5 ms·

Everything is becoming wildly inefficient, all in the name of improved efficiency.

by slg 2mo ago

dgellow 2mo ago
And everybody in the chain can even justify their improved efficiency! It‘s capitalism endgoal. A massive Goldberg machine, where each piece can be optimized, but overall does produce close to no value compared to its cost and effort
- Taek 2mo ago
  I have a hard time looking at the world around me and thinking "close to no value"
  - dgellow 2mo ago
    I’m talking specifically about the AI industry
    - brookst 2mo ago
      Well, how does it compare to the internet industry?
      - dgellow 2mo ago
        Let me know, I personally don’t see meaningful comparisons to make between the 2
        brookst 2mo ago
        The meaningful comparison is that technologies are not industries. What even is the internet industry? There was a brief time in the 1990’s when that was a thing, just like AI will be subsumed as a technology in actual industries in the next decade.
  - inigyou 2mo ago
    Besides technological progress which has nothing to do with this effect and would have happened anyway, what's the value that we didn't have 30 years ago?
    - brabel 2mo ago
      It’s so incredible to me that now we have a chat interface we can ask about anything in any language and get really great answers, something literally considered science fiction a few years ago, and people still act like that is no big deal at all. No value in something like that! Don’t tell me it’s inaccurate, I strongly believe it’s way more accurate than if you could ask an expert in each topic , which of course you couldn’t and even if you did, you would most likely not want to since you would get a lot of “you don’t actually want that, you want this unrelated thing, trust me I am better than you”. Just remember StackOverflow (depending on how young you are perhaps you never even heard of that given how much AI has eclipsed it)!
      - inigyou 2mo ago
        It gives wrong answers.
      - legacynl 2mo ago
        > I strongly believe it’s way more accurate than if you could ask an expert in each topic You can believe anything you want. I can also believe that the only thing that has gone up in the last 30 years is billionaires' worth, and amount of idiots saying things they don't know anything about. I strongly believe this. Don't tell me it's inaccurate.
        brabel 2mo ago
        At least you acknowledge you believe in absurdities. My belief is not absurd , it’s what I have seen myself in the last year or so.
      - slg 2mo ago
        >It’s so incredible to me that now we have a chat interface we can ask about anything in any language and get really great answers, something literally considered science fiction a few years ago, and people still act like that is no big deal at all. Because the importance of this is all about perspective. It wasn't like these systems created this information out of thin air. They were trained on something. That means the answers they are giving you have been available for decades. You just needed the know-how to find that information and synthesize the answers yourself. To many of us, it's like going from the old physical card catalogs to a modern digital system that would have seemed like sci-fi to a prior generation too. It's definitely more efficient and easier to use, but people acting like it's revolutionary seem to be suggesting that the old system didn't exist or wasn't usable with a little effort.
- andrewflnr 2mo ago
  This is no one's end goal. It's just the market being irrational longer than sane people can stay solvent.
  - nik282000 2mo ago
    It's greed at the top pushing the market into insanity. "AI" vendors are dangling the carrot of "eliminate manpower" in front of the manpower-owning class and they are throwing everything they have at it. The wealth that's been thrown into this hole could have payed for a couple million work-years of developers.
    - brookst 2mo ago
      There are, what, about 50 million developers worldwide? So instead of AI that pretty much everyone can use, we could have had 3 or 4 weeks of business as usual?
    - Manfrednotfunny 2mo ago
      If AGI is the next evolutionary goal, its the difference between being stuck and not. Wealth is also only relevant in a capitalistic system, which we invented. It could easily be that all other species never created capitalism and are therefore waiting for us somewere which we will not reach because we are stuck on 'wealth'. And if we are stuck in a local minimum, it might seem that GPT-2 broke us out of there.
      - dgellow 2mo ago
        Or LLMs will end up being the local optimum we organize society around and sacrifice everything to, and end up not being the child dream of infinite wealth and benefits the AI boosters believe in. laissez-faire capitalism tends to result in power concentration and the creation of a distinct class of hyper-wealthy and powerful individuals with close to infinite power to dictate the future. That’s pretty much the situation we are in. If the current AI bet turns out to not be the next revolution, what’s the plan? What will be the pivot? What happens to all the capex and commitments, the reputation of all the people who promised that was the journey to the holly land? The answer is that there is no plan, AI has to work to justify the system itself. It’s almost a natural result of the economical and ideological system we conceived. It’s really not that different from blockchains, though at least LLMs have some actual use cases. But there is a complete disconnect between the actual ROI and the vision sold by the AI folks
saidinesh5 2mo ago
I think that's just the phase 1? Once we have all the use cases figured out, optimizations gradually follow?
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- f6v 2mo ago
  We're living the uranium glass moment. It's going to change, of course.
brookst 2mo ago
Your comment reminds me of the move to packet-switched and routed networks, which were much more complicated than connecting wires end to end. And yet…
- xorcist 2mo ago
  The only way that argument makes sense is when inverted. Packet switched networks did not compete with loose wires hand placed by polite women. They competed with circuit switched networks which emulated that network architecture. And packet switched network equipment were much, much, much more simple than their time divisioned counterparts. On the same budget you could run an order of magnitude fatter pipes using ethernet switches rather than ATM switches. That's also why they won. Simpler and cheaper architecture end-to-end means the same budget can be spent more wisely. That's usually what wins in an open market.

