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I don’t trust someone who is dumb enough to think LLMs aren’t useful at all. Of course, he may just be deceiving himself or his audience about this belief. I d

I don’t trust someone who is dumb enough to think LLMs aren’t useful at all. Of course, he may just be deceiving himself or his audience about this belief. I don’t think he is actually dumb. But this alternative is equally problematic.

surgical_fire 2mo ago
I choose evaluate claims on their merit. Many times in the past I was convinced by good arguments that came from people I dislike. I think Zitron is wrong in the usefulness of AI; but then again, so are the people hyping AI way beyond its capabilities. The numbers he brings up in the article are solid though. That said, if Zitron irks you, you can watch the most recent Patrick Boyle video on the big tech debt: https://youtu.be/NufJ7g63KSY?is=2Eh70U7gleoriLO9 https://youtu.be/NufJ7g63KSY?is=2Eh70U7gleoriLO9 This is a guy that comes purely from the financial angle as has no obvious ideological stance in being either pro or against AI. Also pretty balanced in his delivery. Some numbers he brings up should make even AI hypers question the sanity of this whole thing.
- dwaltrip 2mo ago
  Thanks for an alternative source! I’ll check it out.
- LogicFailsMe 2mo ago
  Great video, thank you. But why do you think everyone in AI is hyping it beyond its capabilities? That's a specific San Francisco-driven AGI cult and a handful of annoying billionaires. I'm doing what Patrick Boyle said is the biggest use case: running a one person consultancy on $400/month of AI services. It's working far better than I expected. And if the rates go up too much down the road, I'll pivot to running locally. I suppose if you still consume influencer content, it's pretty bleak slop right now too, but then there are occasional slopcore geniuses that manage something entertaining so I say let the future work itself out. No worries, it will. As for the sanity of the gold rush phase of anything... Are you kidding me? Really... The global GDP annually is ~$120T. $2T is not that big a number at that scale. It's interesting that the critics stick to the domestic tech GDP when the global tech GDP is ~$20T to insist AI hitting $2T annually is impossible.
- tim333 2mo ago
  I thought the Boyle vid was good. The thing about "hyping AI way beyond its capabilities" is that the future capabilities will no doubt be greater than the current ones so they may just be talking about the future a bit. There's a bit of a tipping point in usefulness between AI being a bit worse than humans and a bit better, like for mathematical theorems that's probably happened where being not very good was kind of useless and just recently they are proving lots of things. That will probably gradually happen in other fields creating a lot of economic value.
  - surgical_fire 2mo ago
    The problem is the numbers and the timeframe. I avoid making predictions on tech: - AI may speed up on improvements and be a singularity moment, truly a new industrial revolution. - AI may have only incremental improvements in the next few decades with diminishing returns. - AI improvements may plateau and fizzle out. All those are possible scenarios, and if you dig you may find evidence and historical precedence for all of those. I don't think making wild bets that can tank the whole economy based on a FOMO-fueled prediction that everything will work out in a best-case scenario is healthy.
    - tim333 2mo ago
      I see your point but there's been a Moore's law like trend in compute/dollar that's progressed steadily for about a century and has a very high probability of continuing. How that maps into AI products is a bit uncertain but there's definitely a trend in that direction. As an example of the predictability, Hand Moravec wrote quite a well argued paper in 1989 predicting human level hardware capabilities would be available in inexpensive machines around the mid 2020s which I think was fairly spot on. He also argued once those capabilities were there, software guys would figure things to use if for.

surgical_fire 2mo ago

I choose evaluate claims on their merit. Many times in the past I was convinced by good arguments that came from people I dislike. I think Zitron is wrong in the usefulness of AI; but then again, so are the people hyping AI way beyond its capabilities. The numbers he brings up in the article are solid though. That said, if Zitron irks you, you can watch the most recent Patrick Boyle video on the big tech debt: https://youtu.be/NufJ7g63KSY?is=2Eh70U7gleoriLO9 https://youtu.be/NufJ7g63KSY?is=2Eh70U7gleoriLO9 This is a guy that comes purely from the financial angle as has no obvious ideological stance in being either pro or against AI. Also pretty balanced in his delivery. Some numbers he brings up should make even AI hypers question the sanity of this whole thing.

dwaltrip 2mo ago
Thanks for an alternative source! I’ll check it out.
LogicFailsMe 2mo ago
Great video, thank you. But why do you think everyone in AI is hyping it beyond its capabilities? That's a specific San Francisco-driven AGI cult and a handful of annoying billionaires. I'm doing what Patrick Boyle said is the biggest use case: running a one person consultancy on $400/month of AI services. It's working far better than I expected. And if the rates go up too much down the road, I'll pivot to running locally. I suppose if you still consume influencer content, it's pretty bleak slop right now too, but then there are occasional slopcore geniuses that manage something entertaining so I say let the future work itself out. No worries, it will. As for the sanity of the gold rush phase of anything... Are you kidding me? Really... The global GDP annually is ~$120T. $2T is not that big a number at that scale. It's interesting that the critics stick to the domestic tech GDP when the global tech GDP is ~$20T to insist AI hitting $2T annually is impossible.
tim333 2mo ago
I thought the Boyle vid was good. The thing about "hyping AI way beyond its capabilities" is that the future capabilities will no doubt be greater than the current ones so they may just be talking about the future a bit. There's a bit of a tipping point in usefulness between AI being a bit worse than humans and a bit better, like for mathematical theorems that's probably happened where being not very good was kind of useless and just recently they are proving lots of things. That will probably gradually happen in other fields creating a lot of economic value.
- surgical_fire 2mo ago
  The problem is the numbers and the timeframe. I avoid making predictions on tech: - AI may speed up on improvements and be a singularity moment, truly a new industrial revolution. - AI may have only incremental improvements in the next few decades with diminishing returns. - AI improvements may plateau and fizzle out. All those are possible scenarios, and if you dig you may find evidence and historical precedence for all of those. I don't think making wild bets that can tank the whole economy based on a FOMO-fueled prediction that everything will work out in a best-case scenario is healthy.
  - tim333 2mo ago
    I see your point but there's been a Moore's law like trend in compute/dollar that's progressed steadily for about a century and has a very high probability of continuing. How that maps into AI products is a bit uncertain but there's definitely a trend in that direction. As an example of the predictability, Hand Moravec wrote quite a well argued paper in 1989 predicting human level hardware capabilities would be available in inexpensive machines around the mid 2020s which I think was fairly spot on. He also argued once those capabilities were there, software guys would figure things to use if for.