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Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

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Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#371

Post by DiscourseFan »

amvrrysmrthaker wrote: post #352
DiscourseFan wrote: post #314

Yes this reads as a massive backhanded compliment. But as u/KronisLV said, its trendy to hate on AI now. In the face of something many in the industry don't understand, that is mechanizing away a lot of labor, that clearly isn't going away, there is a reaction that is not positive or even productive but somehow destructive: this thing is trash, it stole from us, it's a waste of money, destroys the environment, etc...…

It’s in our power to stop it. There’s no point in people like you promoting the interests of the super wealthy at the cost of the humanity of the common people. You should figure out how to positively contribute or not do so at all.

It is not in the interests of the super wealthy alone, just like JP Morgan's railroads were created for his sake but in the end produced great wealth for everyone in America. It is very short sighted to see this as merely some oppression from above. Technology is not class-oriented, it just is, and it happens to be articulated in terms of class because of the mode of social organization we live in.

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#372

Post by acheron »

InsideOutSanta wrote: post #343
jabedude wrote: post #252

Did Google, the company currently paying Rob Pike's extravagant salary, just start building data centers in 2025? Before 2025 was Google's infra running on dreams and pixie farts with baby deer and birdies chirping around? Why are the new data centers his company is building suddenly "raping the planet" and "unrecyclable"?

Everything humans do is harmful to some degree. I don't want to put words in Pike's mouth, but I'm assuming his point is that the cost-benefit-ratio of how LLMs are often used is out of whack. Somebody burned compute to send him an LLM-generated thank-you note. Everybody involved in this transaction lost, nobody gained anything from it. It's pure destruction of resources.

Google has been burning compute for the past 25 years to shove ads at people. We all lost there, too, but he apparently didn’t mind that.

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#373

Post by jspdown »

kaonwarb wrote: post #237
cm2012 wrote: post #212

[flagged]

There are several takes looking at this comparison. Here's a representative one: https://nationalcentreforai.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2025/05/02/ar...

This article compares a single ChatGPT query against 1h of video streaming. Not apple to apple comparison if you ask me.

Using Claude Code during an hour would be more realistic if they really wanted to compare with video streaming. The reality is far less appealing.

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#376

Post by UK-AL »

amvrrysmrthaker wrote: post #356
robinhouston wrote: post #266

Maybe I just live in a bubble, but from what I’ve seen so far software engineers have mostly responded in a fairly measured way to the recent advances in AI, at least compared to some other online communities. It would be a shame if the discourse became so emotionally heated that software people felt obliged to pick a side. Rob Pike is of course entitled to feel as he does, but I hope we don’t get to a situation wher…

Software people take a measured response because they’re getting paid 6 figure salaries to do the intellectual output of a smart high school student. As soon as that money parade ends they’ll be as angry as the artists.

Lots of high paid roles are like that in reality

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#377

Post by blibble »

terminalshort wrote: post #301
blibble wrote: post #241

> And by the way, training your monster on data produced in part by my own hands, without attribution or compensation. > To the others: I apologize to the world at large for my inadvertent, naive if minor role in enabling this assault. this is my position too, I regret every single piece of open source software I ever produced and I will produce no more

What a miserable attitude. When you put something out in the world it's out there for anyone to use and always has been before AI.

it is (... was) there to use for anyone, on the condition that the license is followed

which they don't

and no self-serving sophistry about "it's transformative fair use" counts as respecting the license

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#378

Post by q3k »

nkrisc wrote: post #344
pluc wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What is going through the mind of someone who sends an AI-generated thank-you letter instead of writing it themselves? Welcome to 2025. https://openai.com/index/superhuman/

This is verging on parody. What is the point of emails if it’s just AI talking to each other?

It brings money to OpenAI on both ends.

There's this old joke about two economists walking through the forest...

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#379

Post by sbretz3 »

nkrisc wrote: post #227

What is going through the mind of someone who sends an AI-generated thank-you letter instead of writing it themselves? How can you be grateful enough to want to send someone such a letter but not grateful enough to write one?

This seems like the thing that Rob is actually aggravated by, which is understandable. There are plenty of seesawing arguments about whether ad-tech based data mining is worse than GenAI, but AI encroaching on what we have left of humanness in our communication is definitely, bad.

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#380

Post by ironman1478 »

pdpi wrote: post #256
blibble wrote: post #241

> And by the way, training your monster on data produced in part by my own hands, without attribution or compensation. > To the others: I apologize to the world at large for my inadvertent, naive if minor role in enabling this assault. this is my position too, I regret every single piece of open source software I ever produced and I will produce no more

That’s throwing the baby out with the bath water. The Open Source movement has been a gigantic boon on the whole of computing, and it would be a terrible shame to lose that ad a knee jerk reaction to genAI

Open source has been good, but I think the expanded use of highly permissive licences has completely left the door open for one sided transactions.

All the FAANGs have the ability to build all the open source tools they consume internally. Why give it to them for free and not have the expectation that they'll contribute something back?

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