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This time is different

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Re: This time is different

#321

Post by azan_ »

qsera wrote: post #271
keeda wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look closer into history -- or ask your favorite AI to summarize ;-) -- about what new jobs were created when existing jobs were replaced by automation, the answer is broadly the same every time: the newer jobs required higher-level a) cognitive, b) technical or c) social skills. That is it. There is no other dimension to upskill along. (Would actually be relieved if someone can find counter-examples!) LLMs ar…

LLM's are just a better search tool. Nothing more.

You keep repeating it, but it’s obviously wrong in practice. I guess you can make an argument that sending WhatsApp message or generating video is just a search job but that’s not a great argument for why humans wouldn’t get replaced - it doesn’t matter if LLMs can be reduced to search tools, but if their output is good enough approximation of human worker output. If it is then it has a chance to replace human, even if you call it glorified search tool.

Re: This time is different

#322

Post by direwolf20 »

libraryofbabel wrote: post #273
qsera wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The potential of the current crop of LLM/AIs will stop at being a very powerful tool to search large volumes of text using free-form questions. It will save a lot of time for a lot of people. Yes. But so did computers when they could search through massive amount of data.

I’d rather talk about the history of steam engines than AI today, so: let’s just say it sounds like at some time in the past you saw a clunky inefficient Newcomen steam engine pumping water out of a coal mine, and you hated it, and now you think that’s all steam engines are or can be or can do: they’re loud and annoying and they’re just for pumping coal mines. Then one day someone tells you they’re powering mechanize…

Where is the huge mass of good software that AI has created?

Re: This time is different

#323

Post by qsera »

azan_ wrote: post #321
qsera wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLM's are just a better search tool. Nothing more.

You keep repeating it, but it’s obviously wrong in practice. I guess you can make an argument that sending WhatsApp message or generating video is just a search job but that’s not a great argument for why humans wouldn’t get replaced - it doesn’t matter if LLMs can be reduced to search tools, but if their output is good enough approximation of human worker output. If it is then it has a chance to replace human, even…

Yes, a better search tool will automate a lot of currently employed manual search jobs.

Re: This time is different

#324

Post by usrnm »

danlitt wrote: post #318
usrnm wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No no, an intelligent person looking at a crude steam engine could see what potential it has. This is not hindsight Steam engines were known since the first century, at the vert least: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile It does take a lot of imagination and creativity to come up with new and better ways to use an already existing idea. We're currently just scratching the surface of what LLMs are going to do fo…

From your exact link, > The aeolipile is considered to be the first recorded steam engine or reaction steam turbine, but it is neither a practical source of power nor a direct predecessor of the type of steam engine invented during the Industrial Revolution.

Which is the exact point I was trying to make? It's still a steam engine, the basic idea is there and, yet, nobody saw its huge potential

Re: This time is different

#325

Post by direwolf20 »

danlitt wrote: post #318
usrnm wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No no, an intelligent person looking at a crude steam engine could see what potential it has. This is not hindsight Steam engines were known since the first century, at the vert least: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile It does take a lot of imagination and creativity to come up with new and better ways to use an already existing idea. We're currently just scratching the surface of what LLMs are going to do fo…

From your exact link, > The aeolipile is considered to be the first recorded steam engine or reaction steam turbine, but it is neither a practical source of power nor a direct predecessor of the type of steam engine invented during the Industrial Revolution.

The ancient Greeks surely would have realised that an aeolipile could be used as a source of power, if they'd had abundant combustible fuel, a need for rotary motion, and no better source of it.

Newcomen engines are mere curiosities today, because we have better sources of power (better engines). In the past, they had better sources of power too (donkeys, wind, water, or human slaves). Newcomen engines, like all technologies, are only viable in certain economic environments. In all others they are curiosities.

Re: This time is different

#326

Post by red75prime »

qsera wrote: post #295
unchar1 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calculators are a particularly bad example for your case. There was absolutely hyperbole against calculators when they were introduced. [1] With similar sentiment as well "They make us dumb" "Machines doing the thinking for us" Cars were definitely seen as a fad. More accurately a worse version of a horse [2] If you looked through your other examples, you'd see the same for those as well. Some things start as fads, b…

LLMs will absolutely will have a place. There is no question about it. But it will be doing searching for us, not thinking. The flip side to this is that a lot of jobs today that appear to require "thinking" is actually just doing looking up aka "search"..

Searching for the optimal solution...

Re: This time is different

#327

Post by direwolf20 »

keeda wrote: post #277
sumedh wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like, for many decades. Didnt people say that AI is 50 years away in 2010s?

Yeah and until ChatGPT I thought even 50 years was optimistic, which is why current days feel like SciFi! However, at its essence, the current AI revolution has been driven primarily by a few key algorithmic breakthroughs (cf the Bitter Lesson), which are relatively easy to scale up through compute. On the other hand, the constraints on robotics are largely supply chain-related. The current SOTA for dexterity in robo…

Some types of motors don't require permanent magnets. If we need more motors than we can make permanent magnets, we'll adapt, perhaps with an efficiency loss.

Re: This time is different

#328

Post by Orygin »

parliament32 wrote: post #180
johnfn wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think that Opus 4.6 hallucinates to exactly the same degree as GPT-3.5? I am mystified how you can hold this perspective.

If you're not seeing the hallucinations, I'd assert you're either not using it enough, or (more likely) you don't have enough knowledge in the subject matter to notice when it's hallucinating.

What a condescending post. You either haven't used any recent models if you make that statement. Anyone who used GPT3.5 and any other newer model know that hallucinations have gone down tremendously.

Of course it's not perfect, here and there are inaccuracies or plain hallucinations, but it's impossible to state that it's still the same garbage it was 3 years ago.

Re: This time is different

#329

Post by jodrellblank »

massysett wrote: post #309
libraryofbabel wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ex historian here, now engineer. I would gently suggest you’re underestimating the magnitude of some of the transformations wrought by the technologies that OP mentioned for the people that lived through them. Particularly for the steam engine and the broader Industrial Revolution around 1800: not for nothing have historians called that the greatest transformation in human life recorded in written documents. If you t…

Not at all, I fully appreciate that these inventions transformed life. I’m skeptical because so much of the breathless AI chatter claims AI will eclipse all these inventions. It is the breathless AI commentators, not I, who have lost all perspective on the magnitude and sweep of history.

You think an artificial intelligence would have less impact on the world than the steam engine?

The AI commentators are not saying that ELIZA will change the world, they’re saying that one of the big companies is moments away from an AGI. Sam Altman called a recent ChatGPT model a “PhD level expert”; wouldn’t infinite PhDs for $20/month or $200/month be transformative?

That is, your objection isn’t the usual “LLMs aren’t going to be AGI”, you’re saying “even if they do, it won’t be a big deal”?

Re: This time is different

#330

Post by qsera »

usrnm wrote: post #324
danlitt wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your exact link, > The aeolipile is considered to be the first recorded steam engine or reaction steam turbine, but it is neither a practical source of power nor a direct predecessor of the type of steam engine invented during the Industrial Revolution.

Which is the exact point I was trying to make? It's still a steam engine, the basic idea is there and, yet, nobody saw its huge potential

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47179154
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