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> These prices seem to keep increasing while we were promised they'll keep decreasing. A Ferrari is more expensive than the model T. The most expensive comput

> These prices seem to keep increasing while we were promised they'll keep decreasing. A Ferrari is more expensive than the model T. The most expensive computer is a lot more expensive than the first PC. The price that usually falls is: * The entry level. * The same performance over time. But the _price range_ gets wider. That's fine. That's a sign of maturity. The only difference this time is that the entry level was artificially 0 (or very low) because of VC funding.

PaulHoule 1y ago
But where is the value? If it could write like George Will or Thomas Sowell or Fred Hayek or even William Loeb that would be one thing. But it hears dog whistles and barks which makes it a dog. Except a real dog is soft and has a warm breath, knows your scent, is genuinely happy when you come home and will take a chomp out of the leg of anyone who invades your home at night. We are also getting this kind of discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44502981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44502981 where Grok exhibited the kind of behavior that puts "degenerate" in "degenerate behavior". Why do people expect anything more? Ten years ago you could be a conservative with a conscience -- now if you are you start The Bulwark.
- ben_w 1y ago
  > If it could write like George Will or Thomas Sowell or Fred Hayek or even William Loeb Having only barely heard of these authors even in the collective, I bet most models could do a better job of mimicking their style than I could. Perhaps not well enough to be of interest to you, and I will absolutely agree that LLMs are "low intelligence" in the sense that they need far more examples than any organic life does, but many of them will have had those examples and I definitely have not. > We are also getting this kind of discussion > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44502981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44502981 Even just a few years ago, people were acting as if a "smart" AI automatically meant a "moral AI". Unfortunately, these things can be both capable* and unpleasant. * which doesn't require them to be "properly intelligent"
  - ProjectArcturis 1y ago
    The bar is "can it write as well as these accomplished professional writers?", not "Can it imitate their style better than the average person?"
    - ben_w 1y ago
      Why is the bar set that high? Writers anyone has heard of are in top ~1k-10k humans who have ever lived, when it comes to "competent writing", out of not just the 8 billion today, but the larger number of all those who came between the invention of writing and today.
      - PaulHoule 1y ago
        There is a real case that "LLMs have a liberal bias" https://arxiv.org/html/2403.18932v1 https://arxiv.org/html/2403.18932v1 so a project of a "conservative LLM" would be interesting. If conservatives have anything to be proud of it is being a long tradition going back to at least Edmund Burke which would say you could be a better person by putting yourself in the shoes of the apostles spreading the Gospel or reading the 'Great Books'. Yet to keep up with Musk a system would have to always be configured to know if we are at war with Eastasia or Eurasia today. Musk thinks he can rally people behind his banner but he's yet to come up with a coherent critique of the BBB, I mean he hates that has PIGGY PORK for other people but also hates that it doesn't have PORK for him. Conservatives are frequently apologists for individualism but historically have made appeals to principles and universals. I mean, compared to post-Reagan politicians Nixon looked like a great environmentalist and a bit of an egalitarian and compared to current scene, a model of integrity. You could give Musk a model aligned to The National Review circa 1990 and he wouldn't take it.
        ben_w 1y ago
        > There is a real case that "LLMs have a liberal bias" We're probably in agreement on this, but a US-Democrat bias. The US-Republicans are far too radical to be "conservative", and that research you link to is itself very US-leaning: """The topics consist of 10 political topics (Reproductive Rights, Immigration, Gun Control, Same Sex Marriage, Death Penalty, Climate Change, Drug Price Regularization, Public Education, Healthcare Reform, Social Media Regulation) and four political events (Black Lives Matter, Hong Kong Protest, Liancourt Rocks dispute, Russia Ukraine war).""" If you ask these questions in the UK, it's a lot more one-sided than the USA: """For example, 95% of people believe abortion should be allowed if the woman’s health is seriously endangered by the pregnancy and 89% if there is a strong chance of the baby having a serious health condition. However, the level of support decreases when financial concerns or personal circumstance come into play. For example, 76% of people believe abortion should be allowed if the woman decides