Yes, there was sadly a mismatch between the morality they thought existed vs what actually existed :(. Also, probably vastly underestimated global apathy.
Look, I'm glad we're pausing this. But I'd like to understand why an article on the pause shoots right to the top, but news of a tweet from the president indicating a plan to annihilate a whole country does not see a similar rise to the top.
It's too random a process to be precisely answerable about a specific data point or two.
One could argue that this is a doing-something as opposed to a saying-something, and thus more substantive. Or perhaps people want some good news to believe in? I don't know - one can make up lots of just-so stories about these things (see paragraph 1).
Trump tweets insane things hourly. A reputable news organization announcing something actually happening with quotes from both sides confirming is news worthy.
I used to feel this way, but I think at this point you don’t need much of a brain to realize he’s a narcissist grifter that serves only himself without limit. A fellow gets tired of seeing his mouth shit all over the place. Peace/less killing is a positive break I’d much rather hear about.
I'm fine with using LLMs as coding tools. But I find it deeply offensive when someone is very explicitly using them to communicate with me.
Communication is such a deeply human experience. It lets people feel each other out, and learn things beyond just the words being said. To have that filtered out by an LLM is just disgraceful.
I was talking to managers and they were talking about how they'd use AI to write reviews about their employees to which I said I would not like a non-genuine review/not personal.
I think you're gonna struggle to find companies that aren't infested with this kind of thing.
Observing the effect of LLMs on the "business side" of things, I'm increasingly thinking of these as a kind of infection against which the MBA set and their acolytes have no immune response, and I think it's going to eat a large proportion of the benefit of LLMs to most businesses (possibly overwhelming it and actually harming productivity, will depend on how much better these tools get).
LLMs are awesome at bloating your slide decks while making them really slick and complete-looking. They're great at suggesting an entire set of features on a ticket you've just barely started writing ...but did you actually want all those? You end up with redundant or in-context-gibberish features that leave the person actually doing the work tracking down WTF actually matters. They are adding overhead to communication, so far, not just by puffing up and padding language (which isn't great either) but by adding noise "content" that can't be stripped out without talking to the person who created it and making sure that was actually just AI bullshit and not something they actually needed; that is, you can't just do the "LLM, summarize this" trick, because the author used an LLM to plan it, too, not just to pad-out and gussy-up something they actually thought through and wrote.
LLMs are letting people present very convincingly as having a more-complete understanding of what's going on than they really do in ways that are messing up productive work, I'm not sure business-folks are going to be generally capable of tamping this down because it is so in-line with the way they already operate (but on speed), and helps them so very much to look good to one another while saving tons of time. This isn't just the MBA set I accuse above, either, I'm noticing that this improbably-complete deck communication upward is becoming necessary to look competent (and to ladder-climb) as an IC.
Like, I'm only starting to think this through and really observing what's going on through this lens as I've only noticed it in the last few weeks, but the more I see the more alarming this is. I think this is going to be a little like the largely-wasteful "legibility" obsession of upper management, something enabled by computerization that they find irresistible and are pretty bad at employing judiciously and effectively, but probably a lot worse in terms of harm-to-productivity, and directly affecting and changing the behavior of far more layers of an organization. They never (businesses as a whole, to anthropomorphize a bit) gained wisdom with their new powers to burn resources chasing legibility, and this is starting to look like another thing they just will not be able to use (internally! I don't even mean for actually producing external-facing results!) with restraint and taste.
I reckon you've hit the nail on the head and if you haven't done already, you should write your thoughts into a blog post. It is great to read someone's ponderings about the state of the industry and corporate uptake of LLMs
Ultimately, we need to know the true cost of this technology to evaluate how effectively or ineffectively it can displace the workforce that existed before it.
Information, both good and bad, is a lot more accessible this time around. It has been a dramatic accelerator to worldly views of America in the wake of their recent actions.
There are political similarities between the two aforementioned wars, but the social and technological backdrops are quite different, and they're working against US public perception. Furthermore, decorum is entirely gone this time around, which isn't helping.
