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The future of everything is lies, I guess – Part 5: Annoyances

aphyr.com

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Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess – Part 5: Annoyances

#61

Post by LogicFailsMe »

Leomuck wrote: post #5

So basically more ways of trying to make people buy things, do things, think things than before? I feel like our whole world more and more circulates around manipulation and the absence of truth and discourse. Then again, I do think LLMs are an incredible technological achievement. The issue is not so much what they do or that they exist, but how they are utilized. Right now, they are utilized to further the class di…

Local models and powerful consumer HW and an informed populace that doesn't hate STEM, but that's not good for the shareholder value so you get expensive everything everywhere all at once instead. And if you dare question the mindset of hating on STEM whilst being addicted to its fruits, that just means you're another one of those maximally SV-aligned sociopaths so why bother? Evolve and let the chips fall where they may because I don't see any other options that play out in the idiocracy craving for strong confidently wrong leadership.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess – Part 5: Annoyances

#62

Post by _doctor_love »

I've been enjoying these articles by 'aphyr and I think they raise important points. Primarily though, they read to me as polemics of a curiously American nature.

The pattern goes something like this:

- this development is bad

- companies will be unrestrained in their use of this development

- there will be no rules so they can do whatever they want

- we are all fucked as a result

But then...propose that we make some laws to put rules around this stuff, also known as regulations and everybody goes "whoa hold up hold up hold up...I dunno about that part."

Dear friends - America has always been this way. Study your 19th and 20th century history. Companies will exploit the shit out of us unless we put some rules in place to prevent it. Yes, that might mean making less money in the short term as regulations cause friction. But in the long term it means we can have a better and actually livable society.

(For what it's worth I'm an American and not an uppity European or Australian taking potshots from across the pond; no offense to Euros or Aussies intended, love you guys)

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess – Part 5: Annoyances

#63

Post by bitexploder »

Hoasi wrote: post #27

The erosion and further diffusion of responsibility is the trend that worries me the most, since it’s already how all mid-size organisations, businesses and institutions alike, operate by design, and LLMs are likely to make that much worse.

Just need your own LLMs to exhaust them. The future seems like it will be owned by whoever can automate with LLMs in whatever problem domain there is.

My agent will be in touch with yours, I guess.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess – Part 5: Annoyances

#64

Post by layer8 »

Scholmo wrote: post #40
davidclark wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>LLM when it came out, was perfect as an interface between a system and a normal human. Statements like this make me feel like I live in a different universe with a different implementation of LLMs than other internet commenters.

Do you want to add any argument so we can discuss this? I mean, did you not write with ChatGPT and were surprised how well it response? I'm schocked how well i can talk to an AI through some app like Gemini or ChatGTP. A few years ago i couldn't imagine building such a generic system which such high quality of understanding. I was playing around with dragon naturally speaking and similiar dictation tools 10 years ago…

Not the OP, but you wrote “LLM when it came out, was perfect as an interface between a system and a normal human”. That’s a specific and very encompassing claim. I can only think of very simplistic systems (like a microwave oven maybe) where a current LLM could function perfectly as the sole command interface, much less when LLMs first became available. For systems of any significant complexity, it tends to turn into an exercise in frustration and failure modes when the LLM is your only interface (and frequently even when it isn’t).

An LLM can enhance the interface of a system and can be really useful in that despite its imperfections. But that’s a very different claim.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess – Part 5: Annoyances

#65

Post by fandorin »

embedding-shape wrote: post #43
fandorin wrote: post #41

„Agentic commerce means handing your credit card to a Large Language Model” - this is simply not true. LLMs/Agents will never get any credit/debit card details, they will be just an interface.

Full quote: > People are very excited about “agentic commerce”. Agentic commerce means handing your credit card to a Large Language Model, giving it access to the Internet, telling it to buy something, and calling it in a loop until something exciting happens. I think you're confusing this for the other side of things. The article talks about how some people already use OpenClaw and the variations, give them access t…

Ok, in this case I misunderstood author's point here. "Agentic commerce" for me is a framework that networks (MC, Visa) and other big players in the ecosystem are working on. So it's far from "i'll give my credit cards details to openclaw and hope for the best". Obviously I know that a lot of people do that, unfortunately...

