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I'm not going to rebut everything but I want to point out that I think Geoffrey Hinton is way more in your camp in regards to faith in the technology (which is

I'm not going to rebut everything but I want to point out that I think Geoffrey Hinton is way more in your camp in regards to faith in the technology (which is what we're discussing). I'm in the camp that thinks LLMs are at best a viable competitor to furby -- I have zero existential fears and have very little confidence in them. I'm not opposed to AIs, I just think the state of the art is really really bad (sorry) and the doom and existentialism is a marketing ploy to a world imbued in conspiracy theory and institutional distrust in order to compensate for a wildly over promised and under delivered product. But hey, when you gotta raise money, you gotta raise money, and as you put it, the "trend line is going up" and that's all that matters.

FeepingCreature 3y ago
Your hypothesis is "our company will destroy the world" is a marketing move? Look. People in reality are basically never this gigabrained. Maybe consider as your first-line theory, that when people say "AI will destroy the world", that they mean to express that they believe that AI will destroy the world?
- __loam 3y ago
  It's definitely a marketing strategy. "Our technology is so good it might destroy the world. So we're letting you use it for 19.99 a month." It's just a completely inconsistent position. Who benefits from the government saying only openAI and a few other companies can make this stuff? Would openAI rather talk about the (non-existent) existential threat of AGI or actual problems with their technology like data privacy issues and the amount of power their bullshit consumes?
  - jsunderland323 3y ago
    Yeah, I think that's well said. I think the doomerism is more of a sell to investors than users sorta situation but it cuts both ways, which makes me sad for the tech industry having just made this same mistake with crypto. Who benefits from this? Anyone invested who doesn’t want to disappoint an investor (LPS, VCs, and founders) and/or anyone who’s ego is invested in the space and/or anyone who is raising money in the space and reliant on the technology and/or AI companies who benefit from the publicity/legitimacy of having their CEO talk to congress and/or AI companies who get an entire NYT piece run for a week about how an LLM is going to kill us all and/or any public company that can benefit from a stock rally by pushing the narrative that they’re in a land grab market and have the coveted goods and/or any large company that could benefit from blocking out nimbler competitors by getting arduous regulation passed… I could go on. You realize that like every 10th article on HN is an AI existentialism piece? Reddit is even worse. It also diverts the conversation from LLMs being shitty to the machines are coming. I’m fine with doomerism (getting hysterical can be fun) but I think it’s completely unwarranted with where we’re at. I don’t think we should overlook the risks associated with intellectual property, impersonation, data privacy, the ever growing body of bot spam destroying the internet etc. but worrying about the more dramatic risks has proven to be a pretty effective diversion tactic from the obvious acute problems — namely that LLMs have very little practical utility as they are now and the little utility they do have is primarily beneficial to spammers/scammers. I can already feel the person chiming in to tell me they love co-pilot (please just learn the language you’re working in). But to be clear I’m not saying this is a methodical highly coordinated ad campaign amongst multiple companies. I don’t think human beings are that competent. I think it’s way more grassroots and feeds on cultural tropes that have existed since at least the 1950s but probably the early 1900s. I think Anthropic’s leadership probably genuinely believes their own bullshit but I also think they understand that that same bullshit has raised over a billion in funding.
    - __loam 3y ago
      We'll said, and I agree. The primary use cases are things where accuracy doesn't matter like spam and scams.
corethree 3y ago
>I'm not going to rebut everything but I want to point out that I think Geoffrey Hinton is way more in your camp in regards to faith in the technology (which is what we're discussing). I'm in the camp that thinks LLMs are at best a viable competitor to furby Your point was on whether everybody wants to see AI take over. To that Geoffrey Hinton doesn't want AI to take over, while you do. I for one am not sure. As for whether Geoffrey Hinton thinks AI is legit or not is a different story. On that topic he's on my side, but that was besides the point I brought him up to point out that your take on "everybody" wanting AI to develop further is incorrect. > and the doom and existentialism is a marketing ploy to a world imbued in conspiracy theory and institutional distrust in order to compensate for a wildly over promised and under delivered product. Other way around. With all the money and business interests going into LLMs business interests are promoting LLMs in a future that you want and that is not apocalyptic. The conspiracy theories aren't a thing. It makes no sense as those theories don't align with where the money is being thrown. >But hey, when you gotta raise money, you gotta raise money, and as you put it, the "trend line is going up" and that's all that matters. Bro. I am not saying "trendline" as if it's something I have to keep throwing money at to support. I am talking about a mathematical projection based on data. The pace of technology in the past when graphed points to an ever increasing line on a line graph. When you take the slope of that line and use it to do a quantitative prediction, that line just points up. That's just a fact of reality. The logical outcome of the data we see.

