4 ms·

> very clear and extremely rapid improvement in a startlingly short amount of time. We're almost 6 months into all this AI-code madness and I've yet to see tha

by paganel 6mo ago

> very clear and extremely rapid improvement in a startlingly short amount of time. We're almost 6 months into all this AI-code madness and I've yet to see that "rapid improvement" you mention. As in software products that are genuinely better compared to 6 months ago, or new software products (and good software products at that) which would have not existed had this AI craze not happened.

handoflixue 5mo ago
Can you name literally any other technology that had hundreds of millions of users within the first six months of being invented? Six months after the internet was invented, you could send email between a few universities. Six months after the computer was invented, they still hadn't actually built one. The first transcontinental railroad, took about six YEARS just to build.
- nothinkjustai 5mo ago
  GPT did not have hundreds of millions of users when it was invented almost a decade ago…
  - handoflixue 5mo ago
    If you want to move the goal posts, that's fine, acknowledge it: the original claim I'm responding to was "We're almost 6 months into all this AI-code madness" If you want to set GPT as the target, that's even easier! In that decade it has passed the Turing Test, solved novel open math problems, generates audio, video, and music, and can write coherent code. Again, there is no technology that has improved more rapidly than LLMs.
    - nothinkjustai 5mo ago
      I’d say the internet did, since it literally connected people across the globe in real time, which actually provided the technology that allows LLMs and other similar tech to exist in the first place. I think it’s pretty clear the internet has had 10x the impact of LLMs so far. Maybe 100x
      - aspenmartin 5mo ago
        The internet has been around since the 80s…ChatGPT came out 4 years ago. The internet took decades to build out the infrastructure. Inflation adjusted capex for AI infrastructure already far surpasses that of the internet. You’re talking about a technology that doesn’t just make things easier it replaces entire swaths of work. Under some weird measurement you may be right but I mean cmon.
        nothinkjustai 5mo ago
        You are actually nuts
        handoflixue 5mo ago
        It's wild how unfamiliar you are with the history of the internet - ARPANET was like 1969. Even if we go with AOL in 1985, "decades" to build out the infrastructure is still a very reasonable declaration.
        aspenmartin 5mo ago
        If you don’t have anything to refute you don’t have to reply with an insult, it’s not a great look. Feels like you’ve run out of meaningful things to say? Maybe you disagree with something substantive? We’ll never know!
aspenmartin 5mo ago
Way more than six months. You may be talking about how the world looks from your vantage point, as well you should. But there’s a reason why the world doesn’t allocate trillions of dollars of capital based on that. I really value skeptical people and skepticism generally. But what I think skeptical people would prefer to consider themselves is: rational and reasonable, with their beliefs well calibrated. You’re not the only one to think that literally nothing major or significant has happened with AI but that’s simply wrong. Every major tech company - the ones poised to get the first best rewards, have already gotten good incremental revenue from AI via ads ranking/recommendations (Google, Meta, etc.), good productivity increases due to scale of workforce and advanced in house tooling. You won’t see these numbers and you don’t have to believe them. But I have seen them and I believe them, and I, like you, hate bullshit.
- brazukadev 5mo ago
  > Every major tech company - the ones poised to get the first best rewards, have already gotten good incremental revenue from AI via ads ranking/recommendations (Google, Meta, etc.) That's just software evolving. It happened before LLMs, it would happen without LLMs. > good productivity increases due to scale of workforce and advanced in house tooling. Exactly same case.
  - aspenmartin 5mo ago
    But I don’t really understand: the ask is for evidence AI is generating meaningful returns and it demonstrably is, even while we have integrated these tools only partially. “Just software evolving” um yes, I agree, just that now this happens faster and more efficiently. It is also more than that: models that power advertising and content recommendation at TikTok, Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc are not just “software evolving” it is meaningful improvements to models that are only possible with good AI.
    - brazukadev 5mo ago
      Yes, it is meaningful improvements but AI changes working profitable software. It is more difficult to create exponential value from that compared to new platforms like the internet or mobile. Git and then github, for example, have a much bigger impact on increasing software development productivity than AI, with a fraction of the investment.

