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AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

economist.com

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Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#261

Post by watwut »

jaredklewis wrote: post #68
jcranmer wrote: post #38

Well, for starters, it would make The Economist 's recent article on "What if AI made the world's economic growth explode?" [1] look like the product of overly credulous suckers for AI hype. [1] https://www.economist.com/briefing/2025/07/24/what-if-ai-mad...

This comment reminds me of the forever present HN comments that take a form like "HN is so hypocritical. In this thread commenters are saying they love X, when just last week in a thready about Y, commenters were saying that they hated X."

I will bite here. It is completely valid comment. It points out to the fact that seeming consensus in this thread can not be taken as a sign that there is actually a consensus.

People on HN do not engage in discussion with different opinions on certain topics and prefer to avoid disagreement on those topic.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#262

Post by watwut »

AbstractH24 wrote: post #245
Kapura wrote: post #30

Digital spreadsheets (excel, etc) have done much more to change the world than so-called "artificial intelligence," and on the current trajectory it's difficult to see that changing.

The likely outcome is LLMs being the next the iteration of Excel From its ability to organize and structure data, to running large reporting calculations over and over quickly, to automating a repeatable set of steps quickly and simply. I’m 36 and it’s hard for me to imagine what the world must have been like before spreadsheets. I can do thousands of calculations with a click

> From its ability to organize and structure data, to running large reporting calculations over and over quickly, to automating a repeatable set of steps quickly and simply.

It does not do that tho. Like, reliably doing a repeatable set of steps is a thing it is not doing.

It does fuzzy tasks well.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#263

Post by Planktonne »

cainxinth wrote: post #255

Here’s what amazes me about the reaction to LLMs: they were designed to solve NLP, stunningly did so, and then immediately everyone started asking why they can’t do math well or reason like a human being.

LLMs were pitched as 'genuinely intelligent' rather than 'solving NLP'.

We had countless breathless articles about free will at the time, and though this has now decreased, the discourse is still warped by claims of 'PhD-level intelligence'.

The backlash isn't against LLMs, it's against lies.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#264

Post by andrepd »

measurablefunc wrote: post #132
jrave wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe you misread the post you‘re answering to here or are you suspecting sarcasm? the poster commended your usage of the footnote with the gemini convo as far as i can tell?

Laid it on a little too thick to be sincere & more generally I don't comment on internet forums to be complimented on my response style. Address the substance of my arguments or just save yourself the keystrokes.

If you really can't see the irony of using AI to make up your thoughts on AI then perhaps there's keystrokes to be saved on your end as well.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#266

Post by cgh »

shoo wrote: post #148
kamikazeturtles wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All articles published by the Economist are reviewed by its editorial team. Also, the Economist publishes all articles anonymously so the individual author isn't known. As far as I know, they do this so we take all articles and opinions as the perspective of the Economist publication itself.

re: Why are The Economist’s writers anonymous?, Frqy3 had a good take on this back in 2017: > From an economic viewpoint, this also means that the brand value of the articles remains with the masthead rather than the individual authors. This commodifies the authors and makes then more fungible. > Being The Economist, I am sure they are aware of this. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14016517

Quite a cynical perspective. The Economist’s writers have been anonymous since the magazine’s founding in 1843. In the 19th century, anonymity was normal in publications like this. Signing one’s name to articles was seen as pretentious.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#267

Post by tim333 »

glitchc wrote: post #194

I think LLMs are absolutely fantastic tools. But I think we keep getting stuck on calling them AI. LLMs are not sentient. We can make great strides if we treat them as the next generation of helpers for all intellectual and creative arts.

Using normal usage, LLMs are one type of AI (computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence) and no AI produced so far seems sentient (ability to experience feelings and sensations).

Definitions from the Wikipedia articles.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#268

Post by cubefox »

simonh wrote: post #18
ctoth wrote: post #6

What if this paper actually took things seriously? A serious paper would start by acknowledging that every previous general-purpose technology required human oversight precisely because it couldn't perceive context, make decisions, or correct errors - capabilities that are AI's core value proposition. It would wrestle with the fundamental tension: if AI remains error-prone enough to need human supervisors, it's not t…

LLMs do have to be supervised by humans and do not perceive context or correct errors, and it’s not at all clear this is going to change any time soon. In fact it’s plausible that this is due to basic problems with the current technology. So if you’re right, sure, but I’m certainly not taking that as a given.

They do already correct errors since OpenAI introduced its o1 model. Since then the improvements have been significant. It seems practically certain that their capabilities will keep growing rapidly. Do you think AI will suddenly stagnate such that models are not much more capable in five years than they are now? That would be absurd. Look back five years, and we are practically in the AI stone age.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#269

Post by tim333 »

Kapura wrote: post #30

Digital spreadsheets (excel, etc) have done much more to change the world than so-called "artificial intelligence," and on the current trajectory it's difficult to see that changing.

Terminator 2 would have been a dull movie if the opposition had been a spreadsheet.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#270

Post by tim333 »

jbritton wrote: post #54
chpatrick wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[citation needed] People constantly assert that LLMs don't think in some magic way that humans do think, when we don't even have any idea how that works.

I recently saw an article about LLMs and Towers of Hanoi. An LLM can write code to solve it. It can also output steps to solve it when the disk count is low like 3. It can’t give the steps when the disk count is higher. This indicates LLMs inability to reason and understand. Also see Gotham Chess and the Chatbot Championship. The Chatbots start off making good moves, but then quickly transition to making illegal move…

I think if you tried that with some random humans you'd also find quite a few fail. I'm not sure if that shows humans have an inability to reason and understand although sometimes I wonder.
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