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I’ve heard a joke that under Steve Jobs, the number of big initiatives at Apple was limited to the number of execs Steve could shout at in a given day. I see a

by muglug 1y ago

I’ve heard a joke that under Steve Jobs, the number of big initiatives at Apple was limited to the number of execs Steve could shout at in a given day. I see a similar thing at work — the number of projects a developer can get through isn’t bounded by the lines of code they can churn out in a day. Instead it’s bounded by their appetite for getting shouted at when something goes wrong. Until you can shout at an LLM, I don’t think they’re going to replace humans in the workplace.

1penny42cents 1y ago
everyone talks about the alignment problem, not nearly enough about the accountability problem
- Analemma_ 1y ago
  What problem? The whole point of shareholder capitalism is to diffuse accountability across so many people that it ceases to exist: the employee points to management, management points to executives, executives point to the board, the board points to the shareholders, the shareholders are index funds managed by robots so "nobody" is to blame. The final phase of the administrative state works much the same way. Viewed through that lens, LLMs and their total lack of accountability are a perfect match for the modern-day business; that's probably part of why so many executives are hell-bent on putting them everywhere as quickly as possible.
  - haswell 1y ago
    > What problem? I think you answered this with the rest of your comment.
    - evanmoran 1y ago
      This is intentional and is called a Rhetorical Question: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_question https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_question
      - haswell 1y ago
        I’m familiar with the concept of a rhetorical question. It was not obvious to me that this was the author’s intent.
- munificent 1y ago
  If I've learned anything from watching politics the past decade, it's that many important people in power consider lack of accountability a solution, not a problem.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
tho234i23j4234 1y ago
Technically that is "RLHF" - but RL doesn't really work (except in a very shallow way). Our epistemological standards are so shitty and so pathetically poor, that it's hardly surprising that we're fooled by LLMs much as we are by academic bullshit artists.
falcor84 1y ago
What do you mean? I've been productively shouting at LLMs (particularly via ChatGPT's advanced voice mode) for quite a while now, and they're reasonably receptive to my shouting. More recently , I've been (textually) shouting at OpenaAI's async Codex agents, and they're quite receptive too. We're obviously not quite there yet, but I don't see any inherent limitation to human managers' ability to shout at AI agents. I'll go even a step further and say that knowing that the AI doesn't actually have feelings that I can affect, and that it has limited context helps make my shouting more productive, focusing on the task at hand, rather than on its general faults, as I might when I'm angry at a human.

by muglug 1y ago

1penny42cents 1y ago

everyone talks about the alignment problem, not nearly enough about the accountability problem

Analemma_ 1y ago
What problem? The whole point of shareholder capitalism is to diffuse accountability across so many people that it ceases to exist: the employee points to management, management points to executives, executives point to the board, the board points to the shareholders, the shareholders are index funds managed by robots so "nobody" is to blame. The final phase of the administrative state works much the same way. Viewed through that lens, LLMs and their total lack of accountability are a perfect match for the modern-day business; that's probably part of why so many executives are hell-bent on putting them everywhere as quickly as possible.
- haswell 1y ago
  > What problem? I think you answered this with the rest of your comment.
  - evanmoran 1y ago
    This is intentional and is called a Rhetorical Question: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_question https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhetorical_question
    - haswell 1y ago
      I’m familiar with the concept of a rhetorical question. It was not obvious to me that this was the author’s intent.
munificent 1y ago
If I've learned anything from watching politics the past decade, it's that many important people in power consider lack of accountability a solution, not a problem.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

tho234i23j4234 1y ago

Technically that is "RLHF" - but RL doesn't really work (except in a very shallow way). Our epistemological standards are so shitty and so pathetically poor, that it's hardly surprising that we're fooled by LLMs much as we are by academic bullshit artists.

falcor84 1y ago

What do you mean? I've been productively shouting at LLMs (particularly via ChatGPT's advanced voice mode) for quite a while now, and they're reasonably receptive to my shouting. More recently , I've been (textually) shouting at OpenaAI's async Codex agents, and they're quite receptive too. We're obviously not quite there yet, but I don't see any inherent limitation to human managers' ability to shout at AI agents. I'll go even a step further and say that knowing that the AI doesn't actually have feelings that I can affect, and that it has limited context helps make my shouting more productive, focusing on the task at hand, rather than on its general faults, as I might when I'm angry at a human.