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AI is different

antirez.com

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Re: AI is different

#821

Post by crote »

antirez wrote: post #465
keiferski wrote: post #411

There’s a simple flaw in this reasoning: Just because X can be replaced by Y today doesn’t imply that it can do so in a Future where we are aware of Y, and factor it into the background assumptions about the task. In more concrete terms: if “not being powered by AI” becomes a competitive advantage, then AI won’t be meaningfully replacing anything in that market. You can already see this with YouTube: AI-generated vid…

To understand why this is too optimistic, you have to look at things where AI is already almost human-level. Translations are more and more done exclusively with AI or with a massive AI help (with the effect of destroying many jobs anyway) at this point. Now ebook reading is switching to AI. Book and music album covers are often done with AI (even if this is most of the times NOT advertised), and so forth. If AI prog…

> Translations are more and more done exclusively with AI or with a massive AI help

As someone who speaks more than one language fairly well: We can tell. AI translations are awful. Sure, they have gotten good enough for a casual "let's translate this restaurant menu" task, but they are not even remotely close to reaching human-like quality for nontrivial content.

Unfortunately I fear that it might not matter. There are going to be plenty of publishers who are perfectly happy to shovel AI-generated slop when it means saving a few bucks on translation, and the fact that AI translation exists is going to put serious pricing pressure on human translators - which means quality is inevitably going to suffer.

An interesting development I've been seeing is that a lot of creative communities treat AI-generated material like it is radioactive. Any use of AI will lead to authors or even entire publishers getting blacklisted by a significant part of the community - people simply aren't willing to consume it! When you are paying for human creativity, receiving AI-generated material feels like you have been scammed. I wouldn't be surprised to see a shift towards companies explicitly profiling themselves as anti-AI.

Re: AI is different

#822

Post by crote »

keiferski wrote: post #474
antirez wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To understand why this is too optimistic, you have to look at things where AI is already almost human-level. Translations are more and more done exclusively with AI or with a massive AI help (with the effect of destroying many jobs anyway) at this point. Now ebook reading is switching to AI. Book and music album covers are often done with AI (even if this is most of the times NOT advertised), and so forth. If AI prog…

I can buy the idea that simple specific tasks like translation will be dramatically cut down by AI. But even then – any serious legal situation (like a contract) is going to want a human in the loop to verify that the translation is actually correct. This will require actual translator skills. AI art seems to basically only be viable when it can’t be identified as AI art. Which might not matter if the intention is to…

> But even then – any serious legal situation (like a contract) is going to want a human in the loop to verify that the translation is actually correct.

The usual solution is to specify one language as binding, with that language taking priority if there turns out to be discrepancies between the multiple version.

Re: AI is different

#823

Post by crote »

cesarvarela wrote: post #656
johnecheck wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a number of reasons you might not be able to. Most likely? It's ridiculously expensive and you're poor.

Techonolgy has been deflationary so far, the rich get it first but eventually it reaches everyone.

Only when it is profitable for the rich.

Re: AI is different

#824

Post by Davidzheng »

m4nu3l wrote: post #663
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

The marginal value of natural resources decreases with quantity, and natural resources would only have a much smaller value compared to the final products produced by the AI systems. At some point, there would be an equilibrium where tier 1 wouldn't want to increase it's consumption of natural resources w.r.t. tier 2 or if they did they'd have to trade with tier 2 at a price higher than they value the resources. I ha…

I thought the assumption is that tier two has nothing to offer tier one and is technologically much inferior due to tier one being AI driven. So if tier one needs something from tier two I don't think they need to even ask. Wrt market equilibrium. Indeed i think it will be at equilibrium with increasing cost of extraction so indeed they will not spend arbitrary amounts to extract. But this also means probably there will be no way way for tier two to extract any of the resources which tier one needs at all bc the marginal cost is determined by tier one

Re: AI is different

#825

Post by listenallyall »

ben_w wrote: post #335
listenallyall wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I support UBI Honestly, what type of housing do you envision under a UBI system? Houses? Modern apartment buildings? College dormitory-like buildings? Soviet-style complexes? Prison-style accommodations? B stands for basic, how basic?

(Not the person you're replying to) I think a UBI system is only stable in conjunction with sufficient automation that work itself becomes redundant. Before that point, I don't think UBI can genuinely be sustained; and IMO even very close to that point the best I expect we will see, if we're lucky, is the state pension age going down. (That it's going up in many places suggests that many governments do not expect thi…

I appreciate your perspective but clearly most UBI advocates are talking about something much sooner. However my response to your vision is that even if "work" is totally automated or redundant, the resources (building materials) and the energy to power the robots or whatever, will be more expensive and tightly controlled than ever. Power and wealth simply wont allow everything to be accessible to everyone. The idea that people would be able to build enormous mansions (or personal aircraft carriers or spaceships) just sounds rather absurd, no offense, but come on.