by paganel 6mo ago

handoflixue 5mo ago

Can you name literally any other technology that had hundreds of millions of users within the first six months of being invented? Six months after the internet was invented, you could send email between a few universities. Six months after the computer was invented, they still hadn't actually built one. The first transcontinental railroad, took about six YEARS just to build.

nothinkjustai 5mo ago
GPT did not have hundreds of millions of users when it was invented almost a decade ago…
- handoflixue 5mo ago
  If you want to move the goal posts, that's fine, acknowledge it: the original claim I'm responding to was "We're almost 6 months into all this AI-code madness" If you want to set GPT as the target, that's even easier! In that decade it has passed the Turing Test, solved novel open math problems, generates audio, video, and music, and can write coherent code. Again, there is no technology that has improved more rapidly than LLMs.
  - nothinkjustai 5mo ago
    I’d say the internet did, since it literally connected people across the globe in real time, which actually provided the technology that allows LLMs and other similar tech to exist in the first place. I think it’s pretty clear the internet has had 10x the impact of LLMs so far. Maybe 100x
    - aspenmartin 5mo ago
      The internet has been around since the 80s…ChatGPT came out 4 years ago. The internet took decades to build out the infrastructure. Inflation adjusted capex for AI infrastructure already far surpasses that of the internet. You’re talking about a technology that doesn’t just make things easier it replaces entire swaths of work. Under some weird measurement you may be right but I mean cmon.
      - nothinkjustai 5mo ago
        You are actually nuts
        handoflixue 5mo ago
        It's wild how unfamiliar you are with the history of the internet - ARPANET was like 1969. Even if we go with AOL in 1985, "decades" to build out the infrastructure is still a very reasonable declaration.
        aspenmartin 5mo ago
        If you don’t have anything to refute you don’t have to reply with an insult, it’s not a great look. Feels like you’ve run out of meaningful things to say? Maybe you disagree with something substantive? We’ll never know!

aspenmartin 5mo ago

Way more than six months. You may be talking about how the world looks from your vantage point, as well you should. But there’s a reason why the world doesn’t allocate trillions of dollars of capital based on that. I really value skeptical people and skepticism generally. But what I think skeptical people would prefer to consider themselves is: rational and reasonable, with their beliefs well calibrated. You’re not the only one to think that literally nothing major or significant has happened with AI but that’s simply wrong. Every major tech company - the ones poised to get the first best rewards, have already gotten good incremental revenue from AI via ads ranking/recommendations (Google, Meta, etc.), good productivity increases due to scale of workforce and advanced in house tooling. You won’t see these numbers and you don’t have to believe them. But I have seen them and I believe them, and I, like you, hate bullshit.

brazukadev 5mo ago
> Every major tech company - the ones poised to get the first best rewards, have already gotten good incremental revenue from AI via ads ranking/recommendations (Google, Meta, etc.) That's just software evolving. It happened before LLMs, it would happen without LLMs. > good productivity increases due to scale of workforce and advanced in house tooling. Exactly same case.
- aspenmartin 5mo ago
  But I don’t really understand: the ask is for evidence AI is generating meaningful returns and it demonstrably is, even while we have integrated these tools only partially. “Just software evolving” um yes, I agree, just that now this happens faster and more efficiently. It is also more than that: models that power advertising and content recommendation at TikTok, Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc are not just “software evolving” it is meaningful improvements to models that are only possible with good AI.
  - brazukadev 5mo ago
    Yes, it is meaningful improvements but AI changes working profitable software. It is more difficult to create exponential value from that compared to new platforms like the internet or mobile. Git and then github, for example, have a much bigger impact on increasing software development productivity than AI, with a fraction of the investment.