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AI is different

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Re: AI is different

#711

Post by atleastoptimal »

dmead wrote: post #680
gdubs wrote: post #622

AI has been improving at a very rapid pace, which means that a lot of people have really outdated priors.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 t…

Is there anything you can tell me that will help me drop the nagging feeling that gradient descent trained models will just never be good? I understand all of what you said, but I can't get over that fact that the term AI is being used for these architectures. It seems like the industry is just trying to do a cool parlor trick in convincing the masses this is somehow AI from science fiction. Maybe I'm being overly cy…

The thing is AI is already "good" for a lot of things. It all depends on your definition of "good" and what you require of an AI model.

It can do a lot of things that are generally very effective. High reliability semantic parsing from images is just one thing that modern LLM's are very reliable at.

Re: AI is different

#712

Post by layer8 »

anuramat wrote: post #630
layer8 wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Too erratic to be net useful.

Even for code reviews/test generation/documentation search?

Documentation search I might agree, but that wasn’t really the context, I think. Code reviews is hit and miss, but maybe doesn’t hurt too much. They aren’t better at writing good tests than at writing good code in the first place.

Re: AI is different

#713

Post by mdaniel »

monknomo wrote: post #589
aurareturn wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more software AI can write, the more of a commodity software will become, and the harder the value of software will tank. It's not magic. Total size of the software industry will still increase. Today, a car repairshop might have a need for a custom software that will make their operations 20% more efficient. But they don't have nearly enough money to hire a software engineer to build it for them. With AI, it mig…

this seems pretty unlikely to me. I am not sure I have seen any non-digital business desire anything more custom than "a slightly better spreadsheet". Like, sure I can imagine a desire for something along the lines of "jailbroken vw scanner" but I think you are grossly overestimating how much software impacts a regular business's efficiency

As an alternative perspective, if this hypothetical MCP future materializes and the repair shop could ask Gemini to contact all the vendors, find the part that's actually in stock, preferably within 25 miles, sort by price, order it, and (if we're really going out on a limb) get a Waymo to go pick it up, it will free up the tradeperson to do what they're skilled at doing

For comparison to how things are today:

- contacting vendors requires using the telephone, sitting on hold, talking to a person, possibly navigating the phone tree to reach the parts department

- it would need to understand redirection, so if call #1 says "not us, but Jimmy over at Foo Parts has it"

- finding the part requires understanding the difference between the actual part and an OEM compatible one

- ordering it would require finding the payment options they accept that intersect with those the caller has access to, which could include an existing account (p.o. or store credit)

- ordering it would require understanding "ok, it'll be ready in 30 minutes" or "it's on the shelf right now" type nuance

Now, all of those things are maybe achievable today, with the small asterisk that hallucinations are fatal to a process that needs to work

Re: AI is different

#714

Post by marstall »

monknomo wrote: post #572
marstall wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that was because the economy was controlled/corrupt and not allowed to flourish (and create job-creating technologies like the internet and AI).

I'm puzzled how AI is supposed to be a job creating technology. It is supposed to either wholesale replace jobs, or make workers so efficient that fewer of them are required. This is supposed to make digital and intellectually produced goods cheaper (although, given reproduction is free, the goods themselves are already pretty cheap). To me it looks like we'll see well paying jobs decrease, digital services get cheap…

in the long term: simply that from the spinning jenny on, the history of automation is the history of exponentially expanding the workforce and population. when products are cheaper, demand increases, new populations enter the market and create demand for a higher class of goods and services - which sustains/grows employment.

in the short term: there is a hiring boom within the AI and related industries.

Re: AI is different

#715

Post by layer8 »

xpe wrote: post #702
layer8 wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We already fail to plan for a lot of high-impact things that are exceedingly likely. Maybe we should tackle those first.

