3 ms·

Fresh plums right off the tree taste significantly better than the ones you can get in the produce isle, which are in turn better than canned, which are themsel

Fresh plums right off the tree taste significantly better than the ones you can get in the produce isle, which are in turn better than canned, which are themselves still better than re-hydrated prunes. In scaling out computation to the masses, we went from locally grown plums that took a lot of work and were only available to a small number of people that had a plum tree or knew someone that had one, to building near magical prune-cornucopia devices that everyone could carry around in their pockets, giving them an effectively unlimited supply of prunes. LLMs re-hydrate these for us, making them significantly more palatable; if you're used to gnawing dried fruit, they seem amazing. But there's still a lot of work to be done.

selimthegrim 1y ago
But can it beat William Carlos Williams?
- MarkusQ 1y ago
  they were delicious so sweet and so cold :)
random3 1y ago
Perhaps, but we still failed and not at personal computing, nor just semantic web, but computing and programming in general. The failure is between the original intent (computing was originally more or less AI) along with theory and actual result with every software project turning into unsustainable infinite regress. Things likely broke around ALGOL. Also LLMs are failing too, for different reasons, but IMO unlikely AI in general will— it will correct a 60 years or so failure in industrial computer science.
- heresie-dabord 1y ago
  > we still failed [at] semantic web The most reprehensible knowledge-search-and-communication failure of all. We gave people monetisation of drek instead. Then asked them to use it for education. Then trained bot systems on it. Then said that even those answers must be made to confirm to transient propagandists.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
echelon 1y ago
I really don't like this analogy, and I really don't like the premise of this article. Writing software is only so scalable. It doesn't matter all of the shortcuts we take, like Electron and JavaScript. There are only so many engineers with so much time, and there are abundantly many problems to solve. A better analogy would be to look at what's happening to AI images and video. Those have 10,000x'd the fundamental cost savings, time savings, and personnel requirements. It's an industrialization moment. As a filmmaker who has made several photons-on-glass films, this is a game changer and lifts the entire creative industry to a level where individuals can outdo Pixar. That is the lens with which to look at what AI will do to software. We're going from hand-carving stone wheels to the Model T. This is all just getting started. We've barely used what the models of today offer us.
- MarkusQ 1y ago
  Totally agree with the core of your position. But the two perspectives are complementary, and perhaps even more deeply linked. Initial attempts to alleviate any shortage are likely to result in a decrease in quality; initial attempts to improve quality are likely to reduce variability and thus variety. My point (and my reading of the article) is that we're at the stage where we've figured out how to turn out enough Hostess Twinkies that "let them eat cake!" is a viable option, and starvation is being driven back. This is definite progress, but also highlights previous failures and future work.
- armitron 1y ago
  This is a massive cope. AI image/video slop is still slop. Yes it's getting better, but it's still better .. slop. Unless radical new breakthroughs are made, the current LLM paradigm will not outdo Pixar or any other apex of human creativity. It'll always be instantly recognizable, as slop. And if we allow it to take over society, we'll end up with a society that's also slop. Netflixification/marvelization only much much worse..
  - echelon 1y ago
    > This is a massive cope. AI image/video slop is still slop. Slop content is slop content, AI or not. You don't need an AI to make slop. We've always had films like "The Room", it's just that the financial and time constraints put an upper bound on how much slop was created. AI makes creation more accessible. You've got Reddit for image and video now, essentially. You are biased by media narratives and slop content you're encountering on social media. I work in the industry and professionals are using AI models in ways you aren't even aware of. I guarantee you can't identify all AI content. > And if we allow it to take over society, we'll end up with a society that's also slop. Netflixification/marvelization only much much worse.. Auteurs and artists aren't going anywhere. These tools enable the 50,000 annual film students to sustainably find autonomy, where previously there wasn't any.
askl 1y ago
Or slop with some plum aroma added. Seems like a good analogy.
- Fomite 1y ago
  Extruded synthetic plum substrate
sudohalt 1y ago
The analogy doesn't make any sense, computers today are better by any conceivable metric than computers before.
- MarkusQ 1y ago
  The computers, yes. The experience of using them, no. There is a joy to having a tool that lets you do what you never could before that has been buried along the way in layers of petty annoyances and digital micro aggressions. As you say, computers today are better by so many metrics—including, unfortunately, their ability to tracks us, sell us things we neither need nor want, outrage and distract us.
pavel_lishin 1y ago
> LLMs re-hydrate these for us, making them significantly more palatable; if you're used to gnawing dried fruit, they seem amazing. Except sometimes you're expecting a fresh plum, and then you bite into a fig, or an apple, or a banana, or a stick.

selimthegrim 1y ago

But can it beat William Carlos Williams?

