A sprawling essay. I'm not sure I agree with every micro-conclusion, but it's impressive and amazingly on-point nonetheless. For my money, this line (a rephrasing of the famous Chomsky/Herman "Propaganda Model" of Media Literacy) is worth the price of admission:
"Institutional influence rarely requires the vulgarity of a script."
“They were careless people, - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Not sure that current AI is up to the level of coding you assume. I've had my own trivial problems with chatGPT assuring me it can code something: it couldn't. This was IMHO trivial stuff. My wife tried to get Copilot to draw an 8 pointed star. The prompt was "2 identical squares, one on top of the other. Rotate the top square through 45 degrees. You should have an 8 pointed star. Draw it." Copilot drew a 6 pointed star. When the error was pointed out it drew a 5 pointed star. Impressive stuff. She was teaching software requirements at the time, and the activity was a "must do" principally because Microsoft paid the company to talk up Copilot. It wasn't recorded what the students thought of it. Let's just say they were not fans. Meanwhile Microsoft are tiptoeing back from Copilot. Which is really chatGPT anyway.
What I hear from those working with AI code is that the code is a mess and takes more time to fix than it would have to just get humans to write the code.
I think it has uses, but I'm sceptical about the claims. This is not helped by several of the poster boys (and they do all seem to be, ahem, boys) for AI being known liars, disingenuous, and mad. I can put names to the categories if you like.
The fact Uber used all their tokens for a year in 3-4 months followed by CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga going viral after telling The Information this, adding that higher token usage didn't translate into a proportional increase in useful consumer features and identifying the ROI from AI was very difficult does nothing to stem my fears that this is a ponzi scheme (possibly unintended) and will end in tears. Meanwhile of course the Chinese have created a very capable AI with much less expenditure, and where it's easier to identify the ROI. Rumour has it many American businesses in need of some AI have been buying into Deepseek simply because the token price is comparatively low. I'm glad I'm out of the software world.
Not sure that current AI is up to the level of coding you assume. I've had my own trivial problems with chatGPT assuring me it can code something: it couldn't. This was IMHO trivial stuff. My wife tried to get Copilot to draw an 8 pointed star. The prompt was "2 identical squares, one on top of the other. Rotate the top square through 45 degrees. You should have an 8 pointed star. Draw it." Copilot drew a 6 pointed star. When the error was pointed out it drew a 5 pointed star. Impressive stuff. She was teaching software requirements at the time, and the activity was a "must do" principally because Microsoft paid the company to talk up Copilot. It wasn't recorded what the students thought of it. Let's just say they were not fans. Meanwhile Microsoft are tiptoeing back from Copilot. Which is really chatGPT anyway.
What I hear from those working with AI code is that the code is a mess and takes more time to fix than it would have to just get humans to write the code.
I think it has uses, but I'm sceptical about the claims. This is not helped by several of the poster boys (and they do all seem to be, ahem, boys) for AI being known liars, disingenuous, and mad. I can put names to the categories if you like.
The fact Uber used all their tokens for a year in 3-4 months followed by CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga going viral after telling The Information this, adding that higher token usage didn't translate into a proportional increase in useful consumer features and identifying the ROI from AI was very difficult does nothing to stem my fears that this is a ponzi scheme (possibly unintended) and will end in tears. Meanwhile of course the Chinese have created a very capable AI with much less expenditure, and where it's easier to identify the ROI. Rumour has it many American businesses in need of some AI have been buying into Deepseek simply because the token price is comparatively low. I'm glad I'm out of the software world.
I marvel at the idea of partnering with the government and transforming company support into a “patriotic duty.” “What’s good for OpenAI is good for the country.”
There was a recent article in The Atlantic about AI Data Centers causing Silicon Valley to meet the constraints of the real world vs the resource light hyper scaling of the digital sphere. It’s a race to build enough to turn a profit before the whole thing collapses. This makes the public backlash an even bigger threat than people realize
Nice companion article to what Gary Marcus, Ed Zitron et al have been saying.
