6 ms·

Crypto collapse? Get in loser, we’re pivoting to AI

63 points by Al0neStar 3y ago

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
rsrsrs86 3y ago
It doesn’t need to be AGI to be dangerous. As argument, just consider how the next elections will be. GPT is at least a cannon for fake news. A fake News machine gun
- maxbond 3y ago
  I agree that this article leans too much into "antihype" and dismisses the danger. The criticism that AI safety regulations are a pretty obvious attempt to erect a regulatory moat is an important one however.
- LatteLazy 3y ago
  But then the problem is not GPT/DumbAI, it is it's users. Alternatively, what you have said is true of all tools: a hammer does not need to be conscious to be dangerous, it just needs to be put in the hands of bad actors; well yeah, that is true of everything all the time...
ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
It's crazy to think Sequoia was started by Valentine who invested in so many iconic companies. And now just look at Sequoia. The bottom of the barrel with the worst takes in technology. How much a company can fall.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- ETH_start 3y ago
  The best investment calls are on trends that the majority initially dismiss. The mismatch between public expectations and real potential is the source of returns. So they may still be great investors, making calls that you lack the vision to appreciate.
  - ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
    thanks ETH_start. lol.
    - ETH_start 3y ago
      You're welcome :)
ftxbro 3y ago
me and the bros have already fully pivoted
maxbond 3y ago
The first third of the article is kinda polemic, it won't really convince anyone needing convincing. This however I thought was the substance of it: > The VCs’ actual use case for AI is treating workers badly. > The Writer’s Guild of America, a labor union representing writers for TV and film in the US, is on strike for better pay and conditions. One of the reasons is that studio executives are using the threat of AI against them. Writers think the plan is to get a chatbot to generate a low-quality script, which the writers are then paid less in worse conditions to fix. [Guardian] > Executives at the National Eating Disorders Association replaced hotline workers with a chatbot four days after the workers unionized. “This is about union busting, plain and simple,” said one helpline associate. The bot then gave wrong and damaging advice to users of the service: “Every single thing Tessa suggested were things that led to the development of my eating disorder.” The service has backtracked on using the chatbot. [Vice; Labor Notes; Vice; Daily Dot] > Digital blackface: instead of actually hiring black models, Levi’s thought it would be a great idea to take white models and alter the images to look like black people. Levi’s claimed it would increase diversity if they faked the diversity. One agency tried using AI to synthesize a suitably stereotypical “Black voice” instead of hiring an actual black voice actor. [Business Insider, archive]
- Spivak 3y ago
  Which really is just the latest in the time honored "capitalism was the real villain all along" tradition. Wow look at this thing that has the potential to do labor that previously required a human's time and effort. When you capture the value it means you can either do more or have more leisure. When you don't capture the value it means the treadmill of "being valuable to my employer" just got faster.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
    > Wow look at this thing that has the potential to do labor that previously required a human's time and effort. Yes, but also it still does "require a human's time and effort", what else is the required training data for these models except a large amount of "human time and effort". It's just scraped for free and all munged together. Bulk, unpaid labour.
deltaninenine 3y ago
>People’s susceptibility to anthropomorphizing an even slightly convincing computer program has been known since ELIZA, one of the first chatbots, in 1966. It’s called the ELIZA effect. I'm tired of these arguments. Very very few people are anthropomorphizing chatgpt.. very few. The majority of people both technical and non technical who have played with chatGPT in a non trivial way are aware of the chatbots limitations. It's like recognizing a crazy person on the street. Humans are well equipped for that. This argument characterizes the average person as some kind of stupid buffoon as if he/she can't tell chatGPT really screws shit up. Sure there are a few gullible outliers but as a generality his claim is simply completely false. Pretty much everyone and I mean everyone is aware about the limitations of LLMs. This is a weak and repeated trope that's being regurgitated as if the critics are LLMs themselves. Let me specify exactly what's going on. People who are afraid of/support AI are more speaking to the potential of AI. Why? Because just as much as this thing hallucinates about half the time it answers a complex question with an equally complex and correct answer and that answer in isolation is often indistinguishable or even at times superior to a humans answer. Yes we know it hallucinates and forgets shit. This is obvious, no need to readdress an obvious weakness that everyone is aware about. If critics want to have a real discussion then they seriously need to address the actual strengths and phenomenons of LLMs instead of repeatedly highlighting the obvious weaknesses. Because while we have somewhat of an explanation for the hallucinations we currently don't know how chatGPT was able to do something like this: https://www.engraved.blog/building-a-virtual-machine-inside/ https://www.engraved.blog/building-a-virtual-machine-inside/ Read to the end of you haven't seen this. The ending is what is quite unexplainable by experts. You can't just trivialize that entire post as if it was just a statistical phenomenon. There's obviously an alternative angle here.
