3 ms·

I have to say that watching computers hallucinate and convince people of wrong information based on those hallucinations is not what I dreamed about doing in th

I have to say that watching computers hallucinate and convince people of wrong information based on those hallucinations is not what I dreamed about doing in this industry as a kid and a young adult. I just wanted to make video games and after that I just wanted to use technology to make things more efficient for people. I now wish I would have gone to medical school.

jeppester 3y ago
I can relate to this a bit. Prompt engineering feels a lot like SEO. Learning by trial and error, no factual knowledge to go by. I fear the future will be mostly about poking the big black AI box until its output seems to work as expected. It sounds nothing like what I enjoy about programming.
- verdverm 3y ago
  > Learning by trial and error, no factual knowledge to go by To me, it seems more like learning how to clearly and thoroughly communicate with the LLM, much like we have to do with other humans. There are basics we already know and guides are out there. The details are different for how we communicate with each other, but by and large, the process is similar. I mean, how many books are out there on how to be a better speaker, writer, communicator, relationships... the list could get quite long.
  - jeppester 3y ago
    Communicating with humans is also very trial and error, and there are no facts to go by. It's not that I hate doing it, but if I preferred it over building things, then I'd probably be a project manager instead.
mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
I've been getting increasingly depressed about this over the last several years and it's worsened with the advent of LLMs. What are we doing as an industry? It seems in the last 15 years the main focus has shifted heavily towards creating tools for the enabling, scaling and acceleration of enshittification. LLMs are the latest distillation and phase transition of this trend in the industry. A tremendous achievement to be sure. Now, garbage content and work can be produced at a scale never before seen. Quantity over quality. Familiarity over originality. I mean, are we really going to kid ourselves that this isn't where we're headed? Do we really believe all these deranged billionaires are all in on LLMs because they want to make the world a better place? Even OpenAI itself is founded by people who subscribe to bizarre, megalomaniacal ideologies and theories about AI itself, society as a whole, and even the very fabric of reality.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  I always try and check myself - it’s possible that I’m just getting to be an angry old man, which wouldn’t be a huge transition from being an angry young man, but while I can agree that the LLMs do seem to be a genuine advance, I did not expect that the latest advance in AI would be a bullshit generator and it’s strange that few people seem to have a problem with that. It seems like yet another bandwagon that everyone wants to jump on since it’s the next big thing.
  - wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
    idk man. gpt4 teaches me code stuff all the time.
    - hotpotamus 3y ago
      The code stuff doesn't really bother me though it tends to make up libraries/methods; it bullshits there too. The thing about that is that bullshit is generally rather easily figured out in code, especially if it refuses to compile/run. I do use it on occasion and it can be fabulous for prototyping a bit of code in just about any language. I don't disagree that it is impressive. But when you allow it free reign to bullshit on any subject and it confidently tells you things that are not so easily proven or disproven, that's where I start to get sad.
- IAmGraydon 3y ago
  > Even OpenAI itself is founded by people who subscribe to bizarre, megalomaniacal ideologies and theories about AI itself, society as a whole, and even the very fabric of reality. You’re really going to have to expand upon this.
  - selfhoster11 3y ago
    Not sure about the fabric of reality bit, but a lot of AI folks follow effective accelerationism and things like that.
amelius 3y ago
I think we should move the DL stuff to a separate field. Just like psychology is a different field from physics even though emotions are ultimately caused by atoms and such.
IAmGraydon 3y ago
Are you unable to work in any tech category that’s not AI? If you want to make games and devices that make things more efficient, what’s stopping you?
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  Well, I never really took to actual software development, so game dev is out though I feel like I dodged a bullet on that anyway; it's obviously an actual job (in an industry that I've also grown wary of) and not always fun and exciting as a child might imagine. Still, there are some really cool devs out there doing cool stuff. These days I guess I'm a devops guy in medical software which is in fact aligned with what I value. Pay would embarrass most people here I think, but I like the people and am proud that we get to create a product that people value enough to pay for; we aren't trying to sell ads or otherwise extract value from people, so I am pretty happy with that. It was not always this way; I worked with a lot of startups in the early 10's (not for, but with by helping them with infrastructure before it was all AWS) and quickly became disenchanted with the tech industry. Though I wouldn't have known about the idea of ZIRP back then, it was pretty clear that most every company I worked with was chasing the money and tech-startup lifestyle/image, whatever product they happened to be pushing often seemed like an afterthought. It seems that that attitude moved onto blockchain and now AI. I suppose it's the same old grow-up, lose your innocence story that most go through, but I do feel like the 90's, when I came of age, were a time of real breakthroughs and vision for a brighter future which has slowly dimmed in the intervening decades.

