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AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

ludic.mataroa.blog

81–90 of 320 posts

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#81
post #16

> All of the AI projects we have observed as a team are failing. Every single one – we have seen 0% success in a year and a half, not only amongst projects we have been asked to participate in, but even within projects that we have observed in passing while doing totally unrelated work. That's got to be hyperbole, which blows out their credibility. They chose to say 'AI' rather than, for example, LLM, or Transformer…

I get what you are saying, and while I'll say it is definitely not 0%, I have seen very little in the way of useful software that is primarily generated. The vast majority just does not go the distance for whatever reason. I could explain many reasons, but I am getting really tired of explaining myself. If the tools were as great as everyone says, we'd be going through a software Renaissance, but we're not. I would argue a software dark ages since it feels like things are getting worse and I find bugs in what was historically very long running and stable applications. But, whatever. I think the author is clearly talking about modern AI, I don't think they need to be explicit about models.

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#82
post #15

honestly just seems like selection bias right? 0% success rate with ai projects, really? based on some of their other about us material it seems like they probably only attract companies that aren't motivated to adopt ai successfully.

If you read the article, the go over a case where they introduce AI into their pitch and were met with results they were not comfortable with.

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#84
post #47

Fair point as far as there being low success rate in some ways and over-enthusiasm. But 0% success is a dishonest exaggeration. He's ramped his own AI spite up to a manic level.

Honestly, this is close to my experience within my org. It is not 0%, but it is very close. It seems like you're just uncomfortable with the author's experience conflicting with yours.

Perhaps it is the wording. For my org, I think people are getting value out of AI use supplementally, but what I would see as "AI projects" are definitely dead in the water.

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#85

The AI mania has been really fascinating to witness because on the surface it’s surprising that so many otherwise intelligent people have fallen into it. But I suppose intelligence as a concept is multifaceted and doesn’t include wisdom. I also wonder if it has to do with personality, where the people whose personality best suits leadership roles are more susceptible to this psychosis. I think there is also an archet…

[flagged]

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#86
I think AI is only part of the problem. The Multi-crisis ahead, makes it even less of a proposition to be in charge right now- and AI offers a "responsibility" cope out for already stressed to the limit human systems who have no solutions for the problems, because there often arent any.

Take climate change- you have torrential rainfalls, sweping away whole city-parts in mountanous regions, in some enormous russian roulett. And it doesnt even factor into building evaluations because then it would basically reduce the prevalent pension scheme to cinders.

You have dry months in europe now, where some thrown cigarett butt could ignite a firestorm- and the obvious solution is to remove the dangerous greenery from the burbs. Nobody does it though.

And that is just the plain sight visible layer of this shit cake. If i was some missguided fool into heroics and leadership and signed up for a little more then i could take and fake- i would long for some magic box that lowers the burden too. Those up there are human after all.

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#87
post #16

> All of the AI projects we have observed as a team are failing. Every single one – we have seen 0% success in a year and a half, not only amongst projects we have been asked to participate in, but even within projects that we have observed in passing while doing totally unrelated work. That's got to be hyperbole, which blows out their credibility. They chose to say 'AI' rather than, for example, LLM, or Transformer…

If you read the footnote, they follow up to say they've rejected 100% of the AI projects brought to them. Go to their home page and one of their consulting selling points is recovering struggling projects. One of their front-page selling points is that they use "ancient techniques" from books written prior to the year 2000, because presumably everything newer than that is bad? > For non-executive management who might…

Supposedly 70% of software projects failed even before AI. So are AI projects better or worse than that?

Also like people have asked about the 70% failure rate, how do you define failure/success.

https://medium.com/@trienpont/why-do-over-70-of-software-pro...

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#88
post #16

> All of the AI projects we have observed as a team are failing. Every single one – we have seen 0% success in a year and a half, not only amongst projects we have been asked to participate in, but even within projects that we have observed in passing while doing totally unrelated work. That's got to be hyperbole, which blows out their credibility. They chose to say 'AI' rather than, for example, LLM, or Transformer…

If you read the footnote, they follow up to say they've rejected 100% of the AI projects brought to them. Go to their home page and one of their consulting selling points is recovering struggling projects. One of their front-page selling points is that they use "ancient techniques" from books written prior to the year 2000, because presumably everything newer than that is bad? > For non-executive management who might…

> One of their front-page selling points is that they use "ancient techniques" from books written prior to the year 2000, because presumably everything newer than that is bad?

I get what you are saying here.

At the same time, was reading Deming's last book [0] and there is a great line that I have never seen in any recent business books:

"The organizational chart is usually a pyramid. The main benefit of this style of chart is to clarify who reports to whom. Notably absent from this chart: the customer."

I've also worked at firms filled with very smart people who had no concept (or were not incentivized) to think about the Theory of Constraints, Total Quality Management or that the firm is supposed to work as a team and not a collection of fiefdoms.

What I'm saying is: just because a book was written before 2000 doesn't make it irrelevant.

0 - https://amzn.to/4waEjA2

Re: AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decision-Making

#90
post #18

You are basically calling out the fact that the Emperor has no clothes. Many said this before. While it is a true statement, it is not going to help. Because, as you rightly said, it is a mania - like the tulip mania of 17th century or the manias of many forms today. The mania continues to evolve and flourish through it's peak and then go down. For that matter, there is hardly anything that is not a mania. Think of a…

This mania can also be called "herd behavior" or "crowd psychology". There was that book a while ago about the intelligence of crowds, but far more common is the stupidity and insanity of crowds. Business and politics are mainly driven by it, but the tech industry routinely falls to hype, trends, and decades-long mistakes that seem obvious in hindsight.

You all are missing the larger context. Not everyone here is equal. There are certain people who control economic organizations, set their goals and priorities, generate hype and fluff to increase sales, push everyone to be more productive, dont do the actual programming work. And then there is everyone else. This is how global capitalism is structured.
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