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AI is different

antirez.com

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Re: AI is different

#621

Post by m4nu3l »

azemetre wrote: post #618
kortilla wrote: post #606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments are not the source of wealth. They are just a requisite component to allow people to create it and maintain it.

This doesn't pass the sniff test, governments generate wealth all the time. Public education, public healthcare, public research, public housing. These are all programs that generate an enormous amount of wealth and allow citizens to flourish.

In economics, you aren't necessarily creating wealth just because your final output has value. The value of the final good or service has to be higher than the inputs for you to be creating wealth. I could take a functioning boat and scrap it, sell the scrap metal that has value. However, I destroyed wealth because the boat was worth more. Even if you are creating wealth, but the inputs have better uses and can create more wealth for the same cost, you're still paying in opportunity cost. So things are more complicated than that.

Re: AI is different

#622

Post by gdubs »

AI has been improving at a very rapid pace, which means that a lot of people have really outdated priors. I see this all the time online where people are dismissive about AI in a way that suggests it's been a while since they last checked-in on the capabilities of models. They wrote off the coding ability of ChatGPT on version 3.5, for instance, and have missed all the advancements that have happened since. Or they talk about hallucination and haven't tried Deep Research as an alternative to traditional web-search.

Then there's a tendency to be so 'anti' that there's an assumption that anyone reporting that the tools are accomplishing truly impressive and useful things must be an 'AI booster' or shill. Or they assume that person must not have been a very good engineer in the first place, etc.

Really is one of those examples of the quote, "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few."

It's a rapidly evolving field, and unless you actually spend some time kicking the tires on the models every so often, you're just basing your opinions on outdated experiences or what everyone else is saying about it.

Re: AI is different

#623

Post by SoftTalker »

mindcrime wrote: post #196
andrei_says_ wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure how exactly politicians will jump from “minimal wages don’t have to be livable wages” and “people who are able to work should absolutely not have access to free healthcare” and “any tax-supported benefits are actually undeserved entitlements and should be eliminated” to “everyone deserves a universal basic income”.

Not sure how exactly politicians will jump from ... Well, if one believes that the day will come when their choices will be "make that jump" or "the guillotine", then it doesn't seem completely outlandish. Not saying that day will come, but if it did...

> or "the guillotine"

Or even simply being voted out.

Re: AI is different

#624

Post by antidog »

antirez wrote: post #461
mgradowski wrote: post #459

I wouldn't trust a taxi driver's predictions about the future of economics and society, why would I trust some database developer's? Actually, I take that back. I might trust the taxi driver.

The point is that you don't have to "trust" me, you need to argue with me, we need to discuss about the future. This way, we can form ideas that we can use to understand if a given politician or the other will be right, when we will be called to vote. We can also form stronger ideas to try to influence other people that right now have a vague understanding of what AI is and what it could be. We will be the ones that…

Life is too short to have philosophical debates with every self promoting dev. I'd rather chat about C style but that would hurt your feelings. Man I miss the days of why the lucky stiff, he was actually cool.

Re: AI is different

#625

Post by Scarblac »

keiferski wrote: post #420
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…

Just to further elaborate on this with another example: the writing industry. (Technical, professional, marketing, etc. writing - not books.) The default logic is that AI will just replace all writing tasks, and writers will go extinct. What actually seems to be happening, however, is this: - obviously written-by-AI copywriting is perceived very negatively by the market - companies want writers that understand how to…

Seems a bit optimistic to me. Companies may well accept a lower quality than they used to get if it's far cheaper. We may just get shittier writing across the board.

(and shittier software, etc)

Re: AI is different

#626

Post by azemetre »

m4nu3l wrote: post #621
azemetre wrote: post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This doesn't pass the sniff test, governments generate wealth all the time. Public education, public healthcare, public research, public housing. These are all programs that generate an enormous amount of wealth and allow citizens to flourish.

