"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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if you’ve never used it, then yes, you’re not in a position to judge what it looks like when used properly. being an experienced engineer and maintainer gives you plenty of expertise in software engineering, but it doesn’t magically give you first-hand experience with a tool you explicitly said you’ve never used.
you can absolutely argue that you don’t want to use it. that’s a different claim.
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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 I have to respectfully disagree even though I know I'll be pilloried for it. Economically yes there's a huge bubble around the tech but it's far from failed. Right now there are thousands of small businesses and individuals doing so many creative things with both local and inexpensive hosted models. We're just scratching the surface of what will come for better or worse, but failed? No. Democratized coding yes. Where that leads is up to us.
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@Gargron I have to respectfully disagree even though I know I'll be pilloried for it. Economically yes there's a huge bubble around the tech but it's far from failed. Right now there are thousands of small businesses and individuals doing so many creative things with both local and inexpensive hosted models. We're just scratching the surface of what will come for better or worse, but failed? No. Democratized coding yes. Where that leads is up to us.
I'd say it's "failed" in that there is no way it can live up to the level of hype that the Tech Bro's have made around it, but yes, there is a limited place for it.
CGI existed before this, it will continue to exist albeit augmented.
Machine Generated Art & Text existed before this, it will continue to exist albeit augmented.
Machine Learning existed before this and will continue too.
The annoying things is that all of this has been subsumed into the morass that is "AI": a technology which is not delivering what was promised.
I think people in the know need to revert to the old terms specifically because it displays an actual understanding of the tech behind the promise.
As it is, anyone that says "AI" to me when what they really mean is "ML" of "CG" etc. (particularly the ones that should know better) doesn't get my full attention or the benefit of the doubt from me.
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if you’ve never used it, then yes, you’re not in a position to judge what it looks like when used properly. being an experienced engineer and maintainer gives you plenty of expertise in software engineering, but it doesn’t magically give you first-hand experience with a tool you explicitly said you’ve never used.
you can absolutely argue that you don’t want to use it. that’s a different claim.
@skavish "you have to step on rakes or else you can't say that stepping on rakes is a bad idea" ass response here
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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?
@Luminous_J @Gargron « This large-scale study examined the heterogeneous effects of AI assistance on 140 radiologists across 15 chest X-ray diagnostic tasks and identified predictors of these effects. Surprisingly, conventional experience-based factors, such as years of experience, subspecialty and familiarity with AI tools, fail to reliably predict the impact of AI assistance. Additionally, lower-performing radiologists do not consistently benefit more from AI assistance, challenging prevailing assumptions. Instead, we found that the occurrence of AI errors strongly influences treatment outcomes, with inaccurate AI predictions adversely affecting radiologist performance on the aggregate of all pathologies and on half of the individual pathologies investigated. »
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-024-02850-w
And that's ignoring the deskilling issues found with other medical professionals.
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frankly, i do not give a shit about big corps with shitty management. AI is a massive multiplier for me and my team. if some incompetent corporate fucks manage to use it to create a mountain of shit, that is their problem. let them burn.
I'm tossing this in as another intrinsic aspect of LLM code.
"We demonstrate that hallucinations stem from the fundamental mathematical and logical structure of LLMs. Therefore, eliminating them through architectural improvements, dataset enhancements, or fact-checking mechanisms is impossible."
When people make mistakes, they're almost always mistakes we've seen before. LLM hallucinations? Unlikely.
LLMs Will Always Hallucinate, and We Need to Live with This
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-99965-9_39 -
@waltbaldwin @Gargron @mellowfish Great piece, loved it. But much of that was written by AI! I feel duped.
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@waltbaldwin @Gargron @mellowfish Great piece, loved it. But much of that was written by AI! I feel duped.
@bmoreinis @Gargron @mellowfish
lol, the irony is thick. gotta love the credits at the end. ...and the bod turning into ai, and brads password, and ...
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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 i think it's more true to say that its a failed product based on lies, theft and corruption, the mathematics of the technology is not the problem, the lawlessness, lack of regulation and profound disinformation and psychological damage are both signs of our failure to regulate the fascists and narcissistic tech bros
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@Gargron
I totally agree. What I also dislike is renaming things with "AI" just to make it sound advanced.I heard an advert today for British Telecom saying their "AI business tool" could help your small business. That "tool" was booking tables (that's a CMS/database, not AI) and answering calls (that's an answering machine (at a push, IVR), not AI) etc.
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@Gargron counterpoint: we are well past the point of no return for agentic engineering. There will always be purists who insist on writing code by hand but we aren’t returning to that being the default even after the bubble pops. And I think quiet use of AI as glue will propagate more or less unseen through a lot of tech until it is the expected/desired thing vs a bolted-on buzzword.
Are there myriad problems with both of these? Of course. But that much is not “failure” in any meaningful sense.
@mellowfish @Gargron "agentic" engineering is only effective if you place no weight on the risks of mistakes
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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 and oracle wishes it hadn't burnt all it's cash last october...
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@Gargron jepp we will see what is going to happen with this AI stuff. Everyone IT related knows what is going to be happening.
The entire world knows it. As we say in Germany "lasse komme".
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@Gargron counterpoint: we are well past the point of no return for agentic engineering. There will always be purists who insist on writing code by hand but we aren’t returning to that being the default even after the bubble pops. And I think quiet use of AI as glue will propagate more or less unseen through a lot of tech until it is the expected/desired thing vs a bolted-on buzzword.
Are there myriad problems with both of these? Of course. But that much is not “failure” in any meaningful sense.
Let's see when subsidize usage stops and tokens start costing 10x.
Also, if your prediction is right, then software is doomed.
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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
(just leaving this here as support and contrast to the AI bros losing their sht ^^") -
@clayote you are confusing two arguments. I am not claiming Gargron would get good results, I am saying you cant know what results you'd get without actually using the tools. I use them daily to build real software, so I have firsthand experience. you keep demanding evidence while dismissing the possibility of evidence you haven't personally examined. the irony is hard to miss.
This argument makes no sense.
You don't have to try something to judge it, in fact personal experience is anecdotical and not a good foundation for judgment.
Knowing what the tool is and how it works is more valuable as a judgment criteria.
Especially with something like LLM that "seem" absolutely fantastic at first touch.You're looking like a predicant saying "when you're blessed by the faith, you'll believe!"
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This argument makes no sense.
You don't have to try something to judge it, in fact personal experience is anecdotical and not a good foundation for judgment.
Knowing what the tool is and how it works is more valuable as a judgment criteria.
Especially with something like LLM that "seem" absolutely fantastic at first touch.You're looking like a predicant saying "when you're blessed by the faith, you'll believe!"
Besides that, your tool is built on stolen material, near-slavery training work, it's an ecological disaster and has been designed to reduce the bargain power of intellectual worker like yourself.
You have to be completely ignorant or a complete asshole to be ok with all this.
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Not relevant to whether or not it has failed or works poorly, which is what the original post was about
It is, you can't judge the success and viability of something without considering real cost and externalities.
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@rainynight65 @skavish @Gargron The thing is, for 90% of software, "don't care" probably is the correct approach from a business management PoV.
