4 ms·

The story that’s solidifying is the tech is cool, it’s useful for certain things (eg, meeting note taking), but business have run a ton of “innovation lab” pilo

by cmiles8 10mo ago

The story that’s solidifying is the tech is cool, it’s useful for certain things (eg, meeting note taking), but business have run a ton of “innovation lab” pilots that have returned little to no measurable value with leaders getting frustrated at the invested red ink. In short the substance isn't living up to the hype. Everywhere I look the adoption metrics and impact metrics are a tiny fraction of what was projected/expected. Yes tech keynotes have their shiny examples of “success” but the data at scale tells a very different story and that’s increasingly hard to brush under the carpet. Given the amount of financial engineering shenanigans and circular financing it’s unclear how much longer the present bonanza can continue before the financial and business reality playing out slams on the brakes.

blindhippo 10mo ago
If anything, the AI bubble is reinforcing to me (and hopefully many more people) that the "markets" are anything but rational. None of the investments going on have followed any semblance of fundamentals - it's all pure instinct and chasing hype. I just hope it doesn't tear down the world for the 99% of us unable to actually reap any benefits from it. AI is basically a toy for 99% of us. It's a long long ways away from the productivity boost people love to claim to justify the sky high valuations. It will fade to being a background tech employed strategically I suspect - similar to other machine learning applications and this is exactly where it belongs. I'm forced to use it (literally, AI usage is now used as a talent review metric...) and frankly, it's maybe helped speed me up... 5-10%? I spend more time trying to get the tools to be useful than I would just doing the task myself. The only true benefit I've gotten has been unit test generation. Ask it to do any meaningful work on a mature code base and you're in for a wild ride. So there's my anecdotal "sentiment".
- dionian 10mo ago
  I multi task much more now that i can farm off small coding assignments to agents. i pay hndreds per month in tokens. for my role personally its been a massive paradigm shift.
  - cmiles8 10mo ago
    There are absolutely folks like you out there and I don’t doubt the productivity increase. The challenge is you are not the norm and the hundreds per month from you and others like you are a drop in the bucket of what’s needed to pay for all this.
  - WhyOhWhyQ 10mo ago
    To each his own, but multi-tasking feels bad to me. I want to spend my life pursuing mastery of a craft, not lazily delegating. Not that everyone should have the same goals, but the mastery route feels like it's dying off. It makes me sad. I get it that some people just want to see the thing on the screen. Or your priority is to be a high status person with a loving family etc.. etc... All noble goals. I just don't feel a sense of fulfillment from a life not in pursuit of something deeper. The AI can do it better than me, but I don't really care at the end of the day. Maybe super-corp wants the AI to do it then, but it's a shame.
    - Terretta 10mo ago
      > I want to spend my life pursuing mastery of a craft, not lazily delegating. And yet, the Renaissance "grand masters" became known as masters through systematizing delegation: https://smarthistory.org/workshop-italian-renaissance-art/ https://smarthistory.org/workshop-italian-renaissance-art/
      - WhyOhWhyQ 10mo ago
