6 ms·

Sure, but in two years AI has gone from “impressive tool, but not a replacement for knowledge workers” to “the study where it beats our highest caliber of knowl

by gguncth 4mo ago

Sure, but in two years AI has gone from “impressive tool, but not a replacement for knowledge workers” to “the study where it beats our highest caliber of knowledge workers may have some methodological deficits.” In another two years it’s going to be curtains.

Forgeties79 4mo ago
Assuming it keeps improving at the same rate, which I think we are already seeing not play out. If you compare the first six months when GPT truly hit the mainstream to the previous six months, the improvements are not nearly as evident. That isn’t to say they aren’t noticeable, I could definitely tell it’s improving, but not nearly at the pace it once was. There’s also the fact that they can’t possibly keep improving frontier models at the same rate (I.e. training investment) when investment starts slowing down. The amount of cash being burned is completely unsustainable and you’re already seeing some pullback.
- nopurpose 4mo ago
  On the other hand we keep seeing only marginal generational imorovements in CPU space, yet performance gains over last 10 years in CPUs are very material. Every new model might not be a leap like it used to be, but give it enough time and improvements add up.
  - Forgeties79 4mo ago
    Nobody is disputing that. I specifically said that I can see the improvements from the last six months. What I’m saying is we can’t assume that every two years it will improve at the same rate. The further we get into this, the more AI feels like 3-D printing. Significantly bigger and will be more widely used for sure. But nowhere near the “new industrial revolution” that all these companies are making it out to be
    - fragmede 4mo ago
      What would 3D printing have to do in order for it to be the new industrial revolution to you?
      - Forgeties79 4mo ago
        Everyone has one at home spitting out items they need daily/weekly like was promised. I don't know if you remember the 3D printer (somewhat) boom of the 2010's but the hype was crazy when it became more mainstream. Maker spaces popping up in cities everywhere, schools showing off their units, every conference had some talk on them, startups left and right. The AI boom is basically a more-funded version of that. It was hot hot hot and people thought every home was bound to have one.
        fragmede 4mo ago
        It took a while, especially because the early 3D printers were a project of calibration unto themselves, but modern printers are fairly trouble free. I accidentally melted the bottom of my blender jug on my toaster oven so I'm printing a replacement one right now. Turns out the critical mass needed is someone else having already done the CAD so I can just hit print from my phone, which makes 3D printing a reality.
        chasd00 4mo ago
        The difference with AI is it affects all technology at the same time. 3d printing only affected manufacturing. What we're seeing now has impact in chemistry, medicine, software, and all other knowledge industries at the same time.
    - nopurpose 4mo ago
      Do you agree that economic and behaviour shift will be comparable to mobile and we are at the times of Nokia 3310. Does it count as industrial revolution?
      - Forgeties79 4mo ago
- byzantinegene 4mo ago
  it's also worth keeping in mind that alot of the 'improvements' are actually advancements in harnesses and tools.
  - windexh8er 4mo ago
    This is the hot button right here. Most of the advancements have also come at the cost of excess: exponential token use at the expense of marginal gains. Context is still a large limiting factor, and we have band aids around that area already. And the further along we go the further distributed LLMs get in terms of additional pieces. As for the original article and sentiment I'm sure AI will be a boon for law. It's going to be much easier for the general consumer / person / small business to represent themselves which feels like a win. The downside is I feel like we're tracking towards a digital hell of "virtual lawyers" that will be at the whim of any org. Consumer laws really need to change now to help avoid this dystopian path we're on.
    - snk 4mo ago
      I'll note that having countless superintelligences handy will accelerate problem-solving e.g. dystopia.
- Hfuffzehn 4mo ago
  I agree. But notice that you assume that there is a metric with which you can messure improvement. Which is fine if you are measuring against your personal taste. But it might be that the optimization target itself has a ceiling. If you're training toward human approval ratings from a broad population, you converge toward what median preference selects for. The plateau is baked into what you're measuring against.
- kenjackson 4mo ago
  The issue is that before GPT models basically were useless for any conversation. We are literally in science fiction realm. From a text conversation perspective the gap between where we are at and what’s left to get to is relatively small. In my opinion, the main thing we need to do is have training happen continuously. And probably more real world data (from sensors).
  - the_gastropod 4mo ago
    The ELIZA effect has been around since 1966. I think lots of folks feel “AI” has advanced much more quickly that it really has because of the nature of its many past boom / bust cycles.
    - kenjackson 4mo ago
      ELIZA has never done well in conversational tests. GPT-4.5, for example, tends to out-human humans. Like I could never ask ELIZA this question and get anything close to a decent response: "Give me three points that convey the impact that 9/11 had on rap music in the 21st century with some good examples?" Asking ChatGPT today gives me an answer that I'd give an A grade to a strong college student. ELIZA's response -- "What do you think?".
  - hgs3 4mo ago
    > what’s left to get to is relatively small Not necessarily. In many (most?) areas of tech the rate of advancement follows a logarithmic curve. That is to say, the first 90% is achieved quickly but the last 10% takes significantly more time.
