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AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage

theguardian.com

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Re: AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage

#91

Post by lostmsu »

judahmeek wrote: post #90
lostmsu wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, that contradicts the claim that lately the progress is only made by throwing more compute.

That wasn't the claim made. The claim made was that improving SotA models has historically taken exponentially more compute. The claim implies that improving SotA models takes more compute even while integrating technological advancements to make models more efficient. Unless you think that such advancements have been historically ignored by the curators of SotA models?

No, that was the claim made.

They justified it with the paper that states what you say, but that's exactly the problem. The statement of paper is significantly weaker than the claim that there's no progress without exponential increase in compute.

The statement of the the paper that SotA models require ever increasing compute, does not support "be careful when assuming that model capabilities will continue to grow" because it only speaks of ever growing models, but model capabilities of the models at the same compute cost continue growing too.

Re: AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage

#92

Post by jsnell »

hamdingers wrote: post #83
jsnell wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faking quotes like you're doing there is about as bad faith as it gets.

What do you mean "faking quotes?" Are you genuinely unfamiliar with the concept of paraphrase? If you have an issue with my interpretation of their comment feel free to share, don't feign childlike naivety.

I would have thought that my issue with what you did was pretty clear from the original message, and would not require any particularly sophisticated interpretation.

">" is the notation for quotes.

You did not use it for a quote. Instead you used it to present your own distortion (not a paraphrase) as whimsicalism's words. That is not cool. Stop doing it.

Re: AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage

#93

Post by hamdingers »

jsnell wrote: post #92
hamdingers wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean "faking quotes?" Are you genuinely unfamiliar with the concept of paraphrase? If you have an issue with my interpretation of their comment feel free to share, don't feign childlike naivety.

I would have thought that my issue with what you did was pretty clear from the original message, and would not require any particularly sophisticated interpretation. ">" is the notation for quotes. You did not use it for a quote. Instead you used it to present your own distortion (not a paraphrase) as whimsicalism's words. That is not cool. Stop doing it.

Given the points I can see, other people understood what I was saying and appreciated it. I'm sorry that you're so confused but make no mistake this is your problem, not mine.

Re: AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage

#94

Post by johnnyanmac »

whimsicalism wrote: post #58
roxolotl wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But Corey isn’t saying it’s oversold he’s saying the value capture by a few companies enabled by AI is dangerous to society.

I do not agree with your reading of the article. The premise - both implicit and stated explicitly throughout the article - is that companies are hyping this up because they want to be seen as growing, that this technology cannot do your job, that these are statistical tools foolishly being used to replace real workers. Look at the bits I quote in my other comment. I would have been much more interested in reading th…

You need to read the article again with a more charitable lens. He starts with

>What I do not do is predict the future. No one can predict the future, which is a good thing, since if the future were predictable, that would mean we couldn’t change it.

It feels like shoving words on Cory's mouth to make statements like "he's saying it can't replace us". That is the exact point he avoids in the article to focus on the human. Not the tech and capabilities.

Re: AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage

#95

Post by johnnyanmac »

artninja1988 wrote: post #63
kuerbel wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this comment is reacting to a different argument than the one the article is actually making. The piece isn’t claiming that AI tools are useless or that they don’t materially improve day-to-day work. In fact, it more or less assumes the opposite. The critique is about the economic and organizational story being told around AI, not about whether an individual developer can ship faster today. Saying “these tool…

> The piece isn’t claiming that AI tools are useless or that they don’t materially improve day-to-day work Would you call something that could replace your labor "spicy auto complete"? He also evokes nfts and blockchain, for some reason. To me this phrasing makes it sound like he thinks they are damn near useless.

What cory thinks now doesn't affect the piece that focuses on the future and how humanity shapes around it. It feels like missing the forest for the trees to focus on what he feels about AI in c.2025 when the piece is talking about ramifications.

Re: AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage

#96

Post by johnnyanmac »

whimsicalism wrote: post #59
bee_rider wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re supposed to pretend people read articles instead of just the headline (it is in the posting guidelines). To play along with that rule, people will write as if the poster they are responding to missed some nuance of the article.

I like that you all are having your own little side conversation making fun of me without engaging at all on the substance.

If you're going to dismiss conversation, why bother with the fascimile?

Re: AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage

#97

Post by johnnyanmac »

kalkin wrote: post #56
alpha_squared wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're in half the comment replies with a confrontational tone and, at times, quite aggressively. It does not feel as though you're sincerely engaging, but instead have an ideological world view that makes it difficult to reconcile different perspectives. I'm working directly with these tools and have several colleagues who do as well. Our collective anecdotal experience keeps coming back to the conclusion that the t…

I don't think the commenter to whom you're replying is any more aggressive than, e.g., this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46668988 It's unfortunately the case that even understanding what AI can and cannot do has become a matter of, as you say, "ideological world view". Ideally we'd be able to discuss what's factually true of AI at the beginning of 2026, and what's likely to be true within the next few ye…

>any more aggressive than, e.g., this one

Frequency is important too.

>independently of whether the trends are good for most humans or what we ought to do about them.

This whole article is about the trends and of they are good for humans. I was pleasantly surprised that this was not yet another argument of "AI is (not) good enough" since people at this point have their fences set on that. I don't think it's too late to talk about how we as humans can manage pandora's box before it opens.

Responses like this dismissing the human element seem to want to isolate themselves from societal effects for some reason. The box will affect you.

Re: AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage

#98

Post by johnnyanmac »

ahachete wrote: post #31

There's a fundamental disconnect: OP refers to senior engineers being replaced with AI, whereas the evidence and logical reasoning points much more to junior engineers being replaced by AI. And that premise seems like a quite plausible one...

>OP refers to senior engineers being replaced with AI, whereas the evidence and logical reasoning points much more to junior engineers being replaced by AI.

If industry cared about future seniors, they'd invest in juniors. But that's not what's happening. AI will effectively replace seniors in 20 years with the current trajectory. Whether or not that replacement is adequate or not is the bigger question.

Re: AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage

#99

Post by johnnyanmac »

pessimizer wrote: post #61

They're so obviously going to fail, but in a good way. The idea is that they were going to get the world addicted then raise the prices, but the reality is that there's going to be a race for the bottom in pricing because none of them are significantly better than the others. They don't own anything, it's just math; they can be undercut by an OSS bomb from China at any given moment. Even worse, they've bet against th…

>Personally, I don't care if it replaces programmers: get another job.

In this economy? Restarting in a world that doesn't want to train is expensive at best and suicide at worst.

Re: AI companies will fail. We can salvage something from the wreckage

#100

Post by johnnyanmac »

jongjong wrote: post #87
DetectDefect wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is pretty plain to see technology enables socio-economic disharmony, to say the least. While it may not be the "cause" it is certainly a potent accelerant.

Yes but we can't stop progress while scarcity is still causing suffering. I think that communication works long term, even with algorithm suppression. Insightful ideas tend to bubble up, especially during chaotic times.

>but we can't stop progress while scarcity is still causing suffering.

That's what the billionaires are betting on. That or running away when the bombs hit.

Whether that last sentence is figurative or literal relies on how we react in the next few years. Maybe even few months here in the US.

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