"AI" is a failed technology, in the sense that it's neither fit for purpose, nor a likely path to its stated end goal of "AGI", but a lot of people's profits currently depend on pretending it's not.
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@Noisecolor Same as blockchain and NFTs have changed the world, sure.
@Gargron
Not sure what that has to do with it.In the case of ai, the investments are in the trillions, more planned. Infra is growing, businesses are deep in the implementation. Internet search usage is down, ai is growing. The progress is outpacing all expert predictions.
Again. There is no realistic scenario, that this will somehow blow over or something like that.
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"AI" is a failed technology, in the sense that it's neither fit for purpose, nor a likely path to its stated end goal of "AGI", but a lot of people's profits currently depend on pretending it's not. I am curious to see how long the hype will last once the Nvidia ouroboros ends and money stops being pumped into marketing.
@Gargron That's a quite strong stance, that missed proper argumentation. I agree it's not perfect and it has risks, but 'failed"?What is your definition for 'failed'?
Is it the fact that radiologists now can better diagnose breast cancer using AI as a tool to diagnose than without?
Or Is it the fact that it immensely progressed mRNA technology?
Or perhaps is it your fear for a 'new technology' that's alien and could perhaps take over your job and eventually your life?
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@Gargron
Not sure what that has to do with it.In the case of ai, the investments are in the trillions, more planned. Infra is growing, businesses are deep in the implementation. Internet search usage is down, ai is growing. The progress is outpacing all expert predictions.
Again. There is no realistic scenario, that this will somehow blow over or something like that.
@Noisecolor I agree with you that the damage left in its wake after it collapses will be monumental. Think not just of the derailing of environmental goals which will have very real and painful consequences for most people who don't have a luxury bunker somewhere, but about the generations of kids who are growing up without critical thinking skills. So no, unfortunately, we won't be able to go back to 2022.
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@Noisecolor I agree with you that the damage left in its wake after it collapses will be monumental. Think not just of the derailing of environmental goals which will have very real and painful consequences for most people who don't have a luxury bunker somewhere, but about the generations of kids who are growing up without critical thinking skills. So no, unfortunately, we won't be able to go back to 2022.
@Gargron
I think it's completely disingenuous to blame ai for all the troubles in the world, especially since all these problems were clearly there before ai.You have a problem with capitalism, not ai. And I do too, don't get me wrong. I'd love to live in a better, cleaner, juster world.
But ai has nothing to do with it. -
@Gargron That's a quite strong stance, that missed proper argumentation. I agree it's not perfect and it has risks, but 'failed"?What is your definition for 'failed'?
Is it the fact that radiologists now can better diagnose breast cancer using AI as a tool to diagnose than without?
Or Is it the fact that it immensely progressed mRNA technology?
Or perhaps is it your fear for a 'new technology' that's alien and could perhaps take over your job and eventually your life?
@Luminous_J I've explained why it's failed technology in the same sentence. Perhaps you've lost the ability to interpret complex sentence structures? It is a technology that is fundamentally unable to provide consistently true information or behave in a deterministic way. This means you cannot rely on it to provide information or perform tasks, and it is dangerous and irresponsible to pretend otherwise.
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@Gargron
I think it's completely disingenuous to blame ai for all the troubles in the world, especially since all these problems were clearly there before ai.You have a problem with capitalism, not ai. And I do too, don't get me wrong. I'd love to live in a better, cleaner, juster world.
But ai has nothing to do with it.@Noisecolor I'd like to point you to the data centres being built around the world to accomodate "AI" investments, their energy and water consumption, how it's affecting communities living around them. There's an even deeper conversation that could be had about the belief a lot of the tech execs have expressed that a sufficiently advanced "AI" would solve the climate crisis, diverting efforts from actual solutions.
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@Luminous_J I've explained why it's failed technology in the same sentence. Perhaps you've lost the ability to interpret complex sentence structures? It is a technology that is fundamentally unable to provide consistently true information or behave in a deterministic way. This means you cannot rely on it to provide information or perform tasks, and it is dangerous and irresponsible to pretend otherwise.
Heard Cory Doctorow speak recently & he used radiologists as an example--instead of AI as a "tap on the shoulder" assisting & aiding radiologists, numerous radiologists will be replaced by AI but "human" radiologists will have to sign off AI agents results and will bear the medical liability.
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@Gargron @mellowfish Eugen, you worded that far more diplomatically than I could have managed. I had to delete my reply.

