7 ms·

There is obvious utility to railroads, especially in a world with no cars. The net utility of AI is far more debatable.

gruez 1y ago
>The net utility of AI is far more debatable. I'm sure if you asked the luddites the utility of mechanized textile production you'd get a negative response as well.
- shadowgovt 1y ago
  With this generation of AI, it's too early to tell whether it's the next railroad, the next textile machine, or the next way to lock your exclusive ownership of an ugly JPG of a multicolored ape into a globally-referenceable, immutable datastore backed by a blockchain.
- decimalenough 1y ago
  Railroads move people and cargo quickly and cheaply from point A to point B. Mechanized textile production made clothing, a huge sink of time and resources before the industrial age, affordable to everybody. What does AI get the consumer? Worse spam, more realistic scams, hallucinated search results, easy cheating on homework? AI-assisted coding doesn't benefit them, and the jury is still out on that too (see recent study showing it's a net negative for efficiency).
  - azeirah 1y ago
    For learning with self-study it has been amazing.
    - gamblor956 1y ago
      Until you dive deeper and discover that most of what the AI agents provided you was completely wrong... There's a reason that AI is already starting to fade out of the limelight with customers (companies and consumers both). After several years, the best they can offer is slightly better chatbots than we had a decade ago with a fraction of the hardware.
      - Gud 1y ago
        That has not been the case for me. I use LLMs to study German, so far it’s been an excellent teacher. I also use them to help me write code, which it does pretty well.
      - rockemsockem 1y ago
        I almost always validate what I get back from LLMs and it's usually right. Even when it isn't it still usually gets me closer to my goal (e.g maybe some UX has changed where a setting I'm looking for in an app has changed, etc). IDK where you're getting the idea that it's fading out. So many people are using the "slightly better chatbots" every single day. Btw if you only think chat GPT is slightly better than what we had a decade ago then I do not believe that you have used any chat bots at all, either 10 years ago or recently because that's actually a completely insane take.
        simonw 1y ago
        > So many people are using the "slightly better chatbots" every single day. To back that up, here's a rare update on stats from OpenAI: https://x.com/nickaturley/status/1952385556664520875 https://x.com/nickaturley/status/1952385556664520875 > This week, ChatGPT is on track to reach 700M weekly active users — up from 500M at the end of March and 4× since last year.
      - simonw 1y ago
        "Until you dive deeper and discover that most of what the AI agents provided you was completely wrong..." Oddly enough, I don't think that actually matters too much to the dedicated autodidact. Learning well is about consulting multiple sources and using them to build up your own robust mental model of the truth of how something works. If you can really find the single perfect source of 100% correct information then great, I guess... but that's never been my experience. Every source of information has its flaws. You need to build your own mental model with a skeptical eye from as many sources as possible. As such, even if AI makes mistakes it can still accelerate your learning, provided you know how to learn and know how to use tips from AI as part of your overall process. Having an unreliable teacher in the mix may even be beneficial, because it enforces the need for applying critical thinking to what you are learning.
  - fc417fc802 1y ago
    At a minimum, presumably once it arrives it will provide the consumer custom software solutions which are clearly a huge sink of time and resources (prior to the AI age). You're looking at the prototype while complaining about an end product that isn't here yet.
  - osigurdson 1y ago
    I don't have that negative of a take but agree to some extent. The internet, mobile, AI have all been useful but not in the same way as earlier advancements like electricity, cars, aircraft and even basic appliances. Outside of things that you can do on screens, most people live exactly the same way as they did in the 70s and 80s. For instance, it still takes 30-45 minutes to clean up after dinner - using the same kind of appliances that people used 50 years ago. The same goes for washing clothes, sorting socks and other boring things that even fairly rich people still do. Basically, the things people dreamed about in the 50s - more wealth, more leisure time, robots and flying cars really were the right dream.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- bgwalter 1y ago
  The mechanical loom produced a tangible good. That kind of automation was supposed to free people from menial work. Now they are trying to replace interesting work with human supervised slop, which is a stolen derivative work in the first place. The loom wasn't centralized in four companies. Customers of textiles did not need an expensive subscription. Obviously average people would benefit more if all that investment went into housing or in fact high speed railways. "AI" does not improve their lives one bit.
