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AI is different

antirez.com

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Re: AI is different

#841

Post by oinfoalgo »

Barrin92 wrote: post #504
jhbadger wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You can already see this with YouTube: AI-generated videos are a mild amusement, not a replacement for video creators, because made by AI is becoming a negative label in a world where the presence of AI video is widely known. But that's because, at present, AI generated video isn't very good. Consider the history of CGI. In the 1990s and early 2000s, it was common to complain about how the move away from practical s…

>But that's because, at present, AI generated video isn't very good. It isn't good, but that's not the reason. There's a paper about 10 years ago where people used some computer system to generate Bach-like music that even Bach experts couldn't reliably tell apart, but nobody listens to bot music. (or nobody except for engine programmers watches computer chess, despite superiority. Chess is thriving more now includin…

I am a Bach fiend and the problem is BWV 1 to 1080.

Why would I listen to algorithmic Bach compositions when there are so many of Bach's own work I have never listened to?

Even if you did get bored of all JS music, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach has over 1000 works himself.

There are also many genius baroque music composers outside the Bach family.

This is true of any composer really. Any classical composer that the average person has heard of has an immense catalog of works compared to modern recording artists.

I would say I have probably not even listened to half the works of all my favorite composers because it is such a huge amount of music. There is no need for some kind of classical music style LORA.

Re: AI is different

#842

Post by scotty79 »

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AI has been improving at a very rapid pace, which means that a lot of people have really outdated priors.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

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

I feel like I see now more dismissive comments than previously. As if people, initially confused, formed a firm belief since. And now new facts don't really change it, just entrench them in chosen belief.

Re: AI is different

#843

Post by xpe »

jplusequalt wrote: post #781
xpe wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because otherwise you'd have to convince AI-owners and select professionals to let go of their wealth to give a comfortable and fulfilling life of leisure to the unemployed. Not necessarily. Such forces could be outvoted or out maneuvered. > More likely it will look like the current welfare schemes of many countries.., Maybe, maybe not. It might take the form of UBI or some other form that we haven’t seen in practi…

>So many assumptions. Then a few words later ... >Deep Utopia (Bostrom) is an excellent read that extensively discusses various options if things go well Oh, the irony

Reread the sentence and you’ll notice the word “if”

Re: AI is different

#844

Post by xpe »

layer8 wrote: post #715
xpe wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let’s get specific.

If we’re talking about DARPA’s research agenda or the US military’s priorities, I would say they are quite capable at planning for speculative scenarios and long-term effects - for various reasons, including decision making structure and funding.

If we’re talking about shifting people’s mindsets about AI risks and building a movement, the time is now. Luckily we’ve got foundations to build on. We don’t need to practice something else first. We have examples of trying to prime the public to pay attention to other long-term risks, such as global warming, pandemic readiness, and nuclear proliferation. Now we should to add long-term AI risk to the menu.

And I would not say that I’m anything close to “optimistic” in the probabilistic sense about building the coalition we need, but we must try anyway. And motivation can be found without naïve optimism. A sense of acting with purpose can be a useful state of mind that is not coupled to one’s guesses about most likely outcomes.

Re: AI is different

#845

Post by oinfoalgo »

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…

I use AI as a tool to make digital art but I don't make "AI Art".

Imperfection is not the problem with "AI Art". The problem is that it is really hard to not get the models to produce the same visual motifs and cliches. People can spot AI art so easy because of the motifs.

I think midjourney took this to another level with their human feedback. It became harder and harder to not produce the same visual motifs in the images to the point it is basically useless for me now.

Re: AI is different

#846

Post by the8472 »

svara wrote: post #818
the8472 wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human eyes are unlikely the only thing in parameter-space that's sufficient for driving. Cameras can do IR, 360° coverage, higher frame rates, wider stereo separation... but of course nothing says Teslas sit at a good point in that space.

Yes, agreed, but that's a different point - I was reacting to this specifically: > Humans use only cameras. Which in this or similar forms is sometimes used to argue that L4/5 Teslas are just a software update away.

Ah yeah, that's making even more assumptions. Not only does it assume the cameras are powerful enough but that there already is enough compute. There's a sensing-power/compute/latency tradeoff. That is you can get away with poorer sensors if you have more compute that can filter/reconstruct useful information from crappy inputs.

Re: AI is different

#847

Post by morsecodist »

tim333 wrote: post #808
morsecodist wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I do feel that there is a routine bias on HN to underplay AI It's always interesting to see this take because my perception is the exact opposite. I don't think there's ever been an issue for me personally with a bigger mismatch in perceptions than AI. It sometimes feels like the various sides live in different realities.

I have the impression a lot depends on people's past reading and knowledge of what's going on. If you've read the likes of Kurzweil, Moravec, maybe Turing, you're probably going to treat AGI/ASI as inevitable. For people who haven't they just see these chatbots and the like and think those won't change things much. It's maybe a bit like the early days of covid when the likes of Trump were saying it's nothing, it'll b…

These people's theories (except Turing) are highly speculative predictions about the future. They could be right but they are not analogous to the predictions we get out of epidemiology where we have had a lot of examples to study. What they are doing is not science and it is way more reasonable to doubt them.

Re: AI is different

#848

Post by oinfoalgo »

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…

The bigger issue to me is that not all geography is anything close to equal.

I would much rather live on a beach front property than where I live right now. I don't because the cost trade off is too high.

To bring the real estate market into equilibrium with UBI you would have to turn rural Nebraska into a giant slab city like ghetto. Or every mid sized city would have a slab city ghetto an hour outside the city. It would be ultra cheap to live there but it would be a place everyone is trying to save up to move out of. It would create a completely new under class of people.

Re: AI is different

#849

Post by bluefirebrand »

energy123 wrote: post #826
barrell wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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! [Cha…

Yeah, frankly if you have the free time to dig through all of that to find the best models or whatever for your use cases, good on you

I have code to write

Re: AI is different

#850

Post by bluefirebrand »

saltcured wrote: post #780
barrell wrote: post #759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How exactly am I betting my career on LLMs failing? The inverse is definitely true — going all in on LLMs feels like betting on the future success of LLMs. However not using LLMs to program today is not betting on anything, except maybe myself, but even that’s a stretch. After all, I can always pick up LLMs in the future. If a few weeks is long enough for all my priors to become stale, why should I have to start now?…

I wonder, what drives this intense FOMO ideation about AI tools as expressed further upthread? How does someone reconcile a faith that AI tooling is rapdily improving with that contradictory belief that there is some permanent early-adopter benefit?

I think the early adopter at all costs mentality is being driven by marketing and sales, not any rational reason to need to be ahead of the curve

I agree very strongly with the poster above yours: If these tools are so good and so easy to use then I will learn them at that time

Otherwise the idea that they are saving me time is likely just hype and not reality, which matches my experience

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