Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 383 posts

Re: Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis

#351

Post by j4k3 »

ssl-3 wrote: post #157
Brendinooo wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that's a good term either, unless we're also saying that nail guns and microwaves are addictions.

I used to have a job that involved swinging a hammer over and over again. I got pretty good at it. Then the boss-man bought a minty-new Senco 650 air nailer for me to use. At first, I could take it or leave it. After all, I was proud at the skill I gained in driving nails with a hammer, and the ways my muscles seemed to automatically steer the nail straight into a board without missing a beat even if things started g…

A cat named Jacques Ellul would probably call your addiction a technique. And it's definitely fleshed out in his book.

https://archive.org/details/JacquesEllulTheTechnologicalSoci...

Pretty prescient stuff!

Re: Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis

#352

Post by vkou »

MarkusQ wrote: post #350
vkou wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised by how long a pathologically stupid system can perpetuate itself. Look at any of a million of local shitty maximums our (or any other) society is trapped in. They are all dystopian on one axis or another, and many of them are dystopian in drastically different ways. Their insanity becomes very obvious once you travel the world a bit.

I never made it to Antarctica (though I've had friends who did), so maybe it's different there. But from what I've seen, I would agree that the range of stupid-human tricks is as impressive as you say, but the judgment of the human condition as "shitty" and "dystopian" or "funny" and "heartwarming" is something have people bring with them. I've met people that were feeling sorry for me at the same time I was feeling…

Not everywhere in the world is a dystopian shithole. I would say that most places for the most part aren't.

What I mean to say is that every society has dystopian elements (that are perpetuated and maintained in an incredibly negative-sum manner). Even societies that are on the whole, pleasant to live in have them in their darker edge, that they are quite unable to sand off - despite alternatives existing.

Re: Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis

#353

Post by Timon3 »

WalterBright wrote: post #325
fc417fc802 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And your point is? How long would you say a properly installed panel from 2000 made it in practice? How long would the modern equivalent installed in 2025 be expected to make it? And how many replacement events does each of those make for over the course of your life? Do you contest my earlier claim that solar is roughly equivalent to wood siding or an asphalt shingle roof?

> And your point is? Using 30 years as a lifetime for solar panels is risky as there are no solar panels running for 30 years, not even close. Never mind the lifetime of the power wall battery and the inverters. I bought a 40 year "premium" asphalt roof. It barely made it to 20. A regular asphalt roof, perhaps 10 years. Now I have a metal roof.

> Using 30 years as a lifetime for solar panels is risky as there are no solar panels running for 30 years, not even close.

Are you sure about that? https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/30-year-old-solar-panels...

All the results I've seen indicate that solar panels will keep producing electricity long after those 30 years, just at a reduced rate (but seemingly still >50%).

Re: Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis

#354

Post by moffkalast »

fapjacks wrote: post #261
MichaelZuo wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is a pretty good analogy. Like exceedingly smart 5 year olds. Or whatever the age is before children typically develop object permanence, a theory of mind, and so on.

Not to sound like a codger, but we even said in the 90s that computers are just very fast idiots.

And they've been getting faster! Still idiots though.

Re: Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis

#355

Post by boca_honey »

throwaway91827 wrote: post #335
t8sr wrote: post #229

I’m really not a fan of the therapy speak and everyone trying to diagnose everyone. Historically, this kinda medicalization of everyone you disagree with has not led to good things.

What historical examples are you thinking of?

A few examples come to mind: the 20 or so nazi psychiatrists who classified over 200,000 people as "unfit" to justify their "euthanasia". The USSR using the term "sluggish schizophrenia" to institutionalize dissidents without trial. And the whole "drapetomania" thing which was the mental illness of black slaves that kept running away.

This is very common. Psychiatry has been used as a weapon since its very beginning.

Re: Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis

#356

Post by red-iron-pine »

fragmede wrote: post #287
sokoloff wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of the positive aspect here is that if I have a junior dev who learns a lesson today, maybe they and their immediate peers learn it, but it won’t be all my junior devs and it certainly won’t be junior devs at other companies. With models, there’s no reason that a model error in company A can’t be fixed for all of company A, and companies B-ZZZ.

Why does company A want the model to get fixed for companies B-ZZZ?

why would we let a competitor have the same advantages?

and getting an improvement to some random unrelated 3rd party give us...?

maybe -- and it's a big maybe -- their improvements could help us to. but that's not a given.

Re: Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis

#357

Post by handoflixue »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #291
handoflixue wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general, "loss of contact with reality" is well understood to be an individual experience. If you think voices are talking to you, that's schizophrenia. If you think God wrote an entire book of life advice, that's Christianity. So, kinda by definition, a large group of people cannot generally experience "loss of contact with reality", they're merely mistaken. The alternative is to accept that 90% of humans are suf…

You've assumed an uncharitable boundary and then said "see, that's obviously wrong". Well of course it is if the boundary you selected places 90% of humanity on the side of "loss of contact with reality". So just, you know, don't do that. Select a boundary that places 90% of humanity on the side of "wrong about a number of things but within the bounds of normalcy for the species at large", sprinkle in some caveats ab…

My point is that AI psychosis is well within the bounds you're mentioning: yeah, those people are wrong about a number of things, but it's well within the bounds of normalcy for the species at large; especially in the industrialized world; especially for anyone that has at least a high school education.

You can't cherry-pick a definition where "AI psychosis" is meaningfully different from "wrong about a few things" without hitting a huge swath of "within the bounds of normalcy for the species at large" - there's just too many people in the category

Re: Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis

#358

Post by jdw64 »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #248
jdw64 wrote: post #3

Tech CEOs are suffering from AI psychosis over next quarter's earnings, while I'm suffering from RI(Rent Installment) psychosis. It makes me wonder if human beings are simply hardwired to suffer from some form of obsession-whether it's FOMO or financial pressure

Humans beings are hardwired to be unhappy, and IMO this has helped civilization's progress, even if individuals are unhappy. No matter how good we have it, eventually we normalize it, become bored, and find something to be unhappy about. It happens from children to old people.

[flagged]

Re: Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis

#359

Post by [deleted] »

officialchicken wrote: post #343
dogleash wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>before all the musings about painting by people who have never picked up a brush I can't tell if this is a clever dig that comically undercuts the premise of the previous line, or it's an unaware unironic attempt to separate off a perceived un-serious type of poster.

First things first - have you ever considered making a tech/art blog focused on early company dynamics where you can pontificate and share these kinds of insightful musings?

[deleted]

Re: Tech CEOs are apparently suffering from AI psychosis

#360

Post by dotxlem »

20after4 wrote: post #263
moffkalast wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was reading some posts on r/locallama the other day and apparently it's a common problem that when people try to use Qwen to develop something that hosts a server, it'll try to use the same port as vllm, see that it's already being used, then it'll try to remove the process that is using it and promptly commit suicide. The self awareness of missile tasked with blowing up its own control center.

Reminds me of the movie "Dark Star" by John Carpenter / Dan O'Bannon. The plot revolves around a talking smart bomb which is programmed to detonate and then gets stuck before being deployed. The crew spends the whole movie trying to reason with the bomb, hoping to talk it out of blowing up at the designated time. The movie is very very bad but if you like B movies it is also very very good.

One of my favourite episodes of Archer has a similar plot to this (Mr. Deadly Goes to Town). TIL this is one of the references!

https://archer.fandom.com/wiki/Mr._Deadly_Goes_To_Town

Post reply on HN