Re: AI is different

#826

Post by energy123 »

barrell wrote: post #738
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are also a bunch of us who do kick the tires very often and are consistently underwhelmed. Yep, this is me. Every time people are like "it's improved so much" I feel like I'm taking crazy pills as a result. I try it every so often, and more often than not it still has the same exact issues it had back in the GPT-3 days. When the tool hasn't improved (in my opinion, obviously) in several years, why should I be…

haha I have to laugh because I’ve probably said “I feel like I’m taking crazy pills” at least 20 times this week (I spent a day using cursor with the new GPT and was thoroughly, thoroughly unimpressed). I’m open to programming with LLMs, and I’m entirely fine with people using them and I’m glad people are happy. But this insistence that progress is so crazy that you have to be tapped in at all times just irks me. LLM…

> new GPT

Another sign tapping is needed.

> AI is exceptional for coding! [high-compute scaffold around multiple instances / undisclosed IOI model / AlphaEvolve]

> AI is awesome for coding! [Gpt-5 Pro]

> AI is somewhat awesome for coding! ["gpt-5" with verbosity "high" and effort "high"]

> AI is a pretty good at coding! [ChatGPT 5 Thinking through a Pro subscription with Juice of 128]

> AI is mediocre at coding! [ChatGPT 5 Thinking through a Plus subscription with a Juice of 64]

> AI sucks at coding! [ChatGPT 5 auto routing]

Re: AI is different

#827

Post by trinsic2 »

crote wrote: post #820
xwowsersx wrote: post #696

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a No True Scotsman. That fallacy redefines the group to dismiss counterexamples. The point here is different: when the thing itself keeps changing, evidence from older versions naturally goes stale. Criticisms of GPT-3.5 don't necessarily hold against GPT-4, just like reviews of Windows XP don't apply to Windows 11.

> The point here is different: when the thing itself keeps changing, evidence from older versions naturally goes stale. Yes, but the claims do not. When the hypemen were shouting that GPT-3 was near-AGI, it still turned out to be absolute shit. When the hypemen were claiming that GPT-3.5 was thousands of times better than GPT-3 and beating all highschool students, it turned out to be a massive exaggeration. When the…

Its funny how the hype-train is not responding to any real criticisms about the false predictions and carrying on with the false narrative of AI.

I agree it will probably be something in a decade, but right now, it has some interesting concepts but I do notice upon successive iterations of chat responses that its got a ways to go.

It remind me of Tesla car owners buying into the self-driving terminology. Yes the drive assistant technology has improved quite a bit since cruise control, but its a far cry from self-driving.

Re: AI is different

#828

Post by trinsic2 »

Mars008 wrote: post #707
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…

There is another big and growing group: charlatans (influencers). People who don't know much but make bold statements, select 'proof' cases. Just to get attention. There are many of them on youtube. When you someone on thumbnail making faces this is most likely it.

Here[0] is a perfect example of this. There are so many youtubers making videos about the future of AI as a dooms-day prediction. Its kind of irresponsible actually. These youtubers read a book on the the down fall of humanity because of AGI. Many of these authors seem like they are repeating the Terminator/Skynet themes. Because of all this false information, It's hard to believe anything that is being said about the future of AI on youtube now.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KVDDfAkRgc

Re: AI is different

#829

Post by econ »

owebmaster wrote: post #574
econ wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do others sing along? Do they sing the songs you've written? I think we lost a lot there. I can't even begin to imagine it. Thankfully singing happy birthday is mandatory - the fight isn't over! People also still have conversations despite phones. Some even talk all night at the kitchen table. Not everyone, most don't remember how.

> Do others sing along? Do they sing the songs you've written? Probably more than what you think people did thousands of years ago. And there are almost infinite more people living from singing than ever.

This might be exactly it. In 100 years people will anecdotaly disagree what AI did to humanity. More zombies or more enlightenment or both?

Re: AI is different

#830

Post by LtWorf »

sylos wrote: post #787
LtWorf wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will it be able to function on super slippery roads while volcanic ash is falling down? Or ice? I do drive in these conditions.

Can people handle that? people have millions of accidents in perfect weather and driving conditions. I think the reason most people don't like at drivers now is because it's easy to assign blame to the driver. Ai doesn't have that easy out. Suddenly we're faced with the cold truth: reality is difficult and sometimes shit happens and someone gets the short end of the stick.

No people can't handle that. We just stay home for 2-3 months and hope our food supplies don't run out -_-'
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