- adampunk 4mo ago
  It doesn't even need to 'improve' at the same rate to have extraordinary impact in society. Even if the frontier models stayed roughly the same in cost and capability for just 1-2 years, the harnesses and processes built around them would mature. We have not yet metabolized these models. Frankly, a lot of this feels like late 80s early 90s complaints about how office computerization wasn't happening yet--it was, just not at the rate promised by the companies selling computers to businesses. We don't look back at those people in the 80s saying that paper was here to stay as visionaries just because they noticed that propaganda temporarily outran the business environment. I just wish people would take a step back and think about the timescales here. Language Models are Unsupervised Multitask Learners was in 2019. Here we are seven years later and LOOK AROUND. The landscape is unrecognizable. It's worth thinking about who, in those seven years, had an accurate estimate of the future and whose estimate fundamentally failed. And just as it is valuable to note where propaganda about progress speeds past where we are, we should remember that it is costless to announce that at some unspecified future time all of this will settle down and things will go back to the way they were.
  - techblueberry 4mo ago
    > I just wish people would take a step back and think about the timescales here. Language Models are Unsupervised Multitask Learners was in 2019. Here we are seven years later and LOOK AROUND. The landscape is unrecognizable. It's worth thinking about who, in those seven years, had an accurate estimate of the future and whose estimate fundamentally failed. And just as it is valuable to note where propaganda about progress speeds past where we are, we should remember that it is costless to announce that at some unspecified future time all of this will settle down and things will go back to the way they were. People can understand all this and still disagree with you.
    - adampunk 4mo ago
      Ok? The point isn’t that people can’t disagree it’s that “things will settle down to normal soon” is more a prayer than an argument.
wouldbecouldbe 4mo ago
The issue is, it almost always outperforms knowledge workers. IF the right questions are asked, and IF steered into and corrected at a few crucial points. IF not it goes off in the wrong direction really quick and that's a problem that's still mostly unsolved in the last 2 years. And that can be catastrophic in high risk environments, like legal, medical or high risk software products where being wrong in the wrong place can mean bankruptcy or even cost a life. I help run a few marketing websites where I let the CEO's run crazy with Claude cowork, they are making PR's like a madman, but they are not allowed to touch any of the API's & platforms where there is real user data & sensitive information.
- goolz 4mo ago
  Ya, while the tools are really solid and have seen huge leaps these past two years, in no way will an LLM be able to do any of it unguided in two years. Just a humble opinion that I would love to see be wrong.
  - wouldbecouldbe 4mo ago
    Yeah it can do things unguided if the tests to confirm its correctness are very solid. Thats where a lot of progress has been made and where agents are good, but this is domain specific, and a chance where startups can shine.
  - alberto467 4mo ago
    "in no way will an LLM be able to do any of it unguided in two years" IDK "not any of it" seems a bit strong, especially thinking towards 2028. For a lot of knowledge professions, there is a surprising amount of tasks that are just dumb work compared to the rest.
  - ryan_n 4mo ago
    > Just a humble opinion that I would love to see be wrong Out of curiosity, why would you love to be wrong about that? What possible outcome could you see being a net positive for society if the vast majority of knowledge workers (and ultimately, as robotics progress, most workers in general) are replaced by AI?
AlecSchueler 4mo ago
> the study where it beats our highest caliber of knowledge workers may have some methodological deficits The point is that if the study can't validate the claims being made then we can't actually extrapolate from that claim. What you're predicting may or may come true, but the study (which is the topic at hand) isn't useful for supporting the assertion.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
amelius 4mo ago
> Sure, but in two years AI has gone from “impressive tool, but not a replacement for knowledge workers” to “the study where it beats our highest caliber of knowledge workers may have some methodological deficits.” With that kind of logic ... anything is possible.
skywhopper 4mo ago
Your “some methodological deficits” is doing a lot of work.
- 0xDEAFBEAD 4mo ago
  What if the methodological deficits are actually causing the paper to underestimate the quality of the AI responses? Why assume any deficits would bias the AI's competence upwards instead of downwards?
  - techblueberry 4mo ago
    Why not assume the AI is god and the rapture is happening tomorrow?
internet_points 4mo ago
"the study that claims it beats our highest caliber of knowledge workers has methodological deficits" ftfy so extrapolating from that, in another two years it will continue to bamboozle
bobro 4mo ago
>the study where it beats our highest caliber of knowledge workers may have some methodological deficits. That isn’t even remotely what this study is looking at.
taco_emoji 4mo ago
I will never trust an AI as much as a person
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
ambicapter 4mo ago
Autopilots have been able to land planes for years (decades?), and yet they still don't land passengers planes at any increased rate.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
astrobe_ 4mo ago
I'd say if it does have methodological deficits, it should be ignored. Measuring a length with a wet spaghetti can only result in nonsense.
techblueberry 4mo ago
I mean, my shoe could beat the highest caliber of knowledge workers with enough methodological deficits.

