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Bored of It

paulrobertlloyd.com

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Re: Bored of It

#421

Post by skydhash »

9rx wrote: post #414
skydhash wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's ignore the hype and marketing and truly consider LLM as the first stage of "something". The truth is that I've heard a lot of speculation, but no inching towards any of the speculated objective on a practical scale. For anything else, any such first stage was usually constrained on a very small scale while the glaring issues were ironed out. Now a lot of us are being forced to tolerate what is essentially a pro…

Perhaps LLMs are in the Model T stage? The experience is terrible. Its slow. The roads are muddy and full of ruts. You are bound to break your arm when you spin the crank. But, still, it offers something ever so slightly more than the horse that you put up with it anyway.

More like a Model T that goes fast in the wrong direction, don't respond to the steering wheel, decide to reverse on random occasions,... The road may be bad and the horse is not that great, but no one would hop on that particular model unless for entertainment purposes.

Re: Bored of It

#422

Post by lapcat »

beepbooptheory wrote: post #403
lapcat wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you learn from the submission? What did anyone learn from it?

Someone might make a little game or fun experiment and might post it on here. Someone might write a blog post that is giving their opinion about a coding paradigm or framework and post it on here. I don't know if in any of those cases I am learning something, but they are still something I expect to see on HN frontpage. At least: I thought they were acceptable. But I guess thats not the case? Only educational things…

> Someone might make a little game or fun experiment and might post it on here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/show

> Someone might write a blog post that is giving their opinion about a coding paradigm or framework and post it on here. I don't know if in any of those cases I am learning something

You, specifically you, don't need to learn something, but is there any value to submitting an opinion about something where nobody learns anything? What if the blog post (or social media post) were one sentence: "React native sucks!" Would you consider that to be a good HN submission? Such a submission might provoke intense debate on HN, but the post itself adds absolutely nothing to the debate. It's just an expression of emotion.

The submission here is a mere 19 sentences and 144 words. And frankly, there's nothing interesting in those words. They're mostly platitudes.

> Only educational things are technically HN worthy? I will take your word for it.

"If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I don't see how the submission fits that.

> I just want to have fun or feel something or read a certain articulation of something... But I have other places I can find that kind of stuff I guess.

Perhaps TikTok.

Re: Bored of It

#423

Post by bufferoverflow »

lm28469 wrote: post #114
bufferoverflow wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cure death, not life. And I do enjoy life, that's exactly why I want it to be much much longer.

Cool, I like sci fi too. Now explain me how many dots I have to create out of thin air to connect LLMs to immortality ?

Increased intelligence -> automation and scaling of scientific research -> solving complex problems.

The chain is rather short. You don't even need immortality right away. Longevity escape velocity.

Re: Bored of It

#424

Post by bufferoverflow »

khaled_ismaeel wrote: post #137
bufferoverflow wrote: post #54

Nobody asked for it??? Nobody wants it??? You're not paying attention. I want it. I think it's our only chance at quickly solving huge complex problems like aging, cancer, Alzheimer's.

> I think it's our only chance at quickly solving huge complex problems like aging, cancer, Alzheimer's. Machine learning is certainly a extremely handy in tacking these issues, thinking of breakthroughs like AlphaFold and similar. However, I'd like to push against your take: 1. There already are tremendous developments happening in those fronts you mentioned. Praising AI as "our only chance" is quite a stretch and p…

1. You need to read carefully. I didn't say it was our only chance. I said it was our only chance to do it quickly, I even emphasized the word.

I'm sure humanity can grind through these hard problems in hundreds or thousands of years without AIs.

But I would prefer to be alive, so there's urgency.

Re: Bored of It

#425

Post by 9rx »

skydhash wrote: post #421
9rx wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps LLMs are in the Model T stage? The experience is terrible. Its slow. The roads are muddy and full of ruts. You are bound to break your arm when you spin the crank. But, still, it offers something ever so slightly more than the horse that you put up with it anyway.

More like a Model T that goes fast in the wrong direction, don't respond to the steering wheel, decide to reverse on random occasions,... The road may be bad and the horse is not that great, but no one would hop on that particular model unless for entertainment purposes.

> that goes fast

There is nothing fast about LLMs. That is their biggest pain point of all when used in an engineering context. Even if they offered perfect production, you can still do it faster yourself by a significant margin.

> but no one would hop on that particular model unless for entertainment purposes.

Sounds about right. It might be the "in" thing in tech circles, but the people I encounter on an everyday normal basis have never used LLMs. Many of them don't even know what an LLM is. And that's with LLMs being freely available! Imagine if you had to pay to use them. It would be a handful of people at best.

Re: Bored of It

#427

Post by bufferoverflow »

mcntsh wrote: post #82
bufferoverflow wrote: post #54

Nobody asked for it??? Nobody wants it??? You're not paying attention. I want it. I think it's our only chance at quickly solving huge complex problems like aging, cancer, Alzheimer's.

It's our only chance at quickly solving huge complex problems like how to cut expensive labor costs.

That too. If all/most labor is automated, humans will be free from the 9 to 5 grind. Products will be cheap or free.

Re: Bored of It

#428

Post by beepbooptheory »

lapcat wrote: post #422
beepbooptheory wrote: post #403

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone might make a little game or fun experiment and might post it on here. Someone might write a blog post that is giving their opinion about a coding paradigm or framework and post it on here. I don't know if in any of those cases I am learning something, but they are still something I expect to see on HN frontpage. At least: I thought they were acceptable. But I guess thats not the case? Only educational things…

> Someone might make a little game or fun experiment and might post it on here. https://news.ycombinator.com/show > Someone might write a blog post that is giving their opinion about a coding paradigm or framework and post it on here. I don't know if in any of those cases I am learning something You, specifically you, don't need to learn something, but is there any value to submitting an opinion about something where…

You continue to make a strong, incisive argument! Thanks so much, and thanks for the charity of discourse you show here. It's sad that such a sharp, critical mind's time is wasted by, what I can see now, such low quality, near-worthless submissions. I hope the standards don't continue to fall, just for your sake. On my end, I guess I'll just have to check out this "TikTok." Thanks for the rec.

Re: Bored of It

#429

Post by mcntsh »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #427
mcntsh wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's our only chance at quickly solving huge complex problems like how to cut expensive labor costs.

That too. If all/most labor is automated, humans will be free from the 9 to 5 grind. Products will be cheap or free.

That's never going to happen... when has that ever happened?

Re: Bored of It

#430

Post by [deleted] »

senordevnyc wrote: post #411
placardloop wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What is the greatest tool in human history in your opinion? I think it's too early to call whether AI is the answer to that question, but I think it could be. Yes, LLMs are terrible in all kinds of ways, but there's clearly something there that's of great value. I use it all day every day as a staff-level engineer, and it's making me much better and faster. I can see glimmers of intelligence there, and if we're on a…

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