Posted by inatreecrown2 1 day ago
If you want to believe the simple idea that AI is mostly hype, then you'll get stuck in a multi-year loop talking about stochastic parrots, ridiculous valuations, and doomer scaredycats.
But the real world isn't so simple. Multiple seemingly contradictory things can be true at the same time.
Some AI is useless. Some is incredibly powerful and useful even though it makes mistakes. Some companies are wildly overvalued. Some extremely large and expensive companies will quadruple from here. Some frightening scenarios will look silly in hindsight. Other frightening things will happen that none of the doomers foresee.
It would be great to explore those new ideas and possibilities.
It's so boring rehashing the same old tired and worn out ideas like "they're just hyping the danger to pump their shares up."
The question is not whether AI is useful. It is useful, full stop.
The question is whether AI is useful enough to justify valuations that dwarf the GDP of all but the top 20 countries in the world. As it stands right now, it's not even close! The leaked OpenAI financials put these AI companies in the same profitability territory as utilities, with zero justification for these crazy valuations.
And nukes are useful by some metric too.
AI (llms) is not useful in any way that we as humanity should be pushing for. It’s more harmful than good in every way possible. It’s honestly astounding to me that everyone’s ethics are so weak as to believe that somehow these incredible destructive companies are somehow good for humanity.
Close, it's the time-discounted expectation of future returns. This seems related to future profits but it need not be. Historically, stocks tend to perform poorly after IPOs. There's no guarantee that (say) Anthropic's stock price would ever recover after a post-IPO drop.
The recent attempts by Anthropic et al. to circumvent the usual rules for inclusion in indices have raised red flags all over the place, with many calling it a naked attempt to raid everyone's pension funds for hundreds of billions in ill-gotten capital.
I agree, but it's not so mysterious what will win out. Even if the criticism is repeated so often, that's because much of it is still valid.
LLMs are not AGI. A statistical model of language helps fill in gaps. This is super useful for new and much improved UI/UX ideas that converge with better accessibility. Similar is true for generating images, video, audio, etc. There are situations where it's the right tool for expressing an idea.
What we need is a sense of maturity. The limitations are very clear to everyone now, and we're already past the disillusionment. If we can rein in the abuse, there should be a good path forward. The technology is already boring and that's a very good sign.
However, on a site like HN or Reddit, you're far more likely to hear squawking about "stochastic parrots" or a rant about AI water usage than the mirror on the pro-AI side, making them harder to ignore.
You could post “fortune tellers used to be considered fraudsters and charlatans” and reasonably expect a “Get a load of the Luddite over here. Go raise a barn, Josiah!” response on the internet these days despite not mentioning AI or technology at all
“Maybe he can” - Complex. Divine, possibly? A breathtaking filigree of nuance, like an Alex Grey painting of conceptual allemande.
Yeah poor you this must be much more tiring than being told constantly that the apocalypse is coming and your jobs are gone and everything is going to be shitty because a bunch of ultra rich midwits want even more money and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Sorry dude, hearing that people don't like that messaging and are replying with copypasta talking points must really be rough for you. Praying for you in these trying times.
Personally, I do think some of the people in this field have really drunk the Kool-Aid and still believe in the paperclip monster. But for many others, I do not think the past couple of years of plateauing progress has escaped their notice. ESPECIALLY at the leadership level. I think they're larping and they know it. I just think they want the money and the power.
"They are not in a thought bubble YOU are in the thought bubble"
I am absolutely BTFO'd, you got me.
Oh nevermind I get it. They're only intentionally working on building something that they believe will end humanity. Well as long as it's not intentional crypto-tier scamming, it's all good then.
I'm convinced. Consider my model of reality corrected. Thanks homie.
This would be a great point if I had introduced either the NFT/crypto comparison OR the "existential threat" parameters, but if you read through the thread, you introduced both.
Introducing parameters for the other person, then use those to call them crazy when they operate inside them. Actual DA-tier tactic, my guy. Yikes.
My initial reply was "being told constantly that the apocalypse is coming and your jobs are gone and everything is going to be shitty because a bunch of ultra rich midwits want even more money and there's nothing you can do to stop it."
As in, we are constantly told that everything is going to be shit and there's nothing we can do, because there is a ton of moneyed interest in it.
You're the one that made the leap to "crypto" scamming in the reply and introduced the existential threat aspect. Both in the same comment, actually.
Then apparently tried to crazy-make me for (admittedly dickishly) pointing out that trying to build something that is an existential threat to humanity (your words, their belief, none of my words or belief) is actually worse than crypto scamming (again, both things which you introduced to the thread, btw).