jeppester 3y ago

I can relate to this a bit. Prompt engineering feels a lot like SEO. Learning by trial and error, no factual knowledge to go by. I fear the future will be mostly about poking the big black AI box until its output seems to work as expected. It sounds nothing like what I enjoy about programming.

verdverm 3y ago
> Learning by trial and error, no factual knowledge to go by To me, it seems more like learning how to clearly and thoroughly communicate with the LLM, much like we have to do with other humans. There are basics we already know and guides are out there. The details are different for how we communicate with each other, but by and large, the process is similar. I mean, how many books are out there on how to be a better speaker, writer, communicator, relationships... the list could get quite long.
- jeppester 3y ago
  Communicating with humans is also very trial and error, and there are no facts to go by. It's not that I hate doing it, but if I preferred it over building things, then I'd probably be a project manager instead.

mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago

I've been getting increasingly depressed about this over the last several years and it's worsened with the advent of LLMs. What are we doing as an industry? It seems in the last 15 years the main focus has shifted heavily towards creating tools for the enabling, scaling and acceleration of enshittification. LLMs are the latest distillation and phase transition of this trend in the industry. A tremendous achievement to be sure. Now, garbage content and work can be produced at a scale never before seen. Quantity over quality. Familiarity over originality. I mean, are we really going to kid ourselves that this isn't where we're headed? Do we really believe all these deranged billionaires are all in on LLMs because they want to make the world a better place? Even OpenAI itself is founded by people who subscribe to bizarre, megalomaniacal ideologies and theories about AI itself, society as a whole, and even the very fabric of reality.

hotpotamus 3y ago
I always try and check myself - it’s possible that I’m just getting to be an angry old man, which wouldn’t be a huge transition from being an angry young man, but while I can agree that the LLMs do seem to be a genuine advance, I did not expect that the latest advance in AI would be a bullshit generator and it’s strange that few people seem to have a problem with that. It seems like yet another bandwagon that everyone wants to jump on since it’s the next big thing.
- wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
  idk man. gpt4 teaches me code stuff all the time.
  - hotpotamus 3y ago
    The code stuff doesn't really bother me though it tends to make up libraries/methods; it bullshits there too. The thing about that is that bullshit is generally rather easily figured out in code, especially if it refuses to compile/run. I do use it on occasion and it can be fabulous for prototyping a bit of code in just about any language. I don't disagree that it is impressive. But when you allow it free reign to bullshit on any subject and it confidently tells you things that are not so easily proven or disproven, that's where I start to get sad.
IAmGraydon 3y ago
> Even OpenAI itself is founded by people who subscribe to bizarre, megalomaniacal ideologies and theories about AI itself, society as a whole, and even the very fabric of reality. You’re really going to have to expand upon this.
- selfhoster11 3y ago
  Not sure about the fabric of reality bit, but a lot of AI folks follow effective accelerationism and things like that.

amelius 3y ago

I think we should move the DL stuff to a separate field. Just like psychology is a different field from physics even though emotions are ultimately caused by atoms and such.

IAmGraydon 3y ago

Are you unable to work in any tech category that’s not AI? If you want to make games and devices that make things more efficient, what’s stopping you?

hotpotamus 3y ago
Well, I never really took to actual software development, so game dev is out though I feel like I dodged a bullet on that anyway; it's obviously an actual job (in an industry that I've also grown wary of) and not always fun and exciting as a child might imagine. Still, there are some really cool devs out there doing cool stuff. These days I guess I'm a devops guy in medical software which is in fact aligned with what I value. Pay would embarrass most people here I think, but I like the people and am proud that we get to create a product that people value enough to pay for; we aren't trying to sell ads or otherwise extract value from people, so I am pretty happy with that. It was not always this way; I worked with a lot of startups in the early 10's (not for, but with by helping them with infrastructure before it was all AWS) and quickly became disenchanted with the tech industry. Though I wouldn't have known about the idea of ZIRP back then, it was pretty clear that most every company I worked with was chasing the money and tech-startup lifestyle/image, whatever product they happened to be pushing often seemed like an afterthought. It seems that that attitude moved onto blockchain and now AI. I suppose it's the same old grow-up, lose your innocence story that most go through, but I do feel like the 90's, when I came of age, were a time of real breakthroughs and vision for a brighter future which has slowly dimmed in the intervening decades.