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Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

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Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#331

Post by psvv »

konschubert wrote: post #86
feverzsj wrote: post #28

He also said he's not impressed by LLM, which I totally agree.

I don't know what to say. I may not like it, you may not think it's actually intelligent, you may not think it's going to change the world - but how can you not see that this is revolutionary?

I see it as more iterative than revolutionary.

I remember before LLMs, someone on HN made a bot to program automatically by pulling the top rated answers from stackoverflow. To me agentic coding just feels like the next iteration of this.

And LLMs in general feel like an iteration on search.

The strengths and weakness of LLMs are already apparent, and in my opinion unlikely to change from here.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#332

Post by stavros »

jjulius wrote: post #228
crispyambulance wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I look for people to take advice from I want to see a pattern of home runs, that they can deliver repeatedly... That's fine, I guess, if your idea of "success" is apple-scale product home-runs (good luck with that). For those of us with more modest aspirations, listening to a cool person talk about cool stuff is a far better of use of time and attention.

Right? OP asked a very subjective question on a public forum and is bristling that other's worldviews/desires/goals are different from his.

The only people I see bristling are the ones who don't want to hear an uncomfortable viewpoint.

"When it comes to jobs, I'd rather listen to a business wizard from 2011 than a technical wizard from 1981" is hardly contentious, but if people liked hearing "AI has changed the world and you're all fucked", the students wouldn't have been booing in the first place.

Honestly, if you don't like what Eric Schmidt was saying, you should have a long hard think about whether unchecked capitalism is really as great as advertised.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#333

Post by lokar »

kakacik wrote: post #313
lokar wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit off topic, but about commencement speeches... Marvin Minsky spoke at my graduation. It was around the time when it seemed like genetic therapies might solve all kinds of problems, and there was a big debate, moral objections, etc. Most of the talk was a rambling rant against religion holding us back from scientific improvements to life. It did not go over in the mostly christian crowd. I loved it.

Its not a rambling but sad fact of life, one of the failures of mankind so far. And we don't need to talk about some backwater 3rd world country (actually we do) - US has big issues allowing basic science to be taught to kids, because of some set of stories and anecdotes from various people gathered over centuries together about some potential events around one mason who started yet another sect 2k years ago, and the…

Rambling in the sense of not being well prepared, like he had an idea and some points to hit, but not a script. The content was good, for me.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#334

Post by HumblyTossed »

dyauspitr wrote: post #281
Waterluvian wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also saw video of some school president being booed so badly that he never actually gave the speech, while some other admin had to come hold his hand and yell at the tuition paying students. Ah, here it is. It was CalArts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0vTVWyY47s

What did he do to deserve this, there’s no context?

the students were:

> ... protesting recent staff layoffs, severe program cuts, a mounting structural deficit, and the administration's controversial push for generative AI adoption through corporate tech partnerships

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#335

Post by beej71 »

StilesCrisis wrote: post #122
alsetmusic wrote: post #90

The man is hailed as a brilliant nerd in our circles. I didn't realize he's a great public speaker. He really read the room. The "McKenzie"-style lady and Schmidt from Google (who really seemed to resent the pushback and chided graduates), can go to hell. I'm happy that someone is telling the young people who are likely to suffer because of this tech that they matter. I can't imagine how much angst much exist after t…

I saw him give a graduation speech over twenty years ago, and to be honest, he was not a great public speaker then--he rambled and lost the plot. But twenty years is a long time, so he may be amazing now! I love the quote.

Same, except not at a graduation speech. He was just all over the place, but I loved every second of it. :) As a nerd of the 80s, I'd take that over the sterile CEO BS any day.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#336

Post by HumblyTossed »

joe_mamba wrote: post #160
alsetmusic wrote: post #90

The man is hailed as a brilliant nerd in our circles. I didn't realize he's a great public speaker. He really read the room. The "McKenzie"-style lady and Schmidt from Google (who really seemed to resent the pushback and chided graduates), can go to hell. I'm happy that someone is telling the young people who are likely to suffer because of this tech that they matter. I can't imagine how much angst much exist after t…

* * *

> ... unpopular truth...

