- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- news@lemmy.world
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The scenario begins with AI agents undergoing a “jump in capability”.
Might as well stop reading there. Another fluff piece about how useful and capable AI supposedly is, disguised as a doomsday scenario. I’m so sick of reading this bullshit. “Agentic AI” based on LLMs does not work reliably yet and very likely never will.
If you complain about bugs in traditional (deterministic) software, you ain’t seen nothing yet. A probabilistic system such as an LLM might or might not book the correct flight for you. It might give you the information you have asked for or it might delete your inbox instead.
As a consequence of a system being probabilistic, anything you do with it works or fails based on probabilities. This really is the dumbest timeline.
Not to mention agents not being immune to confabulation, what we’d call if human did it: “making shit up”.
My favourite take so far is the comparison to the introduction of the microwave. Some people really believed that they’d never have to cook again. So what we got was actually a way to make crap quality meals or reheat things when we don’t have time. This is roughly analogous to the output I get from the LLM.
You need to learn how to use a microwave. It’s way more versatile than people think. And more of a steamer than an oven. https://cookanyday.com/collections/recipes
(This is not an analogy about LLMs anymore.)
Yeah but let me present my counterpoint, the air-fryer.
Until I actually got to the link, I thought it was going to be Technology Connections.
I just wanted to have a gander at some microwave recipes, but that site bombarded me with 3 full screen promotional pop up and still didn’t give me any recipes because I have to tap show more results because the first few is products they’re selling. At least that’s my experience on mobile, using waterfox with adblock and even a DNS filter.
You can make a lot of things with a good microwave, but just putting something in doesn’t work for that purpose, yes.
It’s almost funny how all those AI doomsday scenarios are actually meant to prop up investment in AI.
See how Amodei and Altman are usually the ones pushing these narratives on how worried they are by the incredible advancements of their respective companies’ creatures. They are so, so worried about the demise of the human race and how fast it’s coming.
And I sort of understand them because whatever disruption they are peddling needs to happen very fast or they will all run out of money. But what does it tell about the rest of the human race that we are actually buying into it and pouring money into creating a dystopian future?
Just re-watched Tron last night and a scene really struck me. Dumont was talking to Lora about how since the computers are able to think the humans will stop. That scene had more impact this time through
Anything for a dollar
It’s “Iraq is using PS2s to build ICBMs” all over again…
It’s like watching a real-life version of Avengers, but one where Tony Stark says “hey, this Thanos guy is diarupting industries here!” and teams up with… Thiel and Musk to fund his quest for the Infinity Stones. You know, we can’t let China get them first!
Ads back then were so cool, it felt like real magic and it was not hard to believe PS2 is that good.
I just…
Am I wrong here? Like, look, shame me. I work in machine learning and have since 2012. I don’t do any of the llm shit. I do things like predicting wildfire risk from satellite imagery or biomass in the amazon, soil carbon, shit like that.
I’ve tried all the code assistants. They’re fucking crap. There’s no building an economy around these things. You’ll just get dogshit. There’s no building institutions around these things.
Heh, that’s the joke going around now.
AI works, it replaces workers, we lose our jobs.
AI doesn’t work, bubble pops, we lose our jobs.
You’ve worked in ML since 2012 but dont think transformers have had an absolutely insane impact, for example in NLP and machine translation? (I have worked in those fields longer than that and while I dont think AGI or anything like that is coming from transformers and deep neural nets I think you are full of it if you dont admit they have revolutionized a large number of [highly technical] fields).
I think you read way more into their comment than was written. They said nothing about transformers, only that these assistants are shit. Which, let’s admit, they are.
The underlying technology is cool, current implementations are trash and have no long term economical path to viability unless things radically change quickly.
They’re fucking crap. There’s no building an economy around these things.
You are right in every serious part of the world.
But add “venture capital” to the equation and it works out stronger than anything else so far.
I think it’s supposed to work like, “well, even if you are right about the massive utility of AI, is that still what we should be aiming for?”
It gets around the combative “you’re wrong, AI is garbage” argument. The people hoisting AI because they believe, even if it does suck, it’ll get better… those people can probably understand this argument much more easily.
It sucks and its at the point now where were hitting diminishing returns so I’m not sire if it sill get better
Really reinforces my belief that the stockmarket is driven by idiots.
Reminds me of this old Kal cartoon:
Granted AI will probably doom us all but not how the substance post says it will.
Lol, they know it’s all castles on clouds and any spark e.g. a substack post could trigger the loaded spring.
They kind of know. The dot com crashed many companies, and also gave rise to Amazon. They’re all just hoping they’ll be the one that invested in the next Amazon.
Have they made a profit yet?
Amazon didn’t make any profit for a decade and made 360 billion least year. They tell investors that AI will be the same.
How much of that profit less decade was just them reinvesting in their company as opposed to burning money like you’re trapped on Everest and need every bit of heat you can get?
That’s the part they didn’t tell investors. Some call that the enshittification of the investment market. Lies everywhere.
The difference was that Amazon knew how to make a profit, but was reinvesting into infrastructure plays and bigger fish.
If they had to, they could have been a modestly profitable bookshop in 2002. AWS and monster logistics might not have developed to put them in the 13-digit club though.
Does any AI-centric play have that fundamental fallback? The services that seem to be most effective at direct monetization, the coding tools, are typically running at huge losses. If they raised costs to cover, precious few firms will pay basically the salary of a senior dev for an emulation of an enthusiastic junior dev with an affinity for footguns.
The less enterprise-focused products-- parasocial toys, image and video gen, will likely try to dip into consumer subs and advertising, but can that generate the cash volumes these platforms demand?
If people would always demand answers for those questions, we wouldn’t have speculative bubbles. For now, everybody seems to still believe the “it’s the worst it’ll ever be right now” and the “just more scaling bro” answers.