- trod1234 1y ago
  Apples to oranges. Luddites weren't at a point where every industry sees individual capital formation/demand for labor trend towards zero over time. Prices are ratios in the currency between factors and producers. What do you suppose happens when the factors can't buy anything because there is nothing they can trade. Slavery has quite a lot of historic parallels with the trend towards this. Producers stop producing when they can make no profit. You have a deflationary (chaotic) spiral towards socio-economic collapse, under the burden of debt/money-printing (as production risk). There are limits to systems, and when such limits are exceeded; great destruction occurs. Malthus/Catton pose a very real existential threat when such disorder occurs, and its almost inevitable that it does without action to prevent it. One cannot assume action will happen until it actually does.
- harimau777 1y ago
  I mean, for them it probably was.
- no_wizard 1y ago
  Luddites weren’t anti technology at all[0] in fact they were quite adept at using technology. It was a labor movement that fought for worker rights in the face of new technologies. [0]: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/rethinking-the-luddites-in-the-age-of-ai https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/rethinking-the-l...
- AngryData 1y ago
  The luddites were often the ones that built the mechanized looms. They had nothing against mechanized looms, they had everything against the business owners using their workers talents and knowledge to build an entire operation only to later undercut their wages and/or replace them with lesser paid unskilled workers and reduce the quality of life of their entire community. Getting people to associate the luddites as anti-technology zealots rather than pro-labor organization is one of the most successful pieces of propaganda in history.
  - Macha 1y ago
    People will also use "look society was fine afterwards" as proof the luddites were wrong, but if you look at the fact the growth of industrial revolution cities was driven by importing more people from the countryside than died of disease, it's not clear at all that they were wrong about it's impact on their society, even if it worked out alright for us in the aftermath.
  - GJim 1y ago
    > Getting people to associate the luddites as anti-technology zealots Interestingly.... ..... the fact that luddites also called for unemployment compensation and retraining for workers displaced by the new machinery, probably makes them amongst the most forward thinking and progressive people of the 1800's.
  - gruez 1y ago
    >The luddites were often the ones that built the mechanized looms. Source? Skimming the wikipedia article it definitely sounds like most were made up of former skilled textile workers that were upset they were replaced with unskilled workers operating the new machines. > They had nothing against mechanized looms, they had everything against the business owners using their workers talents and knowledge to build an entire operation only to later undercut their wages and/or replace them with lesser paid unskilled workers and reduce the quality of life of their entire community. Sounds a lot like the anti-AI sentiment today, eg. "I'm not against AI, I'm just against it being used by evil corporations so they don't have to hire human workers". The "AI slop" argument also resembles luddites objecting to the new machines on the quality of "quality" (also from wikipedia), although to be fair that was only a passing mention.
- wat10000 1y ago
  They laughed at Einstein, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. This sort of “other people were wrong once, so you might be too” comment is really pointless.
rockemsockem 1y ago
I'm continually amazed to find takes like this. Can you explain how you don't find clear utility, at the personal level, from LLMs? I am being 100% genuine here, I struggle to understand how the most useful things I've ever encountered are thought of this way and would like to better understand your perspective.
- agent_turtle 1y ago
  There was a study recently that showed how not only did devs overestimate the time saved using AI, but that they were net negative compared to the control group. Anyway, that about sums up my experience with AI. It may save some time here and there, but on net, you’re better off without it.
  - keeda 1y ago
    That study gets mentioned all the time, somehow this one and many of the others it cites don't get much airtime: https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/sep/rapid-adoption-generative-ai https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/sep/rapid-ado... >This implies that each hour spent using genAI increases the worker’s productivity for that hour by 33%. This is similar in magnitude to the average productivity gain of 27% from several randomized experiments of genAI usage (Cui et al., 2024; Dell’Acqua et al., 2023; Noy and Zhang, 2023; Peng et al., 2023) Our estimated aggregate productivity gain from genAI (1.1%) exceeds the 0.7% estimate by Acemoglu (2024) based on a similar framework. To be clear, they are surmising that GenAI is already having a productivity gain.