I am so tired of people acting like planning for an uncertain world is a zero sum game, decided by one central actor in a single pipeline execution model. I’ll unpack this below. The argument above (or some version of it) gets repeated over and over, but it is deeply flawed for various reasons. The argument implies that “we” is a single agent that must do some set of things before other things. In the real world, dif…

I was more hinting at that if we fail to plan for the obvious stuff, what makes you think that we’ll be better at planning for the more obscure possibilities. The former should be much easier, but since we fail at it, we should first concentrate on getting better at that.

Re: AI is different

#716

Post by Disposal8433 »

rootusrootus wrote: post #659
Davidzheng wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry this doesn't make sense to me. Given tier one is much richer and more powerful than tier two, any natural resources and land traded at tier two is only at mercy of tier one not interfering. As soon as tier one needs some land or natural resources from tier two, tier two needs are automatically superseded. It's like animal community bear human civ

If tier 2 amounts to 95% of the population, then the amount of power currently held by tier 1 is meaningless. It is only power so long as the 95% remain cooperative.

> the amount of power currently held by tier 1 is meaningless.

It's happening right now with rich people and lobbies.

> It is only power so long as the 95% remain cooperative

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Television_consumption#Contemp... I rest my case.

Re: AI is different

#717

Post by lopatin »

on_the_train wrote: post #708
gdubs wrote: post #622

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 t…

But the reports are from shills. The impact of ai is almost non existent. The greatest impact it had was on role-playing. It's hardly even useful for coding. And that all wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't for the wave of bots that makes the crypto wave seem like child's play.

> They wrote off the coding ability of ChatGPT on version 3.5, for instance, and have missed all the advancements that have happened since.

> It's hardly even useful for coding.

I’m curious what kind of projects you’re writing where AI coding agents are barely useful.

It’s the “shills” on YouTube that keep me up to date with the latest developments and best practices to make the most of these tools. To me it makes tools like CC not only useful but indispensable. Now I do not focus on writing the thing, but I focus on building agents who are capable of building the thing with a little guidance.

Re: AI is different

#718

Post by taormina »

motorest wrote: post #282
taormina wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs are eliminating the need to have a vast array of positions on payrolls. From copywriters to customer support, and even creative activities such as illustration and even authoring books, today's LLMs are already more than good enough to justify replacing people with the output of any commercial chatbot service. I'd love a source to these claims. Many companies are claiming that they are able to layoff folks bec…

> I'd love a source to these claims. Have you been living under a rock? You can start getting up to speed by how Amazon's CEO already laid out the company's plan. https://www.thecooldown.com/green-business/amazon-generative... > (...) AI is just a scapegoat to counteract the reckless overhiring due to (...) That is your personal moralist scapegoat, and one that you made up to feel better about how jobs are being elim…

Congratulations for believing the marketing. He has about 2.46 trillion reasons to make this claim. In other news, water is wet and the sky is blue.

Re: AI is different

#719

Post by thomasfromcdnjs »

_jab wrote: post #59

I'm skeptical of arguments like this. If we look at most impactful technologies since the year 2000, AI is not even in my top 3. Social networking, mobile computing, and cloud computing have all done more to alter society and daily life than has AI. And yes, I recognize that AI has already created profound change, in that every software engineer now depends heavily on copilots, in that education faces a major integri…

Pretty sure I read Economnics in one lesson because of HN, he makes great arguments about how automation never ruins economies as much as people think. "Chapter 7: The Curse of Machinery"

Re: AI is different

#720

Post by loandbehold »

on_the_train wrote: post #708
gdubs wrote: post #622

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 t…

But the reports are from shills. The impact of ai is almost non existent. The greatest impact it had was on role-playing. It's hardly even useful for coding. And that all wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't for the wave of bots that makes the crypto wave seem like child's play.

I don't understand people who say AI isn't useful for coding. Claude Code improved my productivity 10x. I used to put solid 8 hours a day in my remote software engineering job. Now I finish everything in 2 hours and go play with my kids. And my performance is better than before.
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