4 ms·

"Ten years from now, I think we will realize that we were standing in the foothills of the singularity now... I believe that we're only a few years away from [A

"Ten years from now, I think we will realize that we were standing in the foothills of the singularity now... I believe that we're only a few years away from [AGI], maybe 2030 plus or minus a year... I think [AGI] will be an enormous transformative technology, it's going to effectively be a new human era... We can feel this year, I would say, even though I've been working towards this for 30 years, I think this year with the way the agents are working and tool use, it started to become really useful, still early days of it, but genuinely useful in people's workflows... And it's not any one thing, it's several different technologies, several use cases, several things that I thought were maybe a bit further out, turned out to be now, that are coming together that make me feel that in aggregate. I think society needs to hear that because we don't have long to prepare for what that means." -- Demi Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind & Nobel laureate Source with interview clip: https://x.com/deredleritt3r/status/2062223035940139253 https://x.com/deredleritt3r/status/2062223035940139253 EDIT: Ten years ago, most of the skeptics in these threads would have said the success of AlphaFold 3 was impossible.

otabdeveloper4 4mo ago
Someone should document these cringe comments for posterity. As a warning to future generations. It's too bad the previous singularity cult manias 10 and 15 years ago weren't documented and are lost in time.
- esailija 4mo ago
  You know in the future they are just going to say it's different this time right?
  - wartywhoa23 4mo ago
    The Enigma Of Mass Amnesia...
- nopinsight 4mo ago
  Ten years ago, most of the skeptics in these threads would have said the success of AlphaFold 3 was impossible.
  - toasty228 4mo ago
    It doesn't mean everything you can think of is possible. People who say every jobs will be automated never held any tool more advanced than a screwdriver and never worked a single day outside of an air conditioned office. They were predicting flying cars for "the year 2000"...
    - Schlagbohrer 4mo ago
      But enough jobs are going to be automated that it will cause social and economic chaos, and political breakdown. Sure AI can't attach an air conditioning unit outside my window nor use a plunger on my toilet but it can still replace lawyers, secretaries, software devs, and many more jobs.
      - peepee1982 4mo ago
        I'm curious: how will it replace e.g. lawyers? Will judges be replaced as well? Juries?
      - toasty228 4mo ago
        Are we sur eof any of that? Taxis were supposed to be all replaced when Uber promised to buy every single Tesla model S coming out of factories from 2020,they're not even self driving today... Software engineers were supposed to disappear "in 6 months" every 6 months since chat gpt was released Lots of people on this website live in insane bubbles which are completely out of sync with the reality of most workers
        nopinsight 4mo ago
        No one rational ever said software engineers were going to be replaced in 6 months. Some people said AI will automate 90% of coding in 6 months and they were not far off (and accurate in some contexts, e.g. startups).
- Cthulhu_ 4mo ago
  I'm sure HN cult comments from 10 and 15 years ago are still up though, the Dropbox thread is frequently linked to.
- IshKebab 4mo ago
  Just search for "stochastic parrot" on Algolia. Plenty of "BuT iTs NoT rEaLlY iNtElIgEnT" comments...
  - otabdeveloper4 4mo ago
    It literally is a stochastic parrot. P.S. Yes, I do know how an LLM works. I code inference engines at my day job. You're consuming a cloud chat bot.
    - IshKebab 4mo ago
      The people saying "it's just a stochastic parrot" were saying that because they thought the fact that it works by modelling the statistics of words and predicting the next most likely one meant that it would never be capable of anything sophisticated or any kind of novel output. It was just parroting things that already existed in a random way. There was never any actual foundation for that belief, and it has been proven wrong empirically by more capable models, which is why you don't hear people saying it much any more.
- azan_ 4mo ago
  If you look how much goalpost has been moved over the last decade it'd turn out that AI cultist were right more frequently than AI sceptics.
nephihaha 4mo ago
Why are these people so obsessed with the year 2030? It keeps popping up everywhere.
- lioeters 4mo ago
  It's like when people obsessed about 2020, or 2000. It's a nice clean number in the decimal numbering system.
  - nephihaha 4mo ago
    No, there's a lot more to it. I never saw this kind of fuss about 2000 or 2020. I keep seeing things about how some target has to be hit by 2030. Our local council keeps going on about it, in fact their WiFi network even contains 2030!
    - randallsquared 4mo ago
      > No, there's a lot more to it. I never saw this kind of fuss about 2000 I roll to disbelieve! We had hype about the year 2000 throughout the 20th century, and some earlier! When we were IN the year 2000, it was quite common in my circles to tack on some phrase or comment about it being the Future, now, so [whatever thing the person was on about].
      - nephihaha 4mo ago
        A very different type of hype. I remember it. More about the Millennium Bug and the New Year celebration. It didn't have the same vibe at all. The authorities weren't trying to hit various targets since then. The real Millennium turned out to be 11th September, 2001, which was use to bring in a lot of planned changes.
- archievillain 4mo ago
  It feels close (it's only 4 years away) and yet futuristic (the new decade!). The way it feels is important because all these statements are based on jack and only exist for hype.
Valakas_ 4mo ago
"(...) it's going to effectively be a new human era..." We never like it when we realize the universe doesn't circle around us. At first we got mad to discover the Earth wasn't the center of the Solar system. Then we got mad that the solar system wasn't even unique. And now we're still clinging to the idea that humans always will be the most intelligent species or the only ones gifted with "creativity". And soon we might also come to realize it might not be a new human era, but the end of it (if we're not careful).