by gguncth 4mo ago

Forgeties79 4mo ago

Assuming it keeps improving at the same rate, which I think we are already seeing not play out. If you compare the first six months when GPT truly hit the mainstream to the previous six months, the improvements are not nearly as evident. That isn’t to say they aren’t noticeable, I could definitely tell it’s improving, but not nearly at the pace it once was. There’s also the fact that they can’t possibly keep improving frontier models at the same rate (I.e. training investment) when investment starts slowing down. The amount of cash being burned is completely unsustainable and you’re already seeing some pullback.

nopurpose 4mo ago
On the other hand we keep seeing only marginal generational imorovements in CPU space, yet performance gains over last 10 years in CPUs are very material. Every new model might not be a leap like it used to be, but give it enough time and improvements add up.
- Forgeties79 4mo ago
  Nobody is disputing that. I specifically said that I can see the improvements from the last six months. What I’m saying is we can’t assume that every two years it will improve at the same rate. The further we get into this, the more AI feels like 3-D printing. Significantly bigger and will be more widely used for sure. But nowhere near the “new industrial revolution” that all these companies are making it out to be
  - fragmede 4mo ago
    What would 3D printing have to do in order for it to be the new industrial revolution to you?
    - Forgeties79 4mo ago
      Everyone has one at home spitting out items they need daily/weekly like was promised. I don't know if you remember the 3D printer (somewhat) boom of the 2010's but the hype was crazy when it became more mainstream. Maker spaces popping up in cities everywhere, schools showing off their units, every conference had some talk on them, startups left and right. The AI boom is basically a more-funded version of that. It was hot hot hot and people thought every home was bound to have one.
      - fragmede 4mo ago
        It took a while, especially because the early 3D printers were a project of calibration unto themselves, but modern printers are fairly trouble free. I accidentally melted the bottom of my blender jug on my toaster oven so I'm printing a replacement one right now. Turns out the critical mass needed is someone else having already done the CAD so I can just hit print from my phone, which makes 3D printing a reality.
      - chasd00 4mo ago
        The difference with AI is it affects all technology at the same time. 3d printing only affected manufacturing. What we're seeing now has impact in chemistry, medicine, software, and all other knowledge industries at the same time.
  - nopurpose 4mo ago
    Do you agree that economic and behaviour shift will be comparable to mobile and we are at the times of Nokia 3310. Does it count as industrial revolution?
    - Forgeties79 4mo ago
byzantinegene 4mo ago
it's also worth keeping in mind that alot of the 'improvements' are actually advancements in harnesses and tools.
- windexh8er 4mo ago
  This is the hot button right here. Most of the advancements have also come at the cost of excess: exponential token use at the expense of marginal gains. Context is still a large limiting factor, and we have band aids around that area already. And the further along we go the further distributed LLMs get in terms of additional pieces. As for the original article and sentiment I'm sure AI will be a boon for law. It's going to be much easier for the general consumer / person / small business to represent themselves which feels like a win. The downside is I feel like we're tracking towards a digital hell of "virtual lawyers" that will be at the whim of any org. Consumer laws really need to change now to help avoid this dystopian path we're on.
  - snk 4mo ago
    I'll note that having countless superintelligences handy will accelerate problem-solving e.g. dystopia.
