A thing that bugs me wrt to #AI, #LLM, whatever pattern synthesis tech you want:
BINARY THINKING
I understand the hype is exhausting.
But this thing where someone plugs their ears and repeats reductive catechisms about AI is just as silly. The common trope lately is comparing it to Eliza.
The truth is somewhere in between, unevenly distributed across use cases.
Still, when this stuff works well it works well in life-changing ways.
I'd rate myself as a 75th percentile developer. My career success comes from crossing the functional map: add decent code to good product design, and you've got serious impact.
A year ago, I could only write code that I could, myself, imagine or make sense of.
Today, the ceiling on my coding skills is whatever I can come up with alongside #ChatGPT.
That is a vastly different ceiling. The evidence shows up for me constantly, as I tackle more ambitious projects and finish them more reliably.
A year ago, C++ defeated me. I bought books, I took notes, I googled.
And then I gave up. My reach exceeded my grasp.
This year? I shipped. Entirely thanks to ChatGPT’s multiplication of my power. Now, C++ I wrote makes my whole house more energy efficient, better-monitored, more controllable.
But the effects aren't just about managing complexity and unfamiliar code.
ChatGPT is a neurological prosthetic. A cognitive augmentation of my focus.
I don't have an easy relationship with focus. In fact, things that are dull are liable to fully defeat a software project that can't compensate with the pressure and excitement of a deadline
So I know: if I have a well-specified requirement I'd rather not write by hand, I can ask the #LLM to generate a first pass for me
#ChatGPT with browsing is now vastly superior to Google search for solving various Windows fuckups.
Could not figure out how to eliminate screen tearing in #Cyberpunk2077 using the new RTX raytracing tech, which disables VSync settings in the game.
Set ChatGPT loose on it and I had a working solution, including step-by-step instructions for changing my Nvidia card settings (you won't always get full details in an enthusiast forum!)
@danilo One of the nice things is video is really inaccessible to me (I can’t easily digest info from video and their transcripts are often not great) so for stuff like new things to know about the DMV, I was able to get relevant info (like in screenshot) vs an actual DMV link that didn’t actually tell me anything useful
See, it drives me nuts to see someone whose fiction is written into my firmware be so… counterprodutively misleading via sloppy critique
You get to the end of this toot without context, it’s easy to conclude there’s nothing useful happening in the space
When in fact, these tools are systems that have scooped up the intelligence and efforts of others, bottled them, and will help you reason and solve problems.
See how THIS frame immediately reveals labor implications?
What does it mean that companies exist which can absolutely alter the productivity of a given person?
What does is mean that the ROOTS of the system that provides this are other human beings who have gone entirely uncompensated for their contributions to that productivity?
I agree “AI” is a bad name. But when we frame the whole space as being as useless like a parrot, we are giving cover to an ENORMOUS heist
The biggest transformation of labor and labor relations since the steam engine
(1) the absence of creativity ( @cstross is pointing out that it's a copy-and-paraphrase engine, not a mind ) and the reduction of overall knowledge eco-system quality that covers from that
And
(2) it's plagiarism/labor theft/upwards wealth transfer on the order of the industrial revolution, if not checked.
The Luddites were libeled, but they had the right idea and resorted to smashing power looms only after they'd exhausted decades of asking nicely
@trochee it IS right to critique both, and the loudest voices are asleep on the job 50% of the time, to the great benefit of the monied first movers
I’m steamed, I guess, because the VAST majority of people barely have context and the popular, simplistic arguments deform the imagination needed for critical thinking
Even your point about creativity I think elides the actual creative inputs these systems channel, and the creative stimulus they provide, to the casual onlooker
copy-and-paraphrase tools are absolutely legit tools for artists and writers and creatives of all flavors -- I'd be dissing all of hip-hop and most superhero comics if I refused to treat conscious sampling, remix, and citations/shout-outs as art
But it's 100% done without any consciousness or citation, and can't coherently explain why it's doing what it's doing.
In the hands of a skilled artisan like you, it can be used to suggest other shapes it's seen, and you can "follow that suggestion"
But most managers and nearly all VP+ figures can't tell that it's generating a crappy simulacrum of a solution
And they're going to fire an awful lot of us artisans before the consequences of operating the power looms without skilled weavers fall out hard enough to change VP minds
Might kill the craft entirely (it did, for quality English cloth)
@trochee no doubt, and look how much more nuanced and productive this is than the memetic parrot fixation
I understand how it was necessary for experts to frame and defang AI risk that way for policymakers, but when it became part of the casual conversation, it derailed us in a way that’s so productive to the likes of OpenAI, someone in a decade would assume it was a psyop
@danilo it WAS a psyop -- "existential risk" was, and remains so
"Oo my tech is so powerful it might go skynet" is a SALES PITCH from sama
But you're right, there are two games in town: the skynet "critihype" sales pitch (the fast strike), and the "look at all those skilled creatives you can replace" sales pitch (the slow knife).
If we don't counter both, we're gonna get shanked by a Harkonnen
We gotta stay frosty on both. The individual labor of staying frosty and learning how we stay competitive in a world where these things give us greater performance margin
The collective labor interest of not getting dispossessed
It’s a complicated future that’s not easy to soundbite but meanwhile it’s crystallizing ALL the time, man
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