281–290 of 507 posts
Nobody asked for it??? Nobody wants it??? You're not paying attention. I want it. I think it's our only chance at quickly solving huge complex problems like aging, cancer, Alzheimer's.
Aging isn’t a problem. It’s normal.
Wearing crafted pieces of glass on my head every waking moment is not normal, but I choose to do it.
AI is really bringing out the worst in capitalist corporatism. I think even the most pessimistic AI doomer will agree that the technology is fascinating and can do some cool things, but our corporate overlords have made it such an all-encompassing topic that it’s hard not to be disillusioned by it. Yes, it’s an interesting technology - but seeing other interesting technologies and projects get disinvested in because…
This is insane. We have created the greatest tool in human history and people are complaining. I can use it to help me code, fix modeling issues as I learn CAD, help me troubleshoot the issues in my two-stroke leafblower engine and can consistently walk me through complex leetcode algorithms. It literally knows everything and people still complain.
I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the na…
I'll bite. I received my PhD in Computer Science focused on NLP and creative text generation last year and I think the hype around LLMs is ridiculous (academics are no better than industry on chasing hype). They're trained to predict the next token given a context, and that's exactly what they're good at. How old do you think I am?
Does this not explain why you just got your PhD in this? ("This" being broad, but "NLP and creative text generation" sounds like it's in the same ballpark as LLMs.)
> The best minds of my generation I’m tired of that line. I remember first seeing it on “the best minds of our generation being employed to sell you ads”. Making a computer go brrr doesn’t qualify anyone for a “best mind”. I’d hope a “best mind” would be, above all, empathetic. Concerned about the well being of their fellow humans. Philosophical about the state of the world. Patient. Curious. Wise and not just smart.…
Best, to me, means people who are the top of their specialty, whether it be mathematics, astrophysics, rocketry, economics, business, politics, pedagogy, archeology, etc. People with unnerving dedication and pursuit of knowledge to advance whatever their specialty is. It could be the marketing most of us loathe but it can also be any of the above and more and only a few pursuits only tangentially imply empathy.
I've come up with a set of rules that describe our reactions to technologies: 1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. 2. Anything that's invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. 3. Anything invented after you're thirty-five is against the na…
I hate AI.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But it's not "direct access to every PhD in the world." You don't really believe that do you?
It gives me better answers on most things than my actual PhD friends do. So... yeah? The funny thing is, it's somewhat less useful for certain business stuff, because so much of that is private within corporations. But the stuff you learn in a PhD program is all published. And it's pretty phenomenal at distilling that information to answer any specific question. Multiple times a week I run into an obscure term or con…
And last sentences conflate a PhD with a google search or even dictionary lookup. I mean, c'mon!
This is insane. We have created the greatest tool in human history and people are complaining. I can use it to help me code, fix modeling issues as I learn CAD, help me troubleshoot the issues in my two-stroke leafblower engine and can consistently walk me through complex leetcode algorithms. It literally knows everything and people still complain.
It is incapable of knowledge.
I’m bored of it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My software working group has spent much of the quarter discussing whether or not it’s made us more productive. They still can’t decide, but I bet we’ve racked up 1000 coder-hours debating it. I don’t use it because our products have the potential to harm other people and I’m not personally comfortable assuming that risk. Nobody else seems particularly moved by that argument, however.
> They still can’t decide, but I bet we’ve racked up 1000 coder-hours debating it. That sounds... Good? Lots of people run into using whatever is vogue without even thinking twice about it. See the massive move to using cloud for absolutely everything, money be damned, and you'll see what I mean. Cargo culting is a huge issue in the industry. At least they're actually considering if it's making them more or less prod…
At 1,000 hours of "debate", it is unlikely that anyone is considering if it is more or less productive, but rather are using that time to convince themselves that their position is the right one, even when it isn't.
This is insane. We have created the greatest tool in human history and people are complaining. I can use it to help me code, fix modeling issues as I learn CAD, help me troubleshoot the issues in my two-stroke leafblower engine and can consistently walk me through complex leetcode algorithms. It literally knows everything and people still complain.
So would the greatest tool in human history in your mind be something that is used to plagiarise most content in the world and then output correct-30%-of-the-time slop? Or is there another definition you would use?
I'm struggling to think how this could even be in the top 10 tools in human history.