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> HN, and the internet in general, have become just an ocean of reactionary sandbagging and blather about how "useless" LLMs are. This is cult like behaviour t

> HN, and the internet in general, have become just an ocean of reactionary sandbagging and blather about how "useless" LLMs are. This is cult like behaviour that reminds me so much of the crypto space. I don't understand why people are not allowed to be critical of a technology or not find it useful. And if they are they are somehow ignorant, over-reacting or deficient in some way.

wenc 2y ago
I think it's perfectly ok to be critical of technology as long as one is thoughtful rather than dismissive. There is a lot of hype right now and pushing back against it is the right thing to do. I'm more reacting against simplistic and categorical pronouncements of straight up "uselessness," which to me seems un-curious and deeply cynical, especially since it is evidentially untrue in many domains (though it is true for some domains). I just find this kind of emotional cynicism (not a healthy skepticism, but cynicism) to be contrary to the spirit of innovation and openness, and indeed contrary to evidence. It's also an overgeneralization -- "I don't find it useful, so it's useless" -- rather than "Why don't I find it useful, and why do others do? Let me learn more." As future-looking HNers, I'd expect we would understand the world through a lens of "trajectories" rather than "current state". Just because LLMs hallucinate and make mistakes with a tone of confidence today -- a deep weakness -- doesn't mean they are altogether useless. We've witnessed that despite their weaknesses, we are getting a lot of value from them in many domains today and they are getting better over time. Take neural networks themselves for instance. For most of the 90s-2000s, people thought they were a dead end. My own professor had great vitriol against Neural Networks. Most of the initial promises in the 80s truly didn't pan out. Turns out what was missing was (lots of) data, which the Internet provided. And look where we are today. Another area of cynicism is self-driving cars (Level 5). Lots of hype and overpromise, and lots of people saying it will never happen because it requires a cognitive model of the world, which is too complicated, and there are too many exceptional cases for there to ever be Level 5 autonomy. Possibly true, but I think "never" is a very strong sentiment that is unworthy of a curious person.
- threeseed 2y ago
  This entire comment can be summarised as: everyone who doesn't think like me is wrong. Not everyone is interested in seeing the world through the hopes and dreams of e/acc types and would prefer to see it as it is today. LLMs are a technology. Nothing more. It can be as amazing or useless as anyone likes.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    And this comment can be summarized as "Nuh uh, I'm right". When summarizing longer bits of text down to a single sentence, nuance and meaning gets lost, making the summarization ultimatele useless, contributing nothing to the discussion.
- rainsford 2y ago
  I generally agree, although an important aspect of thinking in terms of "trajectories" is recognizing when a particular trajectory might end up at a dead end. One perspective on the weaknesses of current LLMs is that it's just where the things are today and they can still provide value even while the technology improves. But another perspective is that the persistence of these weaknesses indicates something more fundamentally broken with the whole approach that means it's not really the path towards "real" AI, even if you can finesse it into doing useful things in certain applications. There's also an important nuance differentiating rejection of a general technological endpoint (e.g. AGI or Level 5 self-driving cars) with a particular technological approach to achieving those goals (e.g. current LLM design or Tesla's autopilot). As you said, "never" is a long time and it takes a lot of unwarranted confidence to say we will never be able to achieve goals like AGI or Level 5 self-driving. But it seems a lot more reasonable to argue Tesla or OpenAI (and everyone else doing essentially the same thing as OpenAI) are fundamentally on the wrong track to achieving those goals without significantly changing their approach. I agree that none of that really warrants dismissive cynicism of new technology, but being curious and future-looking also requires being willing to say when you think something is a bad approach even if it's not totally useless. Among other reasons, our ability to explore new technology is not limitless, and hype for a flawed technology isn't just annoying but may be sucking all the oxygen out of the room not leaving any for a potentially better alternative. Part of me wants to be optimistic about LLMs, but another part of me thinks about how much energy (human and compute) has gone into this thing that does not seem to be providing a corresponding amount of value.
wenc 2y ago
Also, I'm deeply skeptical of crypto too due to its present scamminess, but I am keeping an open mind that there is a future in which crypto -- once it gets over this phase of get-rich-quick schemers -- will be seen as just another asset class. I read somewhere that historically bonds in their early days were also associated with scamminess but today they're just a vanilla asset.
- evilfred 2y ago
  bonds have utility, crypto does not
- rainsford 2y ago
  I'm honestly more optimistic about cryptocurrency as a mechanism of exchange rather than an asset. As a mechanism of exchange, cryptocurrency has some actually novel properties like distributed consensus that could be useful in certain cases. But an asset class which has zero backing value seems unworkable except for wild speculation and scams. Unfortunately the incentives around most cryptocurrencies (and maybe fundamental to cryptocurrency as an idea) greatly emphasize the asset aspects, and it's getting to be long enough since it became a thing that I'm starting to become skeptical cryptocurrency will be a real medium of exchange outside of illegal activities and maybe a few other niche cases.
evilfred 2y ago
just like with crypto and NFTs and the metaverse, they are always focused on what is suppsoedly coming down the pipe in the future and not what is actually possible today
ben_w 2y ago
Crypro and AI have similarities and differences. The similarities include intense "true believer" pitches and governments taking them seriously. The differences include that the most famous cryptocurrency can't function as a direct payment mechanism for just lunch purchases in just Berlin (IIRC nor is it enough for all interbank transactions so it can't even be a behind-the-scenes system by itself), while GenAI output keeps ending up in places people would rather not find it like homework and that person on Twitter who's telling you Russia Did Nothing Wrong (and also giving you a nice cheesecake recipe because they don't do any input sanitation).