        I have wondered about that actually. Thanks, I'll read that, looks interesting. Surely Donald Knuth and John Carmack are genuine masters though? There's the Elon Musk theory of mastery where everyone says you're great, but you hire a guy to do it, and there's the <nobody knows this guy but he's having a blast and is really good> theory where you make average income but live a life fulfilled. On my deathbed I want to be the second. (Sorry this is getting off topic.)
        fragmede 10mo ago
- fragmede 10mo ago
  > AI is basically a toy for 99% of us. So you're at the "first they laugh at us" stage then.
  - AnimalMuppet 10mo ago
    OK, but not everything that gets to that stage moves on to the next, let alone the stage after that. But I will give you this, the "first they ignore us" stage is over, at least for many people.
- re-thc 10mo ago
  > the "markets" are anything but rational No, they are rational. At least those with a lot of money. > None of the investments going on have followed any semblance of fundamentals - it's all pure instinct and chasing hype That's not what investments are about. Their fundamentals are if they can get a good return on their money. As long as the odds of the next sucker to buy them up exists it is a good investment. > AI is basically a toy for 99% of us. You do pay for toys right? Toy shops aren't irrational?
jp8585 10mo ago
I actually think things improved substantially when compared to last year. The latest batch of sota models is incredible (just ask any software engineer about what’s happening to their profession). It’s only a matter of time until other knowledge workers start getting the asphyxiating “vibe” coding treatment and that drama is what really fascinates me. People are absolutely torn. It seems that ai usage starts as a clutch, then it becomes an essential tool and finally it takes over the essence of the profession itself. Not using it feels like a waste of time. There’s a sense of dread that comes from realizing that it’s not useful to “do work” anymore. That in order to thrive now, we need to outsource as much of your thinking to GPT as possible. If your sense of identity comes from “pure” intellectual pursuits, you are gonna have a bad time. The optimists will say “you will be able to do 10x the amount of work”. That might be true, but the nature of the work will be completely different. Managing a farm is not the same as planting a seed.
- Terretta 10mo ago
  There’s a sense of dread that comes from realizing that it’s not useful to “do work” anymore. That in order to thrive now, we need to outsource as much of your thinking to GPT as possible. If your sense of identity comes from “pure” intellectual pursuits, you are gonna have a bad time. This is 180 degrees from how to think about it. The more thinking you do as ratio to less toil, the better. The more time to apply your intellect with the better machine execution to back that up, the more profit. The Renaissance grand masters used ateliers of apprentices and journeymen while the grand masters conceived, directed, critiqued, and integrated their work into commissioned art; at the end signing their name: https://smarthistory.org/workshop-italian-renaissance-art/ https://smarthistory.org/workshop-italian-renaissance-art/ This is how to leverage the machine. It's your own atelier in a box. Go be Leonardo.
  - jp8585 10mo ago
    I definitely understand that this is the rational way of viewing it. Leveraging these tools is an incredible feeling, but the sense of dread is always there in the corner. You can just feel a deep sense of angst in a lot of these interviews. In any case, I would rather have them and use them to their full extent than to become obsolete. Becoming Leonardo it is.
doug_durham 10mo ago
That's not what the data shows. Read the posting, and read Anthropic's original report. I found it a very sober, grounded report on the reality of using today's tools.