    - agent_turtle 1y ago
      The article you gave is derived from a poll, not a study. As for the quote, I can’t find it in the article. Can you point me to it? I did click on one of the studies and it indicated productivity gains specifically on writing tasks. Which reminded me of this recent BBC article about a copywriter making bank fixing expensive mistakes caused by AI: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyvm1dyp9v2o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyvm1dyp9v2o
peab 1y ago
the goal of the major AI labs is to create AGI. The net utility of AGI is at least on the level of electricity, or the steam engine. It's debatable whether or not they'll achieve that, but if you actually look at what the goal is, the investment makes sense.
- jcgrillo 1y ago
  what? crashing the economy for a psychotic sci-fi delusion "makes sense"? how?
  - rockemsockem 1y ago
    How exactly is AI crashing the economy....? Do you walk around with these beliefs every day?
    - jcgrillo 1y ago
      when bubbles burst crashes follow. this is a colossal bubble. i do walk around with that belief every day, because every day that passes is yet another day when this overblown AI hype bullshit fails to deliver the goods.
      - rockemsockem 1y ago
        So you think the entire perceived value of AI will be wiped out. I think we probably are in a bubble, but much like housing bubbles in major metro areas, the value is real and so the bubble is on top of that real value vs being 100% synthetic.
        jcgrillo 1y ago
        Yes, because big market crashes don't just impact the previously inflated sectors. They hurt all the sectors. So the wipeout could easily exceed the current perceived value of AI.
        1y ago
skybrian 1y ago
Computing is fairly general-purpose, so I suspect that the data centers at least will be used for something. Reusing so many GPU's might be harder, but not as bad as ASICs. There are a lot of other calculations they could do.
- blibble 1y ago
  a data centre is a big warehouse the vast expense is on the GPU silicon, which is essentially useless for compute other than parallel floating point operations when the bubble pops, the "investment" will be a very expensive total waste of perfectly good sand
  - BobaFloutist 1y ago
    Maybe they can use it all to mine crypto.
    - haganomy 1y ago
      If I had to hazard a guess as to why China and the US are building so many GPU farms under the guise of "AI supremacy", I'd say it's to support state sponsored hacking.
  - fc417fc802 1y ago
    Most scientific HPC workloads are designed to utilize GPU equipped nodes. If AI completely flops scientific modeling will see huge benefits. It's a win-win (except for the investors I guess).
  - skybrian 1y ago
    I don't think we're too worried about wasting sand, though? What are the major costs of producing a GPU? Which of those are we worried about wasting? I'm not going to do the homework for a Hacker News comment, but here are a few guesses: I suspect that a lot of it is TSMC's capex for building new fabs. But since the fabs are already built, they could run them for longer. (Possibly producing different chips.) Meanwhile, carbon emissions due to electricity use by data centers can't be taken back. But also, much of an investment bubble popping wouldn't be about wasting resources. It would be investors' anticipated profits turning out to be a mirage - that is, investors feel poorer, but nothing material was lost.
eru 1y ago
> There is obvious utility to railroads, especially in a world with no cars. > The net utility of AI is far more debatable. As long as people are willing to pay for access to AI (either directly or indirectly), who are we to argue? In comparison: what's the utility of watching a Star Wars movie? I say, if people are willing to part with their hard earned cash for something, we must assume that they get something out of it.
pjc50 1y ago
The utility of housing is not at all ambiguous, but yet we still had a destructive boom-crash in debt-financed housing.
Falkon1313 1y ago
It's more than that even. AI may have plenty of utility. But does the massive capex on GPUs that will all be obsolete in a couple years? You can still run a train on those old tracks. And it'll be competitive. Sure you could build all new tracks, but that's a lot more expensive and difficult. So they'll need to be a whole lot better to beat the established network. But GPUs? And with how much tech has changed in the last decade or two and might in the next? We saw cryptocurrency mining go from CPU to GPU to FPGA to ASICs in just a few years. We can't yet tell where this fad is going. But there's fair reason to believe that, even if AI has tons of utility, the current economics of it might be problematic.
- HPsquared 1y ago
  Yeah you'd think the rapid obsolescence of the hardware would dampen P/E ratios a little. It has to pay for itself quickly. P/E is, after all, given in the implied unit of "years". (Same as other ratios like debt/GDP).

