Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI is different

antirez.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

521–530 of 920 posts

Re: AI is different

#521

Post by mrob »

manyaoman wrote: post #477
Davidzheng wrote: post #114

I actually find it hard to understand how the market is supposed to react if the AI capabilities does surpass all humans in all domains. It's first of all not clear such a scenario leads to runaway wealth for a few, even though with no outside events that may be the outcome. However, such scenarios are so unsustainable and catastrophic it's hard to imagine there are no catastrophic reactions to it. How is the market…

Agreed, if the author truly thinks the markets are wrong about AI, he should at least let us know what kind of bets he’s making to profit from it. Otherwise the article is just handwaving.

There's no way to profitably bet on the whole economy collapsing.

Re: AI is different

#522

Post by d3nj4l »

keiferski wrote: post #411

There’s a simple flaw in this reasoning: Just because X can be replaced by Y today doesn’t imply that it can do so in a Future where we are aware of Y, and factor it into the background assumptions about the task. In more concrete terms: if “not being powered by AI” becomes a competitive advantage, then AI won’t be meaningfully replacing anything in that market. You can already see this with YouTube: AI-generated vid…

> AI-generated videos are a mild amusement, not a replacement for video creators

If you seriously think this, you don’t understand the YouTube landscape. Shorts - which have incredible view times - are flooded with AI videos. Most thumbnails these days are made with AI image generators. There’s an entire industry of AI “faceless” YouTubers who do big numbers with nobody in the comments noticing. The YouTuber Jarvis Johnson made a video about how his feed has fully AI generated and edited videos with great view counts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDRH4UBQesI

What you’re missing is that most of these people aren’t going onto Veo 3, writing “make me a video” and publishing that; these videos are a little more complex in that they have separate models writing scripts, generating voiceover, and doing basic editing.

Re: AI is different

#523

Post by [deleted] »

ACCount37 wrote: post #479
vrighter wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if additional sensors improve the ai, then your last statement is categorically untrue. The reason it worked better is that those additional sensors gave it information that wac not available in the video stream

"If." So far, every self-driving accident where the self-driving car was found to be at fault follows the same pattern: the car had all the sensory data it needed to make the right call, and it didn't make the right call. The bottleneck isn't in sensors.

[deleted]

Re: AI is different

#524

Post by zarzavat »

keiferski wrote: post #498
zarzavat wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The assumption here is that LLMs will never pass the Turing test for copywriting, i.e. AI writing will always be distinguishable from human writing. Given that models that produce intelligible writing didn't exist a few years ago, that's a very bold assumption.

No, I’m sure they will at some point, but I don’t think that eliminates the actual usefulness of a talented writer. It just makes unique styles more valuable, raises the baseline acceptable copy to something better (in the way that Bootstrap increased website design quality), and shifts the role of writer to more of an editor. Someone still has to choose what to prompt and I don’t think a boilerplate “make me a marke…

Why couldn't an AI do all of that?

> And I’d bet that the cyborg writers using AI will outcompete the purely AI ones.

In the early days of chess engines there were similar hopes for cyborg chess, whereby a human and engine would team up to be better than an engine alone. What actually happened was that the engines quickly got so good that the expected value of human intervention was negative - the engine crunching so much information than the human ever could.

Marketing is also a kind of game. Will humans always be better at it? We have a poor track record so far.

Re: AI is different

#525

Post by LtWorf »

boulos wrote: post #350
tfourb wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you live in a place with perfect weather year round? I don’t and I haven’t seen a robo taxi my entire life. I do have access to a Tesla though and it’s current self-driving capabilities are not even close to anything I would call „autonomous“ und real world conditions (including weather). Maybe the tech will at some point be good enough. At the current rate of improvement this will still take decades at least…

Our next vehicle sensor suite will be able to handle winter weather ( https://waymo.com/blog/2024/08/meet-the-6th-generation-waymo... ).

Will it be able to function on super slippery roads while volcanic ash is falling down? Or ice?

I do drive in these conditions.

