Live data from Hacker News

I Am An AI Hater

anthonymoser.github.io

441–450 of 515 posts

Re: I Am An AI Hater

#441
post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans understand language at a level no AI does. We use it to serialize ideas, and we have the ideas independent of language. AI works on the serialization itself, which is very powerful because of the relationships between ideas are reflected on statistics in the serialization, but it lacks all the understanding, and can't create new ideas with reasonable resources.

This is an idealized fantasy of language. Language is primarily about patriarchal dominance, control, status, mate-selection, topophilia, and secondarily about communicating ideas. The dark matter of language is expressed in mythological ideas like states, property, law, etc. People are starting to notice we can't solve very simple problems like climate extinction. How the primary forms in language are status oriente…

> Language is primarily about patriarchal dominance, control, status, mate-selection, topophilia, and secondarily about communicating ideas.

I don't agree language is primarily about those things, but I want to point out this is a very human interpretation of language, that no LLM can perform.

Re: I Am An AI Hater

#442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Didn't google just prove there is little to no environmental harm, INCLUDING if you account for training? I don't think they, have, no. Perhaps I'm overlooking something, but their most recent technical paper [0], published less than a week ago, states, "This study specifically considers the inference and serving energy consumption of an AI prompt. We leave the measurement of AI model training to future work." [0]:…

I see. They actually specifically mention they did NOT account for training. Not sure how I misread that so poorly

I saw _quite a few_ people trying to claim that it included training, even though it clearly didn't, so maybe that?

Also, note that it is the _median_ usage for Gemini. One would assume that the median Gemini usage is that pointlessly terrible Google Search results widgets, the one that tells people to eat rocks. Which you've got to assume is on the small side, model-wise.

Re: I Am An AI Hater

#443
post #64

I've noticed that the younger you are, the most likely you're in love with AI. So the tide will turn eventually, for better or worse. I talked to someone recently who claims with no irony that 'AI has zero downside'. I don't hate AI. I hate the people who're in love with it. The culture of people who build and worship this technology is toxic.

I'm not sure to what extent this is an actual youth thing, versus that older people have been exposed to more "it's the real thing this time, promise!" hype bubbles, and, in particular for programmers, have probably been exposed to one or more of the prior "this will make programmers 10x as efficient" and/or "this will get rid of icky programmers altogether" crazes.

Fool me once, and all that.

Re: I Am An AI Hater

#444
post #56

Is Ed Zitron's newsletter banned here? I haven't seen a single article of his on HN and he's been ranting about AI for years now.

Tend to get flagged; there's a minority here who react to any open criticism of our benevolent future robot overlords badly.

Re: I Am An AI Hater

#445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OpenAI openly has a goal to build AGI. We don't know if AGI without consciousness is possible. Some people think that it's not. Many people certainly think that consciousness might be an emergent property that comes along with AGI. >AI industry doesn't push for "consciousness" in any way. What AI industry is trying to build is more capable systems. If you're being completely literal, no one wants slaves. They want wh…

We don't know if existing AI systems are "conscious". Or, for that matter, if an ECU in a year 2002 Toyota Hilux is. We don't even know for certain if all humans are conscious either. It could be another one of those things that we once thought everyone has, but then it turned out that 10% of people somehow make do without. With how piss poor our ability to detect consciousness is? If you decide to give a fuck, then…

Unless you're defining 'consciousness' so broadly that you consider it an open question whether a parsnip is conscious, yeah, no, we do kinda know. They're not.

Re: I Am An AI Hater

#446
post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an idealized fantasy of language. Language is primarily about patriarchal dominance, control, status, mate-selection, topophilia, and secondarily about communicating ideas. The dark matter of language is expressed in mythological ideas like states, property, law, etc. People are starting to notice we can't solve very simple problems like climate extinction. How the primary forms in language are status oriente…

> Language is primarily about patriarchal dominance, control, status, mate-selection, topophilia, and secondarily about communicating ideas. I don't agree language is primarily about those things, but I want to point out this is a very human interpretation of language, that no LLM can perform.

As humans don't think in language, ie, there is no direct contact between what we think we think, and how we externalize what we think we think arbitrarily, empirically language is primarily about these biases and only secondarily about communication. This is, again, the Achilles hell of CS, NLP, generative linguistics. It's impossible for anyone to disagree with this function of language since 2016. The role for LLMs to operate language is zilch, as you admit LLMs can't uncover this, train, align this out of function.

“We refute (based on empirical evidence) claims that humans use linguistic representations to think.” Ev Fedorenko Language Lab MIT 2024

Re: I Am An AI Hater

#447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's bad at - Actually knowing things / being correct - Creating anything original It's good at - Producing convincing output fast and cheap There are lots of applications where correctness and originality matter less than "can I get convincing output fast and cheap". Other commenters have mentioned being able to vibe-code up a simple app, for example. I know an older man who is not great at writing in English (but o…

Those applications are actually abysmally rare - it's just that we've created a society where businesses are just... allowed to externalize all costs. Being wrong or lying is almost universally bad and unproductive. But making money has nothing to do with being productive - you can actively make the world worse and make money. Ask RJ Reynolds.

> Being wrong or lying is almost universally bad and unproductive

Sure, but there are cases where rightness isn’t a thing.

Don’t get me wrong I’m not an AI Stan, it has real problems, but it’s also not going anywhere. Eventually the bubble will pop and we’ll see which applications of AI turned out to be useful and which didn’t.

Re: I Am An AI Hater

#448
post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aristotle: There are no contradictions. I still don't know what this is supposed to mean, and I am not unfamiliar with Aristotle.

The way I see it, Aristotle used language as a reasoning tool. Logic inference rules, modus ponens, and so on. Aristotle was also unaware of the incompleteness problem discovered by Gödel, that no reasoning tool of that type can be complete. There are fundamental contradictions in the nature of language, it however doesn't make them not useful for the entire experience of daily communication, all of literature, and s…

The problem of the GEB is it's containment in symbols. Godel was unaware of the the potential for direct perception, and ecological psychology, and coordination dynamics. All three are possible non-contradictory paths to direct perception. Time to put math aside and search for new possibility.

Re: I Am An AI Hater

#449
The problem with this argument is that the science is still out. Hinton and other actual CS experts are terrified of AI and the risk of an AI/AGI technological singularity. Instead what this article focuses on is the status quo technology, while those scientists (who don't care that much about Altman and his ilk) thinking about the storm to come now that the Pandora's box has been opened.

Re: I Am An AI Hater

#450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Aristotle: There are no contradictions. I still don't know what this is supposed to mean, and I am not unfamiliar with Aristotle.

If you don't grasp the basic ideas of paradox questioning the nature of language beginning in presocratics and winding their way through Aristotle, Socrates, Kant Hume and many others and also appearing in Advaita Vedanta (eg Nisargadatta), then I'm afraid staring here isn't really going to help you. Philosophy has ben questioning whether language is valid from the start. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-…

You're being evasive and hiding behind jargon and frankly, nonsensical phrases. As I said, I am not unfamiliar with Aristotle, so don't be shy about making clear and direct claims. If you can't do that, then, I'm sorry, but this some kind is bullshit.

(FWIW, a feature of the Aristotelian logical tradition is that, unlike the modern, Fregean tradition which is indifferent about the relationship between logic and language, it is very much concerned by the logical structures within grammar. From a practical point of view, this makes total sense: we want to be able to evaluate arguments, to clarify arguments, and so on, which are generally given in natural language. Aristotle was also a moderate realist. Language is a reflection of reality.)

Post reply on HN