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LLM Inevitabilism

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Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#571

Post by philipwhiuk »

JimmaDaRustla wrote: post #556

The author seems to imply that the "framing" of an argument is done so in bad faith in order to win an argument but only provides one-line quotes where there is no contextual argument. This tactic by the author is a straw-man argument - he's framing the position of tech leaders and our acceptance of it as the reason AI exists, instead of being honest, which is that they were simply right in their predictions: AI was…

> AI was inevitable.

This is post hoc ergo propter hoc. AI exists thus it must have been inevitable.

You have no proof it was inevitable.

(Also AI means something wildly different than it meant a few years ago - I remember when AI meant AGI, the salesmen have persuaded you the emperor has clothes because they solved a single compelling test).

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#572

Post by erfgh »

__loam wrote: post #395
eric-burel wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developers haven't even started extracting the value of LLMs with agent architectures yet. Using an LLM UI like open ai is like we just figured fire and you use it to warm you hands (still impressive when you think about it, but not worth the burns), while LLM development is about building car engines (here is you return on investment).

3 years into automating all white collar labor in 6 months.

It's 3 years away.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#574

Post by mountainb »

ikr678 wrote: post #239
SwoopsFromAbove wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100%. Not a new phenomenon at all, just the latest bogeyman for the inevitabilists to point to in their predestination arguments. My aim is only to point it out - people are quite comfortable rejecting predestination arguments coming from eg. physics or religion, but are still awed by “AI is inevitable”.

It's inevitable not because of any inherent quality of the tech, but because investors are demanding it be so and creating the incentives for 'inevitability'. I also think EV vehicles are an 'inevitability' but I am much less offended by the EV future, as they still have to outcompete IC's, there are transitional options (hybrids), there are public transport alternatives, and at least local regulations appear to be k…

To use John Adams' separation of republics into the categories of "the many, the few, and the one," the few in our current day are unusually conflict-adverse both among each other and with respect to the people.

When faced with the current crisis, they look at the options for investment and they see some that will involve a lot of conflict with the many (changing the industrial employment arrangement, rearranging state entitlements), and they see see some that avoid conflict or change. Our few as they are got that way by outsourcing anything physical and material as much as possible and making everything "into computer." So they promote a self serving spiritual belief that because overinvesting in computers got them to their elevated positions, that even more computer is what the world needs more than anything else.

This approach also mollifies the many in a way that would be easily recognizable in any century to any classically educated person. Our few do not really know what the many are there for, but they figure that they might as well extract from the many through e.g. sports gambling apps and LLM girlfriends.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#575

Post by tkiolp4 »

JimmaDaRustla wrote: post #556

The author seems to imply that the "framing" of an argument is done so in bad faith in order to win an argument but only provides one-line quotes where there is no contextual argument. This tactic by the author is a straw-man argument - he's framing the position of tech leaders and our acceptance of it as the reason AI exists, instead of being honest, which is that they were simply right in their predictions: AI was…

The problem is that such “tech leaders” get their mouths full of AI with one goal only: to reduce their workforce to the minimum and maximize their profits. Sure, they are companies and yada yada, but I would like to see a better argument on to why we all should embrace AI. So far, as much as AI is intrinsically amazing, it’s getting bad rep because its main and more lousy supporters are tech billionaires.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#576

Post by bsenftner »

jdiff wrote: post #568
JimmaDaRustla wrote: post #556

The author seems to imply that the "framing" of an argument is done so in bad faith in order to win an argument but only provides one-line quotes where there is no contextual argument. This tactic by the author is a straw-man argument - he's framing the position of tech leaders and our acceptance of it as the reason AI exists, instead of being honest, which is that they were simply right in their predictions: AI was…

The IT industry is also full of salesmen and con men, both enjoy unrealistic exaggeration. Your statements would not be out of place 20 years ago when the iPhone dropped. Your statements would not be out of place 3 years ago before every NFT went to 0. LLMs could hit an unsolvably hard wall next year and settle into a niche of utility. AI could solve a lengthy list of outstanding architectural and technical problems…

> I can't find a single open source codebase, actively used in production, and primarily maintained and developed with AI.