Re: AI is different

#526

Post by bawana »

If computers are ‘bicycles for the mind’, AI is the ‘self-driving car for the mind’. Which technology results in worse accidents? Did automobiles even improve our lives or just change the tempo beyond human bounds?

Re: AI is different

#527

Post by oblio »

zarzavat wrote: post #524
keiferski wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I’m sure they will at some point, but I don’t think that eliminates the actual usefulness of a talented writer. It just makes unique styles more valuable, raises the baseline acceptable copy to something better (in the way that Bootstrap increased website design quality), and shifts the role of writer to more of an editor. Someone still has to choose what to prompt and I don’t think a boilerplate “make me a marke…

Why couldn't an AI do all of that? > And I’d bet that the cyborg writers using AI will outcompete the purely AI ones. In the early days of chess engines there were similar hopes for cyborg chess, whereby a human and engine would team up to be better than an engine alone. What actually happened was that the engines quickly got so good that the expected value of human intervention was negative - the engine crunching so…

Intellectuals have a strong fetish for complete information games such as chess.

Reality and especially human interaction are basically the complete opposite.

Re: AI is different

#528

Post by bananapub »

I think something everyone is underpricing in our area is that LLMs are uniquely useful for writing code for programmers.

it's a very constrained task, you can do lots of reliable checking on the output at low cost (linters, formatters, the compiler), the code is mostly reviewed by a human before being committed, and there's insulation between the code and the real world, because ultimately some company or open source project releases the code that's then run, and they mostly have an incentive to not murder people (Telsa except, obviously).

it seems like lots of programmers are then taking that information and then deeply overestimating how useful it is at anything else, and these programmers - and the marketing people who employ them - are doing enormous harm by convincing e.g. HR departments that it is of any value to them for dealing with complaints, or much much more danderously, convincing governments that it's useful for how they deal with humans asking for help.

this misconception (and deliberate lying by people like OpenAI) is doing enormous damage to society and is going to do much much more.

Re: AI is different

#529

Post by wavemode »

atleastoptimal wrote: post #80

This is an accurate assessment. I do feel that there is a routine bias on HN to underplay AI. I think it's people not wanting to lose control or relative status in the world. AI is an existential threat to the unique utility of humans, which has been the last line of defense against absolute despotism (i.e. a tyrannical government will not kill all its citizens because it still needs them to perform jobs. If humans a…

I certainly understand why lots of people seem to believe LLMs are progressing towards beocming AGI. What I don't understand is the constant need to absurdly psychoanalyze the people who happen to disagree.

No, I'm not worried about losing "control or relative status in the world". (I'm not worried about losing anything, frankly - personally I'm in a position where I would benefit financially if it became possible to hire AGIs instead of humans.)

You don't get to just assert things without proof (LLMs are going to become AGI) and then state that anyone who is skeptical of your lack of proof must have something wrong with them.

Re: AI is different

#530

Post by keiferski »

d3nj4l wrote: post #522
keiferski wrote: post #411

There’s a simple flaw in this reasoning: Just because X can be replaced by Y today doesn’t imply that it can do so in a Future where we are aware of Y, and factor it into the background assumptions about the task. In more concrete terms: if “not being powered by AI” becomes a competitive advantage, then AI won’t be meaningfully replacing anything in that market. You can already see this with YouTube: AI-generated vid…

> AI-generated videos are a mild amusement, not a replacement for video creators If you seriously think this, you don’t understand the YouTube landscape. Shorts - which have incredible view times - are flooded with AI videos. Most thumbnails these days are made with AI image generators. There’s an entire industry of AI “faceless” YouTubers who do big numbers with nobody in the comments noticing. The YouTuber Jarvis J…

These videos and shorts are a fraction of the entire YouTube landscape, and actual creators with identities are making vastly, vastly more money - especially once you realize how YouTube and video content in general is becoming a marketing channel for other businesses. Faceless channels have functionally zero brand, zero longevity, and no real way to extend that into broader products in the way that most successful creators have done.

That was my point: someone that has an identity as a YouTuber shouldn’t worry too much about being replaced by faceless AI bot content.

Post reply on HN