4 ms·

Any flattening of discovery due to AI, but will be temporary. We tend to think that obvious potential is the same as realized potential, for new technology. F

Any flattening of discovery due to AI, but will be temporary. We tend to think that obvious potential is the same as realized potential, for new technology. For any specific context, there are generally innumerable smaller adaptations and capability thresholds that have to be crossed. And the price for that journey is often temporary loss off overt productivity.

Arainach 3mo ago
No, this is significantly more permanent. LLMs are autocomplete generators based off current context, and training generations of people to always ask the planet burners instead of learning to think for themselves - and never having the experience of having to slowly think over the same thing for an extended period - may well mean a permanent cap to human knowledge and a dramatic slowdown or end to new knowledge.
- CuriouslyC 3mo ago
  You act like humanity doesn't exist in a competitive environment. If you think AI codegen is a mistake? Just relax, keep writing code by hand and wait for the pendulum to prove you right while showering you in wealth. There are plenty of people making this bet, and I wish the best of luck to you because I'm 99% certain you're on the losing end of it.
  - Arainach 3mo ago
    The market can remain irrational longer than any of us can remain solvent. The market is not any good at strategic or long-term thinking, particularly if it takes a generation to realize the scope of the damage, as seen by America abandoning its ability to manufacture things in chase of short term profits.
    - abalashov 3mo ago
      This is exactly the right answer. The supposed "rationality" of capitalism can ruin us before we get a chance to dazzle the world with our contrarian insights.
      - rightbyte 3mo ago
        I hate how that very argument has been used by people riding the tide to rationalize the irrationality. Money talks or something. If you don't like it here why don't you leave etc. It is a grifters goto statement.
  - adalacelove 3mo ago
    The very point of the article is that you can win individually and lose as a colective, and that the competitive nature of the field goes against the greater good. And the people betting against AI will be ripped off.
  - rightbyte 3mo ago
    > the pendulum to prove you right while showering you in wealth. This seems like some variant of "why don't you short the market and become rich". It doesn't work like that.
  - claytongulick 3mo ago
    Alternatively, you can walk away from your career in disgust, taking your skills and experience with you, as many people are. Should be interesting to see what happens to the programming profession when there isn't anyone around anymore who actually knows programming.
  - lelanthran 3mo ago
    > You act like humanity doesn't exist in a competitive environment. If you think AI codegen is a mistake? Just relax, keep writing code by hand and wait for the pendulum to prove you right while showering you in wealth. There are plenty of people making this bet, and I wish the best of luck to you because I'm 99% certain you're on the losing end of it. I don't really get this sentiment. You can be in a competitive environment, but it means nothing if the incentives are skewed. Ever heard of "a race to the bottom"? That's a competitive environment too, after all, and no one thinks it's positive when applied to humans.
- spongebobstoes 3mo ago
  when a parent answers their child's question, does it decrease the curiosity of the child? many children have an unlimited capacity to ask "why?". many adults are the same if the abilities of AI are finite, then we will continue to have burning curiosity, questions to ask, and discoveries to make
  - Arainach 3mo ago
    > when a parent answers their child's question, does it decrease the curiosity of the child? When the child is able to go to YouTube and find a tutorial rather than having to puzzle it out, yes, it absolute does. We've seen this for decades now.
  - Jtarii 3mo ago
    There is two different types of learning people are talking about. The first type happens when you are enthusiastically engaged in a topic, which LLMs will likely enhance. The second type happens as a by-product of solving a, perhaps deeply uncomfortably, difficult problem. This is what people are talking about when they say LLMs will hamper human cognition. Instead of sitting there for an hour and struggling, people will instead reflexively give in and ask an LLM to solve it for them.
    - spongebobstoes 3mo ago
      it's an interesting point. is it worthwhile to struggle through an incidental task that has been solved before? we all stand on the shoulders of giants I think in most cases, understanding is the point. we don't expect students to derive general relativity before doing astrophysics. re-invention is only a tool for understanding
      - rznicolet 3mo ago
        Small counterpoint to your analogy, as someone who studied astrophysics: I actually did have a requirement to understand general relativity! Deriving all of it independently from scratch wasn't something we did, but there _were_ derivations involved. And it was definitely worth working through -- it _is_ a good tool for understanding. (I've long since left the field, but I don't regret the work I did.)
- lelanthran 3mo ago
  >No, this is significantly more permanent. LLMs are autocomplete generators based off current context, and training generations of people to always ask the planet burners instead of learning to think for themselves - and never having the experience of having to slowly think over the same thing for an extended period - may well mean a permanent cap to human knowledge and a dramatic slowdown or end to new knowledge. I said as much - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48870324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48870324 - prepare to be downvoted.
claytongulick 3mo ago
Richard Sutton apparently disagrees [1]. He argues that it's impossible for anything novel to come from a LLM. [1] https://youtu.be/kEbVTcncuX0?is=gEMe5zD9sXWD4ONy https://youtu.be/kEbVTcncuX0?is=gEMe5zD9sXWD4ONy
- Nevermark 3mo ago
  Actually: > its output can be novel or good, but rarely both at the same time. > rarely That is not a viewpoint they can't do something useful and new. With that criteria, he could be talking about anyone. I find it rare that people critiquing AI today, actually hold people to the same standards. Or are as enthusiastic about referencing ways machines keep surpassing us, as for ways they have not yet, when speaking about limits for progress.
  - claytongulick 3mo ago
    LLMs are the tech in question, not ML (AI?) in general. LLMs are fundamentally limited by their architecture to only return a token predicted by a statistical inference, essentially lossy decompression. It's like arguing that taking an image, compressing it with JPEG and low quality, then decompressing it into something blurry with some random color values thrown in is creating new art. No one is arguing that everything a human has created is good. No one is arguing that LLMs can't be useful. Sutton is arguing that it can't be novel. Cherry picking a couple of words doesn't change his argument, which is very clear.