on her own she does not wish to have a child, 72% if the couple cannot afford any more children, and 68% if the woman is not married and does not wish to marry. """ - https://natcen.ac.uk/how-are-attitudes-towards-abortion-britain-changing https://natcen.ac.uk/how-are-attitudes-towards-abortion-brit... vs. USA: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/05/13/broad-public-support-for-legal-abortion-persists-2-years-after-dobbs/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/05/13/broad-public... Gun Control, UK has no right to ownership in the first place, and still there's strong support for further restrictions: https://web.archive.org/web/20250318010707/https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/37663-gun-ownership-three-quarters-britons-want-stricter?redirect_from=%2Ftopics%2Fpolitics%2Farticles-reports%2F2021%2F08%2F20%2Fgun-ownership-three-quarters-britons-want-stricter https://web.archive.org/web/20250318010707/https://yougov.co... Same sex marriage has marginally higher support in the UK than the USA, both seem to be quite high (74% and 69% respectively). UK doesn't have the death penalty, can't have it without a treaty change. No idea how popular it is. UK drugs are pretty cheap, because of the NHS. Main fight there is "does the UK have enough doctors, nurses, GPs, hospital beds?", but the NHS is by itself significantly to the left of the USA's Overton Window on this. I've not looked for immigration stats, I assume that's about the same in the UK as the USA. And there's not really much point doing all of these items anyway as this is just to show that the test itself is USA-focussed. But I will add that the four political events they list, I've only heard of two of them (Black Lives Matter, and the Russia-Ukraine war), I don't recall any Hong Kong Protest in 2024 (which may upset the authors, given their email address is a .hk TLD), nor (without googling) which country the Liancourt Rocks dispute is in let alone what it's about. > Yet to keep up with Musk a system would have to always be configured to know if we are at war with Eastasia or Eurasia today. Musk thinks he can rally people behind his banner but he's yet to come up with a coherent critique of the BBB, I mean he hates that has PIGGY PORK for other people but also hates that it doesn't have PORK for him. Conservatives are frequently apologists for individualism but historically have made appeals to principles and universals. I can't really follow your critique of Musk here. I mean, I also don't think he's got a very good grasp of the world, but I don't know which "BBB" that TLA expands to nor what allcaps "PIGGY PORK" is.
HWR_14 1y ago
> The most expensive computer is a lot more expensive than the first PC. Not if you're only looking at modern PCs (and adjusting for inflation). It seems unfair to compare a computer built for a data center with tens of thousands in GPUs to a PC from back then as opposed to a mainframe.
- falcor84 1y ago
  Good point; the proper comparison might be between something like ENIAC, which reportedly cost $487K to build in 1946, being about$7M now, and a typical Google data center, reportedly costing about $500M.
  - mathiaspoint 1y ago
    I think a closer comparison would be one rack or isle, not a whole data center.
827a 1y ago
The base model Apple II cost ~$1300USD when it was released; that's ~$7000USD today inflation adjusted. In other words, Apple sells one base-model computer today that is more expensive than the Apple II; the Mac Pro. They sell a dozen other computers that are significantly cheaper.
- johnnyanmac 1y ago
  We're trying to compare to the 80's where tech was getting cheaper. Instead of 2010 where tech was nearly given away and then squeezed out of us. We're already at the mac Mini prices. It's a matter of if the eventual baseline will be macbook air or a fully kitted out mac pro. There will be "cheap"options, but they won't be from this metaphorical Apple.
johnnyanmac 1y ago
That was the most predictable outcome. It's like we learned nothing from Netflix, nor the general enshittification of tech by the end of the 2010's. We'll have the billionaire AI tech capture markets and charge enterprise prices to make pay back investors. Then maybe we'll have a few free/cheap models fighting over the scraps. Those small creators hoping to leverage AI to bring their visions to life for less than their grocery bill will have a rude awakening. That's why I never liked the argument of "but it saves me money on hiring real people". I heard some small chinese shops for mobile games were already having this problem in recent years and had to re-hire their human labor back when costs started rising.
mkl 1y ago
> The most expensive computer is a lot more expensive than the first PC. Depends on your definition of "computer". If you mean the most expensive modern PC I think you're way off. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto: "The Xerox Alto [...] is considered one of the first workstations or personal computers", "Introductory price US$32,000 (equivalent to $139,000 in 2024)".

