I work in Customer Success so I have to screenshare with a decent number of engineers working for customers - startups and BigCos.

The number of them who just blindly put shit into an AI prompt is incredible. I don't know if they were better engineers before LLMs? But I just watch them blindly pass flags that don't exist to CLIs and then throw their hands up. I can't imagine it's faster than a (non-LLM) Google search or using the -h flag, but they just turn their brains off.

An underrated concern (IMO) is the impact of COVID on cognition. I think a lot of people who got sick have gotten more tired and find this kind of work more challenging than they used to. Maybe they have a harder time "getting in the zone".

Personally, I still struggle with Long COVID symptoms. This includes brain fog and difficulty focusing. Before the pandemic I would say I was in the top 10% of engineers for my narrow slice of expertise - always getting exceptional perf reviews, never had trouble moving roles and picking up new technologies. Nowadays I find it much harder to get started in the morning, and I have to take more breaks during the day to reset my focus. At 5PM I'm exhausted and I can't keep pushing solving a problem into the evening.

I can see how the same kind of cognitive fatigue would make LLM "assistance" appealing, even if it's wrong, because it's so much less work.

Counter data point — my surroundings use ChatGPT basically for anything and say it’s good enough.

The things I have noted offline included a HK case where someone got a link to a zoom call with what seemed to be his team mates and CFO, and then transferring money as per the CFOs instructions.

The error here was to click on a phishing email.

But something I have seen myself is Tim Cook talking about a crypto coin right after the 2024 Apple keynote, on a YT channel that showed the Apple logo. It took me a bit to realize and reassure myself that it was a scam. Even though it was a video of the shoulders up.

The bigger issue we face isn’t the outright fraud and scamming, it’s that our ability to make out fakes easily is weakened - the Liar’s dividend.

It’s by default a shot in the arm for bullshit and lies.

On some days I wonder if the inability to sort between lies, misinformation, initial ideas, fair debate, argument, theory and fact at scale - is the great filter.

The cool body mods are coming!

The work at the Levin Lab ( https://drmichaellevin.org/ ) is making great progress in the basic science that supports this. They can make two-headed planaria, regenerate frog limbs, cure cancer in tadpoles; all via bioelectric communication with cellular networks. No gene editing.

Levin believes this stuff will be very available to humans within the next 10 years, and has talked about how widespread body-modding is something we're going to have to wrestle with societally. He is of course very close to the work, but his cautious nature and the lab's astounding results give that 10-year prediction some weight. From his blog:

> We were all born into physical and mental limitations that were set at arbitrary levels by chance and genetics. Even those who have “perfect” standard human health and capabilities are limited by anatomical decisions that were not made with anyone’s well-being or fulfillment in mind. I consider it to be a core right of sentient beings to (if they wish) move beyond the involuntary vagaries of their birth and alter their form and function in whatever way suits their personal goals and potential.- Copied from https://thoughtforms.life/faqs-from-my-academic-work/

In retrospect, it should have been obvious. I guess I should have known it would all be more Repo Man than Blade Runner. I just didn’t imagine so many people cheering for the non-Wolverines side in Red Dawn.

(Now I want to change the Blade Runner reference to something with Harry Dean Stanton in it just for consistency)

Oh well, at least the futuristic sunglasses are back in fashion.

How do you know this is fraud and not the actions of former employees in Kenya [1] who were exploited [2] to train the models?

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/ai-work-kenya-exploitation-...

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/aug/02/ai-chatbo...

We've seen this before in 1983 and 2000. Many companies will fold, and those that don't will take a substantial hit. The public sentiment about "AI" will sour, but after that a new breed of more practical tools will emerge under different and more fairly marketed branding.

I do think that the industry and this technology will survive, and we'll enjoy many good applications of it, but it will take a few more years of hype and grifting to get there.

Unless, of course, I'm entirely wrong and their predicted AI 2027 timeline[1] comes to pass, and we have ASI by the end of the decade, in which case the world will be much different. But I'm firmly in the skeptical camp about this, as it seems like another product of the hype machine.

[1]: I just took a closer look at ai-2027.com and here's their prediction for 2029 in the conservative scenario:

> Robots become commonplace. But also fusion power, quantum computers, and cures for many diseases. Peter Thiel finally gets his flying car. Cities become clean and safe. Even in developing countries, poverty becomes a thing of the past, thanks to UBI and foreign aid.

Yeah, these people are full of shit.

Sure. I was referring more to the general consensus about products from companies that are currently riding the AI hype train, not about machine learning in general.