- gregjor 3y ago
  Wrong. Too many people do anthropomorphize LLMs. And few people actually understand how LLMs work, or how to detect errors and hallucinations. Calling LLM autocomplete "AI" deliberately conflates the tech with sci-fi tropes that many people already confuse with reality. Numerous examples, from ELIZA to Watson, internet-based scams and frauds, full self-driving, to all of crypto demonstrate human credulity and gullibility, magnified if people think they will either profit or lose financially. The technology behind LLMs probably does have some interesting and valuable applications. But look at the hype and follow the money with a skeptical eye. If so-called AI does or will soon deliver real benefits then why all of the hype around it? Show, don't tell, and especially don't tell stories based on possible future advances or breakthroughs. Future editions of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds will have long chapters about crypto and AI. If you think most people understand the tech and its limitations and don't act according to gullibility, ignorance, and greed that book should disabuse you.
paulpauper 3y ago
Yeah QQQ is up 10% and BTC down 10% from 2 month ago. Going to get worse for Bitcoin and crypto overall. Bitcoin does not generate profits, does not benefit from AI hype/boom, does not hedge inflation. It has no upside, only downside.
yashvg 3y ago
I agree that a lot of crypto grifter seem to be moving on to AI. But it seems like the author is doing the same thing. Since no one is interested in reading his criticism of cypto anymore, he is now moving on to AI. Legend.
- senttoschool 3y ago
  I don't think he's moving to AI. It's a whole lot harder to mass scam people in AI than in crypto. BTC and ETH are still pretty high in price. He's still only covering crypto. But he's right that many scammers, grifters, opportunists have moved to AI. Even the ones left in crypto are basically trying to associate their crypto projects with AI as much as possible. If real estate was hot, crypto would try to associate with real estate. If room temperature superconductors are invented, they'd say crypto for superconductors. Basically, in order for useless crypto shitcoins to get attention, they attach themselves to anything that's hot.
- davidgerard 3y ago
  co-author here: lol I assure you we have no wish to continue on this AI path. OTOH, we both got new patrons all of a sudden. And there's a similar article to write about quantum computing grift, with massive misselling of systems that might one day be able to factor numbers as high as 35.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
GaggiX 3y ago
From reading this article, it seems that the biggest reason AI sucks is that it won't actually destroy humanity. This article seems more like a critique of AI doomerism.
euroderf 3y ago
I do like this quote: "Don’t want to worry anyone, but I just asked ChatGPT to build me a better paperclip." Given the means, would it kill anyone who gets in the way of more paperclips?
- jshmrsn 3y ago
  This quote is referencing a famous hypothetical example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence?wprov...
  - euroderf 3y ago
    Good to know !
richard___ 3y ago
What is this guys tech credentials
- richardjam73 3y ago
  Why does that matter? Is what he saying true or false?
  - xu_ituairo 3y ago
    Feels more like polemic and opinion than something that’s true or false
- davidgerard 3y ago
  co-author here: I'm a sysadmin by day, haven't worked anywhere near AI. But our main applicable experience is as finance journalists writing up crypto grifters. And it's not only the same grift, but literally a lot of the same grifters. It's never about the technology, it's always about the money.
Zemtomo 3y ago
Bad writing,.combining two independent and unrelated things and not knowing what and how LLM and a lot more works. Funny this peace could have been written by chatgpt with the same or better quality. Only good thing is that crypto VC is now starting to invest in something worthy
morelandjs 3y ago
“ChatGPT, a chatbot developed by Sam Altman’s OpenAI and released in November 2022, is a stupendously scaled-up autocomplete. Really, that’s all that it is.” Stopped reading after this part. To be so intentionally misleading and dismissive of truly miraculous work by the LLM community and the OpenAI team is not for me.
- Chuck_Master 3y ago
  Thats a reference that Sam makes in interviews.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