wenc 2y ago

I think it's perfectly ok to be critical of technology as long as one is thoughtful rather than dismissive. There is a lot of hype right now and pushing back against it is the right thing to do. I'm more reacting against simplistic and categorical pronouncements of straight up "uselessness," which to me seems un-curious and deeply cynical, especially since it is evidentially untrue in many domains (though it is true for some domains). I just find this kind of emotional cynicism (not a healthy skepticism, but cynicism) to be contrary to the spirit of innovation and openness, and indeed contrary to evidence. It's also an overgeneralization -- "I don't find it useful, so it's useless" -- rather than "Why don't I find it useful, and why do others do? Let me learn more." As future-looking HNers, I'd expect we would understand the world through a lens of "trajectories" rather than "current state". Just because LLMs hallucinate and make mistakes with a tone of confidence today -- a deep weakness -- doesn't mean they are altogether useless. We've witnessed that despite their weaknesses, we are getting a lot of value from them in many domains today and they are getting better over time. Take neural networks themselves for instance. For most of the 90s-2000s, people thought they were a dead end. My own professor had great vitriol against Neural Networks. Most of the initial promises in the 80s truly didn't pan out. Turns out what was missing was (lots of) data, which the Internet provided. And look where we are today. Another area of cynicism is self-driving cars (Level 5). Lots of hype and overpromise, and lots of people saying it will never happen because it requires a cognitive model of the world, which is too complicated, and there are too many exceptional cases for there to ever be Level 5 autonomy. Possibly true, but I think "never" is a very strong sentiment that is unworthy of a curious person.

threeseed 2y ago
This entire comment can be summarised as: everyone who doesn't think like me is wrong. Not everyone is interested in seeing the world through the hopes and dreams of e/acc types and would prefer to see it as it is today. LLMs are a technology. Nothing more. It can be as amazing or useless as anyone likes.
- fragmede 2y ago
  And this comment can be summarized as "Nuh uh, I'm right". When summarizing longer bits of text down to a single sentence, nuance and meaning gets lost, making the summarization ultimatele useless, contributing nothing to the discussion.
rainsford 2y ago
I generally agree, although an important aspect of thinking in terms of "trajectories" is recognizing when a particular trajectory might end up at a dead end. One perspective on the weaknesses of current LLMs is that it's just where the things are today and they can still provide value even while the technology improves. But another perspective is that the persistence of these weaknesses indicates something more fundamentally broken with the whole approach that means it's not really the path towards "real" AI, even if you can finesse it into doing useful things in certain applications. There's also an important nuance differentiating rejection of a general technological endpoint (e.g. AGI or Level 5 self-driving cars) with a particular technological approach to achieving those goals (e.g. current LLM design or Tesla's autopilot). As you said, "never" is a long time and it takes a lot of unwarranted confidence to say we will never be able to achieve goals like AGI or Level 5 self-driving. But it seems a lot more reasonable to argue Tesla or OpenAI (and everyone else doing essentially the same thing as OpenAI) are fundamentally on the wrong track to achieving those goals without significantly changing their approach. I agree that none of that really warrants dismissive cynicism of new technology, but being curious and future-looking also requires being willing to say when you think something is a bad approach even if it's not totally useless. Among other reasons, our ability to explore new technology is not limitless, and hype for a flawed technology isn't just annoying but may be sucking all the oxygen out of the room not leaving any for a potentially better alternative. Part of me wants to be optimistic about LLMs, but another part of me thinks about how much energy (human and compute) has gone into this thing that does not seem to be providing a corresponding amount of value.

wenc 2y ago

Also, I'm deeply skeptical of crypto too due to its present scamminess, but I am keeping an open mind that there is a future in which crypto -- once it gets over this phase of get-rich-quick schemers -- will be seen as just another asset class. I read somewhere that historically bonds in their early days were also associated with scamminess but today they're just a vanilla asset.

evilfred 2y ago
bonds have utility, crypto does not
rainsford 2y ago
I'm honestly more optimistic about cryptocurrency as a mechanism of exchange rather than an asset. As a mechanism of exchange, cryptocurrency has some actually novel properties like distributed consensus that could be useful in certain cases. But an asset class which has zero backing value seems unworkable except for wild speculation and scams. Unfortunately the incentives around most cryptocurrencies (and maybe fundamental to cryptocurrency as an idea) greatly emphasize the asset aspects, and it's getting to be long enough since it became a thing that I'm starting to become skeptical cryptocurrency will be a real medium of exchange outside of illegal activities and maybe a few other niche cases.

evilfred 2y ago

just like with crypto and NFTs and the metaverse, they are always focused on what is suppsoedly coming down the pipe in the future and not what is actually possible today

ben_w 2y ago

Crypro and AI have similarities and differences. The similarities include intense "true believer" pitches and governments taking them seriously. The differences include that the most famous cryptocurrency can't function as a direct payment mechanism for just lunch purchases in just Berlin (IIRC nor is it enough for all interbank transactions so it can't even be a behind-the-scenes system by itself), while GenAI output keeps ending up in places people would rather not find it like homework and that person on Twitter who's telling you Russia Did Nothing Wrong (and also giving you a nice cheesecake recipe because they don't do any input sanitation).