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Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

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Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Religion is a lot broader than Christian fundamentalism and zealots. It's sort of like applied philosophy: how do you live a flourishing life in relationship to other people and to the god(s). Modernity has an implicit materialist worldview (matter is all that is) and an explicit rejection of the divine. However, if matter is all there is, then there is no meaning in the world. This is not a way to flourish in the wo…

The modern west is still very religious, they just switched to a new religion without a mascot. If you don’t believe me, explain to me how human rights, universal equality, democracy etc are based in science. You can’t, because they aren’t. Sorry for blaspheming. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do them, by the way, it just means that it’s our religion to do them.

> If you don’t believe me, explain to me how human rights, universal equality, democracy etc are based in science.

I'm always blown away by people who need religion to tell right from wrong.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#522

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That simply isn't true. LLMs are completely incapable of operating without supervision, same as they were 3 years ago.

The scope and scale of the tasks LLMs can be trusted to do without supervision has increased massively in the meanwhile. Of course, it will never be enough. The goalposts will move until we run out of them.

I mean, what's the goal here? AI does everything and then... and then what? We all die? Most of us die except a select few who rule the world (which, by the way, would not include you or me)?

The reason we won't let AI run rampant is because it's anti-human. Even if AI can do everything, why would we allow it to? We don't have to do that, that's very much a choice.

We're at the point where we have humans advocating not only against other humans, but against themselves. If people are going to be out here arguing for self-destruction on the order of suicide, they might as well save us all the trouble and put a gun in their mouths. At least that way, humanity might have a few less pathetic losers who put computer programs before themselves.

Maybe that's harsh, but that's how I see it.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#523
post #279
post #34

Actual intelligence is useless when decision makers send new weekly AI rules to be better employees. It’s race to the bottom. Race to an endless technical debt. Some companies will implode when codebases stop being manageable. The small minority will thrive. But majority not. I see it used in hardware world. Clever dudes without prior experience with software craft working Python scripts, automate tests, control hard…

This too shall pass. Among my software engineering friend group bubble: Every single individual (~12 of us) are actively and seriously tokenmaxing. We have middle-managers who have been given an AI mandate, upper-managers saying "uhh...maybe that brush stroke was too broad" when they look at the bill every month, and zero people in that chain have the authority or even ability to roll it back. This week one of my fri…

The same type of executive who will instil a tokenmaxxing mandate will be the same type of executive who decides layoffs are the best way to improve margins when the token bill comes due with no revenue to back it up.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People believe it because they learn to believe it in childhood. People who don’t believe it are bad. If you even question it, people get angry and say you’re bad. People support wars against other people solely on the basis of their disagreement with it. People think we should spread it to other people. Functionally, how is that different from religion? Sure, I am using a different definition of religion because the…

> we should just be labeling it accurately to avoid becoming confused about what we are doing. I think you are doing quite the opposite, and your overexpansion of the term obfuscates things rather than clarifies them. As another user wrote, there is a perfectly good word that covers all your points: ideology. And that way you don't get the side effect of claiming that cultural food preferences are religion, since the…

It's a good word to use because it has so much in common with western religious traditions.

This is a religion: https://hex.ooo/library/why_not_unitarian.html

You don't need to believe in Jesus, but you do need to hold all the right beliefs. Many self described atheists would fit right in in this church.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#525
post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

THIS is going to be the limitation of capitalism. Capitalism isn't compassionate. It's a really good economic framework though, so it will be interesting how that's reconciled in the coming years

Money and monetary systems aren't compassionate -- people are. Historically (in the USA), capitalism was paired with charity and supporting those around you (primarily for religious reasons). One of the greatest downsides of the welfare system is that people don't give the money to others themselves (it's instead stripped from them and doled out without their input). They don't get to experience the good feelings tha…

There's also the other side. The beneficiaries of the system never feel the need to be grateful, as the money is legally theirs. So you end up with selfish/uncharitable on one side and ungrateful/envious on the other.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be excited about technology when it appears based on their stated intentions and revealed track record over the past 15 years of your young life that those driving it fully intend to use it to disenfranchise you further, not empower you? The reality of the world faced by today's 21 year old college grad is completely unlike the world graduates went into 20 years ago.

Would you be excited about technology when it appears based on their stated intentions and revealed track record over the past 15 years of your young life that those driving it fully intend to use it to disenfranchise you further, not empower you? Funny, I don't feel "disenfranchised" by AI. If you do, well... in the words of the other Steve, you're holding it wrong.

The only thing that's really being enfranchised by AI is my stock portfolio. I was promised cancer cures and longevity medicine but all I got is a way bigger workload for the same pay.

