[echelon]

> driving humanity forward against its will.

I want this technology! You don't speak for all of us.

I'm sick of techo-Luddism. I'm sick of complaints about water use in a world that has avocados, beef, and fabric dyes. I'm sick of complaints about power use when you have your air conditioners, winter heat, air travel, and gaming PCs.

I'm sick of artists saying AI image and video sucks. I'm sick of pretend artists, armchair warriors, obsessed fans, and pickmes towing the same line.

I'm sick of engineers saying these models aren't a huge performance gain.

You haters and skeptics out there can keep doing you, but I'm going to keep using the technology. We'll see where the chips fall.

I was raised on optimism and dreams of the future. I want that. I don't want to die with the same incrementalism we've always had. I want orders of magnitude more.

This is our one moment of awareness in a cosmically infinite void. I want spectacular. I'm tired of the chicken attitudes when people should aspire to be eagles.

What we have is so boring. There's so much more if we reach for it. Holodecks, models that cure every molecular cause of cancer, doubled and tripled health spans, instant ability to understand every language, fast and cheap travel autonomous p2p travel, everyone on earth lifted out of poverty, a Michelin chef in your kitchen, ...

[roxolotl]

There’s a difference between being a hater and acknowledging the reality of the technology and those building it. I want all of those things too. However I do not understand why LLMs will get them for us. Instead I see a few really powerful people looking to get more powerful. I see a powerful tool being presented as god in a box when. I see the most resources ever spent on a singular thing being spent in a way that’ll _best case_ be mostly obsolete in a few years.

I want real AI. I want cures for cancer. I want too want to live in a post scarcity world. We had most of the technologies to do that before this. However the companies and investors involved in the AI build out chose to sit on massive reserves instead of trying to directly solve those problems. There exist proposals which solve hunger, the energy transition, etc and together they wouldn’t amount for even half of what’s been spent.

That tells me those involved want nothing other than money and power.

[mplanchard]

That’s a take. Would be cool if you could be happy with what is, rather than what you wish could be, while still being optimistic about new tech. But even if you can’t, would be nice if you could have your optimism without letting other people’s differing opinions get under your skin.

I’d also suggest, if you care about things like curing “every molecular cause of cancer” to spend some time and energy working in that field to understand the real problems there and work towards real solutions (with models or whatever floats your boat), rather than hoping that some poorly defined techno-optimism hand-waving will just happen to result in the best of all possible worlds, with no downsides or alternative outcomes.

Also, crazy to say that the miracle of existence is boring because we don’t have the tech you imagine!! If that’s your take now, no new technology is going to fix it. You’ll just still be bored with the holodeck and your one precious life to live.

[afzalive]

None of these billionaires are going to lead you to the dreams of the future that you have.

And don't forget the negative effects on other people, otherwise that's just selfish.

[duped]

It makes me sad to read someone rejecting humanity.

[TobTobXX]

Painting something new with great potential as negative and "the enemy" - this is truly the essence of humanity. </snark-but-with-a-kernel-of-truth>

If the parent commenter enjoys working with LLMs, then just let them. This doesn't make them inhumane, nor does it make you less of a human.

[jijijijij]

Putting the AI in cocaine, eh?