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@Gargron That's a quite strong stance, that missed proper argumentation. I agree it's not perfect and it has risks, but 'failed"?What is your definition for 'failed'?
Is it the fact that radiologists now can better diagnose breast cancer using AI as a tool to diagnose than without?
Or Is it the fact that it immensely progressed mRNA technology?
Or perhaps is it your fear for a 'new technology' that's alien and could perhaps take over your job and eventually your life?
Just leaving this here.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/comments/1wrqrww/real_talk_here_in_radiology/
There are a lot of hope from all sides that AI will revolutionise a lot of things. One is that it would be great with an AI to diagnose cancer. But we can't trust the AI to be 100% accurate so we will let one human doctor sign off on everything before it's accepted.
So this doctor is sitting with an ever growing mountain of scans that needs to be signed off on. The mountain grows about 50 to 1 for every scan he signs.
Who do you think will be held responsible of any mistakes the AI makes? Well, he signed off on it, didn't he?
The cost of running these AI's are only low now because we are in the rupture market phase still but soon we will go into the monopoly phase and then the prices will be different. We are already setting up the trap, soon a personal computer will be unaffordable and unusable, you will need a subscription computer on a light computer only having a tiny cpu and memory.
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@mellowfish That's... just your opinion. Agentic coding (I don't think you can call it "engineering") is heavily subsidized by big AI companies right now, and that's going away sooner or later. The software world will have a painful wake up call from all the spaghetti code being pumped out right now.
calling code that’s currently being generated by AI agents “spaghetti code” is a pretty sure sign that you either haven’t actually used it seriously or don’t know how to use it.
AI-generated code can absolutely be terrible. so can human-generated code. the interesting question is whether you know how to get the agent to produce good code and how to review, test, and evolve it.
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Heard Cory Doctorow speak recently & he used radiologists as an example--instead of AI as a "tap on the shoulder" assisting & aiding radiologists, numerous radiologists will be replaced by AI but "human" radiologists will have to sign off AI agents results and will bear the medical liability.
@FallsMom Cory Doctorow is right on some topics, but I consider him not extreme enough on "AI". This shtick works while there are qualified radiologists who retain their skills. It falls apart once the deskilling effects of "AI" are in the loop.
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"AI" is a failed technology, in the sense that it's neither fit for purpose, nor a likely path to its stated end goal of "AGI", but a lot of people's profits currently depend on pretending it's not. I am curious to see how long the hype will last once the Nvidia ouroboros ends and money stops being pumped into marketing.
Furthermore, I still have yet see a plausible revenue model explained...
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calling code that’s currently being generated by AI agents “spaghetti code” is a pretty sure sign that you either haven’t actually used it seriously or don’t know how to use it.
AI-generated code can absolutely be terrible. so can human-generated code. the interesting question is whether you know how to get the agent to produce good code and how to review, test, and evolve it.
@skavish I have never used "AI" in my professional or personal life and have no intentions of doing so.
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@Noisecolor I'd like to point you to the data centres being built around the world to accomodate "AI" investments, their energy and water consumption, how it's affecting communities living around them. There's an even deeper conversation that could be had about the belief a lot of the tech execs have expressed that a sufficiently advanced "AI" would solve the climate crisis, diverting efforts from actual solutions.
the environmental-impact argument against AI doesn’t really hold water when you put the numbers in context. the comparison with everyday activities like eating a burger is pretty revealing.
https://welley.social/@skavish/posts/pt_01m4nt61s1ecjrvbczk5zb45z6
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@FallsMom Cory Doctorow is right on some topics, but I consider him not extreme enough on "AI". This shtick works while there are qualified radiologists who retain their skills. It falls apart once the deskilling effects of "AI" are in the loop.
Agreed.
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@skavish I have never used "AI" in my professional or personal life and have no intentions of doing so.
that explains the confidence

if you’ve never actually used it, then you’re not really in a position to judge what agentic coding looks like when used properly.
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@Noisecolor I'd like to point you to the data centres being built around the world to accomodate "AI" investments, their energy and water consumption, how it's affecting communities living around them. There's an even deeper conversation that could be had about the belief a lot of the tech execs have expressed that a sufficiently advanced "AI" would solve the climate crisis, diverting efforts from actual solutions.
@Gargron
Global warming, pollution, energy issues, all there, on the list of solvable things humanity decided not to solve, long long long before ai.But, back to the point: Ai won't go away. Especially now as more and better infrastructure is being built, that will unlock ever better capabilities.
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"AI" is a failed technology, in the sense that it's neither fit for purpose, nor a likely path to its stated end goal of "AGI", but a lot of people's profits currently depend on pretending it's not. I am curious to see how long the hype will last once the Nvidia ouroboros ends and money stops being pumped into marketing.
@Gargron What we term AI today is misnamed and misused and oversold.
But the technology as such (i.e. LLMs and Neural Networks and the like) isn't useless.
E.g. my daughter is training AI to recognize and classify life in ROV videos from the deep sea ocean floors.
Many such applications. "AI" doesn't get bored and is extremely good at spotting patterns and things that break the patterns.
But, yeah, it is shit for coding...
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@Luminous_J I've explained why it's failed technology in the same sentence. Perhaps you've lost the ability to interpret complex sentence structures? It is a technology that is fundamentally unable to provide consistently true information or behave in a deterministic way. This means you cannot rely on it to provide information or perform tasks, and it is dangerous and irresponsible to pretend otherwise.
@Gargron
I am fascinated by your ad hominem attack, but I'm not here to score points or win a right-or-wrong debate.Why not address the substance of my response and engage in a fair debate based on facts and experiences?
Let me start:
What if a technology doesn't need to provide 100% reliable information to be useful, provided its limitations are understood and appropriately managed?And what if future developments improve the reliability of these models and address some of their current limitations? Would AI still be inherently dangerous and irresponsible as a technological tool?
I'm genuinely interested in the reasoning behind your conclusion that AI is a failed technology.
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that explains the confidence

if you’ve never actually used it, then you’re not really in a position to judge what agentic coding looks like when used properly.
@skavish You think I, a maintainer and engineer on one of the largest open-source software projects on GitHub, am not in a position to judge what agentic coding looks like? Sure. Have a nice day!