>The net utility of AI is far more debatable. I'm sure if you asked the luddites the utility of mechanized textile production you'd get a negative response as well.

shadowgovt 1y ago
With this generation of AI, it's too early to tell whether it's the next railroad, the next textile machine, or the next way to lock your exclusive ownership of an ugly JPG of a multicolored ape into a globally-referenceable, immutable datastore backed by a blockchain.
decimalenough 1y ago
Railroads move people and cargo quickly and cheaply from point A to point B. Mechanized textile production made clothing, a huge sink of time and resources before the industrial age, affordable to everybody. What does AI get the consumer? Worse spam, more realistic scams, hallucinated search results, easy cheating on homework? AI-assisted coding doesn't benefit them, and the jury is still out on that too (see recent study showing it's a net negative for efficiency).
- azeirah 1y ago
  For learning with self-study it has been amazing.
  - gamblor956 1y ago
    Until you dive deeper and discover that most of what the AI agents provided you was completely wrong... There's a reason that AI is already starting to fade out of the limelight with customers (companies and consumers both). After several years, the best they can offer is slightly better chatbots than we had a decade ago with a fraction of the hardware.
    - Gud 1y ago
      That has not been the case for me. I use LLMs to study German, so far it’s been an excellent teacher. I also use them to help me write code, which it does pretty well.
    - rockemsockem 1y ago
      I almost always validate what I get back from LLMs and it's usually right. Even when it isn't it still usually gets me closer to my goal (e.g maybe some UX has changed where a setting I'm looking for in an app has changed, etc). IDK where you're getting the idea that it's fading out. So many people are using the "slightly better chatbots" every single day. Btw if you only think chat GPT is slightly better than what we had a decade ago then I do not believe that you have used any chat bots at all, either 10 years ago or recently because that's actually a completely insane take.
      - simonw 1y ago
        > So many people are using the "slightly better chatbots" every single day. To back that up, here's a rare update on stats from OpenAI: https://x.com/nickaturley/status/1952385556664520875 https://x.com/nickaturley/status/1952385556664520875 > This week, ChatGPT is on track to reach 700M weekly active users — up from 500M at the end of March and 4× since last year.
    - simonw 1y ago
      "Until you dive deeper and discover that most of what the AI agents provided you was completely wrong..." Oddly enough, I don't think that actually matters too much to the dedicated autodidact. Learning well is about consulting multiple sources and using them to build up your own robust mental model of the truth of how something works. If you can really find the single perfect source of 100% correct information then great, I guess... but that's never been my experience. Every source of information has its flaws. You need to build your own mental model with a skeptical eye from as many sources as possible. As such, even if AI makes mistakes it can still accelerate your learning, provided you know how to learn and know how to use tips from AI as part of your overall process. Having an unreliable teacher in the mix may even be beneficial, because it enforces the need for applying critical thinking to what you are learning.
- fc417fc802 1y ago
  At a minimum, presumably once it arrives it will provide the consumer custom software solutions which are clearly a huge sink of time and resources (prior to the AI age). You're looking at the prototype while complaining about an end product that isn't here yet.
- osigurdson 1y ago
  I don't have that negative of a take but agree to some extent. The internet, mobile, AI have all been useful but not in the same way as earlier advancements like electricity, cars, aircraft and even basic appliances. Outside of things that you can do on screens, most people live exactly the same way as they did in the 70s and 80s. For instance, it still takes 30-45 minutes to clean up after dinner - using the same kind of appliances that people used 50 years ago. The same goes for washing clothes, sorting socks and other boring things that even fairly rich people still do. Basically, the things people dreamed about in the 50s - more wealth, more leisure time, robots and flying cars really were the right dream.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
bgwalter 1y ago
The mechanical loom produced a tangible good. That kind of automation was supposed to free people from menial work. Now they are trying to replace interesting work with human supervised slop, which is a stolen derivative work in the first place. The loom wasn't centralized in four companies. Customers of textiles did not need an expensive subscription. Obviously average people would benefit more if all that investment went into housing or in fact high speed railways. "AI" does not improve their lives one bit.
trod1234 1y ago
Apples to oranges. Luddites weren't at a point where every industry sees individual capital formation/demand for labor trend towards zero over time. Prices are ratios in the currency between factors and producers. What do you suppose happens when the factors can't buy anything because there is nothing they can trade. Slavery has quite a lot of historic parallels with the trend towards this. Producers stop producing when they can make no profit. You have a deflationary (chaotic) spiral towards socio-economic collapse, under the burden of debt/money-printing (as production risk). There are limits to systems, and when such limits are exceeded; great destruction occurs. Malthus/Catton pose a very real existential threat when such disorder occurs, and its almost inevitable that it does without action to prevent it. One cannot assume action will happen until it actually does.
harimau777 1y ago
I mean, for them it probably was.
no_wizard 1y ago
Luddites weren’t anti technology at all[0] in fact they were quite adept at using technology. It was a labor movement that fought for worker rights in the face of new technologies. [0]: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/rethinking-the-luddites-in-the-age-of-ai https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/rethinking-the-l...
AngryData 1y ago
The luddites were often the ones that built the mechanized looms. They had nothing against mechanized looms, they had everything against the business owners using their workers talents and knowledge to build an entire operation only to later undercut their wages and/or replace them with lesser paid unskilled workers and reduce the quality of life of their entire community. Getting people to associate the luddites as anti-technology zealots rather than pro-labor organization is one of the most successful pieces of propaganda in history.
- Macha 1y ago
  People will also use "look society was fine afterwards" as proof the luddites were wrong, but if you look at the fact the growth of industrial revolution cities was driven by importing more people from the countryside than died of disease, it's not clear at all that they were wrong about it's impact on their society, even if it worked out alright for us in the aftermath.
- GJim 1y ago
  > Getting people to associate the luddites as anti-technology zealots Interestingly.... ..... the fact that luddites also called for unemployment compensation and retraining for workers displaced by the new machinery, probably makes them amongst the most forward thinking and progressive people of the 1800's.
- gruez 1y ago
  >The luddites were often the ones that built the mechanized looms. Source? Skimming the wikipedia article it definitely sounds like most were made up of former skilled textile workers that were upset they were replaced with unskilled workers operating the new machines. > They had nothing against mechanized looms, they had everything against the business owners using their workers talents and knowledge to build an entire operation only to later undercut their wages and/or replace them with lesser paid unskilled workers and reduce the quality of life of their entire community. Sounds a lot like the anti-AI sentiment today, eg. "I'm not against AI, I'm just against it being used by evil corporations so they don't have to hire human workers". The "AI slop" argument also resembles luddites objecting to the new machines on the quality of "quality" (also from wikipedia), although to be fair that was only a passing mention.
wat10000 1y ago
They laughed at Einstein, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. This sort of “other people were wrong once, so you might be too” comment is really pointless.

