Comment by NitpickLawyer | Hacker News Reader

Comment by NitpickLawyer | Hacker News Reader

I just finished reading Service Model by Adrian Tchaikovsky [1], a really timely novel that deals with lots of open ended questions of AI, robots, humanity, control, self determination, and so on. Really recommend it if you're into these kinds of things.

> Premise Imagine that AI frontier progress stops as of 1 September 2026: AI becomes faster and cheaper, but it never becomes superhuman or improves considerably across the board.

I absolutely love this premise. I wrote a comment a few days ago about this very thing. I've had this "revelation" in early 2024, when using a small local model, that even if models never improve, I'd still have a few years of discovering all the things I could do with the models.

Really cool, hopefully we get some interesting and not overwhelmingly pessimistic stories out of this project. There's enough cynicism and negativity in the world. We could use some funny takes on everyone using openclaw2040 ran by fable. Shenanigans galore.

[1] - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/195790861-service-mod...

The more I use Fable the more impressed I am with it. I am still learning how to use it, same with gpt-5.6-sol. I don't think the model has changed much, but both models have gotten smarter in leaps and bounds as I've improved the documentation, context, how I provide work to them and how I specify success.

(And generally that consists of keeping only the very most relevant details and deleting a lot of the boilerplate I used to need for other models, it's a great trend.)

I am excited for the next tier of models, but I could readily work for the rest of my career feeling like I have superpowers with only what we have right now. I'm also very excited for the idea of these same strength models getting faster, and much, much cheaper.

>I am still learning how to use it

I find it interesting that we are still talking in terms of modifying our behaviour to accommodate the tools. Surely the point of LLMs is not to "learn how to use it" but as an extension of our own unique capabilities - the most personalised tool in all of history.

I think I would actually characterize it as a mutual change - obviously the model doesn't change as far as I can tell, but changing the harness and context changes its behavior so wildly that it might as well. Bit of a pas de deux - I learn, I change the context to teach it, it teaches me in turn, rinse and repeat.

The point of any tool is to learn how to use it best. That's the difference between slicing off your arm, or building a chair.

LLMs don't read minds. There's always a chasm between you (your ideas) and them becoming reality. Exactly how people cross that chasm is all the rage right now, and there are a million ways to do it - but just expecting the LLM to pull details out of a few words isn't going to produce anything decent.

You're gonna need both to be able to work with it effectively though, just like working with your hands and wood isn't the same as working with abstract architectures via characters and words on a screen, like we've done since the beginning of programming with English language rather than just numbers and formulations, like how it was in the beginning.

Going further, even programming languages "asks" that you change the way you work to make the most use of them. A Clojure developer has a very different development process than a Rust developer, and they're both efficient, right and correct in their ecosystem, but the experience differs vastly and Clojure for example would change you to fit itself, rather than the opposite.

I finished reading it recently, too. I thought it was quirky, delightful, and obviously exaggerated for entertainment and contemplation purposes. I've recommended it to a bunch of people, too!

It triggered one of my favorite weird activities: after reading a book that I fully enjoyed and feel was completely "worth it," I give myself a few days to float on that happy feeling. Then, I go look at specifically only one and two star reviews. And laugh. Man, some people hated that book!

Note that otherwise, as a rule, I basically never read reviews of entertainment, restaurants, hotels and similar before nor after. I'm just not interested.

>but it never becomes superhuman or improves considerably across the board.

With were AI agent clusters already are I'd say they have reached superhuman capabilities in a number of metrics. I for example am not going to go toe to toe writing exploits against the best models we have out. Faster and cheaper just means they can pear down and explore the problem space even faster than I already can.

Haven't read that one yet, but his Children of Time series is sooo good.

Yes, that book is a stark reminder (or prediction).

I couldn't believe it when the "real" news headline was reported - destructively scanning books.

I thought this was one of the less plausible parts of the book, Sigh! :)

Down the pipe, I think it's medium likely we'll start destructively scanning humans. Wild stuff, honestly.

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