It sucks and I hate it but this is an incredible steam engine engineer, who invented complex gasket designs and belt based power delivery mechanisms lamenting the loss of steam as the dominant technology. We are entering a new era and method for humans to tell computers what to do. We can marvel at the ingenuity that went into technology of the past, but the world will move onto the combustion engine and electricity and there’s just not much we can do about it other than very strong regulation, and fighting for the technology to benefit the people rather than just the share price.
Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
61–70 of 1001 posts
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#62From my point of view, many programmers hate Gen AI because they feel like they've lost a lot of power. With LLMs advancing, they go from kings of the company to normal employees. This is not unlike many industries where some technology or machine automates much of what they do and they resist. For programmers, they lose the power to command a huge salary writing software and to "bully" non-technical people in the co…
You're absolutely right.
But no one is safe. Soon the AI will be better at CEOing.
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#63The cat's out of the bag. Even if US companies stop building data centers, China isn't going to stop and even if AI/LLMs are a bubble, do we just stop and let China/other countries take the lead?
It's an old argument of tech capitalists that nothing can be done because technology's advance is like a physical law of nature. It's not; we can control it and we can work with other countries, including adversaries, to control it. For example, look at nuclear weapons. The nuclear arms race and proliferation were largely stopped.
Technology improves every year; better chips that consume less electricity come out every year. Apple's M1 chip shows you don't need x86, which consumes more electricity and runs cooler for computing.
Tech capitalists also make improvements to technology every year
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#64From my point of view, many programmers hate Gen AI because they feel like they've lost a lot of power. With LLMs advancing, they go from kings of the company to normal employees. This is not unlike many industries where some technology or machine automates much of what they do and they resist. For programmers, they lose the power to command a huge salary writing software and to "bully" non-technical people in the co…
Very true... AI engineers earning $100mn, I doubt Rob Pike earnt that. Maybe $10mn.
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#65It sucks and I hate it but this is an incredible steam engine engineer, who invented complex gasket designs and belt based power delivery mechanisms lamenting the loss of steam as the dominant technology. We are entering a new era and method for humans to tell computers what to do. We can marvel at the ingenuity that went into technology of the past, but the world will move onto the combustion engine and electricity…
Your metaphor doesn’t make sense. What to LLMs run on? It’s still steam and belt based systems all the way down.
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#66The cat's out of the bag. Even if US companies stop building data centers, China isn't going to stop and even if AI/LLMs are a bubble, do we just stop and let China/other countries take the lead?
The world is bigger than US + China.
I'm not sure what your point is. The current two leading countries in the world on the AI/LLMs front are the US and China.
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#67From my point of view, many programmers hate Gen AI because they feel like they've lost a lot of power. With LLMs advancing, they go from kings of the company to normal employees. This is not unlike many industries where some technology or machine automates much of what they do and they resist. For programmers, they lose the power to command a huge salary writing software and to "bully" non-technical people in the co…
Really think it’s entirely wrong to label someone as a bully for not conforming to current, perhaps bad, practices.
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#68From my point of view, many programmers hate Gen AI because they feel like they've lost a lot of power. With LLMs advancing, they go from kings of the company to normal employees. This is not unlike many industries where some technology or machine automates much of what they do and they resist. For programmers, they lose the power to command a huge salary writing software and to "bully" non-technical people in the co…
This is the reality and started happening at faster pace. A junior engineer is able to produce something interesting faster without too much attitude.
Everybody in the company envy the developers and they respect they get especially the sales people.
The golden era of devs as kings started crumbling.
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#69From my point of view, many programmers hate Gen AI because they feel like they've lost a lot of power. With LLMs advancing, they go from kings of the company to normal employees. This is not unlike many industries where some technology or machine automates much of what they do and they resist. For programmers, they lose the power to command a huge salary writing software and to "bully" non-technical people in the co…
He's mainly talking about environmental & social consequences now and in the future. He personally is beyond reach of such consequences given his seniority and age, so this speculative tangent is detracting from his main point, to put it charitably.
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#70From my point of view, many programmers hate Gen AI because they feel like they've lost a lot of power. With LLMs advancing, they go from kings of the company to normal employees. This is not unlike many industries where some technology or machine automates much of what they do and they resist. For programmers, they lose the power to command a huge salary writing software and to "bully" non-technical people in the co…
I understand that you are writing your general opinion, but I have a feeling Rob Pike's feelings go a little bit deeper than this.