There seems to be a similar narrative around AI, that the sheep will look around and realize how much it is lying to them, and combine to throw off the oppressor. I kind of wish I could recapture that kind of optimism.
The hype and over promotion of AI, as well as polluting the commons with slop are "unfortunate"; but the power of what it can do and how it can transform how we live and work is also undeniable.
I’m still not so sure on that part. Maybe, eventually? But it feels like we are still trying to find a problem for it to solve.
Has there been any actual, life transformative use cases from an LLM outside of code generation? I can certainly sit here and say how impactful Claude code has been for me, but I honestly can’t say the same thing for the other users where I work. In fact, the quality of emails has went down since we unleashed Copilot to the world, and so far no one has reported any real productivity gains.
Content analysis and summarization is a big win in my view.
Having also been around during the emergence of the personal computer revolution I'm reminded of how having a home computer could be helpful for keeping recipes and balancing checkbooks -- it was the promise of "someday" that fueled optimism. Then the killer apps of spreadsheets, word processing, and desktop publishing sealed the deal.
Following that analogy we're at the Apple ][ stage -- it works and shows capabilities but there's likely so much more ahead.
they have conveniently omitted he's also CEO of "UNANIMOUS AI"
Social media nonsense is one thing, but I feel we're going to increasingly see people's frustrations redirected and weaponized in more harmful ways. Its an easy hairpin trigger towards brigading.
But if every time AI meets the challenge, we redefine the challenge, are we really measuring intelligence - or just defending human exceptionalism? At what point do we admit that creativity isn’t a mystical trait, but a process that can emerge from algorithms as well as neurons?
Here’s the real question: should we measure AI against the best humans can do - Einstein, Picasso, and Coltrane - standards most humans themselves can’t reach? Or should we measure success by how well AI enables the next Einstein, Picasso, and Coltrane?
I think we need to move to the era of Assisted Intelligence, a symbiotic relationship between AI and human intelligence.
I think anyone who already works in a creative field does acknowledge this. Creativity is, in fact, a process, and a skill that can be broken down into steps, taught to others, and practiced. Graham Wallas broke down the creative process all the way back in the 1920s and it boils down to making novel and valuable connections between existing ideas. What does an LLM do other than that exact process?
I'm an optimist. I think what AI is going to do is show us what it truly means to be human.
Man, in fact, cannot survive without society. You don't have to be a communist to realise this. Until now the stratification of society has had certain unavoidable limits - everyone has a finite lifespan, everyone has an upper bound of intelligence and physical ability - as well as self imposed limits of regulation through states or unions. When kings and empires have come to dominate, revolutions have at least attempted to reform the social order, if not reset it. I fear that with AGI in the hands of the likes of Musk and Thiel we may soon be entering an age when men with Rand's worldview have the kind of power that makes them utterly untouchable and any chance of building a just and democratic future becomes impossible.
You can't ignore the problems of current AI agents by "rising above them". The people who question it aren't in denial, you guys are.
(They have since, amazingly, been caught doing this _again_, in Canada)
This exact scenario happened with the dotcom bubble. Inarguably Internet services drastically changed everyone's daily lives, yet the buildup of Internet infrastructure was based on excessively optimistic predictions, leading to a bubble.
Why wouldnt the tech CEO take the billions of dollars thrown at them if they had the chance?
oh i find them remarkable alright. how is it possible to be this out-of-touch?
And also the 'matter of fact'-ism of large statements like "it will still take away jobs and opportunities on a large scale" and then just carrying on as if there isn't any gravity to those points.
It isn't about the tools or using them, it's about the scale. The scale of impact is immense and we're not ready to handle it in a mutitude of areas because of all the areas technology touches. Millions of jobs erased with no clear replacement? Value of creative work diminshed leading to more opportunities erased? Scale of 'bad' actors abusing the tools and impacting a whole bunch of spheres from information dispersal to creative industries etc. Not even getting into environmental and land-use impacts to spaces with data centers and towns etc (again, it's the scale that gets ya). And for what? Removing a huge chunk of human activity & expression, for what?
andsoitis•2mo ago