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Bored of It

paulrobertlloyd.com

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Re: Bored of It

#371

Post by gh0stcat »

kashnote wrote: post #252
hersko wrote: post #223

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.

And it's cheap . Imagine I told you that you could have direct access to every PhD in the world and they would respond to all of your questions instantly... for $20/mo. Mind-blowing stuff and people still complain.

It’s not actually cheap, just subsidized. Becoming reliant on it now virtually guarantees you will have a tough decision to make later when profitability is actually important.

Re: Bored of It

#372

Post by gnfargbl »

terhechte wrote: post #71

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'm in my mid-forties and I think the LLM revolution is amazing.

It reminds me of the dotcom era in many ways: a genuinely transformative technology which is currently no more than maybe 20% of the way into realising its potential; a technology for which expectations have been hyped up to maybe 200% of potential; and a technology around which a stockmarket bubble has formed.

I'll leave the rest of the LLM story to the reader's imagination, but to see this slightly fragmented and ossified mind it's extremely obvious what happens next, and then what happens after that, and then after that (which is when we get to the really good bit). So no, I'm not bored, and I'm not tired. I'm as happy to be working in technology now as when I was a younger man. Happier in some ways, even.

Re: Bored of It

#373

Post by ilikecakeandpie »

hersko wrote: post #223

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.

The cases you're showing here are things that can also be accomplished by looking in books. You're describing Google if it actually worked

Re: Bored of It

#374

Post by jiscariot »

> "Every pub conversation winding up talking about it."

Is this a SV thing? Conversations about IT with anyone other than co-workers are a once-a-year thing for me. It is actually refreshing, because a lot of the stuff I work on esoteric/niche it's not coming up a lot in conversation.

Re: Bored of It

#375

Post by NobleLie »

nsagent wrote: post #164
terhechte wrote: post #71

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?

Thanks. Sometimes I feel like I'm going insane attempting to ŕeason with people who think the opposite. That these are oracles imbued with human level intellect and creativity.

Now, sure, these models can be impressive - but it's a warped lens of humanities own impressive (selected) corpuses.

Re: Bored of It

#376

Post by ilikecakeandpie »

gh0stcat wrote: post #368
hardlyfun wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People want to remain valuable and this tool takes that away. As long as you still find meaningful ways to contribute, all is good. But this says nothing about all the skills mastered that have been rendered effectively useless. And in time, as this tool gets better, it could rob you of the agency to change your environment.

I’d like to hear an explanation of what mastered skills are useless?

"Computer" used to be a job title https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_(occupation)

Re: Bored of It

#377

Post by BinRoo »

placardloop wrote: post #345
hersko wrote: post #223

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 isn’t even close to being the greatest tool in human history. This type of misunderstanding and hyperbole is exactly why people are tired/bored/frustrated of it. The uncomfortable truth is that AI is the world’s greatest con man. The tools and hype around them have created an environment where AI is incredibly effective at fooling people into thinking it is knowledgeable and helpful, even when it isn’t. And the pe…

The human still needs to think, of course. But, I can get to my answer or my primary source using a tool faster than a typical search engine. That's a super power, when used right!

Re: Bored of It

#378

Post by darepublic »

ilitirit wrote: post #182

Here's some of what I think is my personal best advice: Learn to live in the gray areas. Don't be dogmatic. The world isn't black and white. Take some parts of the black and white. And, don't be afraid to change your mind about some things. This may sound obvious to some of you, and sure, in theory this is simple. But in practice ? Definitely not, at least in my experience. It requires a change in mindset and worldvi…

the thing is, engaging with a poem only as a literal screed on the general topic is a very black and white way to engage with it. The author is negative on LLMs sure, but I'm sure the feeling this piece evokes clicks with many people; including people who use LLMs as power users (like myself). I don't have to fully / always agree with this. It's something that should be said. And there are times when I want to take off my technological wizard hat and put on my simple humanity hat and enjoy a poem like this. And then sigh, double check my impulse to look at my phone, double check my impulse to talk about money making, sex pursuing schemes, look at my friend in the bar and realize they won't be around forever and say, genuinely, 'hows it going bud'

Re: Bored of It

#379

Post by cryptopian »

I've been introspecting lately on why I've got this kind of reaction to the whole situation despite rationally knowing the benefits involved.

We're currently _already_ in the midst of a tech and social revolution in the form of social media platforms. About 15 years ago, everyone became excited about how they could connect with old friends whenever they want on Facebook, from their computer. 10 years later, the story started to curdle as people realised being plugged into the internet 24/7 has major societal drawbacks. I think about how detached I've become from local communities, and just how much my life I entrust to a handful of tech companies in San Francisco.

Now a new group of companies come along, peg themselves to every facet of life, and demand billions of investment dollars for their products and whip up a bunch of evangelists. I'm in the midst of reevaluating my relationship with tech and now tech advocates are in every part of my life trying to tell me how much better my life should be. Maybe I'll install a copilot at some point, but I just want to get on with things for now.

It never helps that my current team has a fetish for rapidly expanding our tech stack without considering the learning cost to the rest of the team, so I'm at my capacity for learning atm

Re: Bored of It

#380

Post by zellyn »

mapt wrote: post #360
zellyn wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a good point. You could equally well argue that the spherical cow “ideal” 100% marketing shows you exactly the right product right as you need it. And then shuts the hell up!

Ideal for whom?

Right.
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