> What this video is really doing is normalising the fact that "even if it is completely stupid, AI will be everywhere, get used to it!"
Techies are finally starting to recognize how framing something as "it's inevitable, get used to it" is a rhetorical device used in mass communications to manufacture consent.
See:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44567857 'LLM Inevitabalism' 5 months ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46288371 'This is not the future' 3 days ago
What happens in 4-5 years when we suddenly have no new engineers, scientists, or doctors?
Young people don't have the life experience to know how unrealistic these claims are, all they can do is act on the information as it's presented. It's irresponsible at best, and evil at worst.
1) because dude, it’s the Wall Street Journal; the entire episode should be viewed as Anthropic preparing to Ollie into an IPO next year.
2) I’m starting to interpret a lot of blog posts like these as rage bait
But I do get the point that the author is trying to make.
I just wish that there were some perspectives on the subject as a whole (AI’s sloptrod into every crevice of human life; modern technology and society and general) that don’t terminate on ironic despair.
This feels forced, there are obvious and good reasons for running that experiment. Namely, learning how it fails and to generate some potentially viral content for investor relationship. The second one seems like an extremely good business move. It is also a great business move from WSJ, get access to some of that investor money in an obviously sponsored content bit that could go viral.
Having said that, I do feels the overall premise of the blog - the world dynamics seems exceedingly irrational in recent times. The concerning fact is that irattionality seems to be accelerating, or perhaps it is keeping pace with the scale of civilization... hard to tell.
That's... exactly what the author said in the post. But with the argument that those are cynical and terrible reasons. I think it's pretty clear the "you" in "why would you want an AI" vending machine is supposed to be "an actual user of a vending machine."
The closest that I think he even gets to one is:
> At first glance, it is funny and it looks like journalists doing their job criticising the AI industry.
Which arguably assumes that journalists ought to be critical of AI in the same way as him...
Right, and neither did the GP. They both offered the exact same two reasons, the GP just apparently doesn't find them as repugnant as the author
The two reasons I believe you may be referring to from above are:
1) "learning how it fails" 2) "to generate some potentially viral content for investor relationship."
The whole of Ploum’s argument may be summarized in his own words as:
> But what appears to be journalism is, in fact, pure advertising. [...] What this video is really doing is normalising the fact that “even if it is completely stupid, AI will be everywhere, get used to it!” [...] So the whole thing is advertising a world where chatbots will be everywhere and where world-class workers will do long queue just to get a free soda. And the best advice about it is that you should probably prepare for that world.
I hate to be pedantic...but my growing disdain for modern blog posts compels me to do so in defense of literacy and clear arguments.
Whether the GP and the author offer the “exact same two reasons” is a matter of interpretation that becomes the duty of readers like us to figure out.
If we take Ploum’s words at their face...the most he does is presuppose (and I hope I’m using that word correctly) that the reader is already keen on the two reasons that `TrainedMonkey makes explicit and like the author, finds them to be stupid. While he does say that the video is not journalism and that it is advertising and that the video does show how the AI failed at the task it was assigned he does not give any credence as to why this is the case from a position other than his own.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding the concept of a “charitable interpretation” too. But I don’t think that there is one present in this post that we’re responding to. `TrainedMonkey’s comment leads off by telling us that this is what (I think) he’s about to offer in the remarks that follow when he says “there are obvious and good reasons for running that experiment”.
So my gripe is that you’re making it sound like there’s a clear counterargument entertained in this post when there isn’t. Because you overstated your interpretation of the GP comment in what looks like an attempt to make Ploum’s argument appear more appealing than it ought to be. Even though both `TrainedMonkey and myself have expressed agreement with the point he’s trying to make in general, perhaps we’re less inclined toward pugnaciousness without a well thought out warrant.
Good business moves can often be bad for humanity.
There will be no more vending machine manufacturers/operators once Anthropic masters the vending machine manufacturing and operating AI.
Running low on CandyBars is a variation on running low on WorkingVendingMachine.
Does this need an /s tag? I'm increasingly unsure.
I got an S25 recently and when I search for "wife" it tries to find pictures with my wife in them. But before it does that it has to ask me who my wife is. There's no way to get it to search for the word "wife." (If I'm wrong, please tell me how.) Other text searches simply don't work either.
Sometimes it's the small ways in which the world is getting dumber.
Ironically, the S20 had a decent hybrid behavior of searching by either text or object that the text represents. Whatever smarter AI they replaced it with is useless.
insert obligatory throwback quote from some antique dude complaining about the youth
This has been a trope since literally the beginning of civilisation. I don’t think it’s any more true or insightful in the modern era
In any case I was looking at a longer view - maybe we have been getting more stupid in the last decade or so but who can say for sure?
hmm, based on what evidence?
Or, if you prefer, based on what appeal to authority? Did you actually quote that authority properly or did you just wing it? Can you properly quote many authorities?
If you don't have good answers to those, then perhaps you have just proved the your opponents point?
Maybe there is a reason people need more compute in their key fob than what our parents/grandparents needed to pilot their ship to the moon?
Horace, Book III of Odes, circa 20 BCE
“Youth were never more sawcie, yea never more savagely saucie . . . the ancient are scorned, the honourable are contemned, the magistrate is not dreaded.”
The Wise-Man’s Forecast against the Evill Time, Thomas Barnes 1624
Some more here https://historyhustle.com/2500-years-of-people-complaining-a...
Either things have gotten continually worse for the last 3000 years or it’s just a tired trope from old men.
But if you want evidence that we're improving, I'd point out that 20 years ago, the mainstream US position was that gay people were evil, 60 years ago they thought black people shouldn't be allowed to vote, and 100 years ago they thought women were also inferior and shouldn't be allowed to vote.
We can keep going back to when people thought "slavery" and "the divine right of kings" were solid ideas.
So... if people were so much smarter in the past, why did they believe all these obviously-dumb ideas?
Humans do trend toward their natural state, and technology accelerates the trend.
It's a bit sparse on details, but it did have what in a human we would call a psychotic break.
I find this very amusing in light of OpenAI's announcement that GPT now solves >70% of their knowledge work benchmark (GDPVal). (Per ArtificialAnalysis, Opus is roughly on par.)
The economy is about to get... Interesting ;)
Had a great business idea just now: A tool for staged interviews! The subject and the journalist submit an equal length list of questions. Each round of the auction they bid on questions they want to include or exclude. The loser gets 50% of the points spend by the winner to be used in the next round. Both the subject and the journalists can buy additional points at any time. I keep all the money.
>The first thing that blew my mind was how stupid the whole idea is
Billions are being poured into LLMs. How is it stupid to experiment with them and see how they fail as opposed to ignoring that?
They weren't caught out by it, they didn't present a working solution, it was just a fun bit of research.
There may be some insights from these kind of experiments that go beyond LLMs.
I read a random comment a few days ago from someone who was saying it'll become possible for people, politicians, companies, etc to run speeches, policies, ideas, etc across thousands of LLM "personalities" to fine tune messaging and it sure seems prescient.
99.9% of social media comments fail to do this.