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess – Part 5: Annoyances

#66

Post by kevg123 »

layer8 wrote: post #60
kevg123 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't even hyping it though. I shared it among friends to spark discussion. Sure, there's some hyperbole, but I found it thought provoking. (FYI, I didn't downvote your comment)

I wouldn’t necessarily read a lengthy blog post either just because some friend recommended it to me, and conversely I wouldn’t expect a friend to necessarily read it if I was recommending it without being prompted for recommendations. There needs to be some additional incentive and/or interest. Also, I’m reading this comment thread instead of TFA because I didn’t find the previous part I read that great. And I’m not…

I didn't provide much context but, 1) I've had deep conversations with these friends for years based on long articles or videos, and 2) I recommend maybe one or two long form items per year and they used to always review them without, "TLDR?"

So my main concern here is that my experience may be a microcosm of the shallowing of discussions correlated with some people's increased use of AI. That worries me.

It's more of a meta point to me. I get that this series isn't landing for some people, yourself included, but the meta-observation is that given something of roughly equal substantiveness as before, these friends' motivations for long form content and discussion seem to have atrophied, perhaps largely due to the addition of the AI summary reality cipher to their lives.

Of course, correlation isn't causation. Maybe they both just got older and more lazy, but given their reliance on AI summaries in other debates happening recently, I'm worried.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess – Part 5: Annoyances

#67

Post by slopinthebag »

0xbadcafebee wrote: post #6

This is doomerism. Yes, everything will get worse. But everything will also get better. Such is progress. (for every one of these examples of annoyances, I can think of two ways to use AI to get around the annoyance. not clever programmer things, but things an average person who learns to use Codex or Claude Desktop to operate their desktop will know) Most of these annoyances are also things that existed before AI, a…

> Yes, everything will get worse. But everything will also get better.

That is not known. Things could easily just get worse, and IMO that is far more likely. Every civilisation has collapsed, ours is clearly in decline, and AI could likely accelerate that decline.

I'm not exactly seeing the progress here. AI helps us write some software a bit faster? Doesn't seem revolutionary to me. Is it having any significant impact on peoples lives other than the various economic forces? I'm not seeing it.

> Yeah, because you voted with your dollars

In our system? No. In crony capitalism the companies who win do it through manipulating the political system. And when the government inflates the currency and destroys people buying power they simply cannot afford to "vote with their dollars". This is hilariously naive.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess – Part 5: Annoyances

#68

Post by SoftTalker »

Leomuck wrote: post #5

So basically more ways of trying to make people buy things, do things, think things than before? I feel like our whole world more and more circulates around manipulation and the absence of truth and discourse. Then again, I do think LLMs are an incredible technological achievement. The issue is not so much what they do or that they exist, but how they are utilized. Right now, they are utilized to further the class di…

> I feel like our whole world more and more circulates around manipulation

Hate to break it to you but it's always been this way, and it was easier in the past when information was so much more expensive to distribute.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess – Part 5: Annoyances

#69

Post by SilverElfin »

_doctor_love wrote: post #62

I've been enjoying these articles by 'aphyr and I think they raise important points. Primarily though, they read to me as polemics of a curiously American nature. The pattern goes something like this: - this development is bad - companies will be unrestrained in their use of this development - there will be no rules so they can do whatever they want - we are all fucked as a result But then...propose that we make some…

It’s not that people are against regulations totally, but that the structure of society is broken. People with wealth, including corporations, can influence and control everything with money. Legislators are easily bribed. Lawsuits are expensive and take years. It’s hard to make anything happen unless you’re already rich or connected enough to access the right people.

The real issue is new amendments are needed. But that’s hard. You need 75% of states ratifying. And that seems impossible today on any topic.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess – Part 5: Annoyances

#70

Post by SoftTalker »

Lerc wrote: post #34

A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER MAKE A MANAGEMENT DECISION —IBM internal training, 1979 It took me a while to realise that the premise is saying the same thing as the reason why we have so many "Computer says no" experiences today. The conclusion only follows if you want someone to be accountable. If you want to avoid being accountable, computers should make all management dec…

You're misinterpreting the implication. A better phrasing might be:

A computer can never be held accountable. Therefore, since all management decisions must have accountability, a computer must never make them.

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