Show me the billion dollar solopreneur startup, or the profit increase for companies and at that point I’ll start thinking that this tasteless high level wanking might make sense in some way
One car went Mach 1, ever, apparently. Anyway, I don’t think the analogy fits. Ford or whoever didn’t loudly and frequently predict Mach 1 cars, right?
The situation is more like: Altman & co are predicting their new car will replace all vehicles: horses, trains, planes, motorcycles, there’s a real possibility the concept of vehicles will not exist other than cars, in the future. Meanwhile it hasn’t really done highway speeds yet. It does some impressive runs on curated tracks, and people use it around their farms (it seems to work ok for some of them).
Yes, one car did Mach 1. And the first production car, the Benz Velo, could only go 12mph. It's an apt analogy.
As I mentioned to OP, applying future aspirations to the current space is incorrect. Some people are able to understand the progression of industrial automation, some people aren't. But if you look at the current batch of frontier models and say, "I just don't see how this is going to be useful", then you're in the camp of those in the 80's who didn't understand personal computers, or in the 90's who didn't understand the web. In hindsight, the technologies evolved massively and found routine use cases that no one initially predicted.
I think my main contention about the analogy is that Mach 1 cars are sort of a ridiculous target, a thing that only happened once just as an attempt to break a barrier, more like a tech demo. Billion dollar startups are very rare of course, but they are real things that happen for practical reasons as part of the industry.
Saying that the person you replied to was looking for the former when they really wanted the latter seems uncharitable. Especially given that replacing most of the engineering department doesn’t seem to be too outside the scope of what some in the space are promising(?).
It is a terrible analogy that shows terrible thinking.
After all, there's one thing we can bet with more confidence on: delegating thinking to this mediocrity machines is affecting the ability to do the same in scores and scores of previously smart people.
Terrible thinking? Delegating thinking to mediocrity machines? "Previously" smart people? I don't think you can project your own limited and malformed understanding of the world any harder. Please go touch grass and learn how to engage with others on the internet without being so negative.
yes, it's just bad thinking. It's a malformed comparison that misunderstands the conversation.
Delegating thinking to mediocrity machines:
Based on the statistical nature of their underlying math, LLMs are by definition mediocrity-producing machines, especially if you understand the etymology of mediocre.
Maybe my understanding of the word is limited and malformed, or maybe you could try to develop one that takes into consideration the humanities, art, the sublime, love, emotions, and everything that makes humans human, instead of looking at the world through the small, mechanistic lens of the hyperengineerization of everything.
No, you mentioned his discussion of the "billion dollar one person startup", which we can both agree is a fanciful idea and more of an eventual "possibility" that will of course not occur as once anyone can be a billionaire, the whole system is going to change.
However, your "tasteless high level wanking" is not a quote from Altman, it's a vague and directionless insult that manages to sweep quite a lot of legitimate discussion about the future of automation and professional work under its thumb.
It's wrong because you're saying, "where are the billion-dollar one-man startups?" in the same way that I might look at a Benz Velo and go, "But it's so slow! Horses can go faster than that! Everyone saying cars are going to change the fabric of society are just tasteless wankers!"
The point is that you are applying future aspirations on the present-day relatively brand-new model space and getting upset that we aren't there yet.