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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

#31

Post by chpatrick »

d3ckard wrote: post #29
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.

What can be asserted without proof, can be dismissed without proof. The proof burden is on AI proponents.

It's more that "thinking" is a vague term that we don't even understand in humans, so for me it's pretty meaningless to claim LLMs think or don't think.

There's this very cliched comment to any AI HN headline which is this:

"LLM's don't REALLY have . I know this for sure because I know both how humans work and how gigabytes of LLM weights work."

or its cousin:

"LLMs CAN'T possibly do BECAUSE they generate text one character at a time UNLIKE humans who generate text one character a time by typing with their fleshy fingers"

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

#32

Post by aredox »

The potentially "explosive" part of AI was that it could be self-improving. Using AI to improve AI, or AI improving itself in an exponential growth until it becomes super-human. This is what the "Singularity" and AI "revolution" is based on.

But in the end, despite saying AI has PhD-level intelligence, the truth is that even AI companies can't get AI to help them improve faster. Anything slower than exponential is proof that their claims aren't true.

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

#33

Post by bradgessler »

1c2adbc4 wrote: post #10
marginalia_nu wrote: post #8

AI is technology that does not exist yet that can be speculated about. When AI materializes into existence it becomes normal technology. Let's not forget there has been times when if-else statements were considered AI. NLP used to be AI too.

Do you have a suggestion for a better name? I care more about the utility of a thing, rather than playing endless word games with AI, AGI, ASI, whatever. Call it what you will, it is what it is.

Artificial Interpolator Augmented Intelligence

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

#34

Post by exe34 »

1c2adbc4 wrote: post #10
marginalia_nu wrote: post #8

AI is technology that does not exist yet that can be speculated about. When AI materializes into existence it becomes normal technology. Let's not forget there has been times when if-else statements were considered AI. NLP used to be AI too.

Do you have a suggestion for a better name? I care more about the utility of a thing, rather than playing endless word games with AI, AGI, ASI, whatever. Call it what you will, it is what it is.

I think it's fine to keep the name, we just have to realise it's like magic. real magic can't be done. magic that can be done is just tricks. AI that works is just tricks.

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

#35

Post by exe34 »

chpatrick wrote: post #19
el_nahual wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a name: Large Language Models, or "Generative" AI. It doesn't think, it doesn't reason, and it doesn't listen to instructions, but it does generate pretty good text!

[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.

my favourite game is to try to get them to be more specific - every single time they manage to exclude a whole bunch of people from being "intelligent".

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

#36

Post by thepryz »

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.

I don’t know if I would agree.

Spreadsheets don’t really have the ability to promote propaganda and manipulate people the way LLM-powered bots already have. Generative AI is also starting to change the way people think, or perhaps not think, as people begin to offload critical thinking and writing tasks to agentic ai.

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

#37

Post by pessimizer »

I've come to the conclusion that it is a normal, extremely useful, dramatic improvement over web 1.0. It's going to

1) obsolete search engines powered by marketing and SEO, and give us paid search engines whose selling points are how comprehensive they are, how predictable their queries work (I miss the "grep for the web" they were back when they were useful), and how comprehensive their information sources are.

2) Eliminate the need to call somebody in the Philippines awake in the middle of the night, just for them to read you a script telling you how they can't help you fix the thing they sold you.

3) Allow people to carry local compressed copies of all written knowledge, with 90% fidelity, but with references and access to those paid search engines.

And my favorite part, which is just a footnote I guess, is that everybody can move to a Linux desktop now. The chatbots will tell you how to fix your shit when it breaks, and in a pedagogical way that will gradually give you more control and knowledge of your system than you ever thought you were capable of having. Or you can tell it that you don't care how it works, just fix it. Now's the time to switch.

That's your free business idea for today: LLM Linux support. Train it on everything you can find, tune it to be super-clippy. Charge people $5 a month. The AI that will free you from their AI.

Now we just need to annihilate web 2.0, replace it with peer-to-peer encrypted communications, and we can leave the web to the spammers and the spies.

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

#38

Post by jcranmer »

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...

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

#40

Post by ronsor »

bradgessler wrote: post #33
1c2adbc4 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a suggestion for a better name? I care more about the utility of a thing, rather than playing endless word games with AI, AGI, ASI, whatever. Call it what you will, it is what it is.

Artificial Interpolator Augmented Intelligence

Aye-aye, that's a good name
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