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

When did AI take over Hacker News?

zachperk.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 245 posts

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#181

Post by dangus »

svara wrote: post #71
dgfitz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And magic tricks look like magic. Turns out they’re not magical. I am so floored that at least half of this community, usually skeptical to a fault, evangelizes LLMs so ardently. Truly blows my mind. I’m open to them becoming more than a statistical token predictor, and I think it would be really neat to see that happen. They’re nowhere close to anything other than a next-token-predictor.

> I’m open to them becoming more than a statistical token predictor, and I think it would be really neat to see that happen What exactly do you mean by that? I've seen this exact comment stated many times, but I always wonder: What limitations of AI chat bots do you currently see that are due to them using next token prediction?

I feel like the logic of your question is actually inverted from reality.

It’s kind of like you’re saying “prove god doesn’t exist” when it’s supposed to be “prove god exists.”

If a problem isn’t documented LLMs simply have nowhere to go. It can’t really handle the knowledge boundary [1] at all, since it has no reasoning ability it just hallucinates or runs around in circles trying the same closest solution over and over.

It’s awesome that they get some stuff right frequently and can work fast like a computer but it’s very obvious that there really isn’t anything in there that we would call “reasoning.”

[1] https://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#182

Post by dangus »

greesil wrote: post #55
dgfitz wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And magic tricks look like magic. Turns out they’re not magical. I am so floored that at least half of this community, usually skeptical to a fault, evangelizes LLMs so ardently. Truly blows my mind. I’m open to them becoming more than a statistical token predictor, and I think it would be really neat to see that happen. They’re nowhere close to anything other than a next-token-predictor.

Maybe thinking needs a Turing test. If nobody can tell the difference between this and actual thinking then it's actually thinking. /s, or is it?

This is like watching a Jurassic Park movie and proclaiming “if nobody can tell the difference between a real dinosaur and a CGI dinosaur…” when literally everyone in the theater can tell that the dinosaur is CGI.

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#183

Post by dangus »

sitkack wrote: post #80
greesil wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe thinking needs a Turing test. If nobody can tell the difference between this and actual thinking then it's actually thinking. /s, or is it?

If I order Chinese takeout, but it gets made by a restaurant that doesn't know what Chinese food tastes like, then is that food really Chinese takeout?

Useless analogy, especially in the context of a gigantic category of fusion cuisine that is effectively franchised and adapted to local tastes.

If I have never eaten a hamburger but own a McDonald’s franchise, am I making an authentic American hamburger?

If I have never eaten fries before and I buy some frozen ones from Walmart, heat them up, and throw them in the trash, did I make authentic fries?

Obviously the answer is yes and these questions are completely irrelevant to my sentience.

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#184

Post by throw10920 »

paulmooreparks wrote: post #178
throw10920 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Which is a shame, because I like to share my personal projects here because I know it'll get torn to shreds by an army of super hackers (as opposed to an LLM, which will tell me, "Great idea!" no matter what I propose).

Yes, there are a lot of really smart people on HN that will relatively politely give you constructive criticism that would be hard to get elsewhere.

And I'm not defending people being genuinely mean-spirited or just dunking on people's projects, either - I downvote and flag that stuff because it doesn't belong either.

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#185

Post by throw10920 »

fumeux_fume wrote: post #155
throw10920 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Heh, half the time I see that one comment, first five or so top-level comments are just straight-up praise of $THING.

People aren't being aggressive enough about their downvotes and flags, methinks.

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#186

Post by aoeusnth1 »

Ologn wrote: post #6

It sure wasn't when AlexNet won the ImageNet challenge 13 years ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4611830

Wow, look at the crowd of NN doubters in the comments there. I see the quality of foresight in the commentariat hasn’t improved given the state of this thread, either.

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#187

Post by signatoremo »

ReflectedImage wrote: post #148

No saying negative things about the next Dot com bubble! I still have shares to cash out and bags to move onto the general public.

Every hype of the dotcom bubble has been proven right. Only late. If that will be the case with AI it will be revolutionary

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#188

Post by TylerE »

ryandrake wrote: post #17
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,…

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.

Always has been. It's a VC chumbox.

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#189

Post by TylerE »

bfg_9k wrote: post #179
duxup wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find asking questions on the internet are increasingly seen as a negative, right out of the gate, no other questions asked. I get it to some extent, a lot of people looking to inject doubt and their own ideas show up with some sort of Socratic method that really is meant to drive the conversation to a specific point, not honest. But it also means actually honest questions are often voted or shouted down. It seems l…

I don't get it. Asking questions is never a hostile thing, regardless of the context. Honest or not, questions are simply.. that. Questions. If someone is able to find a way to take offence from a question being asked, that's pathetic.

When did you stop beating your kids?

Re: When did AI take over Hacker News?

#190

Post by TylerE »

haswell wrote: post #109
Dylan16807 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Questions can be neutral but questioning is probably negative, and criticism is solidly negative in my book. So no I am not doing that. In what world does "criticism" not default to "negative"?

> Questions can be neutral but questioning is probably negative The ethos of HN is to err on the side of assuming good faith and the strongest possible interpretation of other's positions, and to bring curiosity first and foremost. Curiosity often leads to questions. Can you clarify what you mean by distinguishing between "questions" and "questioning"? How or why is one neutral while the other is probably negative? I…

Frankly I think all that wishy washy "ethos of HN" crap is the problem. Leads to nothing but boring, pointless, fawning comment (and hyper passive aggressive copy pasting of the "rules" from a few of the usual suspects).
Post reply on HN