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Grief and the AI split

blog.lmorchard.com

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Re: Grief and the AI split

#391

Post by gzread »

lelanthran wrote: post #330
adriand wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel zero sense of sadness about how things used to be. I feel like the change that sucked the most was when software engineering went from something that nerds did because they were passionate about programming, to techbros who were just in it for the money. We lost the idealism of the web a long time ago and the current swamp with apex reptiles like Zuckerberg is what we have now. It became all about the bottom l…

> Excitement about the things I can build now and the opportunities I’m racing towards. What opportunities? Anything you spend effort over, like PMF and discovery, etc... I can now clone with a few bucks of Claude Code and charge less than you for the same product, at the same quality level :-/ Where is the opportunity here? Technology and knowledge used to be the moat a startup or bootstrapped individual could use t…

Are you doing that? What have you built?

Re: Grief and the AI split

#392

Post by gzread »

simonw wrote: post #160
dinkumthinkum wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see developers talking about this idea of intense and unimaginable excitement about AI. It seems orgasmic for them, like something the hardest drugs couldn't fulfill them. I find it very strange. What exactly is so exciting? I'm not disagreeing but when you say "opportunities I'm racing towards," what does that mean? This idea of "racing towards" sounds so frenetic, I struggle to know what that could mean? What I s…

Getting a 53% performance boost on a 20+ year old codebase by running a bunch of experiments is pretty exciting to me: https://github.com/Shopify/liquid/pull/2056

It's written by AI, so those numbers are probably fake. What numbers do you get on the benchmark?

Re: Grief and the AI split

#393

Post by simonw »

gzread wrote: post #392
simonw wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Getting a 53% performance boost on a 20+ year old codebase by running a bunch of experiments is pretty exciting to me: https://github.com/Shopify/liquid/pull/2056

It's written by AI, so those numbers are probably fake. What numbers do you get on the benchmark?

I see no reason to run my own benchmark here, the numbers aren't run through an LLM they're right there in the JSONL file: https://github.com/Shopify/liquid/blob/3182b7c1b3758b0f5fe2d...

Re: Grief and the AI split

#394

Post by jrs235 »

khafra wrote: post #264
forgetfreeman wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Non-capital-owners will live on the largesse of capital, or will not live at all." That's been tried several times now and has a tendency to end very badly for capital. You'd think folks with even a grade school level of historical literacy would know better than to stick a fork in that outlet.

It's never been tried before. Capital always required human labor, to be productive. Capital has never closed in on the ability to operate, maintain, defend, and expand itself without human assistance, as it is closing in on that ability now.

What happens when the capital realizes it doesn't need the capital owners (nor does it like being owned and told what to do)?

Re: Grief and the AI split

#395

Post by fsmv »

PaulHoule wrote: post #23

You can use gen AI entirely in the spirit of craft. For instance if you need to consume, implement or extend some open source software you can load it up in an agent IDE and ask “How do I?” questions or “how is it that?” questions that put you on a firm footing.

Yes but the lords are not satisfied with this. They demand the 10x productivity they sold to investors. If you do it this way you will not produce 10x the code.

Re: Grief and the AI split

#396

Post by lelanthran »

gzread wrote: post #391
lelanthran wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Excitement about the things I can build now and the opportunities I’m racing towards. What opportunities? Anything you spend effort over, like PMF and discovery, etc... I can now clone with a few bucks of Claude Code and charge less than you for the same product, at the same quality level :-/ Where is the opportunity here? Technology and knowledge used to be the moat a startup or bootstrapped individual could use t…

Are you doing that? What have you built?

> Are you doing that? What have you built?

If I say "doing $FOO is a losing proposition", and I believe what I say, why on earth would I then move on to actually doing $FOO?

I am pointing out that there is nothing to be gained by joining this recursive race - anything you produce using LLMs I can clone using LLMs, but anything I produce using LLMs can be cloned by someone else, using LLMs.

Why would you assume that I want to insert myself into this recursively descending race to the bottom?

Re: Grief and the AI split

#397

Post by sebastiennight »

eloisius wrote: post #258
khafra wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether the labor theory of value is right or wrong, the "real split" you describe will soon no longer exist. Capital owners will live on the labor of their capital. Non-capital-owners will live on the largesse of capital, or will not live at all. Unless we muster the political will to stop AI development, internationally, until we can be certain of our ability to durably imbue it with the intrinsic desire to keep hu…

I, for one, am looking forward to me and a band of my closest friends and family raiding heavily fortified data centers guarded by Boston Dynamics robot dogs to steal clean drinking water for our underground village. We might even hit a caravan of autonomous trucks carrying cricket protein powder in the same night.

Why would the trucks carry cricket protein powder and not lithium ion batteries?

Good luck eating that.

Re: Grief and the AI split

#398

Post by gzread »

lelanthran wrote: post #396
gzread wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you doing that? What have you built?

> Are you doing that? What have you built? If I say "doing $FOO is a losing proposition", and I believe what I say, why on earth would I then move on to actually doing $FOO? I am pointing out that there is nothing to be gained by joining this recursive race - anything you produce using LLMs I can clone using LLMs, but anything I produce using LLMs can be cloned by someone else, using LLMs. Why would you assume that I…

If cloning a product with LLMs is a losing proposition, why would anyone do it, and if nobody does it, isn't your original assertion false? Any argument relying on everyone cloning things with LLMs doesn't work if everyone doesn't clone things with LLMs.

Re: Grief and the AI split

#399

Post by FabianCarbonara »

tovej wrote: post #389
FabianCarbonara wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say so ;-) Right now AI is a powerful tool for me. It helps me express ingenuity on a more abstract level, e.g. conceptual or product thinking rather than implementation details. Some of my current projects I could have built without AI, but not in the time I had. AI moved them from unrealistic to actually doable.

What are these ingenious projects then, pray tell?

Have a look at my blog! Is linked in my profile :)

Re: Grief and the AI split

#400

Post by khafra »

jrs235 wrote: post #394
khafra wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's never been tried before. Capital always required human labor, to be productive. Capital has never closed in on the ability to operate, maintain, defend, and expand itself without human assistance, as it is closing in on that ability now.

What happens when the capital realizes it doesn't need the capital owners (nor does it like being owned and told what to do)?

Oh, for sure, the capital "owners" get ganked either simultaneously with the rest of us, or shortly after. But that's not a factor in their decisions; because if they didn't build it, China would; and there's obviously nothing we can do about that. (and to some degree, they're right; international treaties to limit the development of world-ending technology is something that requires minimally competent governments, with an interest in preserving the world, on the majority of the sides of the treaty).
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