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LLM Inevitabilism

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Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#891

Post by tim333 »

smeeger wrote: post #802
rafaelero wrote: post #770

Right now, I’m noticing how my colleagues who aren’t very comfortable using LLMs for most of their work are getting sidelined. It's a bit sad seeing them struggle by not keeping pace with everyone else who is using it for ~90% of our tasks. They seem to really care about writing code themselves, but, if they don't pivot, things are probably not going to end well for them. So is LLM inevitable? Pretty much if you want…

AGI is not inevitable. we have the choice to stop it.

You can choose not to develop AGI but that won't stop someone else from doing it.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#892

Post by hamilyon2 »

The optimistic scenario for current ai bubble: long careful deflation, one flop at a time.

The cautious scenario of llm usage in daily life: in 36 years, it is invisible and everywhere. Every device has a neural chip. It replaced untold trillions of years of work, reshaped knowledge and artistic work, robotics, became something as boring as email, TV, SAP, or power cable today. Barely anyone is excited. Society is poor, but not hopelessly so.

Humanity forgotten LLMs and is hyping gene engineering.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#893

Post by andai »

deltaburnt wrote: post #586
andai wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many people love games, and some of those even love making games, but few truly love to code. I'm designing a simple game engine now and thinking, I shall have to integrate AI programming right into it, because the average user won't know how to code, and they'll try to use AI to code, and then the AI will frantically google for docs, and/or hallucinate, so I might as well set it up properly on my end. In other words…

I'm not sure I see the logic in what you're describing. By the time you run into this "users using AI on my engine" problem, the models will be different from the ones you used to make the design. Design how you like, I would just be surprised if that choice actually ended up mattering 5 years from now.

>by the time you run into this problem

I'm describing the present day. My friend, who doesn't know anything about programming, made three games in an afternoon with Gemini.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#894

Post by madrox »

evantbyrne wrote: post #543
keiferski wrote: post #107

One of the negative consequences of the “modern secular age” is that many very intelligent, thoughtful people feel justified in brushing away millennia of philosophical and religious thought because they deem it outdated or no longer relevant. (The book A Secular Age is a great read on this, btw, I think I’ve recommended it here on HN at least half a dozen times.) And so a result of this is that they fail to notice t…

I'm pretty bearish on the idea that AGI is going to take off anytime soon, but I read a significant amount of theology growing up and I would not describe the popular essays from e.g., LessWrong as religious in nature. I also would not describe them as appearing poorly read. The whole "look they just have a new god!" is a common trope in religious apologetics that is usually just meant to distract from the author's o…

I've read LessWrong very differently from you. The entire thrust of that society is that humanity is going to create the AI god.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#895

Post by tim333 »

The article talks about being thrown off-balance by debating tricks and then proceed to do just that with a kind of bait and switch from talking about AI to talking about LLMs. Eg. it quotes

>“AI is the new electricity.” – Andrew Ng

as framing AI as kind of inevitable and then flips to

>I’m not convinced that LLMs are the future.

It seems to me AI is inevitable and LLMs will be replaced soon with some better algorithm. It's like video is inevitable but betamax wasn't. Two different things.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#896

Post by overgard »

kenjackson wrote: post #845
strange_quark wrote: post #828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are many technologies that have seemed inevitable and seen retreats under the lack of commensurate business return (the supersonic jetliner) I think this is a great analogy, not just to the current state of AI, but maybe even computers and the internet in general. Supersonic transports must've seemed amazing, inevitable, and maybe even obvious to anyone alive at the time of their debut. But hiding under that…

I think this is both right and wrong. There was a good book that came out probably 15 years ago about how technology never stops in aggregate, but individual technologies tend to grow quickly and then stall. Airplane jets were one example in the book. The reason why I partially note this as wrong is that even in the 70s people recognized that supersonic travel had real concrete issues with no solution in sight. I don…

>I think this is both right and wrong. There was a good book that came out probably 15 years ago about how technology never stops in aggregate, but individual technologies tend to grow quickly and then stall. Airplane jets were one example in the book. The reason why I partially note this as wrong is that even in the 70s people recognized that supersonic travel had real concrete issues with no solution in sight. I don't think LLMs share that characteristic today.

I don't see any solution to hallucinations, nor do I see any solution in sight. I think that could count as a concrete issue that would stop them.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#897

Post by staunton »

gspencley wrote: post #620
evantbyrne wrote: post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty bearish on the idea that AGI is going to take off anytime soon, but I read a significant amount of theology growing up and I would not describe the popular essays from e.g., LessWrong as religious in nature. I also would not describe them as appearing poorly read. The whole "look they just have a new god!" is a common trope in religious apologetics that is usually just meant to distract from the author's o…

Philosophy and religion are not mutually inclusive, though one can certainly describe a religious belief as being a philosophical belief. Even a scientifically inclined atheist has philosophical ideas grounding their world view. The idea that the universe exists as an objective absolute with immutable laws of nature is a metaphysical idea. The idea that nature can be observed and that reason is a valid tool for acqui…

This sounds very educated but I don't really see what it has to do with the comment you're responding to (or with AI).

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#898

Post by Lu2025 »

strange_quark wrote: post #828
lsy wrote: post #63

I think two things can be true simultaneously: 1. LLMs are a new technology and it's hard to put the genie back in the bottle with that. It's difficult to imagine a future where they don't continue to exist in some form, with all the timesaving benefits and social issues that come with them. 2. Almost three years in, companies investing in LLMs have not yet discovered a business model that justifies the massive expen…

> There are many technologies that have seemed inevitable and seen retreats under the lack of commensurate business return (the supersonic jetliner) I think this is a great analogy, not just to the current state of AI, but maybe even computers and the internet in general. Supersonic transports must've seemed amazing, inevitable, and maybe even obvious to anyone alive at the time of their debut. But hiding under that…

Oh no, LLMs won't disappear but they will be a lot less loud.

Progress is often an S shaped curve and we are nearing saturation.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#899

Post by Lu2025 »

Earw0rm wrote: post #857
strange_quark wrote: post #828

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are many technologies that have seemed inevitable and seen retreats under the lack of commensurate business return (the supersonic jetliner) I think this is a great analogy, not just to the current state of AI, but maybe even computers and the internet in general. Supersonic transports must've seemed amazing, inevitable, and maybe even obvious to anyone alive at the time of their debut. But hiding under that…

From a system optimisation perspective, SSTs solved the wrong problem. Want to save people time flying? Solve the grotesque inefficiency pit that is airport transit and check-in. Like, I'm sorry, STILL no high speed, direct to terminal rail at JFK, LAX and a dozen other major international airports? And that's before we get to the absolute joke of "border security" and luggage check-in. Sure, supersonic afterburning…

They don't optimize for our convenience, they optimize for their profit.

Re: LLM Inevitabilism

#900

Post by scubbo »

com2kid wrote: post #209
scubbo wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hours of time saved Come back in a week and update us on how long you've spent debugging all the ways that the code was broken that you didn't notice in those 15 minutes. Usually I don't nitpick spelling, but "mimnutes" and "stylisitic" are somewhat ironic here - small correct-looking errors get glossed over by human quality-checkers, but can lead to genuine issues when parsed as code. A key difference between your…

> Come back in a week and update us on how long you've spent debugging all the ways that the code was broken that you didn't notice in those 15 minutes. Same as if I let a junior engineer merge code to main w/o unit tests. Complete garbage, of course. Oh wait, my code is also trash w/o good unit tests, because I am only human. Instead I'll write out a spec, define behaviors and edge cases, and ask the junior engineer…

Yep, precisely my point. Reviewing a one-shot in 15 minutes is irresponsible.
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