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There’s a hype machine for sure. But the last few paragraphs of the piece kind of give away the game — the author is an AI skeptic judging only the current pro

There’s a hype machine for sure. But the last few paragraphs of the piece kind of give away the game — the author is an AI skeptic judging only the current products rather than taking in the scope of how far they’ve come in such a short time frame. I don’t have much use for this short sighted analysis. It’s just not very intelligent and shows a stubborn lack of imagination. It reminds me of that quote “it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” People like this have banked their futures on AI not working out.

codr7 1y ago
The opposite is more true imo. It's the AI hype squad that are banking their future on AI magically turning into AGI; because, you know, it surprised us once.
- whynotminot 1y ago
  Not really — even if AGI doesn’t work and these models don’t get any better, there’s still enormous value to be mined just from harnessing the existing state of the art. Or these guys pivot and go back to building CRUD apps. They’re either at the front of something revolutionary… or not… and they’ll go back to other lucrative big tech jobs.
  - SoftTalker 1y ago
    Is there enormous value? AI is burning cash at an extraordinary rate on the promise that it will be an enormous value. But if it plateaus, then all the servers, GPUs, data centers, power and cooling and other infrastructure will have to be paid for out of revenue. Will customers be willing to pay the actual costs of running this stuff.
    - whynotminot 1y ago
      I don’t know if what they’ve built and are building in the future will justify the level of investment. I’m not an economist or a VC. It’s hard to fathom the huge sums being so casually thrown around. All I can tell you is that for what I use AI for now in both my personal and professional life, I would pay a lot of money (way more than I already am) to keep just the current capabilities I already have access to today.
      - codr7 1y ago
        May I ask what exactly AI provides that's worth so much to you? Because I wouldn't miss it at all if it disappeared tomorrow, and I'm pretty sure the society would be better off without it.
        whynotminot 1y ago
        Sure! You asked for it, here’s my speech: I’m a software engineer so for work I use it daily. It doesn’t “do my job” but it makes my job vastly more enjoyable. Need unit tests? Done. Want a prototype of an idea that you can refine? Here. Shell script? Boom. Somewhat complicated SQL query? Here ya go. Working with some framework you haven’t used before? Just having a conversation with AI about what I’m trying to do is so much better than sorting through often poorly written documentation. It’s like talking to another engineer who just recently worked on that same kind of problem… except for almost any problem you encounter. My productivity is higher. More than that, I find myself much more willing to take on bigger, harder problems because I know there’s powerful resources to answer just about any question I could have. It just makes me enjoy the job more. In my personal life, I use it to cut through the noise that in recent year has begun to overwhelm the signal on the internet. Give me a salmon recipe. This used to be the sort of thing you’d put into Google and get great results. Now first result is some ad-stuffed website that is 90% fluff piece and a recipe hidden at the bottom. Just give me the fricken recipe! AI does that. The other day I was trying to figure out whether a designer-made piece of furniture was authentic despite missing tags. Had a back and forth with ChatGPT, sharing photos, describing the build quality, telling it what the store owner had told me. Incredible depth of knowledge about an obscure piece of furniture. I also use the image generation all the time. For instance, for the piece of furniture I talked about, I took a picture of my apartment, and the furniture, and asked it to put the furniture into my space, allowing me to visualize it before purchase. It’s a frickin super power! I cannot even begin to understand how people are still skeptical about the transformative power of this stuff. It kind of feels like people are standing outside the library of Alexandria, debating whether it’s providing any value, when they haven’t even properly gone inside. Yes, there are flaws. I’m sure there’s people reading this about to tell me it made them put glue on their salad or whatever. But what we have is already so deeply useful to me. Could I have done all of this through old fashioned search? Mastered Photoshop and put the furniture into my apartment on my own? Of course! But the immediacy here is the game changer.
  - asadotzler 1y ago
    They've so far spent about what the world spent to build out almost all of the broadband internet, the fiber, cable, cellular, etc. If AI companies stop now, about 10 years after they got going, does their effort give us trillions of dollars being added to the economy each year from today forward, like we got for every year after the 10 years of internet build out between 1998 and 2008? I'm not seeing it. If they stop now, that's a trillion dollars in the dumper because no one can afford to operate the existing tech without a continual influx of investor cash that may never pay off.
bgwalter 1y ago
Using the Upton Sinclair quote in this context is a sign of not understanding the quote. The original quote means that you ignore gross injustices of your employer in order to stay employed. It was never used in the sense of denigrating potential competitors in order to stay employed. > People like this have banked their futures on AI not working out. If "AI" succeeds, which is unlikely, what is your recommendation to journalists? Should they learn how to code? Should they become prostitutes for the 1%? Perhaps the only option would be to make arrangements with the Mafia like dock workers to protect their jobs. At least it works: Dock workers have self confidence and do not constantly talk about replacing themselves. /s
- whynotminot 1y ago
  I think the quote makes perfect sense in this context, regardless of the prior application. As to my recommendation to what they do — I dunno man. I’m a software engineer. I don’t know what I am going to do yet. But I’m sure as shit not burying my head in the sand.
  - bgwalter 1y ago
    Even if you apply the quote in a different sense, which would take away all its pithiness, you are still presupposing that "AI" will turn out to be a success. The gross injustices in the original quote were already a fact, which makes the quote so powerful.
    - whynotminot 1y ago
      AI as is, is already a success, which is why I find it so baffling that people continue to write pieces like this. We don’t need AGI for there to be large displacement of human labor. What’s here is already good enough to replace many of us.