rockemsockem 1y ago

I'm continually amazed to find takes like this. Can you explain how you don't find clear utility, at the personal level, from LLMs? I am being 100% genuine here, I struggle to understand how the most useful things I've ever encountered are thought of this way and would like to better understand your perspective.

agent_turtle 1y ago
There was a study recently that showed how not only did devs overestimate the time saved using AI, but that they were net negative compared to the control group. Anyway, that about sums up my experience with AI. It may save some time here and there, but on net, you’re better off without it.
- keeda 1y ago
  That study gets mentioned all the time, somehow this one and many of the others it cites don't get much airtime: https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/sep/rapid-adoption-generative-ai https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2024/sep/rapid-ado... >This implies that each hour spent using genAI increases the worker’s productivity for that hour by 33%. This is similar in magnitude to the average productivity gain of 27% from several randomized experiments of genAI usage (Cui et al., 2024; Dell’Acqua et al., 2023; Noy and Zhang, 2023; Peng et al., 2023) Our estimated aggregate productivity gain from genAI (1.1%) exceeds the 0.7% estimate by Acemoglu (2024) based on a similar framework. To be clear, they are surmising that GenAI is already having a productivity gain.
  - agent_turtle 1y ago
    The article you gave is derived from a poll, not a study. As for the quote, I can’t find it in the article. Can you point me to it? I did click on one of the studies and it indicated productivity gains specifically on writing tasks. Which reminded me of this recent BBC article about a copywriter making bank fixing expensive mistakes caused by AI: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyvm1dyp9v2o https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyvm1dyp9v2o

peab 1y ago

the goal of the major AI labs is to create AGI. The net utility of AGI is at least on the level of electricity, or the steam engine. It's debatable whether or not they'll achieve that, but if you actually look at what the goal is, the investment makes sense.