Hfuffzehn 4mo ago
I agree. But notice that you assume that there is a metric with which you can messure improvement. Which is fine if you are measuring against your personal taste. But it might be that the optimization target itself has a ceiling. If you're training toward human approval ratings from a broad population, you converge toward what median preference selects for. The plateau is baked into what you're measuring against.
kenjackson 4mo ago
The issue is that before GPT models basically were useless for any conversation. We are literally in science fiction realm. From a text conversation perspective the gap between where we are at and what’s left to get to is relatively small. In my opinion, the main thing we need to do is have training happen continuously. And probably more real world data (from sensors).
- the_gastropod 4mo ago
  The ELIZA effect has been around since 1966. I think lots of folks feel “AI” has advanced much more quickly that it really has because of the nature of its many past boom / bust cycles.
  - kenjackson 4mo ago
    ELIZA has never done well in conversational tests. GPT-4.5, for example, tends to out-human humans. Like I could never ask ELIZA this question and get anything close to a decent response: "Give me three points that convey the impact that 9/11 had on rap music in the 21st century with some good examples?" Asking ChatGPT today gives me an answer that I'd give an A grade to a strong college student. ELIZA's response -- "What do you think?".
- hgs3 4mo ago
  > what’s left to get to is relatively small Not necessarily. In many (most?) areas of tech the rate of advancement follows a logarithmic curve. That is to say, the first 90% is achieved quickly but the last 10% takes significantly more time.
adampunk 4mo ago
It doesn't even need to 'improve' at the same rate to have extraordinary impact in society. Even if the frontier models stayed roughly the same in cost and capability for just 1-2 years, the harnesses and processes built around them would mature. We have not yet metabolized these models. Frankly, a lot of this feels like late 80s early 90s complaints about how office computerization wasn't happening yet--it was, just not at the rate promised by the companies selling computers to businesses. We don't look back at those people in the 80s saying that paper was here to stay as visionaries just because they noticed that propaganda temporarily outran the business environment. I just wish people would take a step back and think about the timescales here. Language Models are Unsupervised Multitask Learners was in 2019. Here we are seven years later and LOOK AROUND. The landscape is unrecognizable. It's worth thinking about who, in those seven years, had an accurate estimate of the future and whose estimate fundamentally failed. And just as it is valuable to note where propaganda about progress speeds past where we are, we should remember that it is costless to announce that at some unspecified future time all of this will settle down and things will go back to the way they were.
- techblueberry 4mo ago
  > I just wish people would take a step back and think about the timescales here. Language Models are Unsupervised Multitask Learners was in 2019. Here we are seven years later and LOOK AROUND. The landscape is unrecognizable. It's worth thinking about who, in those seven years, had an accurate estimate of the future and whose estimate fundamentally failed. And just as it is valuable to note where propaganda about progress speeds past where we are, we should remember that it is costless to announce that at some unspecified future time all of this will settle down and things will go back to the way they were. People can understand all this and still disagree with you.
  - adampunk 4mo ago
    Ok? The point isn’t that people can’t disagree it’s that “things will settle down to normal soon” is more a prayer than an argument.