It is only a "truth" if we allow the oligarchs to make it a truth. This is capitalism run amuck. Late stage capitalism if you will.

The serious question that keeps getting kicked aside, is when the majority have no jobs (or low wage jobs at best) and can't afford your freaking "tokens" and trinkets, what then? But nobody cares because that isn't what's happening this quarter.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#337

Post by insane_dreamer »

jdmoreira wrote: post #63

It’s sad that we ended up here. I can’t fathom that young people aren’t excited about technology anymore. I was young once and naive, and I read a bunch of sci-fi. I could never have imagined having these LLMs or coding agents during my lifetime. Never. It was unthinkable to me that something like this could even happen. And yet, here we are. Even if you think it’s just a statistical trick, you should still be blown…

you are so starry-eyed about what the tech can do that you're missing the societal impact

it's like marveling at the wonders of nuclear fission (truly a marvel) and wondering why people are angry about a nuclear arms race that has literally put us one button press away from global destruction

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#338

Post by HumblyTossed »

whack wrote: post #107
dchftcs wrote: post #33

Unsurprising he'd be cheered for saying what they wanted to hear. But perhaps whether or not his stance is correct, the students needed to hear this. They (we) have to believe human brains still have value and find a way out; for otherwise there'd be no point to try anymore.

> They (we) have to believe human brains still have value and find a way out; for otherwise there'd be no point to try anymore. Our value isn't predicated on our utility. The simple fact that we are sentient beings, capable of joy and suffering, gives us value. This is why we continue to support and care for the elderly and the disabled - we value them regardless of any practical utility we may derive from them. If y…

None of that buys groceries.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#339

Post by card_zero »

9dev wrote: post #323
card_zero wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, the Sapiens guy. I read Sapiens, thought it was OK, then other people picked holes in it and persuaded me that it was worse than that. But I suppose that doesn't preclude this Nexus book being good. But anyway I agree: motivations are arbitrary. Why you even got to do a thing? Just sit and be sessile and die. (This is not a personal attack, or recommended.) I rely heavily on an assumption that we do all have more…

I think you missed my point. The distinction I made in terminology was on purpose: I used "joy" to describe the inherent motivation for trying to accomplish something, and "bliss" for the state some may try to reach by using drugs. And I also made a distinction between knowledge and meaning, which you sort of seem to imply is a universally shared value, while I seriously doubt that is the case. There are many ways to…

Obviously you'd want to name "joy" as a separate thing, to propose it as the thing we're motivated to do, but the problem is that you didn't describe it. So now I'm at: the thing we're motivated to do is the thing we're motivated to do, and it's not whatever I say it is, but apart from that you haven't told me anything about it. Of course I'm open to some pluralism, like it can be a string bag of mixed motivations, but I do think the motivations in our culture all agree with creating knowledge, and become vacuous without that element. What is "gain", "pleasure", etc., without meaning? (I don't know what you mean by meaning. I mean the process of explaining and learning and creating ideas.) Without it those are mechanical processes of the "number go up" type. Yes, I am skeptical that anything of that kind is anybody's deep motivation, though it may be a superficial one.

Why are you trying to avoid morality? That seems like a good way to never find out anything important, since importance is a moral judgement.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#340

Post by itsalwaysgood »

jjulius wrote: post #228
crispyambulance wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When I look for people to take advice from I want to see a pattern of home runs, that they can deliver repeatedly... That's fine, I guess, if your idea of "success" is apple-scale product home-runs (good luck with that). For those of us with more modest aspirations, listening to a cool person talk about cool stuff is a far better of use of time and attention.

Right? OP asked a very subjective question on a public forum and is bristling that other's worldviews/desires/goals are different from his.

This is a topic about predicting and preparing for the future.

If you want to be snarky: this is hackernews, not reddit. Bring some logic into the discussion and stop fishing for points.

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