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This time is different

shkspr.mobi

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Re: This time is different

#71

Post by positron26 »

plastic-enjoyer wrote: post #61
positron26 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> most of the people that were the loudest won't say they were wrong I was so expecting to find this wind-up aimed at those peddling the "AI is hype" laziness. It's laziness because they have little CS fundamentals to base such claims on, and the deductions can be made, just not clearly to people who need to study a lot more. It's like watching an invisible train (visible to those with strong CS) rolling down the tra…

> It's laziness because they have little CS fundamentals to base such claims on So, what CS fundamentals do you need to evaluate if AI is the real thing, or will disappoint in the future? Until a few months ago, coding agents were met with skepticism, until Anthropic introduced their new model and, with it, a hype train that cannot be rationally justified. Look, SOTA LLMs, and coding agents in particular, are impress…

> However, current predictions about the future of software development (and the world in general) are speculative.

It's amazing to me how those willing to seize on the speculative nature of any ANY uncertainty cannot recognize the inherent uncertainty of the inverse.

> what CS fundamentals do you need

1. Tarski's undefinability theorem 2. Gödel's incompleteness theorems 3. Curry Howard correspondence

And a lot of exposure to deductive reasoning, vague ideas of automated theorem proving and formalization.

I won't pretend its easy, but let's be clear, a small fraction of people who know things are being forced to entertain the hysteria of a vast majority who are unwilling to know things and just go around beating their chests and will continue doing so until the train hits them.

There are 2-3 minor architectural changes in between now and what I would identify as a completely unbounded AGI with clearly discernible dynamic, self-defined objective functions and self-defined procedures for training and inference. It can be done in megabytes. Oh god. Get me out of this forum. I wish to return to my code editor.

Re: This time is different

#72

Post by casey2 »

edent wrote: post #14
troosevelt wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not really saying anything, though. For every tech hype that has failed, there is another that's changed the world. This IS changing the world and our industry, regardless of whether it reaches the heights of the hypers. I mean you're just stating that sometimes tech doesn't meet it's hype. What's insightful about that? It's a given; cherry-picking examples doesn't prove your case.

The thing is, the successful tech rarely get the excessive hype. MRNA vaccines. Where are the countless breathless articles about these literal life saving tech? A few, maybe, but very few dudes pumping out asinine "white papers" and trying to ride the hype train. Solar and battery. Again, lots of real world impact but remarkably few unhinged blowhards writing endless newsletters about how this changes everything. I'…

The web? GLP-1s? 5G? The newton was mega-hyped, failed but Apple came back with the iPhone. All the dot com failures that eventually became viable businesses (so viable in-fact that sfgate has to reach back 26 years to write their stinkpiece [1])

Hype is often early, in 10-20 years we'll start seeing the value as the rest of the world catches up

https://www.sfgate.com/food/article/rise-fall-bay-area-start...

Re: This time is different

#73

Post by rawling »

thesmart wrote: post #64
CompoundEyes wrote: post #53

I’m doing enterprise coding tasks that used to take a month of whole team coordination from mockups to through development and testing in 3 days now. It’s all test driven development, codex 5.3 and a small team of two people who know how to hold it right orchestrating the agents. There’s no reason not to work this way. The sociotechnical engineering aspects of this change are fascinating and rewarding to solve.

[flagged]

What job are you in where you can even come up with problems that -need- 30-40k lines of code a day?

Re: This time is different

#74

Post by tsumnia »

edent wrote: post #9
TeamDman wrote: post #7

I enjoyed Dave Cridland's comment more than the article. The article is dismissive of AI and other technologies in an unsubstantiated way. New things are happening and it's exciting. "AI bad" statements without examples feel very head-in-sand.

OP here. Unless you're still watching Quibi on your curved TV, delivered via WiMax then, yeah, I'd say it was pretty bloody substantiated. I like technology. I made a decent living from it. But if I had chased every hyped fad that was promised as the next big thing, I doubt I'd be as happy as I am now.

Just chiming in to say thanks for the Pratchett quote! I dare say he's about to beat out Douglass Adams for my top author. Feets of Clay and Hogfather should be must reads for people dealing with AI right now imo.

Re: This time is different

#75

Post by _se »

thesmart wrote: post #64
CompoundEyes wrote: post #53

I’m doing enterprise coding tasks that used to take a month of whole team coordination from mockups to through development and testing in 3 days now. It’s all test driven development, codex 5.3 and a small team of two people who know how to hold it right orchestrating the agents. There’s no reason not to work this way. The sociotechnical engineering aspects of this change are fascinating and rewarding to solve.

[flagged]

If you are pushing 40k lines of code per day you are an idiot and should be fired.

Re: This time is different

#78

Post by mortenjorck »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #69

The hype around AI is admittedly annoying - especially from the Wall St crowd who don't know how to pronounce 'Nvidia' correctly, and who haven't managed to internalize the fact that the chatbots they use hallucinate. It really is 'different' , though, in the same way the Internet was. It took about 20 years (ie: since The World ISP) for the Internet to work its way into every facet of life. And the dot com bubble po…

"AI is a bubble!"

"AI will change everything!"

Few seem to understand that both of the above can be true. The parallel you draw to the internet revolution is apt; dot-coms were both a bubble and changed everything.

Re: This time is different

#79

Post by dvt »

voiper1 wrote: post #62

>Blockchain... NFTs >The problem is, the same dudes who were pumped for all of that bollocks now won't stop wanging on about Artificial Intelligence. I was firmly in the camp that blockchain was not a viable solution to any problem, and that NFTs sound stupid. I think AI is much different than that list. So, there goes your argument?

Yeah that comparison doesn't pass the smell test. Blockchain/crypto were purely financial instruments and for better or worse, a new financial instrument is very different than a new tech innovation; tbh there was a thin veneer of tech when it comes to crypto/blockchain, but the magic was because of the money, not because of the tech.

AI is different because the magic clearly is because of the tech. The fact that we get this emergent behavior out of (what essentially amounts to) polynomial fitting is pretty surprising even for the most skeptical of critics.

Re: This time is different

#80

Post by ericmcer »

_se wrote: post #75
thesmart wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If you are pushing 40k lines of code per day you are an idiot and should be fired.

yeah... maybe he is working alone or bootstrapping a brand new thing?

Otherwise his entire team must collectively groan when a Slack message appears: "Got a new PR ready for review everybody!"

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