When the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, and after the video game crash in 1983, most of the companies within the bubble folded, and those that didn't took a large hit and barely managed to survive. If the technology has genuine use cases then the market can recover, but it takes a while to earn back the trust from consumers, and the products after the crash are much more practical and are marketed more fairly.

So I do think that machine learning has many potentially revolutionary applications, but we're currently still high around the Peak of Inflated Expectations. After the bubble pops, the Plateau of Productivity will showcase the applications with actual value and benefit to humanity. I just hope we get there sooner rather than later.

Good point. I suppose that if grifters can get in positions of power, then the bubble can just keep growing.

Though cryptocurrencies are slightly different because of how they work. They're inherently decentralized, so even though there have been many smaller bubble pops along the way (Mt. Gox, FTX, NFTs, every shitcoin rug pull, etc.), inevitably more will appear with different promises, attracting others interested in potential riches.

I don't think the technology as a whole will ever burst, particularly because I do think there are valid and useful applications of it. Bitcoin in particular is here to stay. It will just keep attracting grifters and victims, just like any other mainstream technology.

In what parallel universe do you live where LLMs are snake oil?

Yes, but the regurgitation can be thought of as memory.

Let it have more source information. Let it know who said the things it reads, let it know on what website it was published.

Then you can say 'Hallucinate comments like those by impossibleFork on news.ycombinator.com', and when the model knows what comes from where, maybe it can learn what users are reliable by which they should imitate to answer questions well. Strengthen the role of metadata during pretraining.

I have no reason to belive it'll work, I haven't tried it and usually details are incredibly important when do things with machine learning, but maybe you could even have critical phases during pretraining where you try to prune away behaviours that aren't useful for figuring out the answers to the questions you have in your high curated golden datasets. Then models could throw away a lot of lies and bullshit, except that which happens to be on particularly LLM-pedagogical maths websites.

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> I’m still stunned to wander into threads like this where all the same talking points of AI being “pushed” on people are parroted.

Where else would AI haters find an echo chamber that proves their point?

In the early days of the web, there wasn't much we could do with it other than making silly pages with blinking texts or under construction animated GIFs. You need to give it some time before judging a new technology.

Delusional take.

I’m not even heavily invested into AI, just a casual user, and it drastically cut amount of bullshit that I have to deal with in modern computing landscape.

Search, summarization, automation. All of this drastically improved with the most superior interface of them all - natural text.

Personally, I have three use cases for AI:

1. Image upscaling. I am decorating my house and AI allowed me to get huge prints from tiny shitty pictures. It's not perfect, but it works.

2. Conversational partner. It's a different question whether it's a good or a bad thing, but I can spend hours talking to Claude about things in general. He's expensive though.

3. Learning basics of something. I'm trying to install LED strips and ChatGPT taught me basics of how that's supposed to work. Also, ChatGPT suggested me what plants might survive in my living room and how to take care of them (we'll see if that works though).

And this is just my personal use case, I'm sure there are more. My point is, you're wrong.

> All the while less perceptive people like yourself apparently don't even seem to realize just how bad the quality of information you're consuming has become, so you cheer it on while labeling us stubborn, resistant to change, or even luddites.

Literally same shit my parents would say while I was cross-checking multiple websites for information and they were watching the only TV channel that our antenna would pick up.

Right, the same “responsible parents” who don’t know what to press so their phone plays YouTube video or don’t know how that “juicy milfs in your area” banner got in their internet explorer.

Please elaborate. Authoritarians seek to consolidate power, which AI enables. Individuals must build immunity to reality distortion fields. This comes from within, not from some centralized authority.

>1) we will live with the reduced usefulness of models trained on data that has been poisoned

This is the entirety of human history, humans create this data, we sink ourselves into it. It's wishful thinking that it would change.

> 2) the best model developers will continue to work hard to curate good data.

Im not sure that this matters much.

Leave these problems in place and you end up with an untrustworthy system, one where skill and diligence become differentiators... Step back from the hope of AI and you get amazing ML tooling that can 10x the most proficient operators.

> supervised tweaks (fine tuning, etc) are now major expenses for the best models. His prediction was that this expense will drive out the smaller players in the next few years.

This kills more refined AI. It is the same problem that killed "expert systems" where the cost of maintaining them and keeping them current was higher than the value they created.

Thank you for proving my point.

On one hand, we have the unquestionable and undeniable facts that Russia invaded Ukraine and is committing atrocities against its civilian population, up to and including literal genocide (kidnapping children).

On the other, we have:

> Scientists who are aware of the full history of ukraine, western interventionism, russian geostrategic concerns, the full details of the 2013 collapse of the ukrainian govenrment, the terms underwhich russian naval bases in crimea had been leased, the original colour revolution, the role of US diplomats in the overthrow of democratically elected Ukrainian leadership -- etc.