MarkusQ 1y ago
they were delicious so sweet and so cold :)

random3 1y ago

Perhaps, but we still failed and not at personal computing, nor just semantic web, but computing and programming in general. The failure is between the original intent (computing was originally more or less AI) along with theory and actual result with every software project turning into unsustainable infinite regress. Things likely broke around ALGOL. Also LLMs are failing too, for different reasons, but IMO unlikely AI in general will— it will correct a 60 years or so failure in industrial computer science.

heresie-dabord 1y ago
> we still failed [at] semantic web The most reprehensible knowledge-search-and-communication failure of all. We gave people monetisation of drek instead. Then asked them to use it for education. Then trained bot systems on it. Then said that even those answers must be made to confirm to transient propagandists.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

echelon 1y ago

I really don't like this analogy, and I really don't like the premise of this article. Writing software is only so scalable. It doesn't matter all of the shortcuts we take, like Electron and JavaScript. There are only so many engineers with so much time, and there are abundantly many problems to solve. A better analogy would be to look at what's happening to AI images and video. Those have 10,000x'd the fundamental cost savings, time savings, and personnel requirements. It's an industrialization moment. As a filmmaker who has made several photons-on-glass films, this is a game changer and lifts the entire creative industry to a level where individuals can outdo Pixar. That is the lens with which to look at what AI will do to software. We're going from hand-carving stone wheels to the Model T. This is all just getting started. We've barely used what the models of today offer us.

MarkusQ 1y ago
Totally agree with the core of your position. But the two perspectives are complementary, and perhaps even more deeply linked. Initial attempts to alleviate any shortage are likely to result in a decrease in quality; initial attempts to improve quality are likely to reduce variability and thus variety. My point (and my reading of the article) is that we're at the stage where we've figured out how to turn out enough Hostess Twinkies that "let them eat cake!" is a viable option, and starvation is being driven back. This is definite progress, but also highlights previous failures and future work.
armitron 1y ago
This is a massive cope. AI image/video slop is still slop. Yes it's getting better, but it's still better .. slop. Unless radical new breakthroughs are made, the current LLM paradigm will not outdo Pixar or any other apex of human creativity. It'll always be instantly recognizable, as slop. And if we allow it to take over society, we'll end up with a society that's also slop. Netflixification/marvelization only much much worse..
- echelon 1y ago
  > This is a massive cope. AI image/video slop is still slop. Slop content is slop content, AI or not. You don't need an AI to make slop. We've always had films like "The Room", it's just that the financial and time constraints put an upper bound on how much slop was created. AI makes creation more accessible. You've got Reddit for image and video now, essentially. You are biased by media narratives and slop content you're encountering on social media. I work in the industry and professionals are using AI models in ways you aren't even aware of. I guarantee you can't identify all AI content. > And if we allow it to take over society, we'll end up with a society that's also slop. Netflixification/marvelization only much much worse.. Auteurs and artists aren't going anywhere. These tools enable the 50,000 annual film students to sustainably find autonomy, where previously there wasn't any.

askl 1y ago

Or slop with some plum aroma added. Seems like a good analogy.

Fomite 1y ago
Extruded synthetic plum substrate

sudohalt 1y ago

The analogy doesn't make any sense, computers today are better by any conceivable metric than computers before.

MarkusQ 1y ago
The computers, yes. The experience of using them, no. There is a joy to having a tool that lets you do what you never could before that has been buried along the way in layers of petty annoyances and digital micro aggressions. As you say, computers today are better by so many metrics—including, unfortunately, their ability to tracks us, sell us things we neither need nor want, outrage and distract us.

pavel_lishin 1y ago

> LLMs re-hydrate these for us, making them significantly more palatable; if you're used to gnawing dried fruit, they seem amazing. Except sometimes you're expecting a fresh plum, and then you bite into a fig, or an apple, or a banana, or a stick.