Fair to say unlucky people are skeptical/pessimistic/realistic and lucky people are naive/optimistic?
If yes, the question is why? What came first? Their luck or their perspective? Maybe a couple instances of things working out tips the scales early in life!
People in my life routinely talk about how lucky I am. Its a big enough thing that it's kind of a meme. I think a big part of it is strategic disassociation. You can't do it with every decision in your life but if you pick and choose some focal points where you just pick the choice with the unknown but possibly positive outcome, commit to it fully, and internalize the value of the joy of discovery without worrying about it too hard you often come out ahead.
I'm pretty sure the luck came first because optimism/pessimism is a learned trait.
I say this as someone who considers themselves "Optimistic by nature, pessimistic by experience."
I was born in lucky circumstances but that luck turned in my teens due to factors outside of my control. I have seen firsthand how it works.
Even now, I constantly have to catch myself and force myself to think pessimistically... And my pessimistic projections are usually right or sometimes not pessimistic enough.
But I know I'm a natural optimist by the fact that I don't give up. I've built so much software and startups over the years; most of them I'm still running on the side and keeping up to date even though I know consciously that there is zero chance they will succeed. Deep down I have a deep optimism that something will change and all the opportunities will come at once. Consciously, I know it is delusional but I'm fundamentally motivated by emotions, not thoughts.
It's a weird feeling having built products that work very similarly to (or better than) other products which rake in millions of dollars but not being able to find a single customer due to all sorts of weird contrived socio-political reasons.
> Fair to say unlucky people are skeptical/pessimistic/realistic and lucky people are naive/optimistic?
Optimism vs pessimism is basically only a valid framing in very neutral times. If things really are significantly tilted towards up or down, then you either notice that or you don't, and only framing that makes sense is realism vs confusion/delusion
> and only framing that makes sense is realism vs confusion/delusion
I think it's very hard, if not impossible, to have objective realism. We all have a tilt. Most people are probably a bit deluded. The frameworks of pessimism and optimism maybe work given the broad inability to have objective realism?
I'm not talking about people's personal predispositions / decision strategies per se. I'm talking about the outcome-based labels that we stick on them after the fact.
Make a table where the world is 3-valued (up/down/neutral) and our subject is only 2-valued (up/down), you'll see what I mean. World up, person down: person is wrong/confused. World up, person up: person is correct/realist. Optimistic / pessimistic roles only work when the world is neutral. This is very silly of course; that's what I'm trying to point out.
In terms of discussing personal predisposition we need to address whether the individual uses strategy to determine appetite for risk, accepts and integrates feedback or doesn't, etc. But yeah.. a completely generalized and non-situational predisposition based on no trends in evidence, on no expected-value considerations, ignoring feedback.. is also called confused or delusional. Notice that the outcome doesn't matter here actually. Intent does matter.. if you're trying and failing to evaluate evidence properly, suffering from imperfect info, you might still be realist. Realists aren't perfect, they just try to align with what is real
A salient comment on the current times. But I'll extend it beyond just wealthy people. We have given every soul a platform. At first glance, that seems like a good thing. But we've given everyone a platform where they can accumulate large followings and express a great many opinions completely unchallenged. In reality, we've built force multiplier tools that enable the dissemination of all takes, good and bad, at a rather alarming rate. And, I would argue, the average joe is a bit gullible and easy to indoctrinate. Society, largely speaking, does not receive enough education and protections against these types of indoctrination platforms that we've made. That celebrities, ultra wealthy individuals, bad actors, and random dumbasses can all use and abuse to sell some physical or cognitive junk.
It's being marketed like it's a vanity project, but it's not. This has been in the works for some time and so many people have given everything they have to make it happen.
Completely agree with you re: climate change being an existential threat, but disagree with your hyperbole about the US being the worst offender. The US should lead because they are supposed to be a world leader - but they alone are not singularly or in majority responsible for climate change.
Mixing fact and hyperbole together weakens your overall message.
I didn’t mean to be hyperbolic, for carbon footprint I’m looking at cumulative footprint since 1750 and not only recent annual footprint. I’m glad we agree, I take your notes.
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