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> The other problem is the monstrous and abusive marketing campaign from the AI industry itself, and those who use AI on a regular basis. If you are against the

> The other problem is the monstrous and abusive marketing campaign from the AI industry itself, and those who use AI on a regular basis. If you are against the consensus that AI will grow ever-larger every single quarter forever, you will be harassed and dogpiled across multiple social media platforms by everyone from AI influencers to actual journalists. The fact that it’s more professionally dangerous to critique the powerful than it is to align with them is disgusting, but I should be clear that these tactics only reinforce that I’m on the right track. > As Nik Suresh noted in his recent piece, refusing to say that AI is giving you massive productivity benefits will lead to actual professional consequences, because so much is riding on the overall grift about what AI can do (which is much, much less than the boosters will promise). This runs antithetical to productivity or good sense, and everybody involved in it should be both eternally shamed and shunned from any sensible business. > And while the AI industry and its fandom will claim that people like me are “skeptics” and “haters,” the outright hatred and vitriol that they spew for not falling in line behind a nakedly false narrative built on outright disinformation is disgraceful. sigh

MrDrMcCoy 2mo ago
Whether wrong or profound, it probably deserves a bit of actual discourse.
- minimaxir 2mo ago
  The most charitable way I can read those paragraphs is that he's vaguely alluding to a nebulous conspiracy by a cabal of elites, which evokes a specific ideology that cannot be discussed constructively. Ed has repeatedly done the "why are people using LLMs?" bit but ignores what well-respected software engineers have actually said about them because he thinks they're AI boosters and they are just lying. At the least, it's an obvious blind spot to explain how the AI industry is what it is despite the numbers he reports arguing otherwise, and many of his industry trend predictions have been incorrect as a direct result.
  - crote 2mo ago
    > a nebulous conspiracy by a cabal of elites You are reading way too much into it. The truth is far simpler: when someone's salary depends on AI being a success, you'll have a really hard time getting them to openly say anything negative about AI. A huge portion of those "well-respected software engineers" work at companies which have pivoted to make AI an essential part of their strategy - because every company has. We're seeing companies where leadership explicitly says that anyone not enthusiastically making AI a core part of their workflow will get fired. It is literally forbidden to doubt AI. Want a promotion? Better start tokenmaxxing - your manager will be looking at your usage stats! And it's going to be the same at the higher levels. A "CTO of $company says $100M AI investment was a massive waste" headline is obviously unacceptable. You've already burned the money, so why ruin your stock price by being "the only company too incompetent to properly use AI" rather than slowly and silently scaling it down while pretending everything is fine and parroting all the buzzwords your peers are using on LinkedIn? The actual results are irrelevant. It does not matter if your AI results are mediocre, or "good in some edge cases", or "can speed up some easier work". The market has decided that AI is huge and a massive success, so anyone not adopting it and having extreme successes with it is a failure and will be punished. There's no need to invent a conspiracy here. Simple self-preservation will do.
    - fragmede 2mo ago
      Ah, yes. Because someone owns NVDA in their retirement account, they're going to intellectually bankrupt themselves and totally lie about being able to use an LLM to generate code feels faster than writing it manually. No conspiracy at all!
      - ragall 2mo ago
        This isn't a conspiracy, which requires coordination between the co-conspirators: it's just old-fashioned common interest in propping up a bubble.
  - disgruntledphd2 2mo ago
    > The most charitable way I can read those paragraphs is that he's vaguely alluding to a nebulous conspiracy by a cabal of elites, which evokes a specific ideology that cannot be discussed constructively. If the markets/finance people reward you for saying you are all-in on AI, people with much of their compensation dependent on the markets (i.e. executives) will claim that AI is driving amazing results. Like, I find AI useful in lots of places and use these tools daily, but I don't see how the pure play model companies can deliver a good return for their investors. Unlike ed though, I do think that we'll find good uses for all the compute and (hopefully) the energy infrastructure being built out for this compute.

MrDrMcCoy 2mo ago

Whether wrong or profound, it probably deserves a bit of actual discourse.

minimaxir 2mo ago
The most charitable way I can read those paragraphs is that he's vaguely alluding to a nebulous conspiracy by a cabal of elites, which evokes a specific ideology that cannot be discussed constructively. Ed has repeatedly done the "why are people using LLMs?" bit but ignores what well-respected software engineers have actually said about them because he thinks they're AI boosters and they are just lying. At the least, it's an obvious blind spot to explain how the AI industry is what it is despite the numbers he reports arguing otherwise, and many of his industry trend predictions have been incorrect as a direct result.
- crote 2mo ago
  > a nebulous conspiracy by a cabal of elites You are reading way too much into it. The truth is far simpler: when someone's salary depends on AI being a success, you'll have a really hard time getting them to openly say anything negative about AI. A huge portion of those "well-respected software engineers" work at companies which have pivoted to make AI an essential part of their strategy - because every company has. We're seeing companies where leadership explicitly says that anyone not enthusiastically making AI a core part of their workflow will get fired. It is literally forbidden to doubt AI. Want a promotion? Better start tokenmaxxing - your manager will be looking at your usage stats! And it's going to be the same at the higher levels. A "CTO of $company says $100M AI investment was a massive waste" headline is obviously unacceptable. You've already burned the money, so why ruin your stock price by being "the only company too incompetent to properly use AI" rather than slowly and silently scaling it down while pretending everything is fine and parroting all the buzzwords your peers are using on LinkedIn? The actual results are irrelevant. It does not matter if your AI results are mediocre, or "good in some edge cases", or "can speed up some easier work". The market has decided that AI is huge and a massive success, so anyone not adopting it and having extreme successes with it is a failure and will be punished. There's no need to invent a conspiracy here. Simple self-preservation will do.
  - fragmede 2mo ago
    Ah, yes. Because someone owns NVDA in their retirement account, they're going to intellectually bankrupt themselves and totally lie about being able to use an LLM to generate code feels faster than writing it manually. No conspiracy at all!
    - ragall 2mo ago
      This isn't a conspiracy, which requires coordination between the co-conspirators: it's just old-fashioned common interest in propping up a bubble.
- disgruntledphd2 2mo ago
  > The most charitable way I can read those paragraphs is that he's vaguely alluding to a nebulous conspiracy by a cabal of elites, which evokes a specific ideology that cannot be discussed constructively. If the markets/finance people reward you for saying you are all-in on AI, people with much of their compensation dependent on the markets (i.e. executives) will claim that AI is driving amazing results. Like, I find AI useful in lots of places and use these tools daily, but I don't see how the pure play model companies can deliver a good return for their investors. Unlike ed though, I do think that we'll find good uses for all the compute and (hopefully) the energy infrastructure being built out for this compute.