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AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

economist.com

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Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#81

Post by stillsut »

1c2adbc4 wrote: post #41
exe34 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's fine to keep the name, we just have to realise it's like magic. real magic can't be done. magic that can be done is just tricks. AI that works is just tricks.

I didn't realize that magic was the goal. I'm just trying to process unstructured data. Who's here looking for magic?

I think the "magic" that we've found a common toolset of methods - embeddings and layers of neural networks - that seem to reveal useful patterns and relationships from a vast array of corpus of unstructured analog sensors (pictures, video, point clouds) and symbolic (text, music) and that we can combine these across modalities like CLIP.

It turns out we didn't need a specialist technique for each domain, there was a reliable method to architect a model that can learn itself, and we could already use the datasets we had, they didn't need to be generated in surveys or experiments. This might seem like magic to an AI researcher working in the 1990's.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#82

Post by cubefox »

ctoth wrote: post #6

What if this paper actually took things seriously? A serious paper would start by acknowledging that every previous general-purpose technology required human oversight precisely because it couldn't perceive context, make decisions, or correct errors - capabilities that are AI's core value proposition. It would wrestle with the fundamental tension: if AI remains error-prone enough to need human supervisors, it's not t…

Exactly. People seem to want to underhype AI. It's like a chimpanzee saying: humans are just normal apes.

Delusional.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#83

Post by hermitcrab »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #8

AI is technology that does not exist yet that can be speculated about. When AI materializes into existence it becomes normal technology. Let's not forget there has been times when if-else statements were considered AI. NLP used to be AI too.

>Let's not forget there has been times when if-else statements were considered AI.

They still are, as far as the marketing department is concerned.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#84

Post by johnbellone »

Eisenstein wrote: post #5
ktallett wrote: post #3

What do they mean what if? It is similarly based to something that has existed for around 4 decades. It of course is at a higher standard of efficiency and able to search through and combine more data but it isn't new. It is just a normal technology and this was why myself and many others were shocked at the initial hype.

> It is similarly based to something that has existed for around 4 decades. Four decades ago was 1985. The thing is, there was a huge jump in progress from then until now. If we took something which had a nice ramped progress, like computer graphics, and instead of ramping up we went from '1985' to '2025' in progress over the course of a few months, do you think there wouldn't be a lot of hype?

> Four decades ago was 1985

Don't remind me.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#85

Post by tempodox »

wvbdmp wrote: post #4

Okay, so AI isn’t exceptional, but I’m also not exceptional. I run on the same tech base as any old chimpanzee, but at one point our differences in degree turned into one of us remaining “normal” and the other burning the entire planet. Whether the particular current AI tech is it or not, I have yet to be convinced that the singularity is practically impossible, and as long as things develop in the opposite direction…

We’ll manage to make our own survival on this planet less probable, even without the help of “AI”.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#86

Post by hermitcrab »

mindcrime wrote: post #51
chpatrick wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[citation needed] People constantly assert that LLMs don't think in some magic way that humans do think, when we don't even have any idea how that works.

> People constantly assert that LLMs don't think in some magic way that humans do think, It doesn't matter anyway. The marquee sign reads "Artificial Intelligence" not "Artificial Human Being". As long as AI displays intelligent behavior, it's "intelligent" in the relevant context. There's no basis for demanding that the mechanism be the same as what humans do. And of course it should go without saying that Artificia…

Aircraft don't fly like birds, submarines don't swim like fish and AIs aren't going to think like a human.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#87

Post by empath75 »

https://books.google.com/books?id=-fG_NOxltlEC&pg=PA25&dq=Co...

Computer's Aren't Pulling Their Weight (1991)

There were _so many_ articles in the late 80s and early 90s about how computers were a big waste of money. And again in the late 90s, about how the internet was a waste of money.

We aren't going to know the true consequences of AI until kids that are in high school now enter the work force. The vast majority of people are not capable of completely reordering how they work. Computers did not help Sally Secretary type faster in the 1980s. That doesn't mean they were a waste of money.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#88

Post by kamikazeturtles »

jaredklewis wrote: post #68
jcranmer wrote: post #38

Well, for starters, it would make The Economist 's recent article on "What if AI made the world's economic growth explode?" [1] look like the product of overly credulous suckers for AI hype. [1] https://www.economist.com/briefing/2025/07/24/what-if-ai-mad...

This comment reminds me of the forever present HN comments that take a form like "HN is so hypocritical. In this thread commenters are saying they love X, when just last week in a thready about Y, commenters were saying that they hated X."

All articles published by the Economist are reviewed by its editorial team.

Also, the Economist publishes all articles anonymously so the individual author isn't known. As far as I know, they do this so we take all articles and opinions as the perspective of the Economist publication itself.

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#89

Post by measurablefunc »

wvbdmp wrote: post #4

Okay, so AI isn’t exceptional, but I’m also not exceptional. I run on the same tech base as any old chimpanzee, but at one point our differences in degree turned into one of us remaining “normal” and the other burning the entire planet. Whether the particular current AI tech is it or not, I have yet to be convinced that the singularity is practically impossible, and as long as things develop in the opposite direction…

If you use non-constructive reasoning¹ then you can argue for basically any outcome & even convince yourself that it is inevitable. The basic example is as follows, there is no scientific or physical principle that can prevent the birth of someone much worse than Hitler & therefore if people keep having children one of those children will inevitably be someone who will cause unimaginable death & destruction. My recommendation is to avoid non-constructive inevitability arguments using our current ignorant state of understanding of physical laws as the main premise b/c it's possible to reach any conclusion from that premise & convince yourself that the conclusion is inevitable.

¹https://gemini.google.com/share/d9b505fef250

Re: AI might yet follow the path of previous technological revolutions

#90

Post by buu700 »

gyomu wrote: post #64
jcranmer wrote: post #38

Well, for starters, it would make The Economist 's recent article on "What if AI made the world's economic growth explode?" [1] look like the product of overly credulous suckers for AI hype. [1] https://www.economist.com/briefing/2025/07/24/what-if-ai-mad...

Why would you expect opinion pieces from different people to agree with one another? I’m curious about exploring the topics “What if the war in Ukraine ends in the next 12 months” just as much as “What if the war in Ukraine keeps going for the next 10 years”, doesn’t mean I expect both to happen.

To add to your point, both article titles are questions that start with "What if". The same person could have written both and there would be no contradiction.
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