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This is not a great argument: > But it is hard to argue against the value of current AI [...] it is getting $1B dollar runway already. The psychic services in

by wpietri 10mo ago

This is not a great argument: > But it is hard to argue against the value of current AI [...] it is getting $1B dollar runway already. The psychic services industry makes over $2 billion a year in the US [1], with about a quarter of the population being actual believers. [2]. [1] The https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/industry/psychic-services/4413/ https://www.ibisworld.com/united-states/industry/psychic-ser... [2] https://news.gallup.com/poll/692738/paranormal-phenomena-met-skepticism.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/692738/paranormal-phenomena-met...

apexalpha 10mo ago
What if these provide actual value through placebo-effect?
- recursive 10mo ago
  You talking about psychics or LLMs?
  - grosswait 10mo ago
    Yes
- wpietri 10mo ago
  I think we have different definitions of "actual value". But even if I pick the flaccid definition, that isn't proof of value of the thing itself, but of any placebo. In which case we can focus on the cheapest/least harmful placebo. Or, better, solving the underlying problem that the placebo "helps".
  - computably 10mo ago
    I'll preface by saying I fully agree that psychics aren't providing any non-placebo value to believers, although I think it's fine to provide entertainment for non-believers. > Or, better, solving the underlying problem that the placebo "helps". The underlying problems are often a lack of a decent education and a generally difficult/unsatisfying life. Systemic issues which can't be meaningfully "solved" without massive resources and political will.
    - jay_kyburz 10mo ago
      Actually, I'd go one step further and say they are harmful to everybody else. It might just be my circles, but I've seen Carl Sagans quote everywhere in the last couple of months. "“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”"
    - wpietri 10mo ago
      If we look back over the last century or so, I think we've made excellent progress on that. The main current barrier is that we've lately let people with various pathologies run wild, but historically that creates enough problems that the political will emerges. See, e.g., the American and French revolutions, or India's independence, or the US civil war and Reconstruction.
ctoth 10mo ago
2022/2023: "It hallucinates, it's a toy, it's useless." 2024/2025: "Okay, it works, but it produces security vulnerabilities and makes junior devs lazy." 2026 (Current): "It is literally the same thing as a psychic scam." Can we at least make predictions for 2027? What shall the cope be then! Lemme go ask my psychic.
- wpietri 10mo ago
  I suppose it's appropriate that you hallucinated an argument I did not make, attacked the straw man, and declared victory.
  - ben_w 10mo ago
    Ironically, the human tendency to read far too much into things for which we have far too little data, does seem to still be one of the ways we (and all biological neural nets) are more sample-efficient than any machine learning. I have no idea if those two points, ML and brains, are just different points on the same Pareto frontier of some useful metrics, but I am increasingly suspecting they might be.
- bopbopbop7 10mo ago
  2022/2023: "Next year software engineering is dead" 2024: "Now this time for real, software engineering is dead in 6 months, AI CEO said so" 2025: "I know a guy who knows a guy who built a startup with an LLM in 3 hours, software engineering is dead next year!" What will be the cope for you this year?
  - aspenmartin 10mo ago
    The cope + disappointment will be knowing that a large population of HN users will paint a weird alternative reality. There are a multitude of messages about AI that are out there, some are highly detached from reality (on the optimistic and pessimistic side). And then there is the rational middle, professionals who see the obvious value of coding agents in their workflow and use them extensively (or figure out how to best leverage them to get the most mileage). I don't see software engineering being "dead" ever, but the nature of the job _has already changed_ and will continue to change. Look at Sonnet 3.5 -> 3.7 -> 4.5 -> Opus 4.5; that was 17 months of development and the leaps in performance are quite impressive. You then have massive hardware buildouts and improvements to stack + a ton of R&D + competition to squeeze the juice out of the current paradigm (there are 4 orders of magnitude of scaling left before we hit real bottlenecks) and also push towards the next paradigm to solve things like continual learning. Some folks have opted not to use coding agents (and some folks like yourself seem to revel in strawmanning people who point out their demonstrable usefulness). Not using coding agents in Jan 2026 is defensible. It won't be defensible for long.

by wpietri 10mo ago

apexalpha 10mo ago

What if these provide actual value through placebo-effect?

recursive 10mo ago
You talking about psychics or LLMs?
- grosswait 10mo ago
  Yes
wpietri 10mo ago
I think we have different definitions of "actual value". But even if I pick the flaccid definition, that isn't proof of value of the thing itself, but of any placebo. In which case we can focus on the cheapest/least harmful placebo. Or, better, solving the underlying problem that the placebo "helps".
- computably 10mo ago
  I'll preface by saying I fully agree that psychics aren't providing any non-placebo value to believers, although I think it's fine to provide entertainment for non-believers. > Or, better, solving the underlying problem that the placebo "helps". The underlying problems are often a lack of a decent education and a generally difficult/unsatisfying life. Systemic issues which can't be meaningfully "solved" without massive resources and political will.
  - jay_kyburz 10mo ago
    Actually, I'd go one step further and say they are harmful to everybody else. It might just be my circles, but I've seen Carl Sagans quote everywhere in the last couple of months. "“Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”"
  - wpietri 10mo ago
    If we look back over the last century or so, I think we've made excellent progress on that. The main current barrier is that we've lately let people with various pathologies run wild, but historically that creates enough problems that the political will emerges. See, e.g., the American and French revolutions, or India's independence, or the US civil war and Reconstruction.

ctoth 10mo ago

2022/2023: "It hallucinates, it's a toy, it's useless." 2024/2025: "Okay, it works, but it produces security vulnerabilities and makes junior devs lazy." 2026 (Current): "It is literally the same thing as a psychic scam." Can we at least make predictions for 2027? What shall the cope be then! Lemme go ask my psychic.

wpietri 10mo ago
I suppose it's appropriate that you hallucinated an argument I did not make, attacked the straw man, and declared victory.
- ben_w 10mo ago
  Ironically, the human tendency to read far too much into things for which we have far too little data, does seem to still be one of the ways we (and all biological neural nets) are more sample-efficient than any machine learning. I have no idea if those two points, ML and brains, are just different points on the same Pareto frontier of some useful metrics, but I am increasingly suspecting they might be.
bopbopbop7 10mo ago
2022/2023: "Next year software engineering is dead" 2024: "Now this time for real, software engineering is dead in 6 months, AI CEO said so" 2025: "I know a guy who knows a guy who built a startup with an LLM in 3 hours, software engineering is dead next year!" What will be the cope for you this year?
- aspenmartin 10mo ago
  The cope + disappointment will be knowing that a large population of HN users will paint a weird alternative reality. There are a multitude of messages about AI that are out there, some are highly detached from reality (on the optimistic and pessimistic side). And then there is the rational middle, professionals who see the obvious value of coding agents in their workflow and use them extensively (or figure out how to best leverage them to get the most mileage). I don't see software engineering being "dead" ever, but the nature of the job _has already changed_ and will continue to change. Look at Sonnet 3.5 -> 3.7 -> 4.5 -> Opus 4.5; that was 17 months of development and the leaps in performance are quite impressive. You then have massive hardware buildouts and improvements to stack + a ton of R&D + competition to squeeze the juice out of the current paradigm (there are 4 orders of magnitude of scaling left before we hit real bottlenecks) and also push towards the next paradigm to solve things like continual learning. Some folks have opted not to use coding agents (and some folks like yourself seem to revel in strawmanning people who point out their demonstrable usefulness). Not using coding agents in Jan 2026 is defensible. It won't be defensible for long.