by cmiles8 10mo ago

blindhippo 10mo ago

If anything, the AI bubble is reinforcing to me (and hopefully many more people) that the "markets" are anything but rational. None of the investments going on have followed any semblance of fundamentals - it's all pure instinct and chasing hype. I just hope it doesn't tear down the world for the 99% of us unable to actually reap any benefits from it. AI is basically a toy for 99% of us. It's a long long ways away from the productivity boost people love to claim to justify the sky high valuations. It will fade to being a background tech employed strategically I suspect - similar to other machine learning applications and this is exactly where it belongs. I'm forced to use it (literally, AI usage is now used as a talent review metric...) and frankly, it's maybe helped speed me up... 5-10%? I spend more time trying to get the tools to be useful than I would just doing the task myself. The only true benefit I've gotten has been unit test generation. Ask it to do any meaningful work on a mature code base and you're in for a wild ride. So there's my anecdotal "sentiment".

dionian 10mo ago
I multi task much more now that i can farm off small coding assignments to agents. i pay hndreds per month in tokens. for my role personally its been a massive paradigm shift.
- cmiles8 10mo ago
  There are absolutely folks like you out there and I don’t doubt the productivity increase. The challenge is you are not the norm and the hundreds per month from you and others like you are a drop in the bucket of what’s needed to pay for all this.
- WhyOhWhyQ 10mo ago
  To each his own, but multi-tasking feels bad to me. I want to spend my life pursuing mastery of a craft, not lazily delegating. Not that everyone should have the same goals, but the mastery route feels like it's dying off. It makes me sad. I get it that some people just want to see the thing on the screen. Or your priority is to be a high status person with a loving family etc.. etc... All noble goals. I just don't feel a sense of fulfillment from a life not in pursuit of something deeper. The AI can do it better than me, but I don't really care at the end of the day. Maybe super-corp wants the AI to do it then, but it's a shame.
  - Terretta 10mo ago
    > I want to spend my life pursuing mastery of a craft, not lazily delegating. And yet, the Renaissance "grand masters" became known as masters through systematizing delegation: https://smarthistory.org/workshop-italian-renaissance-art/ https://smarthistory.org/workshop-italian-renaissance-art/
    - WhyOhWhyQ 10mo ago
      I have wondered about that actually. Thanks, I'll read that, looks interesting. Surely Donald Knuth and John Carmack are genuine masters though? There's the Elon Musk theory of mastery where everyone says you're great, but you hire a guy to do it, and there's the <nobody knows this guy but he's having a blast and is really good> theory where you make average income but live a life fulfilled. On my deathbed I want to be the second. (Sorry this is getting off topic.)
      - fragmede 10mo ago
fragmede 10mo ago
> AI is basically a toy for 99% of us. So you're at the "first they laugh at us" stage then.
- AnimalMuppet 10mo ago
  OK, but not everything that gets to that stage moves on to the next, let alone the stage after that. But I will give you this, the "first they ignore us" stage is over, at least for many people.
re-thc 10mo ago
> the "markets" are anything but rational No, they are rational. At least those with a lot of money. > None of the investments going on have followed any semblance of fundamentals - it's all pure instinct and chasing hype That's not what investments are about. Their fundamentals are if they can get a good return on their money. As long as the odds of the next sucker to buy them up exists it is a good investment. > AI is basically a toy for 99% of us. You do pay for toys right? Toy shops aren't irrational?

jp8585 10mo ago

I actually think things improved substantially when compared to last year. The latest batch of sota models is incredible (just ask any software engineer about what’s happening to their profession). It’s only a matter of time until other knowledge workers start getting the asphyxiating “vibe” coding treatment and that drama is what really fascinates me. People are absolutely torn. It seems that ai usage starts as a clutch, then it becomes an essential tool and finally it takes over the essence of the profession itself. Not using it feels like a waste of time. There’s a sense of dread that comes from realizing that it’s not useful to “do work” anymore. That in order to thrive now, we need to outsource as much of your thinking to GPT as possible. If your sense of identity comes from “pure” intellectual pursuits, you are gonna have a bad time. The optimists will say “you will be able to do 10x the amount of work”. That might be true, but the nature of the work will be completely different. Managing a farm is not the same as planting a seed.

Terretta 10mo ago
There’s a sense of dread that comes from realizing that it’s not useful to “do work” anymore. That in order to thrive now, we need to outsource as much of your thinking to GPT as possible. If your sense of identity comes from “pure” intellectual pursuits, you are gonna have a bad time. This is 180 degrees from how to think about it. The more thinking you do as ratio to less toil, the better. The more time to apply your intellect with the better machine execution to back that up, the more profit. The Renaissance grand masters used ateliers of apprentices and journeymen while the grand masters conceived, directed, critiqued, and integrated their work into commissioned art; at the end signing their name: https://smarthistory.org/workshop-italian-renaissance-art/ https://smarthistory.org/workshop-italian-renaissance-art/ This is how to leverage the machine. It's your own atelier in a box. Go be Leonardo.
- jp8585 10mo ago
  I definitely understand that this is the rational way of viewing it. Leveraging these tools is an incredible feeling, but the sense of dread is always there in the corner. You can just feel a deep sense of angst in a lot of these interviews. In any case, I would rather have them and use them to their full extent than to become obsolete. Becoming Leonardo it is.

doug_durham 10mo ago

That's not what the data shows. Read the posting, and read Anthropic's original report. I found it a very sober, grounded report on the reality of using today's tools.