otabdeveloper4 4mo ago

Someone should document these cringe comments for posterity. As a warning to future generations. It's too bad the previous singularity cult manias 10 and 15 years ago weren't documented and are lost in time.

esailija 4mo ago
You know in the future they are just going to say it's different this time right?
- wartywhoa23 4mo ago
  The Enigma Of Mass Amnesia...
nopinsight 4mo ago
Ten years ago, most of the skeptics in these threads would have said the success of AlphaFold 3 was impossible.
- toasty228 4mo ago
  It doesn't mean everything you can think of is possible. People who say every jobs will be automated never held any tool more advanced than a screwdriver and never worked a single day outside of an air conditioned office. They were predicting flying cars for "the year 2000"...
  - Schlagbohrer 4mo ago
    But enough jobs are going to be automated that it will cause social and economic chaos, and political breakdown. Sure AI can't attach an air conditioning unit outside my window nor use a plunger on my toilet but it can still replace lawyers, secretaries, software devs, and many more jobs.
    - peepee1982 4mo ago
      I'm curious: how will it replace e.g. lawyers? Will judges be replaced as well? Juries?
    - toasty228 4mo ago
      Are we sur eof any of that? Taxis were supposed to be all replaced when Uber promised to buy every single Tesla model S coming out of factories from 2020,they're not even self driving today... Software engineers were supposed to disappear "in 6 months" every 6 months since chat gpt was released Lots of people on this website live in insane bubbles which are completely out of sync with the reality of most workers
      - nopinsight 4mo ago
        No one rational ever said software engineers were going to be replaced in 6 months. Some people said AI will automate 90% of coding in 6 months and they were not far off (and accurate in some contexts, e.g. startups).
Cthulhu_ 4mo ago
I'm sure HN cult comments from 10 and 15 years ago are still up though, the Dropbox thread is frequently linked to.
IshKebab 4mo ago
Just search for "stochastic parrot" on Algolia. Plenty of "BuT iTs NoT rEaLlY iNtElIgEnT" comments...
- otabdeveloper4 4mo ago
  It literally is a stochastic parrot. P.S. Yes, I do know how an LLM works. I code inference engines at my day job. You're consuming a cloud chat bot.
  - IshKebab 4mo ago
    The people saying "it's just a stochastic parrot" were saying that because they thought the fact that it works by modelling the statistics of words and predicting the next most likely one meant that it would never be capable of anything sophisticated or any kind of novel output. It was just parroting things that already existed in a random way. There was never any actual foundation for that belief, and it has been proven wrong empirically by more capable models, which is why you don't hear people saying it much any more.
azan_ 4mo ago
If you look how much goalpost has been moved over the last decade it'd turn out that AI cultist were right more frequently than AI sceptics.

nephihaha 4mo ago

Why are these people so obsessed with the year 2030? It keeps popping up everywhere.

lioeters 4mo ago
It's like when people obsessed about 2020, or 2000. It's a nice clean number in the decimal numbering system.
- nephihaha 4mo ago
  No, there's a lot more to it. I never saw this kind of fuss about 2000 or 2020. I keep seeing things about how some target has to be hit by 2030. Our local council keeps going on about it, in fact their WiFi network even contains 2030!
  - randallsquared 4mo ago
    > No, there's a lot more to it. I never saw this kind of fuss about 2000 I roll to disbelieve! We had hype about the year 2000 throughout the 20th century, and some earlier! When we were IN the year 2000, it was quite common in my circles to tack on some phrase or comment about it being the Future, now, so [whatever thing the person was on about].
    - nephihaha 4mo ago
      A very different type of hype. I remember it. More about the Millennium Bug and the New Year celebration. It didn't have the same vibe at all. The authorities weren't trying to hit various targets since then. The real Millennium turned out to be 11th September, 2001, which was use to bring in a lot of planned changes.
archievillain 4mo ago
It feels close (it's only 4 years away) and yet futuristic (the new decade!). The way it feels is important because all these statements are based on jack and only exist for hype.

Valakas_ 4mo ago

"(...) it's going to effectively be a new human era..." We never like it when we realize the universe doesn't circle around us. At first we got mad to discover the Earth wasn't the center of the Solar system. Then we got mad that the solar system wasn't even unique. And now we're still clinging to the idea that humans always will be the most intelligent species or the only ones gifted with "creativity". And soon we might also come to realize it might not be a new human era, but the end of it (if we're not careful).