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Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

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Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#931

Post by Teever »

DonHopkins wrote: post #674
neurostimulant wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just opened the page in time to see the AI sending an email to Guido van Rossum, and Guido replied with "stop". Wild.

That's as obnoxious as texting unsolicited CAT FACTS to Ken Thompson! Hi Ken Thompson! You are now subscribed to CAT FACTS! Did you know your cat does not concatenate cats, files, or time — it merely reveals them, like a Zen koan with STDOUT? You replied STOP. cat interpreted this as input and echoed it back. You replied ^D. cat received EOF, nodded politely, exited cleanly, and freed the terminal. You replied ^C, wh…

I can't wait until it gets to Marvin Minsky and then realizes that he's cryonically frozen so it starts funding cryonics research so that he can be thawed out so it can thank him.

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#932

Post by ltbarcly3 »

gtowey wrote: post #589
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #507

It's hard to realize that the thing you've spent decades of your life working on can be done by a robot. It's quite dehumanizing. I'm sure it felt the same way to shoemakers.

I think you'd be surprised then to know that shoes are not generally made with robots. Factories have made mass production possible, but there are still tons of humans in there pushing parts through sewing machines by hand. Industrial automation for non uniform shapes and fiddly bits is expensive, much cheaper to just offshore the factory and hire desperately poor locals to act like robots.

Kindof? The final assembly is done by a person.

Making a shoe is a long process and involves making the pieces of the shoe, then assembling them. Literally the only thing a human does at a Nike factory is the final assembly. Everything else is made on a machine almost end to end. The trickiest part of making a shoe, attaching the sole, is just done by putting it in a press with some glue/heat. It takes 15s.

Making a shoe by hand takes 40 to 100 hours of high skill human input, and the skill level largely determines the quality of the shoe. Making a shoe at a Nike factory takes around 45 minutes of moderate skill human input and massive effort is made to make the skill level of the worker as irrelevant as possible.

I think my point stands however as no shoe factories hire shoe makers.

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#933

Post by maxnevermind »

lkbm wrote: post #445

I'm unsure if I'm missing context. Did he do something beyond posting an angry tweet? It seems like he's upset about AI (same), and decided to post angry tweets about it (been there, done that), and I guess people are excited to see someone respected express an opinion they share (not same)? Does "Goes Nuclear" means "used the F word"? This doesn't seem to add anything meaningful, thoughtful, or insightful.

I was trying to find some more context on this but all I could find is that Rob Pike seems to care a lot about efficiency of software/hardware and against bloat which is expressed in his work on Golang and in related talks about it.

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#934

Post by starchild3001 »

This reads like a mid-life crisis. A few rebuttals:

1. Yes, humans cause enormous harm. That’s not new, and it’s not something a single technology wave created. No amount of recycling or moral posturing changes the underlying reality that life on Earth operates under competitive, extractive pressures. Instead of fighting it, maybe try to accept it and make progress in other ways?

2. LLMs will almost certainly deliver broad, tangible benefits to ordinary people over time; just as previous waves of computing did. The Industrial Revolution was dirty, unfair, and often brutal, yet it still lifted billions out of extreme poverty in the long run. Modern computing followed the same pattern. LLMs are a mere continuation of this trend.

Concerns about attribution, compensation, and energy use are reasonable to discuss, but framing them as proof that the entire trajectory is immoral or doomed misses the larger picture. If history is any guide, the net human benefit will vastly outweigh the costs, even if the transition is messy and imperfect.

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#935

Post by trinsic2 »

starchild3001 wrote: post #934

This reads like a mid-life crisis. A few rebuttals: 1. Yes, humans cause enormous harm. That’s not new, and it’s not something a single technology wave created. No amount of recycling or moral posturing changes the underlying reality that life on Earth operates under competitive, extractive pressures. Instead of fighting it, maybe try to accept it and make progress in other ways? 2. LLMs will almost certainly deliver…

[flagged]

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#936

Post by roncesvalles »

starchild3001 wrote: post #934

This reads like a mid-life crisis. A few rebuttals: 1. Yes, humans cause enormous harm. That’s not new, and it’s not something a single technology wave created. No amount of recycling or moral posturing changes the underlying reality that life on Earth operates under competitive, extractive pressures. Instead of fighting it, maybe try to accept it and make progress in other ways? 2. LLMs will almost certainly deliver…

>Just wait

still waiting

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#937

Post by razodactyl »

deaux wrote: post #894
suralind wrote: post #727

I don’t really understand the hate he gets over this. If you want to thank someone for their contribution, do that yourself? Sending thank you from an ML model is anything but respectful. I can only imagine that if I got a message like that I’d be furious too. This reminds me a story from my mom’s work from years ago: the company she was working for announced salary increases to each worker individually. Some, like m…

> I don’t really understand the hate he gets over this. For me, the dislike comes from the first part of the message. All of a sudden people who never gave a single shit about the environment, and still make zero lifestyle changes (besides "not using AI") for it, claim to massively care. It's all hypocritical bullshit by people who are scared of losing their jobs or of the societal damage. Which there is a risk of, d…

I appreciate the critical aspect of this comment. We definitely need more of it in society especially when we're inundated with low-quality data.

Unfortunately, the negative commentary self-perpetuates a toxic community culture that won't help us in the long run.

I upvoted for the critical stance. Constructive commentary in future will go much further to helping us all learn from each other.

Personal attacks are a waste of everyone's time.

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#938

Post by [deleted] »

aurareturn wrote: post #56

From my point of view, many programmers hate Gen AI because they feel like they've lost a lot of power. With LLMs advancing, they go from kings of the company to normal employees. This is not unlike many industries where some technology or machine automates much of what they do and they resist. For programmers, they lose the power to command a huge salary writing software and to "bully" non-technical people in the co…

[deleted]

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#939

Post by razodactyl »

trinsic2 wrote: post #748

>"For myself, the big fraud is getting public to believe that Intellectual Property was a moral principle and not just effective BS to justify corporate rent seeking." If anything, I'm glad people are finally starting to wake up to this fact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent-seeking TIL

Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI

#940

Post by trinsic2 »

koakuma-chan wrote: post #922
suralind wrote: post #727

I don’t really understand the hate he gets over this. If you want to thank someone for their contribution, do that yourself? Sending thank you from an ML model is anything but respectful. I can only imagine that if I got a message like that I’d be furious too. This reminds me a story from my mom’s work from years ago: the company she was working for announced salary increases to each worker individually. Some, like m…

The fact you can unironically get "furious" in general is probably not a good thing, and going on that glorified Twitter platform, and making that kind of post, doesn't make it look better.

It's totally warranted anger, many people feel it.
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