Arainach 3mo ago

No, this is significantly more permanent. LLMs are autocomplete generators based off current context, and training generations of people to always ask the planet burners instead of learning to think for themselves - and never having the experience of having to slowly think over the same thing for an extended period - may well mean a permanent cap to human knowledge and a dramatic slowdown or end to new knowledge.

CuriouslyC 3mo ago
You act like humanity doesn't exist in a competitive environment. If you think AI codegen is a mistake? Just relax, keep writing code by hand and wait for the pendulum to prove you right while showering you in wealth. There are plenty of people making this bet, and I wish the best of luck to you because I'm 99% certain you're on the losing end of it.
- Arainach 3mo ago
  The market can remain irrational longer than any of us can remain solvent. The market is not any good at strategic or long-term thinking, particularly if it takes a generation to realize the scope of the damage, as seen by America abandoning its ability to manufacture things in chase of short term profits.
  - abalashov 3mo ago
    This is exactly the right answer. The supposed "rationality" of capitalism can ruin us before we get a chance to dazzle the world with our contrarian insights.
    - rightbyte 3mo ago
      I hate how that very argument has been used by people riding the tide to rationalize the irrationality. Money talks or something. If you don't like it here why don't you leave etc. It is a grifters goto statement.
- adalacelove 3mo ago
  The very point of the article is that you can win individually and lose as a colective, and that the competitive nature of the field goes against the greater good. And the people betting against AI will be ripped off.
- rightbyte 3mo ago
  > the pendulum to prove you right while showering you in wealth. This seems like some variant of "why don't you short the market and become rich". It doesn't work like that.
- claytongulick 3mo ago
  Alternatively, you can walk away from your career in disgust, taking your skills and experience with you, as many people are. Should be interesting to see what happens to the programming profession when there isn't anyone around anymore who actually knows programming.
- lelanthran 3mo ago
  > You act like humanity doesn't exist in a competitive environment. If you think AI codegen is a mistake? Just relax, keep writing code by hand and wait for the pendulum to prove you right while showering you in wealth. There are plenty of people making this bet, and I wish the best of luck to you because I'm 99% certain you're on the losing end of it. I don't really get this sentiment. You can be in a competitive environment, but it means nothing if the incentives are skewed. Ever heard of "a race to the bottom"? That's a competitive environment too, after all, and no one thinks it's positive when applied to humans.
spongebobstoes 3mo ago
when a parent answers their child's question, does it decrease the curiosity of the child? many children have an unlimited capacity to ask "why?". many adults are the same if the abilities of AI are finite, then we will continue to have burning curiosity, questions to ask, and discoveries to make
- Arainach 3mo ago
  > when a parent answers their child's question, does it decrease the curiosity of the child? When the child is able to go to YouTube and find a tutorial rather than having to puzzle it out, yes, it absolute does. We've seen this for decades now.
- Jtarii 3mo ago
  There is two different types of learning people are talking about. The first type happens when you are enthusiastically engaged in a topic, which LLMs will likely enhance. The second type happens as a by-product of solving a, perhaps deeply uncomfortably, difficult problem. This is what people are talking about when they say LLMs will hamper human cognition. Instead of sitting there for an hour and struggling, people will instead reflexively give in and ask an LLM to solve it for them.
  - spongebobstoes 3mo ago
    it's an interesting point. is it worthwhile to struggle through an incidental task that has been solved before? we all stand on the shoulders of giants I think in most cases, understanding is the point. we don't expect students to derive general relativity before doing astrophysics. re-invention is only a tool for understanding
    - rznicolet 3mo ago
      Small counterpoint to your analogy, as someone who studied astrophysics: I actually did have a requirement to understand general relativity! Deriving all of it independently from scratch wasn't something we did, but there _were_ derivations involved. And it was definitely worth working through -- it _is_ a good tool for understanding. (I've long since left the field, but I don't regret the work I did.)
lelanthran 3mo ago
>No, this is significantly more permanent. LLMs are autocomplete generators based off current context, and training generations of people to always ask the planet burners instead of learning to think for themselves - and never having the experience of having to slowly think over the same thing for an extended period - may well mean a permanent cap to human knowledge and a dramatic slowdown or end to new knowledge. I said as much - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48870324 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48870324 - prepare to be downvoted.

claytongulick 3mo ago

Richard Sutton apparently disagrees [1]. He argues that it's impossible for anything novel to come from a LLM. [1] https://youtu.be/kEbVTcncuX0?is=gEMe5zD9sXWD4ONy https://youtu.be/kEbVTcncuX0?is=gEMe5zD9sXWD4ONy

Nevermark 3mo ago
Actually: > its output can be novel or good, but rarely both at the same time. > rarely That is not a viewpoint they can't do something useful and new. With that criteria, he could be talking about anyone. I find it rare that people critiquing AI today, actually hold people to the same standards. Or are as enthusiastic about referencing ways machines keep surpassing us, as for ways they have not yet, when speaking about limits for progress.
- claytongulick 3mo ago
  LLMs are the tech in question, not ML (AI?) in general. LLMs are fundamentally limited by their architecture to only return a token predicted by a statistical inference, essentially lossy decompression. It's like arguing that taking an image, compressing it with JPEG and low quality, then decompressing it into something blurry with some random color values thrown in is creating new art. No one is arguing that everything a human has created is good. No one is arguing that LLMs can't be useful. Sutton is arguing that it can't be novel. Cherry picking a couple of words doesn't change his argument, which is very clear.