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AI as Normal Technology

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Re: AI as Normal Technology

#51

Post by LiquidSky »

cootsnuck wrote: post #40
roxolotl wrote: post #12

This is a rare piece on AI which takes a coherent middle of the road viewpoint. Saying both that AI is “normal” and that it will be transformative is a radical statement in today’s discussions about AI. Looking back on other normal but transformative technologies: steam power, electricity, nuclear physics, the transistor, etc you do actually see similarly stratified opinions. Most of those are surrounded by an initia…

I wouldn't call it a "middle" road rather a "nuanced" road (or even a "grounded" road IMO). If its a "middle" road what is it in the middle of (i.e. what "scale")? And how so? I'm not trying to be pedantic. I think our tendency to call nuanced, principled positions as "middle" encourages an inherent "hierarchy of ideas" which often leads to applying some sort of...valence to opinions and discourse. And I worry that m…

>If its a "middle" road what is it in the middle of (i.e. what "scale")?

That's pretty clear. We already have two "sides": AI is the latest useless tech boondoggle that consumes vast quantities of money and energy while not actually doing anything of value vs. AI is the dawn of a new era of human existence that will fundamentally change all aspects of our world (possibly with the additional "and lead to the AGI Singularity").

Re: AI as Normal Technology

#52

Post by Philpax »

j45 wrote: post #50

I find in all the hype, that it's important to remember that AI is just software. A remarkable, and different kind of software. But software.

And software rules the world ;)

More seriously: software can drive hardware, and software can be endlessly replicated. The ramifications of these for those of us living in the physical world may be surprising.

Re: AI as Normal Technology

#53

Post by cryptopian »

bluefirebrand wrote: post #28
owebmaster wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI will transform everything, and after that life will continue as normal 100%. It just happened with the advent of the internet and then smartphones.

I think the problem I have is that it still doesn't feel like society has really caught up to the impact that The Internet and Smartphones have had, and we keep getting disrupted faster and faster it seems I know that there have always been disruptive technologies, but I the the rate of "technologies that are disrupting everything " as opposed to "technologies that are disrupting just one thing" has been kind of craz…

It's said that the most disruptive technologies are the ones that change the way we communicate.

I'll admit, a lot of the reason for me being reticent of jumping into the AI game is an increasing amount of distrust towards the current state of the tech industry. Social media giants rose up, made everybody excited about the opportunities to communicate with anyone (which are perfectly valid, I was on board too) and years later, we come to realise the addictions, the fractured information landscape and the surveillance. Now a bunch of companies from the same part of the world come along asking for billions to change the world again and I'm just exhausted by the whole conversation.

Re: AI as Normal Technology

#54

Post by JimDabell »

owebmaster wrote: post #24
datadrivenangel wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI will transform everything, and after that life will continue as normal, so except for the details, it's not a big deal. Going to be a simultaneously wild and boring ride.

> AI will transform everything, and after that life will continue as normal 100%. It just happened with the advent of the internet and then smartphones.

I wrote this a few days ago:

This is a permanent part of the software industry now. It will just stop being such a large part of the conversation.

Once upon a time, all software was local, with no connectivity. The Internet commercialised and became mainstream, and suddenly a wave of startups were like X, but online! Adding connectivity was a foundational pillar you could base a business around. Once that permeated the industry and became the norm, connectivity was no longer a reason to start a business, but it was still hugely popular as a feature. And then further down the line, everybody just assumes all software can use the Internet for even the smallest, most mundane things. The Internet never “died down”, it just stopped being the central thing driving innovation and became omnipresent in software development.

Mobile was the same. Smartphones took off, and suddenly a wave of startups were like X, but as an app! Having an app was a foundational pillar you could base a business around. Once that permeated the industry and became the norm, being on mobile was no longer a reason to start a business, but it was still hugely popular as a feature. And then further down the line, everybody just assumes you’re available on mobile for even the smallest, most mundane things. Mobile never “died down”, it just stopped being the central thing driving innovation and became omnipresent in software development.

Now we’ve got intelligence as the next big thing. We’re still in the like X, but smart! phase. It’s never going to “die down”. You’re just going to see intelligence became a standard part of the software development process. Using AI in a software project will become as mundane as using a database, or accessing the Internet. You aren’t going to plan a project around it so much as just assume it’s there.

— https://www.reddit.com/r/ExperiencedDevs/comments/1jylp6y/ai...

Re: AI as Normal Technology

#55

Post by lo_zamoyski »

mdp2021 wrote: post #23
lo_zamoyski wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The surest defense against fashionable nonsense is a sound philosophical education and a temperament disinclined to hysteria. Ignorance leaves you wide open to all manner of emotional misadventure. But even when you are in possession of the relevant facts — and a passable grasp of the principles involved — it requires a certain moral maturity to resist or remain untouched by the lure of melodrama and the thrill of be…

> sound philosophical education and a temperament disinclined to hysteria Sound good common sense suffices - the ability to go "dude, that's ". Preferring a clear idea of reality to intoxication... That should not be hard to ask and obtain. > it requires a certain moral maturity to Same thing.

It’s a fair point, broadly speaking. If which case, then what we’re observing in the tech sector is not merely an oversight, but a pervasive absence of basic common sense.

Re: AI as Normal Technology

#57

Post by MattSayar »

cainxinth wrote: post #37

It already is for me. I've been using LLMs daily for years now. I don't get the people claiming AGI every two minutes any more than the people claiming these tools are useless. LLM reasoning abilities are very fragile and often overfitted to training data. But if still you haven't figured out how to do anything useful with an LLM, warts and all, that says more about you than LLMs.

I don't believe LLMs will directly lead to AGI. I'm also annoyed by the folks who hype it with the same passion as crypto bros.

As new "thinking" techniques and agentic behavior takes off, I think LLMs will continue to incrementally improve and the real trick is finding ways to make them work with the known limitations they have. And they can do quite a bit

Re: AI as Normal Technology

#58

Post by pluto_modadic »

Burning the planet for a ponzi scheme isn't normal.

The healthiest thing for /actual/ AI to develop is for the current addiction to LLMs to die off. For the current bets by OpenAI, Gemini, DeepSeek, etc to lose steam. Prompts are a distraction, and every single company trying to commodify this are facing an impossible problem in /paying for the electricity/. Currently they're just insisting on building more power plants, more datacenters, which is like trying to do more compute with vacuum relays. They're digging in the wrong place for breakthroughs, and all the current ventures will go bust and be losses for investors. If they start doing computation with photons or something like that, then call me back.

Re: AI as Normal Technology

#59

Post by FL33TW00D »

pluto_modadic wrote: post #58

Burning the planet for a ponzi scheme isn't normal. The healthiest thing for /actual/ AI to develop is for the current addiction to LLMs to die off. For the current bets by OpenAI, Gemini, DeepSeek, etc to lose steam. Prompts are a distraction, and every single company trying to commodify this are facing an impossible problem in /paying for the electricity/. Currently they're just insisting on building more power pla…

All data centres consume ~1% of global electricity. A very small fraction.
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