A sprawling essay. I'm not sure I agree with every micro-conclusion, but it's impressive and amazingly on-point nonetheless. For my money, this line (a rephrasing of the famous Chomsky/Herman "Propaganda Model" of Media Literacy) is worth the price of admission:
"Institutional influence rarely requires the vulgarity of a script."
“They were careless people, - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Not sure that current AI is up to the level of coding you assume. I've had my own trivial problems with chatGPT assuring me it can code something: it couldn't. This was IMHO trivial stuff. My wife tried to get Copilot to draw an 8 pointed star. The prompt was "2 identical squares, one on top of the other. Rotate the top square through 45 degrees. You should have an 8 pointed star. Draw it." Copilot drew a 6 pointed star. When the error was pointed out it drew a 5 pointed star. Impressive stuff. She was teaching software requirements at the time, and the activity was a "must do" principally because Microsoft paid the company to talk up Copilot. It wasn't recorded what the students thought of it. Let's just say they were not fans. Meanwhile Microsoft are tiptoeing back from Copilot. Which is really chatGPT anyway.
What I hear from those working with AI code is that the code is a mess and takes more time to fix than it would have to just get humans to write the code.
I think it has uses, but I'm sceptical about the claims. This is not helped by several of the poster boys (and they do all seem to be, ahem, boys) for AI being known liars, disingenuous, and mad. I can put names to the categories if you like.
The fact Uber used all their tokens for a year in 3-4 months followed by CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga going viral after telling The Information this, adding that higher token usage didn't translate into a proportional increase in useful consumer features and identifying the ROI from AI was very difficult does nothing to stem my fears that this is a ponzi scheme (possibly unintended) and will end in tears. Meanwhile of course the Chinese have created a very capable AI with much less expenditure, and where it's easier to identify the ROI. Rumour has it many American businesses in need of some AI have been buying into Deepseek simply because the token price is comparatively low. I'm glad I'm out of the software world.
Not sure that current AI is up to the level of coding you assume. I've had my own trivial problems with chatGPT assuring me it can code something: it couldn't. This was IMHO trivial stuff. My wife tried to get Copilot to draw an 8 pointed star. The prompt was "2 identical squares, one on top of the other. Rotate the top square through 45 degrees. You should have an 8 pointed star. Draw it." Copilot drew a 6 pointed star. When the error was pointed out it drew a 5 pointed star. Impressive stuff. She was teaching software requirements at the time, and the activity was a "must do" principally because Microsoft paid the company to talk up Copilot. It wasn't recorded what the students thought of it. Let's just say they were not fans. Meanwhile Microsoft are tiptoeing back from Copilot. Which is really chatGPT anyway.
What I hear from those working with AI code is that the code is a mess and takes more time to fix than it would have to just get humans to write the code.
I think it has uses, but I'm sceptical about the claims. This is not helped by several of the poster boys (and they do all seem to be, ahem, boys) for AI being known liars, disingenuous, and mad. I can put names to the categories if you like.
The fact Uber used all their tokens for a year in 3-4 months followed by CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga going viral after telling The Information this, adding that higher token usage didn't translate into a proportional increase in useful consumer features and identifying the ROI from AI was very difficult does nothing to stem my fears that this is a ponzi scheme (possibly unintended) and will end in tears. Meanwhile of course the Chinese have created a very capable AI with much less expenditure, and where it's easier to identify the ROI. Rumour has it many American businesses in need of some AI have been buying into Deepseek simply because the token price is comparatively low. I'm glad I'm out of the software world.
This makes Charles Ponzi appear to be an underachiever.
If only he'd had access to such a boondoggle....
I marvel at the idea of partnering with the government and transforming company support into a “patriotic duty.” “What’s good for OpenAI is good for the country.”
There was a recent article in The Atlantic about AI Data Centers causing Silicon Valley to meet the constraints of the real world vs the resource light hyper scaling of the digital sphere. It’s a race to build enough to turn a profit before the whole thing collapses. This makes the public backlash an even bigger threat than people realize
You describe a potentially world-ecompassing ourobouros that is eating itself.
It’s also a bet, they placed, on how long they think this authoritarian government will last…
Not long enough for AI to turn a profit is my guess.