That's because using AI to write code is a poor application of LLM AIs. LLMs are better suited to summary, advice, and reflection than forced into a Rube Goldberg Machine. Use your favorite LLM as a Socratic advisor, but not as a coder, and certainly not as an unreliable worker.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#577

Post by miningape »

evantbyrne wrote: post #543
keiferski wrote: post #107

One of the negative consequences of the “modern secular age” is that many very intelligent, thoughtful people feel justified in brushing away millennia of philosophical and religious thought because they deem it outdated or no longer relevant. (The book A Secular Age is a great read on this, btw, I think I’ve recommended it here on HN at least half a dozen times.) And so a result of this is that they fail to notice t…

I'm pretty bearish on the idea that AGI is going to take off anytime soon, but I read a significant amount of theology growing up and I would not describe the popular essays from e.g., LessWrong as religious in nature. I also would not describe them as appearing poorly read. The whole "look they just have a new god!" is a common trope in religious apologetics that is usually just meant to distract from the author's o…

While it's a fair criticism, just because someone doesn't believe in a god doesn't mean the religious hardware in their brain has been turned off. It's still there and operational - I don't think it's a surprise that this hardware's attention would then be automatically tuned to a different topic.

I think you can also see this in the intensification of political discussion, which has a similar intensity to religious discussions 100-200+ years ago (i.e. Protestant reformation). Indicating that this "religious hardware" has shifted domains to the realm of politics. I believe this shift can also be seen through the intense actions and rhetoric we saw in the mid-20th century.

You can also look at all of these new age "religions" (spiritualism, horoscopes, etc.) as that religious hardware searching for something to operate on in the absence of traditional religion.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#578

Post by abagee »

jaza wrote: post #564
aksosoakbab wrote: post #519

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spoken language is a miserable language to communicate in for programming. It’s one of the major detractors of LLMs. Programming languages have a level of specification orders of magnitude greater than human communication ones.

Computer scientists in the ~1970s said that procedural languages are a miserable medium for programming, compared to assembly languages. And they said in the ~1960s that assembly languages are a miserable medium for programming, compared to machine languages. (Ditto for every other language paradigm under the sun since then, particularly object-oriented languages and interpreted languages). I agree that natural langu…

I don't think that's the only difference - every "leap" in languages you mentioned was an increase in the level of abstraction, but no change in the fact that the medium was still deterministic.

Programming in natural languages breaks that mold by adding nondeterminism and multiple interpretations into the mix.

Not saying it will never happen - just saying that I don't think it's "only" because you're a computer scientist from the 2010s that you find natural languages to be a poor medium for programming.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#579

Post by 4star3star »

jdiff wrote: post #568
JimmaDaRustla wrote: post #556

The author seems to imply that the "framing" of an argument is done so in bad faith in order to win an argument but only provides one-line quotes where there is no contextual argument. This tactic by the author is a straw-man argument - he's framing the position of tech leaders and our acceptance of it as the reason AI exists, instead of being honest, which is that they were simply right in their predictions: AI was…

The IT industry is also full of salesmen and con men, both enjoy unrealistic exaggeration. Your statements would not be out of place 20 years ago when the iPhone dropped. Your statements would not be out of place 3 years ago before every NFT went to 0. LLMs could hit an unsolvably hard wall next year and settle into a niche of utility. AI could solve a lengthy list of outstanding architectural and technical problems…

At the heart of it all is language. Logic gates to assembly to high level programming languages are a progression of turning human language into computed processes. LLMs need to be tuned to recognize ambiguity of intention in human language instructions, following up with clarifying questions. Perhaps quantum computing will facilitate the process, the AI holding many fuzzy possibilities simultaneously, seeking to "collapse" them into discrete pathways by asking for more input from a human.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#580

Post by eric-burel »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #540
eric-burel wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developers haven't even started extracting the value of LLMs with agent architectures yet. Using an LLM UI like open ai is like we just figured fire and you use it to warm you hands (still impressive when you think about it, but not worth the burns), while LLM development is about building car engines (here is you return on investment).

> Developers haven't even started extracting the value of LLMs with agent architectures yet. For sure there is a portion of developers who don't care about the future, are not interested in current developements and just live as before hoping nothing will change. But the rest already gave it a try and realized tools like Claude Code can give excellent results for small codebases to fail miserably at more complex task…

This is a bit developer centric, I am much more impressed by the opportunities I see in consulting rather than applying LLMs to dev tasks. And I am still impressed by the code it can output eventhough we are still in the funny intern stage in this area.
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