wouldbecouldbe 4mo ago

The issue is, it almost always outperforms knowledge workers. IF the right questions are asked, and IF steered into and corrected at a few crucial points. IF not it goes off in the wrong direction really quick and that's a problem that's still mostly unsolved in the last 2 years. And that can be catastrophic in high risk environments, like legal, medical or high risk software products where being wrong in the wrong place can mean bankruptcy or even cost a life. I help run a few marketing websites where I let the CEO's run crazy with Claude cowork, they are making PR's like a madman, but they are not allowed to touch any of the API's & platforms where there is real user data & sensitive information.

goolz 4mo ago
Ya, while the tools are really solid and have seen huge leaps these past two years, in no way will an LLM be able to do any of it unguided in two years. Just a humble opinion that I would love to see be wrong.
- wouldbecouldbe 4mo ago
  Yeah it can do things unguided if the tests to confirm its correctness are very solid. Thats where a lot of progress has been made and where agents are good, but this is domain specific, and a chance where startups can shine.
- alberto467 4mo ago
  "in no way will an LLM be able to do any of it unguided in two years" IDK "not any of it" seems a bit strong, especially thinking towards 2028. For a lot of knowledge professions, there is a surprising amount of tasks that are just dumb work compared to the rest.
- ryan_n 4mo ago
  > Just a humble opinion that I would love to see be wrong Out of curiosity, why would you love to be wrong about that? What possible outcome could you see being a net positive for society if the vast majority of knowledge workers (and ultimately, as robotics progress, most workers in general) are replaced by AI?

AlecSchueler 4mo ago

> the study where it beats our highest caliber of knowledge workers may have some methodological deficits The point is that if the study can't validate the claims being made then we can't actually extrapolate from that claim. What you're predicting may or may come true, but the study (which is the topic at hand) isn't useful for supporting the assertion.

deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]

amelius 4mo ago

> Sure, but in two years AI has gone from “impressive tool, but not a replacement for knowledge workers” to “the study where it beats our highest caliber of knowledge workers may have some methodological deficits.” With that kind of logic ... anything is possible.

skywhopper 4mo ago

Your “some methodological deficits” is doing a lot of work.

0xDEAFBEAD 4mo ago
What if the methodological deficits are actually causing the paper to underestimate the quality of the AI responses? Why assume any deficits would bias the AI's competence upwards instead of downwards?
- techblueberry 4mo ago
  Why not assume the AI is god and the rapture is happening tomorrow?

internet_points 4mo ago

"the study that claims it beats our highest caliber of knowledge workers has methodological deficits" ftfy so extrapolating from that, in another two years it will continue to bamboozle

bobro 4mo ago

>the study where it beats our highest caliber of knowledge workers may have some methodological deficits. That isn’t even remotely what this study is looking at.

taco_emoji 4mo ago

I will never trust an AI as much as a person

deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]

ambicapter 4mo ago

Autopilots have been able to land planes for years (decades?), and yet they still don't land passengers planes at any increased rate.

deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]

astrobe_ 4mo ago

I'd say if it does have methodological deficits, it should be ignored. Measuring a length with a wet spaghetti can only result in nonsense.

techblueberry 4mo ago

I mean, my shoe could beat the highest caliber of knowledge workers with enough methodological deficits.