63 points by Al0neStar 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

It doesn’t need to be AGI to be dangerous. As argument, just consider how the next elections will be. GPT is at least a cannon for fake news. A fake News machine gun

maxbond 3y ago
I agree that this article leans too much into "antihype" and dismisses the danger. The criticism that AI safety regulations are a pretty obvious attempt to erect a regulatory moat is an important one however.
LatteLazy 3y ago
But then the problem is not GPT/DumbAI, it is it's users. Alternatively, what you have said is true of all tools: a hammer does not need to be conscious to be dangerous, it just needs to be put in the hands of bad actors; well yeah, that is true of everything all the time...

ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago

It's crazy to think Sequoia was started by Valentine who invested in so many iconic companies. And now just look at Sequoia. The bottom of the barrel with the worst takes in technology. How much a company can fall.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ETH_start 3y ago
The best investment calls are on trends that the majority initially dismiss. The mismatch between public expectations and real potential is the source of returns. So they may still be great investors, making calls that you lack the vision to appreciate.
- ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
  thanks ETH_start. lol.
  - ETH_start 3y ago
    You're welcome :)

ftxbro 3y ago

me and the bros have already fully pivoted

maxbond 3y ago

The first third of the article is kinda polemic, it won't really convince anyone needing convincing. This however I thought was the substance of it: > The VCs’ actual use case for AI is treating workers badly. > The Writer’s Guild of America, a labor union representing writers for TV and film in the US, is on strike for better pay and conditions. One of the reasons is that studio executives are using the threat of AI against them. Writers think the plan is to get a chatbot to generate a low-quality script, which the writers are then paid less in worse conditions to fix. [Guardian] > Executives at the National Eating Disorders Association replaced hotline workers with a chatbot four days after the workers unionized. “This is about union busting, plain and simple,” said one helpline associate. The bot then gave wrong and damaging advice to users of the service: “Every single thing Tessa suggested were things that led to the development of my eating disorder.” The service has backtracked on using the chatbot. [Vice; Labor Notes; Vice; Daily Dot] > Digital blackface: instead of actually hiring black models, Levi’s thought it would be a great idea to take white models and alter the images to look like black people. Levi’s claimed it would increase diversity if they faked the diversity. One agency tried using AI to synthesize a suitably stereotypical “Black voice” instead of hiring an actual black voice actor. [Business Insider, archive]

Spivak 3y ago
Which really is just the latest in the time honored "capitalism was the real villain all along" tradition. Wow look at this thing that has the potential to do labor that previously required a human's time and effort. When you capture the value it means you can either do more or have more leisure. When you don't capture the value it means the treadmill of "being valuable to my employer" just got faster.
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
  > Wow look at this thing that has the potential to do labor that previously required a human's time and effort. Yes, but also it still does "require a human's time and effort", what else is the required training data for these models except a large amount of "human time and effort". It's just scraped for free and all munged together. Bulk, unpaid labour.

deltaninenine 3y ago

>People’s susceptibility to anthropomorphizing an even slightly convincing computer program has been known since ELIZA, one of the first chatbots, in 1966. It’s called the ELIZA effect. I'm tired of these arguments. Very very few people are anthropomorphizing chatgpt.. very few. The majority of people both technical and non technical who have played with chatGPT in a non trivial way are aware of the chatbots limitations. It's like recognizing a crazy person on the street. Humans are well equipped for that. This argument characterizes the average person as some kind of stupid buffoon as if he/she can't tell chatGPT really screws shit up. Sure there are a few gullible outliers but as a generality his claim is simply completely false. Pretty much everyone and I mean everyone is aware about the limitations of LLMs. This is a weak and repeated trope that's being regurgitated as if the critics are LLMs themselves. Let me specify exactly what's going on. People who are afraid of/support AI are more speaking to the potential of AI. Why? Because just as much as this thing hallucinates about half the time it answers a complex question with an equally complex and correct answer and that answer in isolation is often indistinguishable or even at times superior to a humans answer. Yes we know it hallucinates and forgets shit. This is obvious, no need to readdress an obvious weakness that everyone is aware about. If critics want to have a real discussion then they seriously need to address the actual strengths and phenomenons of LLMs instead of repeatedly highlighting the obvious weaknesses. Because while we have somewhat of an explanation for the hallucinations we currently don't know how chatGPT was able to do something like this: https://www.engraved.blog/building-a-virtual-machine-inside/ https://www.engraved.blog/building-a-virtual-machine-inside/ Read to the end of you haven't seen this. The ending is what is quite unexplainable by experts. You can't just trivialize that entire post as if it was just a statistical phenomenon. There's obviously an alternative angle here.

