3 ms·

I would say, AI is probably the biggest thing to happen in tech, full stop. LLMs went from a toy to highly capable (along many dimensions) in just a few years.

by cubefox 2mo ago

I would say, AI is probably the biggest thing to happen in tech, full stop. LLMs went from a toy to highly capable (along many dimensions) in just a few years. Which makes it very likely that in a few years more, we will be seeing crazy capabilities that leave us humans increasingly behind.

altcognito 2mo ago
You really have to expand the list to ridiculous levels before you get to something as big. We've already left humans behind in many ways (but in others we've failed to build LLMs that know how to find the gaps in implementation that humans are leaving out) Cynics really say stuff like "but it's been 3 years and all they can claim is that it's changed text to speech, speech to text, photos to text, text to photos, programming, cybersecurity, research, mathematics, war... "They lie about it being dangerous!" and simulataneously "They hacked a system with zero day exploits! Everyone involved should goto jail!" Tech leaders are awful, but it is just that we've built a society that enables the most awful among us to benefit the most. It has never been the case that tech leaders are particularly amazing, they are just amazing at exploitation.
- qarl2 2mo ago
  > "They lie about it being dangerous!" and simulataneously "They hacked a system with zero day exploits! Everyone involved should goto jail!" FWIW: The simultaneous "it's stupidly weak" and "it's dangerously strong" is a well known propaganda technique.
- skydhash 2mo ago
  > You really have to expand the list to ridiculous levels before you get to something as big Instead of expanding the list, it would be better to widen your vision. Email was more transformative than AI is right now. Unix, then Linux was more transformative. If you have a magic wand and remove AI, I think barely anyone would be impacted, but removing something like windows would be like erasing computers. And removing Linux would wipe most of the internet services.
  - altcognito 2mo ago
    Email in it's first five years barely extended beyond some research universities. And is it novel? Do you see email as somehow a difficult concept to imagine? Unix in it's first five years reworked the way operating systems performed. I'd agree it's pretty important, but I don't see how it fundamentally changed the way we perform work in multiple disciplines (in its first 5 years). Same for Linux, but even less so. We're in very early times, and generative AI is touching every corner of the workpace and education, for better and worse. Powerful technologies can have negative effects. Email has been negatively transformative in ways as well. Part of the reason you can erase AI so effectively with so "little" effect is that it is new.
    - skydhash 2mo ago
      There's only a few months left for the core technologies of LLM, the transformer, to be a decade old (counting since the "Attention is all you need"). In a decade, we have gone from pure theory of computation (Turing paper in 1936) to the first general purpose computer (ENIAC in 1945). In 1971, the first email was sent over the network (ARPANET), by the early 1980s, we were looking at nationwide deployment of email systems. > We're in very early times, and generative AI is touching every corner of the workpace and education, for better and worse. Forcefully. By a mixture of free offerings and bundling AI in every tools with no disable button. It's still not an essential tech like email or Linux is (not even essential at the level of GitHub).
      - altcognito 2mo ago
        This is an entirely weird and bizarre conversation. The world today has network effects - specifically because of well, networking. It feels almost ridiculous comparing the impact of things like ENIAC to github because they aren't even in the same class. GIT and email (FYI, there is a predecessor to email in 1965 called MAIL) are specific implementations of systems that would have happened no matter what. GIT is awesome, email is kinda ok -- but that's beside the point. > Forcefully. By a mixture of free offerings and bundling AI in every tools with no disable button. It's still not an essential tech like email or Linux is (not even essential at the level of GitHub). We could survive without computers and the internet. We did it. I was there. We could go back. It's not essential. You've lived maybe 3 years with LLMs. No kidding they could disappear. As an old person, I have no idea why you think any other technology is any different. LLMs are new, that's the big difference as I said earlier. > Forcefully. So.... I hate mobile apps. I hate that TVs connect to the internet. I hate that we have cameras on every corner. I hate that we have cameras that watch us while driving. Now, tell me about how this is different than all that.
goalieca 2mo ago
I think microprocessors were the biggest thing, until the internet, then the web, open source, system on a chip, virtualization, cloud, .. When each of those things came in, there was definitely some stumbling but I remember things being less ambiguous about being good than LLMs.
- brazukadev 2mo ago
  > I think microprocessors were the biggest thing, until the internet, then the web, open source, system on a chip, virtualization, cloud, .. and none of them changed society more than the smartphone (starting with the iphone).
- threethirtytwo 2mo ago
  The ambiguity partly comes from denial. LLMs in the end, to be brutally honest, replace us. That is the direction it's headed and some people can't face the cold hard truth.
  - skydhash 2mo ago
    Or are tired of the hyperboles and straight up lies. Will you hand over your bank account to an agent? Can it grow food and sew clothes?
    - cubefox 2mo ago
      If it can't yet, it will very soon. In less than five years probably.
      - skydhash 2mo ago
        And what is justifying such belief?
        threethirtytwo 2mo ago
        reality as we know it
reaperducer 2mo ago
I would say, AI is probably the biggest thing to happen in tech, full stop. I would say, the transistor was probably the biggest thing to happen in tech, full stop.
- cubefox 2mo ago
  I think you will change your mind when AI will become smarter than any human.
  - bigstrat2003 2mo ago
    Even if that happens, it depends on the transistor, and thus is less big of an innovation than the transistor.
    - cubefox 2mo ago
      - A successful surgery may require both a surgeon and a nurse, but that doesn't mean the nurse has nearly as much impact on the successful surgery as the surgeon. - The lighting of the match is mainly caused by the striking of the match, not by the presence of oxygen, even though both are necessary for lighting the match. So a cause being necessary for an effect doesn't imply that its impact on the effect is very large.
dan_ggggg 2mo ago
[dead]
bigstrat2003 2mo ago
It still is a toy.

