3 ms·
There was a lot of FUD in the mainframe era about computers being called "electronic brains" and fears of them taking people's jobs because the ignorant public
by ThrowawayR2 7mo ago
There was a lot of FUD in the mainframe era about computers being called "electronic brains" and fears of them taking people's jobs because the ignorant public mistook their lighting fast arithmetic skills for intelligence. Many did lose their jobs as digital record keeping, computerized accounting/ERP, robotics on assembly lines, became cost effective, but at no time did the "electronic brain" become intelligent.
There's a lot of FUD today about LLM's being sapient because the ignorant public mistakes their complex token prediction skills for intelligence. But it's just embarrassing to see people making that mistake on a forum ostensibly filled with hackers.
- ACCount37 7mo agoIs it me making the mistake, or is it you making that very mistake in the other direction? Back in the "mainframe era", we had entire lists of tasks that even the most untrained humans would find trivial, but computers were impossibly bad at. Like following informal instructions, or telling a picture of a dog from that of a cat. We're in the "AI era" now, and what remains of those lists? What are the areas of human advantage, the standing bastions of human specialness? Because with modern AI, the list has grown quite thin. Growing thinner as we speak.
- djhn 6mo agoThe success rate of computers doing those tasks has gone from 0% to 70%-90%, but reaching 100% might take a very long time.
- sharlos201068 6mo agoHow many people are needed to make up the difference to 100% though?
- sharlos201068 6mo agoThey don't need to be sapient to be dangerous though