In economics, you aren't necessarily creating wealth just because your final output has value. The value of the final good or service has to be higher than the inputs for you to be creating wealth. I could take a functioning boat and scrap it, sell the scrap metal that has value. However, I destroyed wealth because the boat was worth more. Even if you are creating wealth, but the inputs have better uses and can creat…

This isn't related to what I was commenting on where the other poster came across as not seeing government by the governed as having economic worth.

Re: AI is different

#627

Post by latexr »

randallsquared wrote: post #557
latexr wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Mark Rober did some field tests on that exact difference. LiDAR passed all of them, while Tesla’s camera-only approach failed half. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQJL3htsDyQ

I'm not sure the guy who did the Tesla crash test hoax and (partially?) faked his famous glitterbomb pranks is the best source. I would separately verify anything he says at this point.

> Tesla crash test hoax

First I’m hearing of that. In doing a search, I see a lot of speculation but no proof. Knowing the shenanigans perpetrated by Musk and his hardcore fans, I’ll take theories with a grain of salt.

> and (partially?) faked his famous glitterbomb pranks

That one I remember, and the story is that the fake reactions were done by a friend of a friend who borrowed the device. I can’t know for sure, but I do believe someone might do that. Ultimately, Rober took accountability, recognised that hurt his credibility, and edited out that part from the video.

https://www.engadget.com/2018-12-21-viral-glitter-bomb-video...

I have no reason to protect Rober, but also have no reason to discredit him until proof to the contrary. I don’t follow YouTube drama but even so I’ve seen enough people unjustly dragged through the mud to not immediately fall for baseless accusations.

One I bumped into recently was someone describing the “fall” of another YouTuber, and in one case showed a clip from an interview and said “and even the interviewer said X about this person”, with footage. Then I watched the full video and at one point the interviewer says (paraphrased) “and please no one take this out of context, if you think I’m saying X, you’re missing the point”.

So, sure, let’s be critical about the information we’re fed, but that cuts both ways.

Re: AI is different

#628

Post by thatfrenchguy »

iwontberude wrote: post #600
m4nu3l wrote: post #595

>We are not there, yet, but if AI could replace a sizable amount of workers, the economic system will be put to a very hard test. Moreover, companies could be less willing to pay for services that their internal AIs can handle or build from scratch. Nor is it possible to imagine a system where a few mega companies are the only providers of intelligence: either AI will be eventually a commodity, or the governments wou…

I think the bigger relief is that I know humans won’t put up with a two tiered system of haves and have nots forever and eventually we will get wealth redistribution. Government is the ultimate source of all wealth and organization, corporations are built on top of it and thus are subservient.

I mean, you can imagine a public bureaucracy being bad at redistributing too, that’s a lot of governments in the world

Re: AI is different

#629

Post by azemetre »

m4nu3l wrote: post #608
iwontberude wrote: post #600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the bigger relief is that I know humans won’t put up with a two tiered system of haves and have nots forever and eventually we will get wealth redistribution. Government is the ultimate source of all wealth and organization, corporations are built on top of it and thus are subservient.

Having your life dependent on a government that controls all AIs would be much worse. The government could end up controlling something more intelligent than the entire rest of the population. I have no doubt it will use it in a bad way. I hope that AIs will end up distributed enough. Having a government controlling it is the opposite of that.

Why would this be worse than the current situation of private actors accountable to no one controlling this technology? It's not like I can convince Zuckerberg to change his ways.

At least with a democratic government I have means to try and build a coalition then enact change. The alternative requires having money and that seems like an inherently undemocratic system.

Why can't AIs be controlled with democratic institutions? Why are democratic institutions worse? This doesn't seem to be the case to me.

Private institutions shouldn't be allowed to control such systems, they should be compelled to give them to the public.

Re: AI is different

#630

Post by anuramat »

layer8 wrote: post #505
djeastm wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>our clients are still a long way from being able to use those So it's simply a matter of time >often too erratic to be useful So sometimes it is useful.

Too erratic to be net useful.

Even for code reviews/test generation/documentation search?
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