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Comment by brokegrammer | Hacker News Reader

I don't find it jaw-dropping because the idea is quite simple. Just feed the model an enormous amount of unethically sourced data, build data centers that cause droughts, and use all chips available so that normal people can't afford to buy RAM anymore.

We're all sacrificing great things in order to make these models more capable. Whether it'll all be worth it, only time will tell.

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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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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! ... "

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.

Yes, and I'm saying that generating predictable slop is totally free now, humans behaving like machines turns out to be replaceable by machines.

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.

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.

Then you'll also says that a printer is more intelligent than most of humanity because it can replicate a drawing better than any painter. Or that the ipod is a better musician, etc,...

I can't be amazed at tools. I only applaud the minds that create them. Someone that find a way to grow rice where everyone thought was impossible is way more worthy than whatever opus produced. Just like someone winning the Tour de France is more remarkable than the latest AI benchmark or whatever.

There's likely about a billion cyclists and most of them stand no chance at winning Tour de France ever in their life. And it's funny how we moved from growing rice towards inventing the agriculture.

And look I don't know how to grow rice but I grew other staple foods before. I also wrote substantial texts and programmed computers for decades. Saying that farming is more intellectually challenging than writing or programming is plain ridiculous and counterproductive to whatever argument you were trying to make.

> Saying that farming is more intellectually challenging than writing or programming is plain ridiculous and counterproductive to whatever argument you were trying to make.

I’m not saying that. You invented it on your own.

What I’ve been saying is that writing and programming are not the sole indicators of intelligence. There are plenty of other skills that highlight the intelligence of people.

I don’t say that my compiler is intelligent because it can take my C89 code and optimize it to run on the latest architecture. I also don’t know the latest optimizations techniques. But I would credit the people that are working on GCC and the fact that they know more than me on the subject.

Saying that LLM are better than most humans at programming is like saying that calculators are better at math than most humans, or that a car is faster than humans. It’s a tool, and tools are created. The ones that are creating it are the ones deserving the praise, not the tool.

Speaking of inventing stuff, I'm not sure where you find me praising anything. It was statement of the fact, exactly as "a car is faster than a human".

> 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.

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?

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.

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.

>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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

> We're all sacrificing great things

Oh please.

> Unethically sourced data

Is that a great sacrifice?

> data centers that cause droughts

That's nonsense.

> normal people can't afford to buy RAM anymore

Lol? Another great sacrifice?

This isn't a healthy or sensible way to think.

How about total surveillance total thought control total power in a hands of few trillionaires in the near future. Drones killing undesirables with cheering crowds watching.

It is not like it is much different right now but it may be significantly worse.

And even that is one of the “good” outcomes assuming no ASI.

That is a bad outcome. But there are better possible outcomes that the doomers ignore. How about AI curing cancer? I think that alone is worth the risks.

By the time we spend all the earths resources to train AI models so that cancer is cured, we could have spent those same resources training real humans. The literacy rate of undeveloped countries is still abysmal. We could train more people and fund more research.

And humans can keep growing while AI can only grow if it has access to high quality training data. Who provides the data? Humans.

Then again, looking back, that’s the way history is made. Modern democracies in the west are built on foundations of slavery and colonialism; yet we cherish them as to all the greatness they have brought as well. We need some amount of tolerance to ambiguity, and LLMs are undoubtedly both extremely cool but also extremely concerning.

Edit: Note that I am not saying that this is good, or desirable; just that it is. The technology is here know and not going anywhere, with all the flaws of its conception. We can be skeptical and curious at the same time.

The west thrived by leveraging slavery and colonialism at the expense of everyone else. Then democracies were built by moving away from both slavery and colonialism so that the world can grow as a whole.

It's possible that we'll have to move away from AI at some point in order for society to continue growing.

Please tell me you're not so delusional to think that slavery or colonialism is a uniquely "western" trait. Empires, nation-states, and groups all sought to expand; some, for various reasons, did much better than others.

The ottoman empire leveraged slavery and colonialism just as much, and there's no progress to be seen from them, at least not when compared to the west.

It's the renaissance and the scientific and industrial revolutions, that's what gave the west the opportunity to thrive.

Unlike western powers, The Ottoman empire didn't use slavery and colonialism to create capital. Instead, it wanted slaves so that it could grow its military.

The west also made its goal to create a new world order while the Ottoman empire's goal was mostly revenue extraction. The British systematically deindustrialized India’s textile sector to turn it from a competitor into an exporter of raw cotton and an importer of Lancashire cloth. The Ottoman would opt for taxation instead of usurpation of an entire industry.

Scientific revolutions was already happening during the bronze age. The west simply leveraged existing systems while making use of violence and exploitation to rise to the top.

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