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This will sound pedantic but I'll explain why it matters: the exact wording is "We need to do something useful with AI", because the current (editorialized) sub

by keeda 9mo ago

This will sound pedantic but I'll explain why it matters: the exact wording is "We need to do something useful with AI", because the current (editorialized) submission title (of an already slanted article) makes it sound like people don't know what to do with AI. We already know many useful things to do; there are already 10,000 startups (9789 out of YC alone, 4423 of which are coding-related) doing various ostensibly useful things. And there a ton more use-cases discussed in the comments here and elsewhere. But because of the headline the discussion is missing the much more important point! Satya's point is, we need to do things that improve people's lives. Specific quotes from TFA: >... "do something useful that changes the outcomes of people and communities and countries and industries." > "We will quickly lose even the social permission to take something like energy, which is a scarce resource, and use it to generate these tokens, if these tokens are not improving health outcomes, education outcomes, public sector efficiency, private sector competitiveness, across all sectors, small and large, right?" said Nadella. "And that, to me, is ultimately the goal." Which is absolutely right. He's the only Big Tech CEO I've heard of who constantly harps on the human and economic benefit angle of LLMs, whereas so many others talk -- maybe in indirect ways -- about replacing people and/or only improving company outcomes (which are usually better for only a small group of people: the shareholders.) He's still a CEO, so I have no illusions that he's any different from the rest of them (he's presided over a ton of layoffs, after all.) But he seems to be the only CEO whose interests appear to be aligned with the rest of ours.

tempodox 9mo ago
The number of startups is no proof they’re doing anything useful. It only proves that the founders think they can make money with it.
- keeda 9mo ago
  And potentially their investors, for the startups that got funding. And maybe their customers, for the startups that are already hitting millions in ARR in a year or less. There are some of the numbers out there worth looking up. Is your contention that we don't already know how to do useful things with AI?
orangea 9mo ago
> We already know many useful things to do; there are already 10,000 startups (9789 out of YC alone, 4423 of which are coding-related) doing various ostensibly useful things. I don't think you meant "ostensibly".
- keeda 9mo ago
  You're right, maybe the better word would have been "presumably."
xracy 9mo ago
> We already know many useful things to do; there are already 10,000 startups (9789 out of YC alone, 4423 of which are coding-related) doing various ostensibly useful things. And there a ton more use-cases discussed in the comments here and elsewhere. But because of the headline the discussion is missing the much more important point! There has to be gold in the West! Look at all of the prospectors moving there to get rich on gold! You have not demonstrated that there are 10k uses of AI, you've only demonstrated that there are 10k "businesses" interested in making money off of AI. Just like there were 10k+ crypto-currencies... Just like there were 10k+ "uber but for..." apps. Where are these failed gold-rush attempts now? Investors are currently rewarding the words "AI", so (to extend the analogy) when the gold moved, the gold rushers moved to where they thought the gold would be. Also your emphasis doesn't change the reading of the sentence.
- keeda 9mo ago
  Cryptocurrency startups were just ways to bring "novel" trading strategies into the world of unregulated finance. The only "innovation" there was freedom from regulation and accountability, which turned out just as you'd expect. (Also there are still a surprising number of crypto companies plugging away out there.) "Uber but for ..." apps were either just bad ideas, or ended up serving niche markets or reincarnating as features in Uber, DoorDash and the like. The only innovation there was new facets of the gig economy, which is still expanding BTW. Now if you look at the AI gold rush, the differences are stark: 1. A lot of AI startups are already making a lot of money and growing at a record pace. Some of the numbers out there are bonkers. 2. The domains they are targeting are all over, including accounting, education, energy, games, healthcare, sales, pharma, drug discovery, agriculture, legal, customer support, semiconductor design, travel, retail... you name it. 3. The demand is so high, AI hyperscalers have TRIPLE-DIGIT BILLIONS EACH in backlog, i.e. commited revenue they could not realize because of severe capacity crunch. 4. Literally all the world's major governments, which typically take ages to catch up to technological change, are scrambling to get in on the AI wave. All within only ~3 years. I'd say there's some utility there.
  - tabs_or_spaces 9mo ago
    > A lot of AI startups are already making a lot of money and growing at a record pace. Some of the numbers out there are bonkers. Do you have examples of this? I'm aware of raises, but not aware of any profitable ai companies yet
radicalethics 9mo ago
I'll explain it even better, trying to find something useful for the AI to do is the same is trying to find something useful for humans to do. Think that one through. You see, in a room that used to be just you and the boss now includes these whole other new entity called AI. Your boss is really interested in this new thing. That is all.
- keeda 9mo ago
  Yes, but I think that is the exact attitude Satya's advising against: Where many leaders are looking inward to see how they can optimize their own businesses, they should be looking outward to see how they can improve the world.
  - tstrimple 9mo ago
    LOL! Does anyone think CEO's of major corporations are trying to improve the world? Honestly that's funny. Sorry if you really are this earnest. I wish you the best and hope you can maintain your outlook despite how disconnected from reality.
    - keeda 9mo ago
      Eh, I did say he's not necessarily better than the rest of them, just more aligned with the rest of us, likely because he's more forward-looking than the others. He's seeing the backlash against AI, the pushback against data centers, and the social turmoil on the horizon, and he's saying, "Maybe we should not piss all the people off." Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46729271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46729271
    - techblueberry 9mo ago
      “LOL! Does anyone think CEO's of major corporations are trying to improve the world?” I think that there are some leaders who think about building a business in terms of providing value or an exchange of goods. I think there’s a fundamental difference to society between a ceo that abstracts their role as building a product people value, and one that sees their role as hacking the stock price. The first still may do terrible things, but I think a lot of modern problems in society stem from the fact that deregulation changed the incentives from (1) to (2), but I’m pro any conversation that tries to move us back towards 1
cal_dent 9mo ago
The problem for him and other leaders in the AI ecosystem is that they ran ahead of themselves to overpromise and that has muddied the water from a consumer perspective. That ultimately increases the risk that we throw the baby out with the bathwater as people get sour with it. I have no doubt LLM will be a feature of society going forward, but they have been reckless with the way they've gone about messaging it
- techblueberry 9mo ago
  It’s not just reckless it’s misanthropic. He’s rowing upstream against a messaging strategy of “fuck y’all!” Jobs? Fuck y’all!
journal 9mo ago
i found good use for ai but no one cares about my world changing ambitions because they can't see unicorns anymore.
rramadass 9mo ago
You are exactly right! However, i would say Satya Nadella is quite different from other American CEOs (whose mantra is "greed is good") in that he comes from an Indian middle class family whose focus was on education/good-work and also being forced to take care of a son who suffered from cerebral palsy. All of these shaped his worldviews to be more empathetic of the "common man" which is reflected in his style of leadership.
- keeda 9mo ago
  Agreed on all counts; despite his stilted style of talking, he does come across as much more human than the rest. That said, he's competing in circles dominated by absolute sociopaths. I can't imagine how you could battle with monsters in the abyss and not get Nietzsche'd at least a little bit.
  - rramadass 9mo ago
    He is balancing it pretty well without losing his fundamental values. As this article itself alludes, in-spite of sinking a large amount of money into OpenAI he is genuinely looking for ways to make it useful rather than just make money.
- kasabali 9mo ago
  You are either hopelessly naive or you're being dishonest if you think he's even slightly less sociopathic than any other of 'em.
  - rramadass 9mo ago
    You are clueless if you think all CEOs are the same.
- FireBeyond 9mo ago
  > also being forced to take care of a son who suffered from cerebral palsy "forced"?
rererereferred 9mo ago
I feel his actual subtext underneath is "We need to do something useful with AI... because I invested in it". And he also goes on saying that calling it slop is bad for society. No, it's bad for the billionaires that invested in it.