Trying to muddy the waters with at best exaggerations, at worst flat out lies, trying to sow doubt with things which, if true (and usually they aren't) are relevant only to help contextualise the events. But don't in any way change the core facts of the Russian invasion and subsequent war crimes. How does American diplomats supporting a popular protest against the current government which led to that government fleeing (and three elections have happened since, btw), in any way change or minimise the war crimes? It doesn't, you're just muddying the waters. "Oh Russia is justified in kidnapping children and bombing civilians because diplomats did support a popular protest that led to the Russian puppet running away to Russia, 10 years ago, even though multiple elections since have confirmed the people of Ukraine are not for Russian puppets anymore".

You're just repeating Russian propaganda talking points. And we've known since the 80s that they operate in a "firehose" manner, drowning everyone in nonsense to sow doubt. How many different excuses have they provided for their "special military operation" now? Which one is it, is Ukraine ruled by Nazis or are Ukrainians just confused Russians or did America coup Ukraine to install a guy who was elected on a platform of peace with Russia? And how does it in any way explain the war crimes? It's like the downing of MH17, they drowned everyone in multiple conspiracy theories to make it seem there is some doubt in the official, proven, story.

Yeah, just check how many alternative versions they provided for MH17 downing.

If there's one underlying axiom of western thought it is "question everything." So no, not really.

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Now, why are you spending misinformation?

The russian military doctrine of spreading a "firehouse of falsehood" is well documented.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_disinformation

And yet, you switch it around and blame the west - exactly as per russian misinformation doctrine.

Odd, eh?

> For example, it is the truth that the Golf of Mexico is called the Gulf of America in the US

We're pretty much okay with different countries and languages having different names for the same thing. None of that really reflects "truth" though. For what it's worth, I'd guess that "the Gulf of America" is and will be about as successful as "Freedom fries" was.

No, it's called the Gulf of Mexico everywhere else, not the Golf of Mexico. I'm not falling for your propaganda ;-)

The correct truth is to go to a higher level of abstraction and explain that there's a naming controversy.

I get the general point, but I disagree that you have to choose between one of the possibilities instead of explaining what the current state of belief is. This won't eliminate grey areas but it'll sure get us closer than picking a side at random.

Brandolini’s law in action.

Parent is arguing one thing, show up with some bullshit argument and watch dozen comments arguing about Gulf of Mexico instead of discussing original point.

I'm not calling it, that, because it's ridiculous.

The US hasn't switched to calling the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Partisans on the right do this to show their allegiance to Trump. Partisans on the left still call it the Gulf of Mexico to show their opposition to Trump. Big companies that can be targeted by Trump call it the Gulf of America to protect themselves. And most non-partisans still call it the Gulf of Mexico because they're not paying attention and have always called it that (if they have ever spoken of it or know that it exists). I suspect a lot of people call it the Gulf, already an established custom before this idiocy about renaming it, precisely to avoid entangling themselves in the partisan fight.

The US, like other countries, doesn't get redefined with every change of government, and Trump has not yet cowed the public into knuckling under to his every dictat.

It's been called the Gulf of Mexico everywhere for centuries. The president is free to attempt to rename it but that will only be successful if usage follows. Which it does not, as of today. This is a terrible example of subjectivity.

Russia doesn't care what you call that sea, they're interested in actual falsehoods. Like redefining who started the Ukraine war, making the US president antagonize Europe to weaken the West, helping far right parties accross the West since they are all subordinated to Russia...

> the point seems to be that the commonly accepted truth does indeed change.

As it should when new evidence comes to light to justify it. Ideally, the tools we use would keep up along with those changes while transparently preserving the history and causes of them.

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It’s very US-centric for a start.

In other countries we went from “that looks bad in China” to “shit, it spread to Italy now, we really need to worry”

And with masks we went from “we don’t think they’re necessary, handwashing seems more important” to “Ok shit it is airborne, mask up”. Public messaging adapted as more was known.

But the US seems to have to turn everything into a partisan fight, and we could watch, sadly, in real time as people picked matters of public health and scientific knowledge to get behind or to hate. God forbid anyone change their advice as they become better informed over time.

Seeing everything through this partisan, pugnacious prism seems to be a sickness US society is suffering from, and one it is trying (with some success) to spread.

You would still have a single model, but like internet search, it would take in both a user vector and a query (prompt).

People have done this on their own behalf since the dawn of time, so it's not really clear to me why it's so often framed as an AI issue.

I stand corrected. My comment above was dumb.