin »

kypro wrote: post #144

I invested in Tesla extremely early (2011) because electric cars, if built correctly, would obviously make great cars, and Elon was one of the few people I actually thought had a shot at doing it. I was right that blockchain was BS and all the "not sure about Bitcoin, but blockchain will be big" people were idiots. I've been right for the last couple of years on AI and that people were vastly underestimating it when…

[dead]

Re: This time is different

#170

Post by bigstrat2003 »

_se wrote: post #75
thesmart wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If you are pushing 40k lines of code per day you are an idiot and should be fired.

I agree with your point that the original claim is unlikely to be true (and would be extremely foolish behavior even if it were true). I don't think it's good to flame people though, even if they did say something unreasonable.
Post reply on HN