by keeda 9mo ago

tempodox 9mo ago

The number of startups is no proof they’re doing anything useful. It only proves that the founders think they can make money with it.

keeda 9mo ago
And potentially their investors, for the startups that got funding. And maybe their customers, for the startups that are already hitting millions in ARR in a year or less. There are some of the numbers out there worth looking up. Is your contention that we don't already know how to do useful things with AI?

orangea 9mo ago

> We already know many useful things to do; there are already 10,000 startups (9789 out of YC alone, 4423 of which are coding-related) doing various ostensibly useful things. I don't think you meant "ostensibly".

keeda 9mo ago
You're right, maybe the better word would have been "presumably."

xracy 9mo ago

> We already know many useful things to do; there are already 10,000 startups (9789 out of YC alone, 4423 of which are coding-related) doing various ostensibly useful things. And there a ton more use-cases discussed in the comments here and elsewhere. But because of the headline the discussion is missing the much more important point! There has to be gold in the West! Look at all of the prospectors moving there to get rich on gold! You have not demonstrated that there are 10k uses of AI, you've only demonstrated that there are 10k "businesses" interested in making money off of AI. Just like there were 10k+ crypto-currencies... Just like there were 10k+ "uber but for..." apps. Where are these failed gold-rush attempts now? Investors are currently rewarding the words "AI", so (to extend the analogy) when the gold moved, the gold rushers moved to where they thought the gold would be. Also your emphasis doesn't change the reading of the sentence.

