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AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

terriblesoftware.org

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Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#21

Post by Grimblewald »

Art9681 wrote: post #20

Every generation has had tech doomers. Every single one. History repeats. Yet we collectively move forward. This time it will be no different. These folks are wasting time when they could be doing something productive.

plenty of ex-civs had techdoomers who were right. When tevh doomers have no salient points to make, its fair to not listen, but this time around i think something is different to historic doomerism.

Trust is a fundamental thing, and i cannot fathom how a post-trust society could possibly host life as we know it. Life ad we know it comes from systemic efficiencies that are rooted in trust, requiring it deeply. no trust means extreme loss in system efficiency, in a system already creaking under the straign of supporting current populations.

post trust is in my reakoning a serious issue to engage with.

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#22

Post by philbo »

I think one way to approach this is by deliberately choosing less capable tools (but still AI-assisted). You don't have to delegate huge tasks to agents wholesale, but it requires fighting against mainstream harnesses to do so because they exist to sell you more tokens. Model providers are not incentivised to offer less autonomous flows.

I wrote about this frustration a few months ago [1], then realised that if the model providers won't do it perhaps I should try fixing it myself. So, shameless plug klaxon, I wrote an open-source harness that tries to work more like pair programming and less like code review [2].

As usual, my "Show HN" post [3] sank like a stone, so I think perhaps most engineers aren't really interested in this direction. It is possible though, we don't have to just accept whatever tooling the labs throw at us.

[1]: https://philbooth.me/blog/agentic-coding-and-mental-models

[2]: https://www.opairdev.org/

[3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49625009

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#23

Post by mitxela »

Havoc wrote: post #15

I worry for the next generation. You and I have a baseline. A brain that did most of it’s developmental phase while there was still some unified accepted version of truth (even if dubious) Future generations will have to develop in a more splintered reality. A world where there is nothing to hold on to. Not even a dubious commonly accepted narrative

note this started years before generative AI, arguably around 2014 with the gamergate era

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#24

Post by mitxela »

Grimblewald wrote: post #21
Art9681 wrote: post #20

Every generation has had tech doomers. Every single one. History repeats. Yet we collectively move forward. This time it will be no different. These folks are wasting time when they could be doing something productive.

plenty of ex-civs had techdoomers who were right. When tevh doomers have no salient points to make, its fair to not listen, but this time around i think something is different to historic doomerism. Trust is a fundamental thing, and i cannot fathom how a post-trust society could possibly host life as we know it. Life ad we know it comes from systemic efficiencies that are rooted in trust, requiring it deeply. no trus…

There are plenty of low-trust societies. They have things like armed security guards and barbed wire fences outside every apartment complex. Coughsouthafrica

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#25

Post by mitxela »

lovich wrote: post #13

The elite broke trust. No one made people like Sam Altman into a compulsive liar. No one made Musk call a service full self driving, and then make it return liability to the user the second it decides an accident is about to happen. Stop removing agency from the people making the top level decisions and reaping all the rewards. Would you claim that someone who took 5 shots in a row and drove home wasn’t responsible f…

There were always a spectrum of people to choose from to become elites. We chose a system that chose the ones who compulsively lied.

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#26

Post by asdff »

mitxela wrote: post #25
lovich wrote: post #13

The elite broke trust. No one made people like Sam Altman into a compulsive liar. No one made Musk call a service full self driving, and then make it return liability to the user the second it decides an accident is about to happen. Stop removing agency from the people making the top level decisions and reaping all the rewards. Would you claim that someone who took 5 shots in a row and drove home wasn’t responsible f…

There were always a spectrum of people to choose from to become elites. We chose a system that chose the ones who compulsively lied.

To be fair, it has probably only been that way forever. At least we live in a time where some people might realize it.

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#27

Post by nonsensical_ »

mitxela wrote: post #23
Havoc wrote: post #15

I worry for the next generation. You and I have a baseline. A brain that did most of it’s developmental phase while there was still some unified accepted version of truth (even if dubious) Future generations will have to develop in a more splintered reality. A world where there is nothing to hold on to. Not even a dubious commonly accepted narrative

note this started years before generative AI, arguably around 2014 with the gamergate era

You’ll have to enlighten how GG plays into all this. Sounds like a curious tie-in.

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#28

Post by mitxela »

nonsensical_ wrote: post #27
mitxela wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

note this started years before generative AI, arguably around 2014 with the gamergate era

You’ll have to enlighten how GG plays into all this. Sounds like a curious tie-in.

It was the spark that started the online culture war that metastasized into the real world and brought about the post-truth era we are now living in.

Who knows whether it was a symptom or a cause. Either way it marks the beginning.

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#29

Post by salawat »

mitxela wrote: post #23
Havoc wrote: post #15

I worry for the next generation. You and I have a baseline. A brain that did most of it’s developmental phase while there was still some unified accepted version of truth (even if dubious) Future generations will have to develop in a more splintered reality. A world where there is nothing to hold on to. Not even a dubious commonly accepted narrative

note this started years before generative AI, arguably around 2014 with the gamergate era

Earlier. I'd say it started right around the time SEO started taking off big time.

Re: AI Is Breaking This Thing We Call Trust

#30

Post by nobodywillobsrv »

meander_water wrote: post #6
plaidfuji wrote: post #4

> Here’s the thing: most of our habits at work still assume that producing something means you have to understand it. This has only ever been true in a relative sense. Until recently, one was expected to understand the software-level code they wrote. But not the machine code, or the computer internals at a deep level. You trust that those layers work. At some point in the past you couldn’t just trust that. At some po…

You trust machine code because it was produced by a deterministic system that was written and tested thoroughly by other engineers. AI systems are not the same. You can't guarantee deterministic output. Also, code is still the best language we have to convey our intentions as engineers into function. Natural language is too imprecise and ambiguous. Understanding the code allows us to understand the intention behind t…

But in chemical science you would not "understand" everything. You cook with ingredients where you don't fully understand then.

There are always limits.

Engineering human types are often guilty of saying something is low cost but then not doing it themselves. Great, "understand everything".

Trust us trust. You trust an entity. What the author is describing is a new kind of transaction. It's not that AI causes people to lie suddenly (although if you trusted the wrong people this might happen to you, but YOU were wrong then) but now you have a lot of work being done more at the edge of uncertainty and recommendations. Ideas are not ideas anymore, they are working implementations.

So instead of submitting discussions or requests for features, you literally submit implemented features because the cost is lower. This is good. You just have to realize that you are starting the discussion with a working implementation. If you continually try to act like this is not the case, without someone literally lying to you about it, this is more about just accepting a now workflow.

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