[taurath]

For mine it’s worse because we have new leadership who believes in it to a far larger extent than it can deliver. Now a massive amount of our workforce is building up proofs of concepts and spitting out tons of effectively useless output to look good because of how strongly they’ve signaled it’s good for careers here to fully embrace it. It’s a massive mess and there’s nobody to clean it up, and the voices advocating for rigor or good engineering practices are being sidelined.

It’s full out mania. As someone raised in and who escaped a cult, I am having to use every tool in my very large toolbox to stay sane while I wait for this to pass and die down or make my move towards a place that still cares whether their product works.

[therobots927]

If the majority of engineers decide to rot their brains and abandon best practices, the industry will eventually implode. Stay true to your beliefs and use the bare minimum of AI to keep your job.

We’re in what I would call the “dark ages” of tech. There will be a new renaissance led by those who used this as an opportunity to build skills and tools that are genuinely useful and ingenious.

If you keep a long-term horizon this is the perfect opportunity to work on a solo project in stealth mode. Or build professional connections with others who see things the way you do.

[UqWBcuFx6NV4r]

“What I would call […]”.

When people talk about one’s salary being an imperative to them understanding something, they are talking about exactly you. “This’ll all wash over and we’ll be back to the good old days that I’m used to” has never happened. Ever.

[therobots927]

Well actually it did happen. Greco-Roman intellectual tradition was lost when Rome collapsed and institutions of knowledge with it. Islamic scholars preserved much of this knowledge during the dark ages but in the western world Christian religious dogma reigned supreme.

During the renaissance western thinkers pieced together lost information and we got the scientific revolution.

Kind of wild that you completely ignored the example I gave of exactly this happening in my original comment.

And speaking of people whose salary dictates their understanding of something, let’s talk about Sam Altman and the rest of SV currently spinning a fairytale about AI which just so happens to justify astronomical valuations for their companies.

[taurath]

At my company everyone’s salary and career ladder are determined by exactly how much they dive into AI and show enthusiasm for it, regardless of whether they’re using it for something useful or they’re just competing for how much money they can burn

[partyficial]

Early stages of any major disruptive technology will have hype due to get-rich-quick folks. Dot-com boom & bust of 2000 is similar. But the underlying technology (internet) defined our lives forever.

I don't know why people are comparing the Day-1 of one technology with the Day-1000 of another. Yes, AI is useless in many fields - NOW. But you can't imagine doing any work without in a couple years.

Like the kids used to ask - 'How did they build Google without Google?'

Now their kids will ask - 'How did they build chatGPT without chatGPT'?

[sph]

ChatGPT has been around for 4 years at this point. Not very long, but I’ve heard of the ‘imagine what it’ll do in one year’ spiel quite a few times by now.

[partyficial]

How long was the internet around before it became essential for every day life?

[Eufrat]

The “Internet” was a DARPA-funded research curiosity initially. It was not crammed down people’s throats like a roll of Oreos while advocates screamed that, “You like this, right‽ This is the future! You have to like this, what is wrong with you?”

Transformers were treated like any other ML technique until Sutskever decided to just go big on training it. That it can look like a compelling simulacrum, I am not arguing, but this thing left the ivory tower of research prematurely and recklessly. We are all going to pay for it.

[taurath]

2 things - it’s not day 1 for AI, and it’s also not dot-com (which dropped the nasdaq 80% btw). It’s the entire American economy right now. When it can’t deliver anything approaching its hype, just like all the data centers that can’t deliver on power, the profit margins that can’t deliver, and the promises of massive 500% revenue increases this fiscal year… sorry, I was raised in a cult and know what the fuck I’m seeing, sadly among a lot of otherwise intelligent people here.

I expect I’ll be using LLMs now and in the future, but the public is far more right about the companies and the people running them than the tech “insiders” here.