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I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

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Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#161

Post by wavemode »

cure_42 wrote: post #111
wavemode wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. It does all sound rather grandiose, but in this startup economy I'm sure he can at least manage to get acquired. At least he's pursuing something more novel than yet another "sandboxes for agents".

In this startup economy? Where almost no one is getting acquired anymore and over fifty percent of global venture is locked up in dead weight and liquidity is at an all time low? Not sure how you can feel sure anyone can get acquired even if their company had a path to profitability, much less for ones that absolutely don't.

Plenty of companies in (or adjacent to) the AI space are still getting acquired and/or finding VC funding, even as funding in other spaces is drying up.

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#162

Post by nl »

xhevahir wrote: post #151
Chamix wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, haha, across hundreds of personal discussions I've been involved with on lesswrong/lighthaven, twitter, Wikipedia talk/editing, SF parties etc I think his most distinguishing feature has always been his abiding and unabashed love for possessing extreme competency whenever satisfying cunningham-esque laws. Though the post-dwarkesh clout certainly tainted things a bit.

> his abiding and unabashed love for possessing extreme competency whenever satisfying cunningham-esque laws. Though the post-dwarkesh clout certainly tainted things a bit. I can't make any sense of that.

You can tell someone in native on LessWrong by their ability to use incredibly obtuse language to say simple things. It's just in-crowd signalling.

> cunningham-esque laws

Cunningham's Law states "the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer."

> post-dwarkesh clout

He went on the Dwarkesh podcast. That's maximal in-crowd for some AI-pilled people.

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#163

Post by geraneum »

reasonableklout wrote: post #72
artyom wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Leaving AI completely aside, it still amazes me that people finds "novel" the idea of removing highly-paid white collar intellectual workers (software developers or otherwise) completely out of the loop. No-code platforms date back to the 80's. Getting rid of engineers in general is even older [*]. Even relational databases and SQL were initially promoted as "ways to get rid of those expensive programmers to access y…

It's novel because previous rounds of automation were about automating specific tasks or well-scoped functions. There was always an implicit understanding that the white-collar worker would be freed to spend their time on more valuable, higher-level problems. But this time is different because of the generality of the technology. Agents promise to automate the process of thinking itself. And in many domains they can…

> It's novel because previous rounds of automation were about automating specific tasks or well-scoped functions.

Evidently, this has not really changed with LLMs and coding agents. It’s what AI companies are betting on though.

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#164

Post by djhn »

reasonableklout wrote: post #158
majormajor wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's novel because previous rounds of automation were about automating specific tasks or well-scoped functions. There was always an implicit understanding that the white-collar worker would be freed to spend their time on more valuable, higher-level problems. But this time is different because of the generality of the technology. Agents promise to automate the process of thinking itself. And in many domains they ca…

That's a good point. However, overseas people are still people. They need to sleep, get sick, and the better they get at their jobs, the more money they will demand. The cheap ones also often have communication barriers and work slower than the workers they're replacing. AI models get better and more efficient every 3 months, run around the clock, can be copied infinitely, and unprecedented amounts of capital and res…

The implied assumption that “writing correct code” used to be a limitation that has been solved since 2024 is… overstating current capabilities.

The idea that “AI models” have acquired “agency” as of 2025 and are working on “self-improvement” in 2026 is closer to delusion than exaggeration.

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#165

Post by strangegecko »

eru wrote: post #131
cure_42 wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They still can't. But very smart humans constructed ways to use the monkeys with typewriters (with a statistical advantage) to find correct answers to problems where they already knew how to verify the answer.

You say it like it's not an achievement.

No, he says it's a different category of problem, and ability to solve one doesn't carry over to the other and it doesn't imply intelligent understanding.

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#166

Post by [deleted] »

xhevahir wrote: post #151
Chamix wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha, haha, across hundreds of personal discussions I've been involved with on lesswrong/lighthaven, twitter, Wikipedia talk/editing, SF parties etc I think his most distinguishing feature has always been his abiding and unabashed love for possessing extreme competency whenever satisfying cunningham-esque laws. Though the post-dwarkesh clout certainly tainted things a bit.