FeepingCreature 3y ago

Your hypothesis is "our company will destroy the world" is a marketing move? Look. People in reality are basically never this gigabrained. Maybe consider as your first-line theory, that when people say "AI will destroy the world", that they mean to express that they believe that AI will destroy the world?

__loam 3y ago
It's definitely a marketing strategy. "Our technology is so good it might destroy the world. So we're letting you use it for 19.99 a month." It's just a completely inconsistent position. Who benefits from the government saying only openAI and a few other companies can make this stuff? Would openAI rather talk about the (non-existent) existential threat of AGI or actual problems with their technology like data privacy issues and the amount of power their bullshit consumes?
- jsunderland323 3y ago
  Yeah, I think that's well said. I think the doomerism is more of a sell to investors than users sorta situation but it cuts both ways, which makes me sad for the tech industry having just made this same mistake with crypto. Who benefits from this? Anyone invested who doesn’t want to disappoint an investor (LPS, VCs, and founders) and/or anyone who’s ego is invested in the space and/or anyone who is raising money in the space and reliant on the technology and/or AI companies who benefit from the publicity/legitimacy of having their CEO talk to congress and/or AI companies who get an entire NYT piece run for a week about how an LLM is going to kill us all and/or any public company that can benefit from a stock rally by pushing the narrative that they’re in a land grab market and have the coveted goods and/or any large company that could benefit from blocking out nimbler competitors by getting arduous regulation passed… I could go on. You realize that like every 10th article on HN is an AI existentialism piece? Reddit is even worse. It also diverts the conversation from LLMs being shitty to the machines are coming. I’m fine with doomerism (getting hysterical can be fun) but I think it’s completely unwarranted with where we’re at. I don’t think we should overlook the risks associated with intellectual property, impersonation, data privacy, the ever growing body of bot spam destroying the internet etc. but worrying about the more dramatic risks has proven to be a pretty effective diversion tactic from the obvious acute problems — namely that LLMs have very little practical utility as they are now and the little utility they do have is primarily beneficial to spammers/scammers. I can already feel the person chiming in to tell me they love co-pilot (please just learn the language you’re working in). But to be clear I’m not saying this is a methodical highly coordinated ad campaign amongst multiple companies. I don’t think human beings are that competent. I think it’s way more grassroots and feeds on cultural tropes that have existed since at least the 1950s but probably the early 1900s. I think Anthropic’s leadership probably genuinely believes their own bullshit but I also think they understand that that same bullshit has raised over a billion in funding.
  - __loam 3y ago
    We'll said, and I agree. The primary use cases are things where accuracy doesn't matter like spam and scams.

corethree 3y ago

>I'm not going to rebut everything but I want to point out that I think Geoffrey Hinton is way more in your camp in regards to faith in the technology (which is what we're discussing). I'm in the camp that thinks LLMs are at best a viable competitor to furby Your point was on whether everybody wants to see AI take over. To that Geoffrey Hinton doesn't want AI to take over, while you do. I for one am not sure. As for whether Geoffrey Hinton thinks AI is legit or not is a different story. On that topic he's on my side, but that was besides the point I brought him up to point out that your take on "everybody" wanting AI to develop further is incorrect. > and the doom and existentialism is a marketing ploy to a world imbued in conspiracy theory and institutional distrust in order to compensate for a wildly over promised and under delivered product. Other way around. With all the money and business interests going into LLMs business interests are promoting LLMs in a future that you want and that is not apocalyptic. The conspiracy theories aren't a thing. It makes no sense as those theories don't align with where the money is being thrown. >But hey, when you gotta raise money, you gotta raise money, and as you put it, the "trend line is going up" and that's all that matters. Bro. I am not saying "trendline" as if it's something I have to keep throwing money at to support. I am talking about a mathematical projection based on data. The pace of technology in the past when graphed points to an ever increasing line on a line graph. When you take the slope of that line and use it to do a quantitative prediction, that line just points up. That's just a fact of reality. The logical outcome of the data we see.