jcgrillo 1y ago
what? crashing the economy for a psychotic sci-fi delusion "makes sense"? how?
- rockemsockem 1y ago
  How exactly is AI crashing the economy....? Do you walk around with these beliefs every day?
  - jcgrillo 1y ago
    when bubbles burst crashes follow. this is a colossal bubble. i do walk around with that belief every day, because every day that passes is yet another day when this overblown AI hype bullshit fails to deliver the goods.
    - rockemsockem 1y ago
      So you think the entire perceived value of AI will be wiped out. I think we probably are in a bubble, but much like housing bubbles in major metro areas, the value is real and so the bubble is on top of that real value vs being 100% synthetic.
      - jcgrillo 1y ago
        Yes, because big market crashes don't just impact the previously inflated sectors. They hurt all the sectors. So the wipeout could easily exceed the current perceived value of AI.
        1y ago

skybrian 1y ago

Computing is fairly general-purpose, so I suspect that the data centers at least will be used for something. Reusing so many GPU's might be harder, but not as bad as ASICs. There are a lot of other calculations they could do.

blibble 1y ago
a data centre is a big warehouse the vast expense is on the GPU silicon, which is essentially useless for compute other than parallel floating point operations when the bubble pops, the "investment" will be a very expensive total waste of perfectly good sand
- BobaFloutist 1y ago
  Maybe they can use it all to mine crypto.
  - haganomy 1y ago
    If I had to hazard a guess as to why China and the US are building so many GPU farms under the guise of "AI supremacy", I'd say it's to support state sponsored hacking.
- fc417fc802 1y ago
  Most scientific HPC workloads are designed to utilize GPU equipped nodes. If AI completely flops scientific modeling will see huge benefits. It's a win-win (except for the investors I guess).
- skybrian 1y ago
  I don't think we're too worried about wasting sand, though? What are the major costs of producing a GPU? Which of those are we worried about wasting? I'm not going to do the homework for a Hacker News comment, but here are a few guesses: I suspect that a lot of it is TSMC's capex for building new fabs. But since the fabs are already built, they could run them for longer. (Possibly producing different chips.) Meanwhile, carbon emissions due to electricity use by data centers can't be taken back. But also, much of an investment bubble popping wouldn't be about wasting resources. It would be investors' anticipated profits turning out to be a mirage - that is, investors feel poorer, but nothing material was lost.

eru 1y ago

> There is obvious utility to railroads, especially in a world with no cars. > The net utility of AI is far more debatable. As long as people are willing to pay for access to AI (either directly or indirectly), who are we to argue? In comparison: what's the utility of watching a Star Wars movie? I say, if people are willing to part with their hard earned cash for something, we must assume that they get something out of it.

pjc50 1y ago

The utility of housing is not at all ambiguous, but yet we still had a destructive boom-crash in debt-financed housing.

Falkon1313 1y ago

It's more than that even. AI may have plenty of utility. But does the massive capex on GPUs that will all be obsolete in a couple years? You can still run a train on those old tracks. And it'll be competitive. Sure you could build all new tracks, but that's a lot more expensive and difficult. So they'll need to be a whole lot better to beat the established network. But GPUs? And with how much tech has changed in the last decade or two and might in the next? We saw cryptocurrency mining go from CPU to GPU to FPGA to ASICs in just a few years. We can't yet tell where this fad is going. But there's fair reason to believe that, even if AI has tons of utility, the current economics of it might be problematic.

HPsquared 1y ago
Yeah you'd think the rapid obsolescence of the hardware would dampen P/E ratios a little. It has to pay for itself quickly. P/E is, after all, given in the implied unit of "years". (Same as other ratios like debt/GDP).