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Hey hn, this is my first blog post. The community here inspired me to finally try it out. I would really appreciate any feedback on clarity, or anything that c

Hey hn, this is my first blog post. The community here inspired me to finally try it out. I would really appreciate any feedback on clarity, or anything that causes good or bad gut reactions.

anoy8888 4y ago
Well written . Thanks
- lachlan_gray 4y ago
  thanks!
smburdick 4y ago
I don't see a way to leave feedback right away on your page. To solicit more feedback, you might consider linking your email address/contact page in the article itself, or have an anon. comment section on your blog itself. (I realize you have your obfuscated email in the "about" section, but you might provide a simpler mechanism if you have time) Happy blogging!
- lachlan_gray 4y ago
  Thanks for the idea! I'm looking into this now, looks like there are batteries-included services I can plunk down into the website
wslh 4y ago
Could you please add a few sentences/paragraphs about your core idea because now NSFW? Obviously without using ChatGPT ;-)
- lachlan_gray 4y ago
  AI will definitely have NSFW use cases... I think William Gibson's Neuromancer books will prove to have prescient insights into what that will look like. Tech like simstims that can seize your attention and can hold it indefinitely, and highly personal AI-designed fantasies
the_gipsy 4y ago
I enjoyed the read. Nice take on the future of AI without going handwavy.
- lachlan_gray 4y ago
  that's good to hear- my hands like to wave and I tried hard to keep them at bay
gwd 4y ago
Your description of "dumb AI" as being "just useful enough to maintain a flow of funding" reminds me of A Collection of Unmitigated Pedatry's description of the start of the Industrial Revolution [1]: > The specificity matters here because each innovation in the chain required not merely the discovery of the principle, but also the design and an economically viable use-case to all line up in order to have impact. The steam engine is an excellent example of this problem. Early tinkering with the idea of using heat to create steam to power rotary motion – the core function of a steam-engine – go all the way back to Vitruvius (c. 80 BC -15 AD) and Heron of Alexandria (c. 10-70 AD). With the benefit of hindsight we can see they were tinkering with an importance principle but the devices they actually produced – the aeolipile – had no practical use – it’s fearsomely fuel inefficient, produces little power and has to be refilled with water (that then has to be heated again from room temperature to enable operation). He goes on to say that the very first "commercial" steam engine only happened to be commercially useful because of the particular situation in which it was invented: England had cut down most of their trees, but luckily had lots of coal. The engine wasn't quite useful enough to use to (say) pump water out of an iron mine, because it was so resource-hungry that it the cost of the fuel plus getting fuel to the engine would be too much. But it's just barely useful enough to pump water out of a coal mine, if you can provide it coal without having to transport it. And that gave it just enough of a commercial toe-hold to fund its optimization. It sounds like "dumb AI" of the 2000's may have performed a similar function; and we are, perhaps, on the edge of the "AI revolution", similar to the Industrial Revolution, where we reach a hockey-stick proliferation. EDIT: Fixed link [1] https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/comment-page-1/ https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus...
- lachlan_gray 4y ago
  This is extremely interesting and I will keep it for later! I think the engine is a perfect analogy for what makes language models exciting. At the time nobody would have realized that it would power trains or factories... it's just this huge inefficient dirty machine that gets water out of the coal mine. Let alone realize that given better fuel, they would become small and cheap enough to power strange futuristic personal devices like lawn mowers and cars.
kakapo88 4y ago
That was a fresh and insightful post. I think the comparison to the Cambrian explosion is a good one, as well as the larger framing of technological progress in the context of punctuated equilibrium.
- lachlan_gray 4y ago
  I'm glad you enjoyed it!
whoibrar 4y ago
Well Written, Reading this felt like a breath of fresh air amid all the fog and pollution by "AI will take all our jobs" and "How to $$$ with AI".

Hey hn, this is my first blog post. The community here inspired me to finally try it out. I would really appreciate any feedback on clarity, or anything that causes good or bad gut reactions.

anoy8888 4y ago

Well written . Thanks

lachlan_gray 4y ago
thanks!

smburdick 4y ago

I don't see a way to leave feedback right away on your page. To solicit more feedback, you might consider linking your email address/contact page in the article itself, or have an anon. comment section on your blog itself. (I realize you have your obfuscated email in the "about" section, but you might provide a simpler mechanism if you have time) Happy blogging!

lachlan_gray 4y ago
Thanks for the idea! I'm looking into this now, looks like there are batteries-included services I can plunk down into the website

wslh 4y ago

Could you please add a few sentences/paragraphs about your core idea because now NSFW? Obviously without using ChatGPT ;-)

lachlan_gray 4y ago
AI will definitely have NSFW use cases... I think William Gibson's Neuromancer books will prove to have prescient insights into what that will look like. Tech like simstims that can seize your attention and can hold it indefinitely, and highly personal AI-designed fantasies

the_gipsy 4y ago

I enjoyed the read. Nice take on the future of AI without going handwavy.

lachlan_gray 4y ago
that's good to hear- my hands like to wave and I tried hard to keep them at bay

gwd 4y ago

Your description of "dumb AI" as being "just useful enough to maintain a flow of funding" reminds me of A Collection of Unmitigated Pedatry's description of the start of the Industrial Revolution [1]: > The specificity matters here because each innovation in the chain required not merely the discovery of the principle, but also the design and an economically viable use-case to all line up in order to have impact. The steam engine is an excellent example of this problem. Early tinkering with the idea of using heat to create steam to power rotary motion – the core function of a steam-engine – go all the way back to Vitruvius (c. 80 BC -15 AD) and Heron of Alexandria (c. 10-70 AD). With the benefit of hindsight we can see they were tinkering with an importance principle but the devices they actually produced – the aeolipile – had no practical use – it’s fearsomely fuel inefficient, produces little power and has to be refilled with water (that then has to be heated again from room temperature to enable operation). He goes on to say that the very first "commercial" steam engine only happened to be commercially useful because of the particular situation in which it was invented: England had cut down most of their trees, but luckily had lots of coal. The engine wasn't quite useful enough to use to (say) pump water out of an iron mine, because it was so resource-hungry that it the cost of the fuel plus getting fuel to the engine would be too much. But it's just barely useful enough to pump water out of a coal mine, if you can provide it coal without having to transport it. And that gave it just enough of a commercial toe-hold to fund its optimization. It sounds like "dumb AI" of the 2000's may have performed a similar function; and we are, perhaps, on the edge of the "AI revolution", similar to the Industrial Revolution, where we reach a hockey-stick proliferation. EDIT: Fixed link [1] https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-industrial-revolution/comment-page-1/ https://acoup.blog/2022/08/26/collections-why-no-roman-indus...

lachlan_gray 4y ago
This is extremely interesting and I will keep it for later! I think the engine is a perfect analogy for what makes language models exciting. At the time nobody would have realized that it would power trains or factories... it's just this huge inefficient dirty machine that gets water out of the coal mine. Let alone realize that given better fuel, they would become small and cheap enough to power strange futuristic personal devices like lawn mowers and cars.

kakapo88 4y ago

That was a fresh and insightful post. I think the comparison to the Cambrian explosion is a good one, as well as the larger framing of technological progress in the context of punctuated equilibrium.

lachlan_gray 4y ago
I'm glad you enjoyed it!

whoibrar 4y ago

Well Written, Reading this felt like a breath of fresh air amid all the fog and pollution by "AI will take all our jobs" and "How to $$$ with AI".