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AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

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Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#221

Post by TeMPOraL »

butlike wrote: post #178
TeMPOraL wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define better. Fast fashion sucks, but hand-spun cotton won't give you Kevlar or modern wind-resistant clothing or fireproof materials for your furniture or... . It's always win some, lose some with the economy, but technology itself opens previously impossible capabilities.

Better is 'longer lasting and less disposable.' Your comment got me thinking about if technology is actually better, but that's a whole new discussion. We wouldn't need the fireproof furniture if we all used the local sweat lodge for bathing or the mess hall yurt for cooking. We wouldn't need wind-resistant clothing if we didn't make personal rockets that go 200mph to travel long distances to arrive at the same ameni…

> Better is 'longer lasting and less disposable.'

I'd generally agree, but there are always caveats. See e.g. glass vs. plastic bottles - glass looks like strictly superior solution environmentally, until you consider how much fuel is saved across entire logistics chain by plastic bottles being significantly lighter.

> We wouldn't need wind-resistant clothing if we didn't make personal rockets that go 200mph to travel long distances to arrive at the same amenities (just in a different city)

FWIW, I was thinking more about people who like to walk around in windy places, including mountains, etc. But even if we exclude tourists, we're still left with people who work at altitudes (including infrastructure anywhere - get on a high enough pole or roof, it's going to be windy). More generally, there are people doing useful work, including construction, services, and research, in all kinds of extreme environments, and this is directly enabled by post-industrial era fabrics.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#222

Post by redsocksfan45 »

gilleain wrote: post #124
malfist wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Einstein famously refused to learn people's phone numbers, stating that he could look them up in the phonebook whenever he needed it. I don't think there is that much value in memorizing rarely used, easily looked up information.

Agreed, it interests me how much some people emphasise knowing facts - like dates in history or dictionary definitions of words. Facts alone are like pebbles on a beach, far better (IMO) to have a few stones mortared with understanding to make a building of knowledge. A fanciful metaphor but you know ...

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Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#223

Post by generic92034 »

pixl97 wrote: post #132
elAhmo wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, we are not paying for Gmail, Youtube, TikTok either, all sorts of other services that are free as well.

Well, we are paying for it, but not directly with cash.

But certainly indirectly with cash. All the advertised products are more expensive than they could be, due to the costs of advertising. This comes out of everyone's pocket.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#224

Post by sph »

bandrami wrote: post #204
sph wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. I don’t think my brother has written boilerplate in 20 years either. He’s a chef. I on the other hand am a software engineer, so writing code is part of the job title.

Right but, were you really not using snippets and templates before LLMs? Company? Helm? Whatever vi uses that's like company and helm? Haven't IDEs written function calls for you for like decades now?

I very rarely use autocomplete on Emacs, except hippie-expand. I have yasnippet installed but I have never used it. I just checked, it's not even key bound to anything.

I work on greenfield projects so I see my fair share of boilerplate, but honestly, it's just a minute part of work that's almost meditative to write a little bit of trivial code (i.e. a function signature) in between sessions of hard thinking. Writing boilerplate is very far down the list of things I seek to optimize.

Also I don't use LLM.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#225

Post by cheesecompiler »

awongh wrote: post #16

I think it's clear to me that AI will be both things: 1) as in the article it's a contraction of work- industrialization getting rid of hand-made work or the contraction of all things horse-related when the internal combustion engine came around but- it will also be 2) new technologies and ideas enabled by a completely new set of capabilities The real question is if the economic boost from the latter outpaces the los…

> the AI pessimism is hard to understand in this context

This is a burden of proof inversion: historically new technology has not resulted in optimistic outcomes. Quality of life improvements were side effects of capital accruing. AI optimism is the naïve option that requires justification.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#226

Post by packetlost »

mlcruz wrote: post #218
packetlost wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Right now most corporations do not have their data organized and structured well enough for this to be possible, but there is a lot of heat and money in this space. I think you misunderstand what I'm saying. I'm not really referring to data systems at all, I'm referring to context on what problems are actually being solved by a business. LLMs very clearly do not model outcomes that don't have well-defined textual r…

> I think you misunderstand what I'm saying. I'm not really referring to data systems at all, I'm referring to context on what problems are actually being solved by a business. LLMs very clearly do not model outcomes that don't have well-defined textual representations. Yeah i misunderstood your point, i completely agree with what you are saying. I honestly do not believe that strategy, decision making and other real…

> Maybe im too biased due to working in a particularly inefficient domain, but you would be surprised how much work can be automated in your average back office.