Everything is becoming wildly inefficient, all in the name of improved efficiency.

by slg 2mo ago

Everything is becoming wildly inefficient, all in the name of improved efficiency.

And everybody in the chain can even justify their improved efficiency! It‘s capitalism endgoal. A massive Goldberg machine, where each piece can be optimized, but overall does produce close to no value compared to its cost and effort

Taek 2mo ago
I have a hard time looking at the world around me and thinking "close to no value"
- dgellow 2mo ago
  I’m talking specifically about the AI industry
  - brookst 2mo ago
    Well, how does it compare to the internet industry?
    - dgellow 2mo ago
      Let me know, I personally don’t see meaningful comparisons to make between the 2
      - brookst 2mo ago
        The meaningful comparison is that technologies are not industries. What even is the internet industry? There was a brief time in the 1990’s when that was a thing, just like AI will be subsumed as a technology in actual industries in the next decade.
- inigyou 2mo ago
  Besides technological progress which has nothing to do with this effect and would have happened anyway, what's the value that we didn't have 30 years ago?
  - brabel 2mo ago
    It’s so incredible to me that now we have a chat interface we can ask about anything in any language and get really great answers, something literally considered science fiction a few years ago, and people still act like that is no big deal at all. No value in something like that! Don’t tell me it’s inaccurate, I strongly believe it’s way more accurate than if you could ask an expert in each topic , which of course you couldn’t and even if you did, you would most likely not want to since you would get a lot of “you don’t actually want that, you want this unrelated thing, trust me I am better than you”. Just remember StackOverflow (depending on how young you are perhaps you never even heard of that given how much AI has eclipsed it)!
    - inigyou 2mo ago
      It gives wrong answers.
    - legacynl 2mo ago
      > I strongly believe it’s way more accurate than if you could ask an expert in each topic You can believe anything you want. I can also believe that the only thing that has gone up in the last 30 years is billionaires' worth, and amount of idiots saying things they don't know anything about. I strongly believe this. Don't tell me it's inaccurate.
      - brabel 2mo ago
        At least you acknowledge you believe in absurdities. My belief is not absurd , it’s what I have seen myself in the last year or so.
    - slg 2mo ago
      >It’s so incredible to me that now we have a chat interface we can ask about anything in any language and get really great answers, something literally considered science fiction a few years ago, and people still act like that is no big deal at all. Because the importance of this is all about perspective. It wasn't like these systems created this information out of thin air. They were trained on something. That means the answers they are giving you have been available for decades. You just needed the know-how to find that information and synthesize the answers yourself. To many of us, it's like going from the old physical card catalogs to a modern digital system that would have seemed like sci-fi to a prior generation too. It's definitely more efficient and easier to use, but people acting like it's revolutionary seem to be suggesting that the old system didn't exist or wasn't usable with a little effort.
andrewflnr 2mo ago
This is no one's end goal. It's just the market being irrational longer than sane people can stay solvent.
- nik282000 2mo ago
  It's greed at the top pushing the market into insanity. "AI" vendors are dangling the carrot of "eliminate manpower" in front of the manpower-owning class and they are throwing everything they have at it. The wealth that's been thrown into this hole could have payed for a couple million work-years of developers.
  - brookst 2mo ago
    There are, what, about 50 million developers worldwide? So instead of AI that pretty much everyone can use, we could have had 3 or 4 weeks of business as usual?
  - Manfrednotfunny 2mo ago
    If AGI is the next evolutionary goal, its the difference between being stuck and not. Wealth is also only relevant in a capitalistic system, which we invented. It could easily be that all other species never created capitalism and are therefore waiting for us somewere which we will not reach because we are stuck on 'wealth'. And if we are stuck in a local minimum, it might seem that GPT-2 broke us out of there.
    - dgellow 2mo ago
      Or LLMs will end up being the local optimum we organize society around and sacrifice everything to, and end up not being the child dream of infinite wealth and benefits the AI boosters believe in. laissez-faire capitalism tends to result in power concentration and the creation of a distinct class of hyper-wealthy and powerful individuals with close to infinite power to dictate the future. That’s pretty much the situation we are in. If the current AI bet turns out to not be the next revolution, what’s the plan? What will be the pivot? What happens to all the capex and commitments, the reputation of all the people who promised that was the journey to the holly land? The answer is that there is no plan, AI has to work to justify the system itself. It’s almost a natural result of the economical and ideological system we conceived. It’s really not that different from blockchains, though at least LLMs have some actual use cases. But there is a complete disconnect between the actual ROI and the vision sold by the AI folks

saidinesh5 2mo ago

I think that's just the phase 1? Once we have all the use cases figured out, optimizations gradually follow?

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
f6v 2mo ago
We're living the uranium glass moment. It's going to change, of course.

brookst 2mo ago

Your comment reminds me of the move to packet-switched and routed networks, which were much more complicated than connecting wires end to end. And yet…

xorcist 2mo ago
The only way that argument makes sense is when inverted. Packet switched networks did not compete with loose wires hand placed by polite women. They competed with circuit switched networks which emulated that network architecture. And packet switched network equipment were much, much, much more simple than their time divisioned counterparts. On the same budget you could run an order of magnitude fatter pipes using ethernet switches rather than ATM switches. That's also why they won. Simpler and cheaper architecture end-to-end means the same budget can be spent more wisely. That's usually what wins in an open market.