[bondarchuk]

>But there’s a problem: there is little agreement on what those results really mean. Some people are dazzled by what they see as glimmers of human-like intelligence; others aren’t convinced one bit.

I find the whole hype & anti-hype dynamic so tiresome. Some are over-hyping, others are responding with over-anti-hyping. Somewhere in-between are many reasonable, moderate and caveated opinions, but neither the hypesters or anti-hypesters will listen to these (considering all of them to come from people at the opposite extreme), nor will outside commentators (somehow being unable to categorize things as anything more complicated than this binary).

[Closi]

Depends if the hype is invalid - Let's remember that "There will be a computer in every home!" was once considered hype.

There is a possible world where AI will be a truly transformative technology in ways we can't possibly understand.

There is a possible world where this tech fizzles out.

So one of the reasons that there is a broad 'hype' dynamic here is because the range of possibilities is broad.

I sit firmly in the first camp though - I believe it's truly a transformative technology, and struggle to see the perspective of the 'anti-hype' crowd.

[TerrifiedMouse]

I’m in the second camp. To every hyped up tech, all I can say is “prove it”. Give me actual real world results.

There are millions of hustlers out there pushing snake oil. The probability that something is the real deal and not snake oil is small. Better to assuming the glass is half empty.

[Closi]

There will be millions of hustlers regardless of if the technology is transformative or not.

The invention of the PC market was filled with hustlers but that doesn't mean that the PC didn't match the hype.

The .com boom was filled with hustlers, but that doesn't mean that the Internet wasn't transformative.

Actual real world results... well the technology is already responsible for c40% of code on Github. Image recognition technologies are soaring and self driving feels within reach. Few people doubt that a real-world Jarvis will be in your home within 12 months. The turing test is smashed, and LLM's are already replacing live chat operatives. And this is just the start of the technology...

[TerrifiedMouse]

> The .com boom was filled with hustlers, but that doesn't mean that the Internet wasn't transformative.

But a lot of .com projects were BS. If you were to pick at random, the probability you got a winner is low. Thus it’s wise to be skeptical of all hyped stuff until they have proven themselves.

> Actual real world results... well the technology is already responsible for c40% of code on Github.

Quite sure you misread that article. It says 40% of the code checked in by people who use Copilot is AI-generated. Not 40% of all code.

That’s how some programmers are I guess. I have heard of people copy pasting code directly from stack overflow without a second thought about how it works. That’s probably Copilot’s audience.

[Closi]

I think your reasoning is flawed - the fact a lot of .com projects were BS does not imply that the underlying technology (the internet) wasn't transformative.

Are we really saying that people who were saying the internet was a transformative technology in the mid-1990's were wrong? It was transformative, but it was hard to see which parts of the technology would stick around. Of course it doesn't mean that every single company and investment was going to be profitable, that's not true of anything ever. People investing in Amazon and Google were winners though - these are companies that have in many ways reinvented the market they operate in.

> Quite sure you misread that article. It says 40% of the code checked in by people who use Copilot is AI-generated. Not 40% of all code.

Ok, I'll take that it's 40% of Copilot users. That's still 40% of some programmers code!