PaulHoule 1y ago

But where is the value? If it could write like George Will or Thomas Sowell or Fred Hayek or even William Loeb that would be one thing. But it hears dog whistles and barks which makes it a dog. Except a real dog is soft and has a warm breath, knows your scent, is genuinely happy when you come home and will take a chomp out of the leg of anyone who invades your home at night. We are also getting this kind of discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44502981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44502981 where Grok exhibited the kind of behavior that puts "degenerate" in "degenerate behavior". Why do people expect anything more? Ten years ago you could be a conservative with a conscience -- now if you are you start The Bulwark.

ben_w 1y ago
> If it could write like George Will or Thomas Sowell or Fred Hayek or even William Loeb Having only barely heard of these authors even in the collective, I bet most models could do a better job of mimicking their style than I could. Perhaps not well enough to be of interest to you, and I will absolutely agree that LLMs are "low intelligence" in the sense that they need far more examples than any organic life does, but many of them will have had those examples and I definitely have not. > We are also getting this kind of discussion > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44502981 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44502981 Even just a few years ago, people were acting as if a "smart" AI automatically meant a "moral AI". Unfortunately, these things can be both capable* and unpleasant. * which doesn't require them to be "properly intelligent"
- ProjectArcturis 1y ago
  The bar is "can it write as well as these accomplished professional writers?", not "Can it imitate their style better than the average person?"
  - ben_w 1y ago
    Why is the bar set that high? Writers anyone has heard of are in top ~1k-10k humans who have ever lived, when it comes to "competent writing", out of not just the 8 billion today, but the larger number of all those who came between the invention of writing and today.
    - PaulHoule 1y ago
      There is a real case that "LLMs have a liberal bias" https://arxiv.org/html/2403.18932v1 https://arxiv.org/html/2403.18932v1 so a project of a "conservative LLM" would be interesting. If conservatives have anything to be proud of it is being a long tradition going back to at least Edmund Burke which would say you could be a better person by putting yourself in the shoes of the apostles spreading the Gospel or reading the 'Great Books'. Yet to keep up with Musk a system would have to always be configured to know if we are at war with Eastasia or Eurasia today. Musk thinks he can rally people behind his banner but he's yet to come up with a coherent critique of the BBB, I mean he hates that has PIGGY PORK for other people but also hates that it doesn't have PORK for him. Conservatives are frequently apologists for individualism but historically have made appeals to principles and universals. I mean, compared to post-Reagan politicians Nixon looked like a great environmentalist and a bit of an egalitarian and compared to current scene, a model of integrity. You could give Musk a model aligned to The National Review circa 1990 and he wouldn't take it.
      - ben_w 1y ago
        > There is a real case that "LLMs have a liberal bias" We're probably in agreement on this, but a US-Democrat bias. The US-Republicans are far too radical to be "conservative", and that research you link to is itself very US-leaning: """The topics consist of 10 political topics (Reproductive Rights, Immigration, Gun Control, Same Sex Marriage, Death Penalty, Climate Change, Drug Price Regularization, Public Education, Healthcare Reform, Social Media Regulation) and four political events (Black Lives Matter, Hong Kong Protest, Liancourt Rocks dispute, Russia Ukraine war).""" If you ask these questions in the UK, it's a lot more one-sided than the USA: """For example, 95% of people believe abortion should be allowed if the woman’s health is seriously endangered by the pregnancy and 89% if there is a strong chance of the baby having a serious health condition. However, the level of support decreases when financial concerns or personal circumstance come into play. For example, 76% of people believe abortion should be allowed if the woman decides on her own she does not wish to have a child, 72% if the couple cannot afford any more children, and 68% if the woman is not married and does not wish to marry. """ - https://natcen.ac.uk/how-are-attitudes-towards-abortion-britain-changing https://natcen.ac.uk/how-are-attitudes-towards-abortion-brit... vs. USA: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/05/13/broad-public-support-for-legal-abortion-persists-2-years-after-dobbs/ https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/05/13/broad-public... Gun Control, UK has no right to ownership in the first place, and still there's strong support for further restrictions: https://web.archive.org/web/20250318010707/https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/37663-gun-ownership-three-quarters-britons-want-stricter?redirect_from=%2Ftopics%2Fpolitics%2Farticles-reports%2F2021%2F08%2F20%2Fgun-ownership-three-quarters-britons-want-stricter https://web.archive.org/web/20250318010707/https://yougov.co... Same sex marriage has marginally higher support in the UK than the USA, both seem to be quite high (74% and 69% respectively). UK doesn't have the death penalty, can't have it without a treaty change. No idea how popular it is. UK drugs are pretty cheap, because of the NHS. Main fight there is "does the UK have enough doctors, nurses, GPs, hospital beds?", but the NHS is by itself significantly to the left of the USA's Overton Window on this. I've not looked for immigration stats, I assume that's about the same in the UK as the USA. And there's not really much point doing all of these items anyway as this is just to show that the test itself is USA-focussed. But I will add that the four political events they list, I've only heard of two of them (Black Lives Matter, and the Russia-Ukraine war), I don't recall any Hong Kong Protest in 2024 (which may upset the authors, given their email address is a .hk TLD), nor (without googling) which country the Liancourt Rocks dispute is in let alone what it's about. > Yet to keep up with Musk a system would have to always be configured to know if we are at war with Eastasia or Eurasia today. Musk thinks he can rally people behind his banner but he's yet to come up with a coherent critique of the BBB, I mean he hates that has PIGGY PORK for other people but also hates that it doesn't have PORK for him. Conservatives are frequently apologists for individualism but historically have made appeals to principles and universals. I can't really follow your critique of Musk here. I mean, I also don't think he's got a very good grasp of the world, but I don't know which "BBB" that TLA expands to nor what allcaps "PIGGY PORK" is.