gregjor 3y ago
Wrong. Too many people do anthropomorphize LLMs. And few people actually understand how LLMs work, or how to detect errors and hallucinations. Calling LLM autocomplete "AI" deliberately conflates the tech with sci-fi tropes that many people already confuse with reality. Numerous examples, from ELIZA to Watson, internet-based scams and frauds, full self-driving, to all of crypto demonstrate human credulity and gullibility, magnified if people think they will either profit or lose financially. The technology behind LLMs probably does have some interesting and valuable applications. But look at the hype and follow the money with a skeptical eye. If so-called AI does or will soon deliver real benefits then why all of the hype around it? Show, don't tell, and especially don't tell stories based on possible future advances or breakthroughs. Future editions of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds will have long chapters about crypto and AI. If you think most people understand the tech and its limitations and don't act according to gullibility, ignorance, and greed that book should disabuse you.

paulpauper 3y ago

Yeah QQQ is up 10% and BTC down 10% from 2 month ago. Going to get worse for Bitcoin and crypto overall. Bitcoin does not generate profits, does not benefit from AI hype/boom, does not hedge inflation. It has no upside, only downside.

yashvg 3y ago

I agree that a lot of crypto grifter seem to be moving on to AI. But it seems like the author is doing the same thing. Since no one is interested in reading his criticism of cypto anymore, he is now moving on to AI. Legend.

senttoschool 3y ago
I don't think he's moving to AI. It's a whole lot harder to mass scam people in AI than in crypto. BTC and ETH are still pretty high in price. He's still only covering crypto. But he's right that many scammers, grifters, opportunists have moved to AI. Even the ones left in crypto are basically trying to associate their crypto projects with AI as much as possible. If real estate was hot, crypto would try to associate with real estate. If room temperature superconductors are invented, they'd say crypto for superconductors. Basically, in order for useless crypto shitcoins to get attention, they attach themselves to anything that's hot.
davidgerard 3y ago
co-author here: lol I assure you we have no wish to continue on this AI path. OTOH, we both got new patrons all of a sudden. And there's a similar article to write about quantum computing grift, with massive misselling of systems that might one day be able to factor numbers as high as 35.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

GaggiX 3y ago

From reading this article, it seems that the biggest reason AI sucks is that it won't actually destroy humanity. This article seems more like a critique of AI doomerism.

euroderf 3y ago

I do like this quote: "Don’t want to worry anyone, but I just asked ChatGPT to build me a better paperclip." Given the means, would it kill anyone who gets in the way of more paperclips?

jshmrsn 3y ago
This quote is referencing a famous hypothetical example https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence?wprov=sfti1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence?wprov...
- euroderf 3y ago
  Good to know !

richard___ 3y ago

What is this guys tech credentials

richardjam73 3y ago
Why does that matter? Is what he saying true or false?
- xu_ituairo 3y ago
  Feels more like polemic and opinion than something that’s true or false
davidgerard 3y ago
co-author here: I'm a sysadmin by day, haven't worked anywhere near AI. But our main applicable experience is as finance journalists writing up crypto grifters. And it's not only the same grift, but literally a lot of the same grifters. It's never about the technology, it's always about the money.

Zemtomo 3y ago

Bad writing,.combining two independent and unrelated things and not knowing what and how LLM and a lot more works. Funny this peace could have been written by chatgpt with the same or better quality. Only good thing is that crypto VC is now starting to invest in something worthy

morelandjs 3y ago

“ChatGPT, a chatbot developed by Sam Altman’s OpenAI and released in November 2022, is a stupendously scaled-up autocomplete. Really, that’s all that it is.” Stopped reading after this part. To be so intentionally misleading and dismissive of truly miraculous work by the LLM community and the OpenAI team is not for me.

Chuck_Master 3y ago
Thats a reference that Sam makes in interviews.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]