keeda 9mo ago
Cryptocurrency startups were just ways to bring "novel" trading strategies into the world of unregulated finance. The only "innovation" there was freedom from regulation and accountability, which turned out just as you'd expect. (Also there are still a surprising number of crypto companies plugging away out there.) "Uber but for ..." apps were either just bad ideas, or ended up serving niche markets or reincarnating as features in Uber, DoorDash and the like. The only innovation there was new facets of the gig economy, which is still expanding BTW. Now if you look at the AI gold rush, the differences are stark: 1. A lot of AI startups are already making a lot of money and growing at a record pace. Some of the numbers out there are bonkers. 2. The domains they are targeting are all over, including accounting, education, energy, games, healthcare, sales, pharma, drug discovery, agriculture, legal, customer support, semiconductor design, travel, retail... you name it. 3. The demand is so high, AI hyperscalers have TRIPLE-DIGIT BILLIONS EACH in backlog, i.e. commited revenue they could not realize because of severe capacity crunch. 4. Literally all the world's major governments, which typically take ages to catch up to technological change, are scrambling to get in on the AI wave. All within only ~3 years. I'd say there's some utility there.
- tabs_or_spaces 9mo ago
  > A lot of AI startups are already making a lot of money and growing at a record pace. Some of the numbers out there are bonkers. Do you have examples of this? I'm aware of raises, but not aware of any profitable ai companies yet

radicalethics 9mo ago

I'll explain it even better, trying to find something useful for the AI to do is the same is trying to find something useful for humans to do. Think that one through. You see, in a room that used to be just you and the boss now includes these whole other new entity called AI. Your boss is really interested in this new thing. That is all.

keeda 9mo ago
Yes, but I think that is the exact attitude Satya's advising against: Where many leaders are looking inward to see how they can optimize their own businesses, they should be looking outward to see how they can improve the world.
- tstrimple 9mo ago
  LOL! Does anyone think CEO's of major corporations are trying to improve the world? Honestly that's funny. Sorry if you really are this earnest. I wish you the best and hope you can maintain your outlook despite how disconnected from reality.
  - keeda 9mo ago
    Eh, I did say he's not necessarily better than the rest of them, just more aligned with the rest of us, likely because he's more forward-looking than the others. He's seeing the backlash against AI, the pushback against data centers, and the social turmoil on the horizon, and he's saying, "Maybe we should not piss all the people off." Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46729271 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46729271
  - techblueberry 9mo ago
    “LOL! Does anyone think CEO's of major corporations are trying to improve the world?” I think that there are some leaders who think about building a business in terms of providing value or an exchange of goods. I think there’s a fundamental difference to society between a ceo that abstracts their role as building a product people value, and one that sees their role as hacking the stock price. The first still may do terrible things, but I think a lot of modern problems in society stem from the fact that deregulation changed the incentives from (1) to (2), but I’m pro any conversation that tries to move us back towards 1

cal_dent 9mo ago

The problem for him and other leaders in the AI ecosystem is that they ran ahead of themselves to overpromise and that has muddied the water from a consumer perspective. That ultimately increases the risk that we throw the baby out with the bathwater as people get sour with it. I have no doubt LLM will be a feature of society going forward, but they have been reckless with the way they've gone about messaging it

techblueberry 9mo ago
It’s not just reckless it’s misanthropic. He’s rowing upstream against a messaging strategy of “fuck y’all!” Jobs? Fuck y’all!

journal 9mo ago

i found good use for ai but no one cares about my world changing ambitions because they can't see unicorns anymore.

rramadass 9mo ago

You are exactly right! However, i would say Satya Nadella is quite different from other American CEOs (whose mantra is "greed is good") in that he comes from an Indian middle class family whose focus was on education/good-work and also being forced to take care of a son who suffered from cerebral palsy. All of these shaped his worldviews to be more empathetic of the "common man" which is reflected in his style of leadership.

keeda 9mo ago
Agreed on all counts; despite his stilted style of talking, he does come across as much more human than the rest. That said, he's competing in circles dominated by absolute sociopaths. I can't imagine how you could battle with monsters in the abyss and not get Nietzsche'd at least a little bit.
- rramadass 9mo ago
  He is balancing it pretty well without losing his fundamental values. As this article itself alludes, in-spite of sinking a large amount of money into OpenAI he is genuinely looking for ways to make it useful rather than just make money.
kasabali 9mo ago
You are either hopelessly naive or you're being dishonest if you think he's even slightly less sociopathic than any other of 'em.
- rramadass 9mo ago
  You are clueless if you think all CEOs are the same.
FireBeyond 9mo ago
> also being forced to take care of a son who suffered from cerebral palsy "forced"?

rererereferred 9mo ago

I feel his actual subtext underneath is "We need to do something useful with AI... because I invested in it". And he also goes on saying that calling it slop is bad for society. No, it's bad for the billionaires that invested in it.