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Why does AI feel so different?

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Re: Why does AI feel so different?

#71

Post by yobbo »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #56
yobbo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an interesting example but it can't be scaled up to have meaningful impact on the level of the economy or society. The effect right now of LLMs is reducing friction for some people with certain problems, but big important problems are already optimised to much higher levels.

I disagree completely. You seem to believe the venture capital money machine that tells you technology and innovation must always be a major disruptive force and solve big, important problems. Most problems we encounter in daily life are small. If a technology helps solve them faster, at a lower cost, or in a way that was not possible before, I believe it can scale very well. People just have to get accustomed to it.…

It sounds like we agree? LLMs are great for finding fixes for lawnmowers and other things. Before, easier fixes for those problems weren't valuable enough to warrant any investment.

Therefore, current LLMs won't be a complete upheaval like some are fearing.

Things like AlphaFold might create upheavals in their respective fields but they are very specialised. I'm more enthusiastic about that than chatbots.

Re: Why does AI feel so different?

#72

Post by eru »

qweiopqweiop wrote: post #63
eru wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where's the monopoly (or rather oligopoly) you are talking about? There's many models offered by many companies and labs that are close enough to state of the art. Many of them are completely open source or at least have open weights. You might complain about outsourcing your thinking to a machine, sure. But there's no monopoly nor oligopoly.

Google, currently thought of as the AI leader has shown time and time again they will resort to monopolistic practices. I really hope open source models are the way, but the fact is the vast majority of day to day usage of LLMs is on models owned by multi-bullion dollar companies. And even if they're not monopolies, people being influenced by companies to this extent should worry people.

It's news to me that Google is the AI leader. Where did you get that information / impression? I'd assumed that if anyone is a leader, it's OpenAI, but even their lead seems pretty tenuous at best.

And people trying shading things doesn't make a monopoly. Especially if there's plenty of competition.

Re: Why does AI feel so different?

#73

Post by eru »

mna_ wrote: post #62
eru wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dot-com boom of the late 1990s also had plenty of VC money. Back then and today, you find plenty of true believers, and plenty of people who are in it for the money. Similar, when people financed eg canals and railways or factories in the past, many participants cared about the money. (Or are you saying it's not about the money, but specifically VCs?)

>Similar, when people financed eg canals and railways or factories in the past, many participants cared about the money. Those things were tangible and their advantages/disadvantages more immediate than something intangible like ``AI''.

Hindsight is 20/20. Past breakthroughs look obvious and immediately beneficial in retrospect.

Btw, there were plenty of people who thought electricity or the internet were just toys or fads.

Re: Why does AI feel so different?

#74

Post by scotty79 »

bamboozled wrote: post #61
scotty79 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Year ago with enough prompting it could write a function for me that did something conceptually simple but tedious. I tried Windsurf over the last 3 days. It can write complex game mechanics logic in multiple files and refactor code when told to. I can talk to it using language of the domain I just made up and I can talk to it using language that developers use when they talk about the code. It can solve bugs that wo…

Are you familiar with the garnet hype cycle? https://www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/gartner-hy... I'm doing everything you're doing and probably more with Claude code (I 'let it run'). I'd say I too have been through a few of the different phases of the gartner hype cycle now. As I said it's a good tool, it's far from being an "auto-pilot".

I don't care about the hype. If you put me in a cave for last 5 years and today gave me Windsurf and told me nothing beyond that a machine does that, I wouldn't believe you. All of it was literally science fiction 5 years ago. This literally replaces a person that I would have to hire to pursue my ideas.

Re: Why does AI feel so different?

#75

Post by thefz »

donperignon wrote: post #5

It’s the first revolutionary technology that his first goal is to make money for VC investors instead of really change the world, the perceived benefit for society is just a sub-product of the ponzi scheme behind those VC firms.

Not even a revolutionary technology, it's just goind to speed up web searching for those who can't and be a hindrance for those who already do.

Re: Why does AI feel so different?

#76

Post by thefz »

ec109685 wrote: post #17

These are poor examples: > Why do I need to know what quarks are, or how steam engines work? Why do I need to know anything about anything? I can just look it up with AI Literally all possible with Google and YouTube.

> Literally all possible with Google and YouTube.

Literally all possible with school

Re: Why does AI feel so different?

#77

Post by mykowebhn »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #69
mykowebhn wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100 percent. The same thing happened with the "Internet". It was amazing when it first started getting popular with the first web browsers in the 90s. There was so much potential with it. Now look what's happened to the Internet.

It still can be amazing, more amazing than it was in the 90s. You could make a website this afternoon and host it on your phone. But ~nobody can be bothered, because easier centralised platforms exist. The problem, if you want to call it that, is purely social/cultural.

Have you ever heard of Geocities?

Re: Why does AI feel so different?

#78

Post by AstralStorm »

akoboldfrying wrote: post #68
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s the first revolutionary technology that his first goal is to make money for VC investors instead of really change the world Is that true? Steam technology and factory machinery were created and used to make the pit, mill, and factory owners more money than with human workers. The railway mania in the 1840s was a period where vast sums of money were invested in railway lines and engine technology. https://en.wi…

Exactly. This idea that AI is unique in making its backers money is ridiculous. Everything in capitalism has always worked this way.

The question is, what is the actual paradigm that's being shifted here? Employing people?

It's definitely not wanting to talk to people, and even employment is a bit of a practical joke for now.

Comparing with Internet or electricity here is ridiculous thus far as well.

If we had actual intelligence instead of pretty nifty text robots, then it would be perhaps more true.

Re: Why does AI feel so different?

#79

Post by AstralStorm »

eru wrote: post #73
mna_ wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Similar, when people financed eg canals and railways or factories in the past, many participants cared about the money. Those things were tangible and their advantages/disadvantages more immediate than something intangible like ``AI''.

Hindsight is 20/20. Past breakthroughs look obvious and immediately beneficial in retrospect. Btw, there were plenty of people who thought electricity or the internet were just toys or fads.

True, but original electricity stayed the same, even the turbine generators still in use are very similar. (Same with steam power, still in use today.) Batteries are improved but general operation is the same. There's many more devices using it, mostly for the better.

We don't even know if we want LLMs in more devices. Likewise we likely do not want Internet/email in every toaster.

LLMs staying the same would be the death of this technology. Even minor improvements don't matter enough.

Voice activated devices are not necessarily paradigm shifting either. We had these for over 25 years now.

Re: Why does AI feel so different?

#80

Post by uncircle »

crystal_revenge wrote: post #16

AI feels different because quietly we are all aware, to differing degrees of comfort, that the world around us is collapsing. We see the escalating effects of climate change impacting day-to-day life in ways we were told would only happen in the far future, witnessing genocide become a normal part of the news critique of which can mean serious personal consequences, we're watching the United States transform into Sta…

Excellent insight, would explain why opinions of an AI-driven future tend to be very extreme. Assuming the vast majority of us see a world in rapid collapse, that not even politicians have a decent answer to [1], either AI is the shining technological hope that drives us to a better future, or it is yet another acceleration towards the singularity of shit our modern societies have been crumbling towards.

As an extreme AI doomer, I can now respect and understand the position of AI optimists: they are both expressions of the same critique towards the status quo. What scares me then are those that feel the world is fine, we’re not collapsing, and AI is just another technology that is here to stay but won’t amount to much, and we’re all gonna be alright.

1: see HyperNormalisation by Adam Curtis

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