But yeah shame on me for not taking you seriously and providing evidence I guess.
Odd how the bar for me is "providing evidence" but you're happy to outright lie that I was going from crypto scamming and existential threats in order to score a rhetorical point by claiming "AI psychosis" in a useless internet thread. Yeah I must be the unhinged one here, surely.
To quote you, ten minutes before:
> that the apocalypse is coming and your jobs are gone and everything is going to be shitty because a bunch of ultra rich midwits want even more money and there's nothing you can do to stop it.
It's a fair description of your stance. And, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
* fails to identify where "crypto scams" or "existential threat" was introduced, which was the entire point
* tells the other person what their own stance actually is
* fedora tipping edgelord sign-off line
Holy fuck I have just been absolutely obliterated in the marketplace of ideas. I concede. Please no more.
The same could have been said (and has been said) about other tech company employees for all sorts of other reasons in alignment with those companies' goals. Don't you remember how much people used to laugh at Tesla employees for worshipping Elon Musk as some kind of god of engineering and entrepreneurial genius? Or Apple employees in the Steve Jobs reality distortion field?
I would have thought at this point that it'd be well known that the employees of all cult-like tech companies can't be trusted to make a sober evaluation of their companies' justified valuation. We can talk about conflicts of interest and we'd barely be getting started! How about biased selection by hiring managers for the most fervent believers in the company's mission from the get-go?
Calling them scammers is literally giving them benefit of the doubt and trying to avoid conspiratorial thinking. You frame the belief that "these are normal people with normal motivation" to be paranoid conspiratorial thinking. Meanwhile, you claim they are literal conspiracy and cult and that is somehow less paranoid.
Now, dangerous cults and scammers are severely overlapping categories. Most if not all cults scam people. They lie to get more powerful whenever it suits them. They have true believers (like your friends) fully willing to cause any amount of harm for the visionary in the center. These people may have started as a well meaning do-gooders, but they usually just end up being co-conspirators in crimes.
yes
> And when we finally ended racism during DEI?
I fucking hate geohot, I can't believe you monsters are into this shit
Like - right up his own asshole.
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I understand this comment is inappropriate. I think the comment in the article is WAY more fucking out of line than this.
I do believe it is possible Anthropic are legitimately trying to start political discourse, but if they are they are either sacrificing themselves on purpose or shooting themselves in the foot. Others in the comments here are pointing out that there are many incentives for them to get into politics. Maybe they see possible outcomes worth the short term problems.
If it is just marketing and FUD, it's worth considering that a good lie is usually based in truth.
Let's say Anthropic were a "hippie organisation willing to sacrifice revenue for morals" (or pick your own, I'm just giving an example). Could they play the politics game better?
Would solve a lot of problems in the US, actually. Being financially incentivized to gleefully lie and spread misinformation at the expense of others should not be protected speech.
Really? That's the only possible conclusion?
Anthropic has _always_ positioned itself as a company that cares about AI safety.
I imagine tons of people have written that article. But no one reads it. They're all busy with the doomiest bullshit Facebook or Tiktok will serve them. It's what gets engagement.
No one is clicking on the "None of the things your scared of are scary and here's why" video when it's up against the "$x is the end of the world and will eat your children" agitprop.
- Anthropic has a cult-like culture. AI Safety is their religion. The AI Constitution is their bible. Dario is their cult leader. Employees are the apostles. They just really really believe their church, and only Dario is qualified to manage the AI safety.
- Asymmetrical risk. If Dario speaks optimistically about AI and he turns out to be wrong, he'd face the rage of many people. If he fans the doomerism of AI and he turns out to be wrong, at most he will be mocked.
- Regulatory capture. After all, pretty much all the AI big shots in Biden government went to Anthropic. They produced the Biden's regulation, and they made it clear that they wanted to pick a few winners to back.
Oh no, the obvious strawmans that - despite the author's assertions - people did not actually widely believe in, were strawmans? Crazy, I tell you. It'd seem that people aren't actually as dumb as the author likes to characterize them being.
Sure love this genre of writing. It's a beautifully revealing tour de force in projection and narcissism. "Will somebody please think for all the fools who believe in the obvious nonsense I secretly fear?"
I have been saying this for a while. I visited SF a couple months ago and god do people feel empty from the inside. Everything is revolving around AI this and AI that. Half of these people were not paying attention when we were training gradient boost models and now all of these people are 'AI Agents experts'.
you mean loop engineers?