Problems that attract smart people • Hacker News Board

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#41

Post by javajosh » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 1:58 PM UTC

themitigating wrote: post #35

ckemere wrote: post #28

The premise of this is ridiculous. The smartest people I know personally and that I'm aware of generally are not attracted by AI. Person 1 was interested in fundamental physics (dark matter) but had to leave physics due to lack of job opportunities. Person 2 is Terrence Tao. Person 3 is Ed Witten, etc etc. This reflects the hubris of the tech world that overestimates its own intelligence....

"This reflects the hubris of the tech world that overestimates its own intelligence." This Medium blog post is not the PR person for the "tech world".

Moreover it's worrisome that someone who knows Witten and Tao personally doesn't have even grade-school media literacy.

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#42

Post by jokethrowaway » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 2:03 PM UTC

Simran-B wrote: post #6

Does enabling to run LLMs at home really strengthen democracy? People may believe that, but it potentially enables AI to run on any device with a low footprint for surveillance purposes as well, and governments don't even have to pay for the development...

How is democracy a good thing?

It's literally the dictatorship of the majority over all the other minorities.

We should move towards decentralising power (ideally up to the individual level), not strengthening democracy.

Democracy is just a tool we use to decide what to do with the collective power we have.

And enabling everyone to run LLMs definitely helps everyone to become more independent of governments and large corporations.

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#43

Post by Cthulhu_ » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 2:06 PM UTC

agentultra wrote: post #38

I wonder how many of the developers in the groups denigrated in the author also thought they were the, "smart ones attracted to interesting problems." You can find interesting problems in many banal situations. You only have to look.

> You can find interesting problems in many banal situations. You only have to look.

Unfortunately (unrelated to AI and co), this is also a problem; many engineers write overcomplicated solutions for simple / banal problems, because they get bored otherwise.

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#44

Post by Cthulhu_ » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 2:07 PM UTC

ajuc wrote: post #26

chatmasta wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much of the fear of AI is really a fear of concentrated increase in power of those controlling it. Decentralizing models mitigates that risk by spreading the power amongst a more diffuse population. I don't see how it should be any different from the PC revolution. We've all got a 1970s supercomputer in our pocket now, for better or worse. But it's certainly preferable to only the richest and most powerful having one…

Would you feel safer if somebody made it easy to make nuclear weapons in your garage?

This whataboutism isn't a good fit for this particular issue, I think.

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#45

Post by jokethrowaway » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 2:07 PM UTC

The single smartest person I know (an actual genius, mensa, gifted schools, etc) works in a crappy web agency and he's chronically underpaid.

Tons of smart people I know are doing mediocre jobs.

The fact someone is tackling hard problems doesn't make them the smartest people in the room, you need a combination of risk taking and smart in life.

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#46

Post by nradov » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 2:08 PM UTC

lkschubert8 wrote: post #21

namaria wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're just extending the lines in a way you like to imagine. Kinda like wishing for flying cars when we can't even make them navigate 2D city streets autonomously.

Isn't flight autopilot an easier problem than ground vehicle autopilot?

Flight autopilot is easy if you only have to fly from one point to another. The hard part is dealing with emergencies. We are far from being able to build an autopilot that could react as well as the human crew did during US Airways flight 1549.

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#47

Post by buggy6257 » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 2:09 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #41

themitigating wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This reflects the hubris of the tech world that overestimates its own intelligence." This Medium blog post is not the PR person for the "tech world".

Moreover it's worrisome that someone who knows Witten and Tao personally doesn't have even grade-school media literacy.

Claims to know*

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#48

Post by ajuc » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 2:10 PM UTC

eternalban wrote: post #34

ajuc wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you feel safer if somebody made it easy to make nuclear weapons in your garage?

Google and Microsoft (read: corporations) don't have nukes. But if they could and did, yes, why not Joe Schmoe? A little deterence for those days when your Google account suddenly stops working. Just send a stern letter to Mountain View. More seriously: Corporations have fiduciary obligations only to the shareholders. Civilization disrupting technology can not, must not, be trusted to sole custodianship of such decis…

Russia and China suck, but it's still better that only a few countries have nukes instead of millions of people having 1 each :) If everybody had nukes we'd stop living in big cities :)

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#49

Post by lambic2 » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 2:14 PM UTC

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #13

michaelt wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends on how you think technology relates to democracy. If you think this is the modern-day equivalent of a printing press, it's vital to avoid this being in the hands of only one or two multi-billion-dollar corporations with a history of morally questionable moves. If you think privacy rights and freedom from surveillance are critical to democracy, you want your smart speaker or video doorbell to do all its pro…

The washing machine is one of the biggest game changer in the world, allowing people to suddenly have, like a noble used to have, the equivalent of a servant to do a tremendously costly chore. Without the slavery part. I think AI has the same potential: filling administrative work, walking the complexity of an information overloaded world, keeping up to date with laws you can't ignore but have no way to know about, p…

|Amazing, but very basic.

After playing around with ChatGPT for a few hours I have a hard time seeing how someone could objectively call it "basic".

Re: Problems that attract smart people

#50

Post by kgwgk » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 2:16 PM UTC

javajosh wrote: post #41

themitigating wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"This reflects the hubris of the tech world that overestimates its own intelligence." This Medium blog post is not the PR person for the "tech world".

Moreover it's worrisome that someone who knows Witten and Tao personally doesn't have even grade-school media literacy.

Maybe I don’t have the required level of literacy but I understand « The smartest people I know personally and that I'm aware of generally » as the union of the « know personally » and « aware of generally » sets.