by cubefox 2mo ago

altcognito 2mo ago

You really have to expand the list to ridiculous levels before you get to something as big. We've already left humans behind in many ways (but in others we've failed to build LLMs that know how to find the gaps in implementation that humans are leaving out) Cynics really say stuff like "but it's been 3 years and all they can claim is that it's changed text to speech, speech to text, photos to text, text to photos, programming, cybersecurity, research, mathematics, war... "They lie about it being dangerous!" and simulataneously "They hacked a system with zero day exploits! Everyone involved should goto jail!" Tech leaders are awful, but it is just that we've built a society that enables the most awful among us to benefit the most. It has never been the case that tech leaders are particularly amazing, they are just amazing at exploitation.

qarl2 2mo ago
> "They lie about it being dangerous!" and simulataneously "They hacked a system with zero day exploits! Everyone involved should goto jail!" FWIW: The simultaneous "it's stupidly weak" and "it's dangerously strong" is a well known propaganda technique.
skydhash 2mo ago
> You really have to expand the list to ridiculous levels before you get to something as big Instead of expanding the list, it would be better to widen your vision. Email was more transformative than AI is right now. Unix, then Linux was more transformative. If you have a magic wand and remove AI, I think barely anyone would be impacted, but removing something like windows would be like erasing computers. And removing Linux would wipe most of the internet services.
- altcognito 2mo ago
  Email in it's first five years barely extended beyond some research universities. And is it novel? Do you see email as somehow a difficult concept to imagine? Unix in it's first five years reworked the way operating systems performed. I'd agree it's pretty important, but I don't see how it fundamentally changed the way we perform work in multiple disciplines (in its first 5 years). Same for Linux, but even less so. We're in very early times, and generative AI is touching every corner of the workpace and education, for better and worse. Powerful technologies can have negative effects. Email has been negatively transformative in ways as well. Part of the reason you can erase AI so effectively with so "little" effect is that it is new.
  - skydhash 2mo ago
    There's only a few months left for the core technologies of LLM, the transformer, to be a decade old (counting since the "Attention is all you need"). In a decade, we have gone from pure theory of computation (Turing paper in 1936) to the first general purpose computer (ENIAC in 1945). In 1971, the first email was sent over the network (ARPANET), by the early 1980s, we were looking at nationwide deployment of email systems. > We're in very early times, and generative AI is touching every corner of the workpace and education, for better and worse. Forcefully. By a mixture of free offerings and bundling AI in every tools with no disable button. It's still not an essential tech like email or Linux is (not even essential at the level of GitHub).
    - altcognito 2mo ago
      This is an entirely weird and bizarre conversation. The world today has network effects - specifically because of well, networking. It feels almost ridiculous comparing the impact of things like ENIAC to github because they aren't even in the same class. GIT and email (FYI, there is a predecessor to email in 1965 called MAIL) are specific implementations of systems that would have happened no matter what. GIT is awesome, email is kinda ok -- but that's beside the point. > Forcefully. By a mixture of free offerings and bundling AI in every tools with no disable button. It's still not an essential tech like email or Linux is (not even essential at the level of GitHub). We could survive without computers and the internet. We did it. I was there. We could go back. It's not essential. You've lived maybe 3 years with LLMs. No kidding they could disappear. As an old person, I have no idea why you think any other technology is any different. LLMs are new, that's the big difference as I said earlier. > Forcefully. So.... I hate mobile apps. I hate that TVs connect to the internet. I hate that we have cameras on every corner. I hate that we have cameras that watch us while driving. Now, tell me about how this is different than all that.

goalieca 2mo ago

I think microprocessors were the biggest thing, until the internet, then the web, open source, system on a chip, virtualization, cloud, .. When each of those things came in, there was definitely some stumbling but I remember things being less ambiguous about being good than LLMs.

brazukadev 2mo ago
> I think microprocessors were the biggest thing, until the internet, then the web, open source, system on a chip, virtualization, cloud, .. and none of them changed society more than the smartphone (starting with the iphone).
threethirtytwo 2mo ago
The ambiguity partly comes from denial. LLMs in the end, to be brutally honest, replace us. That is the direction it's headed and some people can't face the cold hard truth.
- skydhash 2mo ago
  Or are tired of the hyperboles and straight up lies. Will you hand over your bank account to an agent? Can it grow food and sew clothes?
  - cubefox 2mo ago
    If it can't yet, it will very soon. In less than five years probably.
    - skydhash 2mo ago
      And what is justifying such belief?
      - threethirtytwo 2mo ago
        reality as we know it

reaperducer 2mo ago

I would say, AI is probably the biggest thing to happen in tech, full stop. I would say, the transistor was probably the biggest thing to happen in tech, full stop.

cubefox 2mo ago
I think you will change your mind when AI will become smarter than any human.
- bigstrat2003 2mo ago
  Even if that happens, it depends on the transistor, and thus is less big of an innovation than the transistor.
  - cubefox 2mo ago
    - A successful surgery may require both a surgeon and a nurse, but that doesn't mean the nurse has nearly as much impact on the successful surgery as the surgeon. - The lighting of the match is mainly caused by the striking of the match, not by the presence of oxygen, even though both are necessary for lighting the match. So a cause being necessary for an effect doesn't imply that its impact on the effect is very large.

dan_ggggg 2mo ago

[dead]

bigstrat2003 2mo ago

It still is a toy.