Have a statue of RMS yelling "I told you so" designed by the robot overlords as reward for that blogpost.
Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
951–960 of 1001 posts
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#952Most of the critiques of Rob's take in here equate to: Rob rolled through a stop sign once, therefore he's not allowed to take fault with habitual drunk drivers.
He created stuff while getting a lot of money for it.
Now he complains about it? Its just ignorant.
And he has apparently 10 millions and "the couple live both in the US and Australia.". So guess how often he flies around the globe. Guess how much real estate he occupies?
He isn't part of the solution, he is part of the problem.
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#953Earlier quoted context omitted.
“If I automate this with AI, it can send thousands of these. That way, if just a few important people post about it, the advertising will more than pay for itself.” In the words of Gene Wilder in Blazing Saddles, “You know … idiots.”
Mel Brooks wrote those words.
Do you attribute the following to Yoda or Lucas? "Do or do not, there is no try."
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#954Earlier quoted context omitted.
He received what is arguably some AI-generated spam. Apparently this has enraged him and motivated an unhinged rant where he talks about raping the planet and vile machines. It's a hateful post and it seems disrespectful to anyone working in the industry, so some backlash has to be expected.
> unhinged rant Seems pretty hinged to me. Grounded firmly in reality even. The data centres used to run AI consume huge amounts of power and water to run, not to mention massive quantities of toxic raw materials in their manufacture and construction. The hardware itself has a shelf life measured in single digit years and many of its constituent components can’t be recycled. Tell me what I’m missing. What exactly is…
Many in the comment section are acting obtuse.
It's obviously the "vile machines raping the world and blowing up society" part that is particularly unhinged and possibly offensive.
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#955FYI, this was sent as an experiment by a non-profit that assigns fairly open ended tasks to computer-using AI models every day: https://theaidigest.org/village The goal for this day was "Do random acts of kindness". Claude seems to have chosen Rob Pike and sent this email by itself. It's a little unclear to me how much the humans were in the loop. Sharing (but absolutely not endorsing) this because there seems to be…
Sorry, cannot resist all the AI companies are not "making" profit. Seriously though, it ignores that words of kindness need a entity that can actually feel expressing them. Automating words of kindness is shallow as the words meaning comes from the sender's feelings.
You cant possibly expect software engineers to be able to understand human emotions and meaning.
We built Palantir and all the other fun tech making people's lifes miserable. If software engineers had ethics and would understand human meaning they wouldn't pump out predatory software like its cow milk. Fuck software engineers (excluding all the OSS devs that actually try and make the world a better place).
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#956You would expect that voices that have so much weight would be able to evaluate a new and clearly very promising technology with better balance. For instance, Linus Torvalds is positive about AI, while he recognizes that industrially there is too much inflation of companies and money: this is a balanced point of view. But to be so dismissive of modern AI, in the light of what it is capable of doing, and what it could…
To be fair, air conditioning is considered to be a net positive by about 100% of the people that enjoy it; even if it's used in excess. Not to mention that in some climates and for some people with certain health conditions, air conditioning might even be essential. AI is not considered to be a net positive by even close to 100% of people that encounter it. It's definitely not essential. So its impact is going to be…
For a second I'll not consider the fact that I believe your argument is conceptually wrong. Let's focus only on the cultural part: "net positive by about 100% of people", this is deeply US-centric. For most other people, coming in the US is preparing to being exposed to an amount of AC that causes strong discomfort. Ask every European, for instance. Moreover having a more normal temperature would be something people adapt in just a few months: and this would save an enormous amount of energy. But no, let's blame AI, with our asses freezing at 17 degrees.
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#957Earlier quoted context omitted.
“If I automate this with AI, it can send thousands of these. That way, if just a few important people post about it, the advertising will more than pay for itself.” In the words of Gene Wilder in Blazing Saddles, “You know … idiots.”
Mel Brooks wrote those words.
Well, technically someone originally proposed them in some ancient PEI Ur language and then Mel rearranged them. But you’re right. I couldn’t remember Wilder’s character’s name and kept coming up with The Frisco Kid. The 70s were a great time for weird film.
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#958This 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…
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Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#959Big vibe shift against AI right now among all the non-tech people I know (and some of the tech people). Ignoring this reaction and saying "it's inevitable/you're luddites" (as I'm seeing in this thread) is not going to help the PR situation
How do you reconcile the sense that there's a vibe shift with the usage numbers: about a billion weekly users of ChatGPT and Gemini and continuing to grow.
I just assume that at least half of those are bots on social media platforms. You go on Twitter and the quality of posts is so low, yet every post has a bunch of replies. The same is true for YouTube, it’s full of empty, inflammatory responses. And this has become more common with the appearance of ChatGPT. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have no incentive to come clean about it, since they provide both the source and the destination, which is very lucrative.
Re: Rob Pike goes nuclear over GenAI
#960I 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…
FWIW I agree with you. I don't know Rob at all but he seems to be influencing enough for this long thread.
But the tone of his message is really off: "Raping the planet"? If his concern is with massive datacenter water and storage needs of AI I think he needs some reflection. Isn't Rob himself somewhat responsible for the popularity of computers by his own work?