codr7 1y ago

The opposite is more true imo. It's the AI hype squad that are banking their future on AI magically turning into AGI; because, you know, it surprised us once.

whynotminot 1y ago
Not really — even if AGI doesn’t work and these models don’t get any better, there’s still enormous value to be mined just from harnessing the existing state of the art. Or these guys pivot and go back to building CRUD apps. They’re either at the front of something revolutionary… or not… and they’ll go back to other lucrative big tech jobs.
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  Is there enormous value? AI is burning cash at an extraordinary rate on the promise that it will be an enormous value. But if it plateaus, then all the servers, GPUs, data centers, power and cooling and other infrastructure will have to be paid for out of revenue. Will customers be willing to pay the actual costs of running this stuff.
  - whynotminot 1y ago
    I don’t know if what they’ve built and are building in the future will justify the level of investment. I’m not an economist or a VC. It’s hard to fathom the huge sums being so casually thrown around. All I can tell you is that for what I use AI for now in both my personal and professional life, I would pay a lot of money (way more than I already am) to keep just the current capabilities I already have access to today.
    - codr7 1y ago
      May I ask what exactly AI provides that's worth so much to you? Because I wouldn't miss it at all if it disappeared tomorrow, and I'm pretty sure the society would be better off without it.
      - whynotminot 1y ago
        Sure! You asked for it, here’s my speech: I’m a software engineer so for work I use it daily. It doesn’t “do my job” but it makes my job vastly more enjoyable. Need unit tests? Done. Want a prototype of an idea that you can refine? Here. Shell script? Boom. Somewhat complicated SQL query? Here ya go. Working with some framework you haven’t used before? Just having a conversation with AI about what I’m trying to do is so much better than sorting through often poorly written documentation. It’s like talking to another engineer who just recently worked on that same kind of problem… except for almost any problem you encounter. My productivity is higher. More than that, I find myself much more willing to take on bigger, harder problems because I know there’s powerful resources to answer just about any question I could have. It just makes me enjoy the job more. In my personal life, I use it to cut through the noise that in recent year has begun to overwhelm the signal on the internet. Give me a salmon recipe. This used to be the sort of thing you’d put into Google and get great results. Now first result is some ad-stuffed website that is 90% fluff piece and a recipe hidden at the bottom. Just give me the fricken recipe! AI does that. The other day I was trying to figure out whether a designer-made piece of furniture was authentic despite missing tags. Had a back and forth with ChatGPT, sharing photos, describing the build quality, telling it what the store owner had told me. Incredible depth of knowledge about an obscure piece of furniture. I also use the image generation all the time. For instance, for the piece of furniture I talked about, I took a picture of my apartment, and the furniture, and asked it to put the furniture into my space, allowing me to visualize it before purchase. It’s a frickin super power! I cannot even begin to understand how people are still skeptical about the transformative power of this stuff. It kind of feels like people are standing outside the library of Alexandria, debating whether it’s providing any value, when they haven’t even properly gone inside. Yes, there are flaws. I’m sure there’s people reading this about to tell me it made them put glue on their salad or whatever. But what we have is already so deeply useful to me. Could I have done all of this through old fashioned search? Mastered Photoshop and put the furniture into my apartment on my own? Of course! But the immediacy here is the game changer.
- asadotzler 1y ago
  They've so far spent about what the world spent to build out almost all of the broadband internet, the fiber, cable, cellular, etc. If AI companies stop now, about 10 years after they got going, does their effort give us trillions of dollars being added to the economy each year from today forward, like we got for every year after the 10 years of internet build out between 1998 and 2008? I'm not seeing it. If they stop now, that's a trillion dollars in the dumper because no one can afford to operate the existing tech without a continual influx of investor cash that may never pay off.

bgwalter 1y ago

Using the Upton Sinclair quote in this context is a sign of not understanding the quote. The original quote means that you ignore gross injustices of your employer in order to stay employed. It was never used in the sense of denigrating potential competitors in order to stay employed. > People like this have banked their futures on AI not working out. If "AI" succeeds, which is unlikely, what is your recommendation to journalists? Should they learn how to code? Should they become prostitutes for the 1%? Perhaps the only option would be to make arrangements with the Mafia like dock workers to protect their jobs. At least it works: Dock workers have self confidence and do not constantly talk about replacing themselves. /s

whynotminot 1y ago
I think the quote makes perfect sense in this context, regardless of the prior application. As to my recommendation to what they do — I dunno man. I’m a software engineer. I don’t know what I am going to do yet. But I’m sure as shit not burying my head in the sand.
- bgwalter 1y ago
  Even if you apply the quote in a different sense, which would take away all its pithiness, you are still presupposing that "AI" will turn out to be a success. The gross injustices in the original quote were already a fact, which makes the quote so powerful.
  - whynotminot 1y ago
    AI as is, is already a success, which is why I find it so baffling that people continue to write pieces like this. We don’t need AGI for there to be large displacement of human labor. What’s here is already good enough to replace many of us.