401k has never been better though. College grads don't have one yet so I can see why they're grumpy.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With what would I be coping? I'd much prefer (probably like most people) if AI were not that powerful. The harsh reality, and the stuff of cope, is that it's (too) powerful.

The trouble with this narrative is the evidence doesn't actually support it. If it is so powerful where are the results? If it was actually all that powerful it would be obvious. There wouldn't be any question. Nobody says "nuclear explosions aren't really all that much bigger than conventional explosions" because it's measurable and absolutely obvious just looking at one that they are. I don't believe you when you s…

What would you even need to see? I struggle to find things that I cant do at scale with AI, and it’s dumbfounding to read posts about people that are unconvinced.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#528
post #279
post #34

Actual intelligence is useless when decision makers send new weekly AI rules to be better employees. It’s race to the bottom. Race to an endless technical debt. Some companies will implode when codebases stop being manageable. The small minority will thrive. But majority not. I see it used in hardware world. Clever dudes without prior experience with software craft working Python scripts, automate tests, control hard…

This too shall pass. Among my software engineering friend group bubble: Every single individual (~12 of us) are actively and seriously tokenmaxing. We have middle-managers who have been given an AI mandate, upper-managers saying "uhh...maybe that brush stroke was too broad" when they look at the bill every month, and zero people in that chain have the authority or even ability to roll it back. This week one of my fri…

> This too shall pass. Among my software engineering friend group bubble: Every single individual (~12 of us) are actively and seriously tokenmaxing. We have middle-managers who have been given an AI mandate, upper-managers saying "uhh...maybe that brush stroke was too broad" when they look at the bill every month, and zero people in that chain have the authority or even ability to roll it back. This week one of my friends cobbled together an agent that runs in an infinite loop, grabs whatever song they're actively listening to on Spotify, writes it in a file, then instructs the agent to emit tokens for 2-3 minutes on what that song and previous songs that day might mean for that person's mental state, like a little music-based diary. Repeat, run all day, 24/7. Kinda cool. But its just a way to use tokens, because the first thing all these AI labs built was a good coding model, and the second thing they built was a dashboard for admins to track how much their users are using the good coding model.

What the actual quack, are we being really serious? What is even happening at this point and what have I even just read. This might be worse than burning money in a fire pit.

The sad part is the perverse incentives have made it so that these datacenters and gpu's and ram prices and energy costs are going up in price for this...

Why are people tokenmaxxing? Why are these companies literally burning (actually worse) of their money and their investors money? AI psychosis, what exact reason is the cause behind such things?

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#529

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trouble with this narrative is the evidence doesn't actually support it. If it is so powerful where are the results? If it was actually all that powerful it would be obvious. There wouldn't be any question. Nobody says "nuclear explosions aren't really all that much bigger than conventional explosions" because it's measurable and absolutely obvious just looking at one that they are. I don't believe you when you s…

What would you even need to see? I struggle to find things that I cant do at scale with AI, and it’s dumbfounding to read posts about people that are unconvinced.

Tech products improving, for one. If everyone is a 10x engineer now (and has been for years) why isn't everything better? Instead, we're seeing github outages increasing in frequency, consumer products degrading left and right (google, iOS, etc etc). What is taking so long? Where are the results?

Where is the impact on the real world? Where are the process improvements? Where are the efficiency gains? Why are prices going up, not down? If y'all are actually super-engineers now why aren't you actually making anything better? Hurry up and fix some shit already.

I'll tell you why: it's all bullshit. You aren't actually any more effective with AI than you were without it. You may feel that way, but it's delusional. I'd love to be proven wrong, you can do it by living up to the hype.

I'm confident that won't happen, though. The industry will continue to produce the same mediocre, enshittified slop it always has. It'll do it at approximately the same rate, achieving the same output per engineer, even if they make you do it via a chatbot middleman. AI has had this property for a long, long time before LLMs, before Deep Learning, while neural nets were in their infancy--before backprop even. It can do really impressive things, in the right context, but it is not a substitute for thought and work. You have to put in the effort--whether it's tuning an objective function or iteratively crafting and refining a prompt. All that was old is new again.

The difference now is that it's taken on some bizarre religious significance. These goddamn fucking acolytes running around praising the computer jesus because it speaks words and stuff!. Revolting.

If you really want to convince me, show me something better than that.

Re: Steve Wozniak cheered after telling students they have AI – actual intelligence

#530

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The modern west is still very religious, they just switched to a new religion without a mascot. If you don’t believe me, explain to me how human rights, universal equality, democracy etc are based in science. You can’t, because they aren’t. Sorry for blaspheming. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do them, by the way, it just means that it’s our religion to do them.

> If you don’t believe me, explain to me how human rights, universal equality, democracy etc are based in science. I'm always blown away by people who need religion to tell right from wrong.

Care to elaborate?
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