[makaking]

The arguably sketchy means used to get there —and the resulting side-effects— do not take away from the impressiveness of the emerging capabilities themselves.

I agree about the uncertainty regarding the value for humanity in the long-term. But that's not my point. Being jaw-dropped != being happy and cheering for it.

[brokegrammer]

It's certainly a great thing that AI is improving (I use AI to write code daily myself), but I wouldn't be calling it impressive because it's essentially all about money and government backing.

At some point, the chickens are gonna come out.

[breppp]

I am still impressed by the fact we have found a way to feed data to matter and get human surpassing intelligence, that's a very unexpected advance

[simonbarker87]

It’s not human surpassing intelligence though in my opinion. If we had the same constraints on that task then we would also come up with the idea of creating our own viewer and if, like the LLM, the knowledge to do so was embedded in our brain we would do it, it would just take longer because we can’t type as fast. So instead we would buy or compile a viewer since the problem is already solved.

[varjag]

IDK the models definitely do write qualitatively better prose (and better code) than the majority of people. If your definition of "human intelligence" is baseline performance of 0.2% of humanity it's certainly something else.

[skydhash]

Better code and better prose are not great indicators of intelligence. Can it help you survive in the middle of the jungle? Can it grow rice? Can it give you first aid? Intelligence is the ability to learn skills and adapt them to the situation. The importance of skills is contextual. Better prose and code is just education, not intelligence.

[varjag]

Imagine it's 2006, there's no LLM in sight and you're arguing on an Internet forum that growing rice is a better highlight of intelligence than computer programming or writing.

Also it absolutely is not education, as repeated failure to educate programmers without aptitude or drill essay-writing into general population has shown.

[mistercheph]

they don't, cite one example of well written LLM prose? they can definitely infer a lot more slop than people have patience to, and anyone writing or reading slop prose has realised this and replaced sitting around writing and reading slop wiith llm's writing and reading slop and then grug-brains paste 10k words of slop say "grok, pls summarize, no mistakes" and grok tells them "What a brilliantly written article! ... "

[varjag]

Have you ever received an email from trades folk, in the days before LLMs? I'm not saying it's a better writer than Hemingway but very likely better than most your classmates.

[ddalex]

> At some point, the chickens are gonna come out.

What does this mean ? AI will only get better and cheaper.

> essentially all about money and government backing

So is nuclear power, and once it came it didn't go away.

[brokegrammer]

AI is cheap right now thanks to governments or VCs agreeing to lose money. I can use DeepSeek to code all day thanks to the CCP.

Nuclear power benefits everyone. Who does AI benefit apart from a few vibe coders and a small amount of knowledge workers?

[watwut]

We have certainity it will be used to harm most people in the short term while pointificating about long term future. CEO class is very open with their vision and goals, none of them spell anything positive for us.

[derektank]

>We have certainity it will be used to harm most people in the short term

How will it harm most people in the short term, exactly?

[Grombobulous]

Taking jobs away, obviously.

And the only reason no longer working is a bad thing is that nobody trusts our government to create a universal welfare system.

[derektank]

It seems very unlikely to me that most people will lose either their current job in the short term, or their ability to find work at all in the medium term.

It does seem like something to worry about for a small percentage of people in the short term (just as the China shock hurt a number of manufacturing workers in the 90s/00s) and maybe a majority of people when AGI exists, but who knows when that will be.

[Grombobulous]

Sure, though I think you can understand how most laypeople don’t really feel like the risks are worth the reward.

The people at the top are guaranteed to benefit. The people at the bottom probably figure they have a very low chance of benefiting.

[watwut]

The expression "becoming obsolete permanent underclass" CEO crave so much pretty much explains it.

If they succeed in their stated goals, most will be permanently unemployed, with no political power and the government will be a.) fascist b.) feudal.

[derektank]

I’m simply not seeing the certainty you’re seeing. There are lots of risks associated with power concentration, but I’m not seeing evidence of that yet. What I am seeing are open weights models, and even just competition between closed weight model providers alone, turn these systems into commodity products. Additionally I am not seeing any kind of massive labor demand destruction, even though we’re nearly 6 months into the middle of a global energy supply shock. Maybe your fears are realized eventually but I do not think (a) they are certain or (b) they will happen in the near term.

[brokegrammer]

Exactly. I'm a nerd too and we nerds can real hypocrites because we spend too much time alone. I will happily turn a blind eye to world suffering if it means I get to work less but get paid the same.

AI CEOs aren't different. At some point we'll have to admit that we're sacrificing others for our own benefit.