> his abiding and unabashed love for possessing extreme competency whenever satisfying cunningham-esque laws. Though the post-dwarkesh clout certainly tainted things a bit. I can't make any sense of that.

[deleted]

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#167

Post by reasonableklout »

djhn wrote: post #164
reasonableklout wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good point. However, overseas people are still people. They need to sleep, get sick, and the better they get at their jobs, the more money they will demand. The cheap ones also often have communication barriers and work slower than the workers they're replacing. AI models get better and more efficient every 3 months, run around the clock, can be copied infinitely, and unprecedented amounts of capital and res…

The implied assumption that “writing correct code” used to be a limitation that has been solved since 2024 is… overstating current capabilities. The idea that “AI models” have acquired “agency” as of 2025 and are working on “self-improvement” in 2026 is closer to delusion than exaggeration.

We are either living in different worlds, or squabbling over different meanings of words.

Models have absolutely acquired agency as of 2025. Developers are no longer copy-pasting code from ChatGPT into their text editor, they're working with agents like Claude Code and Codex that can edit code, run terminal commands, do web searches, manage their own context windows, sift through gigabytes of logs with datadog MCP, etc.

Self-improvement is also being worked on. Claude Tag learns over time in slack convos. My company also has an agent that updates its own skill files after every conversation so that we don't need to keep reminding it about the same workflows every time. Is it clunky as hell? Yes. Are the labs plowing billions of dollars into "continual learning" and "recursive self improvement"? Also yes.

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#168

Post by [deleted] »

nl wrote: post #162
xhevahir wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> his abiding and unabashed love for possessing extreme competency whenever satisfying cunningham-esque laws. Though the post-dwarkesh clout certainly tainted things a bit. I can't make any sense of that.

You can tell someone in native on LessWrong by their ability to use incredibly obtuse language to say simple things. It's just in-crowd signalling. > cunningham-esque laws Cunningham's Law states "the best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer." > post-dwarkesh clout He went on the Dwarkesh podcast. That's maximal in-crowd for some AI-pilled people.

[deleted]

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#169

Post by GolfPopper »

qingcharles wrote: post #133
rocmcd wrote: post #38

It's hard to read Gwern's accompanying article without seeing this for what it is, which is a kind of mania. I'm sure he means well and is genuine in his aspirations, but what's outlined for GA is framing LLM's as quasi-gods, which they absolutely are not. I wish him the best, and look forward to being proven wrong.

The end goal of AI is to create quasi-gods.

>The end goal of AI is to create quasi-gods.

I think this is what is driving the hype, the mania, and what increasingly appears to be insanely high investment. It's not about the underlying technology, which is objectively impressive, even if we're not certain of the true cost or utility of it. It's about selling the dream of Olympian omnipotence to investors, implicitly promising that IPO stands for Install Planetary Overlord.[1] And who doesn't want to be on the right side of that? (That there is no 'right side' in such circumstances does not seen to occur to anyone involved in the decisionmaking.)

1. Not my coinage, but that of SF author Charlie Stross in The Jennifer Morgue

Re: I am retiring from fulltime writing (& pseudonymity) to launch Guardian Angel

#170

Post by rdedev »

kashyapc wrote: post #157
Mithriil wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the example Gwern brings [1] is a GA as an agent for public discourse and political life, to bring your "set of values" to have an effect in solving society's issues, when you yourself don't have the time or energy to. I don't think it solves or reconciles with self-actualization, but, from a pragmatical point of view, it offers the promise of extending causally your set of views and philosophies to politics.…

> One of the example Gwern brings [1] is a GA as an agent for public discourse and political life, to bring your "set of values" to have an effect in solving society's issues, when you yourself don't have the time or energy to. I'm sorry, that doesn't sound meaningful. If I don't have the energy, I'd rather shut up than have a stupid "avatar" of me yell on the internet in the name of "bringing my values" or "particip…

It also presupposed the fact that everyone can articulate what their political and moral stances are
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