> Much of the operational work is following set process and anything out of that is going to up the governance chain for approval from some decision maker.

Oh that's very interesting! Thank you for the insights!

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#227

Post by randcraw »

Zealotux wrote: post #4

I'm currently looking for sort of niche clothes for an event and it's the first time I had to give up on buying online because of the sheer amount of AI-generated pictures. Going to a physical store was just a much better experience, I can't recall the last time this happened, almost all sellers on Etsy are using AI for their pictures.

Clothes are a good example of what ails online shopping. When you physically visit a clothing store, you chose it knowing the quality and style of that merchant -- you thereby filter out a huge fraction of the market that you want to exclude from your search.

But online (because the available search criteria are so imprecise) your search brings up every possible form of clothing, especially the stuff that's a commodity (or hyped by major e-merchants) -- cheap, popular with 25 year olds, colorless, largely disposable. It's hopeless unless you yourself are a commodity -- indiscriminating, predictable, and totally average.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#228

Post by TeMPOraL »

randcraw wrote: post #212
MattRix wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is one factor, but it’s not the whole thing. The other key element is “cognitive offloading” where your brain stops doing stuff when it thinks it is redundant. This is similar to the photo-taking impairment effect where people will remember an event more poorly if they took photos at the event. Their brain basically subconsciously decides it doesn’t need to remember the event because the camera will remember the…

The more the role of the tool, the less the role of the craftsman.

If the tool is reliable, it's a win. Saved brain power doesn't disappear, it can be applied elsewhere.

If the tool is powerful enough to do a better job than our brains would, it's a big win. In fact, we built the entire technological civilization on one such fundamental tool: writing.

Or from another perspective: our brains excel at adapting to the environment we find ourselves in. The tools we build, the technology we create, are parts our environment.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#229

Post by dinfinity »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #149
awongh wrote: post #16

I think it's clear to me that AI will be both things: 1) as in the article it's a contraction of work- industrialization getting rid of hand-made work or the contraction of all things horse-related when the internal combustion engine came around but- it will also be 2) new technologies and ideas enabled by a completely new set of capabilities The real question is if the economic boost from the latter outpaces the los…

Change is a constant in history. Stuff happens, and then we adjust. Big changes may result in short term confusion, anger, etc. All the classic signs of the five stages of grief basically. If you step back a little, a lot of people simply don't see the forest for the trees and they start imagining bad outcomes and then panic over those. Understandable but not that productive. If you look at past changes where that wa…

We are the horses, though.

At some point those became almost fully obsolete in a productive economical sense (they're just fancy toys now, basically). No 'raising the ambition' is ever going to change that. They are what they are and they can do what they can do.

I don't know about you, but if the something in "we'll find something to do" is becoming a toy for AI or very rich people, I'm not exactly hopeful about the future.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#230

Post by alexjplant »

embedding-shape wrote: post #17
neals wrote: post #15

I had to code something on a plane today. It used to be that you couldn't get you packages or check stackoverflow. But now, I'm useless. My mind has turned to pudding. I cannot remember basic boilerplate stuff. Crazy how fast that goes.

Really? How long you've been a developer? I've been almost exclusively doing "agent coding" for the last year + some months, been a professional developer for a decade or something. Tried just now to write some random JavaScript, C#, Java, Rust and Clojure "manually" and seems my muscle memory works just as well as two years ago. I'm wondering if this is something that hits new developers faster than more experienced…

I recently had to write a coding interview question for candidates at my current job. I wrote the outline and had Claude generate synthetic data for it. I then wrote the solution without assistance to make sure it was viable (and because I wouldn't ask somebody to do something I wouldn't myself). I had no trouble getting it done in 20 minutes in a language that I haven't used actively in around a year and a half.

I do still write stuff manually frequently - I often spend 5 minutes writing structs or function signatures to make sure that the LLM won't misunderstand or make something up. Maybe that's why I haven't lost it.

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