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Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
41–50 of 1001 posts
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#42[flagged]
I think there is a difference between automating “things” (as you put it) and getting to the point where people are on stage suggesting that the government becomes a “backstop” to their investments in automation.
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
This argument always felt insincere to me. What power do big tech companies have and why do you have a problem with it? They are simply providing a service you didn’t have access to.
For some context, this is the a long time Googler who's feats include major contributions to GoLang and Co-creating UTF-8. To call him the Oppenheimer of Gemini would be overly dramatic. But he definitely had access to the Manhattan project. >What power do big tech companies have and why do you have a problem with Do you want the gist of the last 20 years or so, or are you just being rhetorical? im sure there will be…
Rob Pike is not a 'Googler' by birth or fame or identity. He was at Bell Labs and was on the team that created Unix, led the team creating Plan 9, co-created UTF-8, and did a bunch more - all long before Google existed. He was a legend before he deigned to join them and lend them his credibility.
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#44The cat's out of the bag. Even if US companies stop building data centers, China isn't going to stop and even if AI/LLMs are a bubble, do we just stop and let China/other countries take the lead?
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#45The cat's out of the bag. Even if US companies stop building data centers, China isn't going to stop and even if AI/LLMs are a bubble, do we just stop and let China/other countries take the lead?
Yes.
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#46Maybe you could organize a lot of big-sounding names in computing (names that look major to people not in the field, such as winners of top awards) to speak out against the various rampant and accelerating baggery of our field.
But the culture of our field right is in such a state that you won't influence many of the people in the field itself.
And so much economic power is behind the baggery now, that citizens outside the field won't be able to influence the field much. (Not even with consumer choice, when companies have been forcing tech baggery upon everyone for many years.)
So, if you can't influence direction through the people doing it, nor through public sentiment of the other people, then I guess you want to influence public policy.
One of the countries whose policy you'd most want to influence doesn't seem like it can be influenced positively right now.
But other countries can still do things like enforce IP rights on data used for ML training, hold parties liable for behavior they "delegate to AI", mostly eliminate personal surveillance, etc.
(And I wonder whether more good policy may suddenly be possible than in the past? Given that the trading partner most invested in tech baggery is not only recently making itself a much less desirable partner, but also demonstrating that the tech industry baggery facilitates a country self-destructing?)
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#47No "going nuclear" there. A human and emotional reaction I think many here can relate to. BTW I think it's preferred to link directly to the content instead of a screenshot on imgur.
Does HN allow links to content that's not publicly viewable?
Plenty of paywalled articles are posted and upvoted.
There's nothing in the guidelines to prohibit it https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#48The cat's out of the bag. Even if US companies stop building data centers, China isn't going to stop and even if AI/LLMs are a bubble, do we just stop and let China/other countries take the lead?
It's an old argument of tech capitalists that nothing can be done because technology's advance is like a physical law of nature.
It's not; we can control it and we can work with other countries, including adversaries, to control it. For example, look at nuclear weapons. The nuclear arms race and proliferation were largely stopped.
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#49Maybe you could organize a lot of big-sounding names in computing (names that look major to people not in the field, such as winners of top awards) to speak out against the various rampant and accelerating baggery of our field. But the culture of our field right is in such a state that you won't influence many of the people in the field itself. And so much economic power is behind the baggery now, that citizens outsi…
Every problem these days is met with a lecture on helplessness. People have all the power they need; they just have believe it and use it. Congress and the President can easily be pressured to vote in laws that the public wants - they all want to win the next election.
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#50The cat's out of the bag. Even if US companies stop building data centers, China isn't going to stop and even if AI/LLMs are a bubble, do we just stop and let China/other countries take the lead?
The world is bigger than US + China.