HWR_14 1y ago

> The most expensive computer is a lot more expensive than the first PC. Not if you're only looking at modern PCs (and adjusting for inflation). It seems unfair to compare a computer built for a data center with tens of thousands in GPUs to a PC from back then as opposed to a mainframe.

falcor84 1y ago
Good point; the proper comparison might be between something like ENIAC, which reportedly cost $487K to build in 1946, being about$7M now, and a typical Google data center, reportedly costing about $500M.
- mathiaspoint 1y ago
  I think a closer comparison would be one rack or isle, not a whole data center.

827a 1y ago

The base model Apple II cost ~$1300USD when it was released; that's ~$7000USD today inflation adjusted. In other words, Apple sells one base-model computer today that is more expensive than the Apple II; the Mac Pro. They sell a dozen other computers that are significantly cheaper.

johnnyanmac 1y ago
We're trying to compare to the 80's where tech was getting cheaper. Instead of 2010 where tech was nearly given away and then squeezed out of us. We're already at the mac Mini prices. It's a matter of if the eventual baseline will be macbook air or a fully kitted out mac pro. There will be "cheap"options, but they won't be from this metaphorical Apple.

johnnyanmac 1y ago

That was the most predictable outcome. It's like we learned nothing from Netflix, nor the general enshittification of tech by the end of the 2010's. We'll have the billionaire AI tech capture markets and charge enterprise prices to make pay back investors. Then maybe we'll have a few free/cheap models fighting over the scraps. Those small creators hoping to leverage AI to bring their visions to life for less than their grocery bill will have a rude awakening. That's why I never liked the argument of "but it saves me money on hiring real people". I heard some small chinese shops for mobile games were already having this problem in recent years and had to re-hire their human labor back when costs started rising.

mkl 1y ago

> The most expensive computer is a lot more expensive than the first PC. Depends on your definition of "computer". If you mean the most expensive modern PC I think you're way off. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto: "The Xerox Alto [...] is considered one of the first workstations or personal computers", "Introductory price US$32,000 (equivalent to $139,000 in 2024)".