Promote yourself to CEO of your own company, and get the co-workers you work well with on board. Thats what all the greats did. HP, Microsoft, Google, Apple, etc.
Just don't tell management. Fight club needs corporate sponsorship. :D
9 karma · joined April 9, 2024
Just don't tell management. Fight club needs corporate sponsorship. :D
I got stuck in a loop when I tried the clearly stated "experimental" WebGPU feature in settings on an Arch Linux/firefox-156.0-1/AMD Integrated GPU workstation.
It kept reloading the game assets. Clearing site data in firefox settings resolved it.
If you just enjoy the sheer problem solving dimension of software development, and never intend to ship or use anything, and want to do pure research, go ahead. If its never being shared or released and its just going to die with you, then its by definition "inconsequential" and how you feel about it is your business.
Relocating to a new environment, when the old one no longer suits you, is an adaptation.
From what little I've studied history, it seems emotions run high among the population when truly disruptive technologies have emerged. Some are enthusiastic, some are terrified, some number of workers are displaced, etc etc etc.
Everything changes. Nothing changes.
I proposed to a co-worker 30 years ago the question "I wonder if software will someday write itself ? Like recursion ? A program that writes a program ?"
He burst out in laughter and called me an idiot.
At this point, I can conclude the idea made him anxious, and I'm probably not a complete idiot. V
"It’s also the nature of the agent automation to feel more like delegation to a clueless junior developer than automation, and that changes your relationship to the work.
In woodworking, the power tools didn’t reduce the woodworker’s emotional investment in what they made. The worker still felt like they’d made that thing out of wood themselves.
Some woodworkers might still use hand tools for a variety of reasons – some of them romantic, some of them, you know, just because it’s more fun.
But having a table saw doesn’t make you feel like you’ve asked somebody else to make the shelf, or table, or chair.
The nature of automation with Large Language Model tools feels substantially different from prior attempts at automation in coding. It’s an abstraction that feels like a delegation, not an automation, and separates you from the output.
That has an effect of making you feel less invested in the output and that takes away much the joy of coding. The flow state is also gone, the sort of focused state of mind that you get into when you’re really deep into solving a problem."
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This viewpoint, expressed by the author, makes perfect sense to me, but I don't see this as an AI or software industry problem, I see it as merely a recognition that something has changed. Well, yes, it has, and the question is not whether you are okay with it or not, but, rather, how are you going to adapt to the enviroment you inhabit that just changed ?
The goal for developers, either alone or in teams, is the same as it ever was ... ship a useful product. We've added data compression to our products and workflows for decades, and now AI allows us to add time compression.
Its exactly the same as the woodworkers relationship with power tools. The person building the desk still has to know how to design and assemble and ship a desk, it just takes less time with power tools. AI seems and feels no different to me.
To all my fellow developers, the identity crisis that results from the 5 year old next door being able to develop an app is optional. Adaptation to the environment in which you now live is not.
When you're done lamenting, you can get back to inventing, and show that 5 year old you're still the man. ;D
( 2 cents from a developer and woodworker, nothing more )
After reading others comments, I'm trying to imagine the utility of having AI training, inference, intelligence filtering, etc in space, like, spy satellites all sharing an AI hub, and that doesn't make sense either. They can just as easily download spy satellite images, and apply "as much AI as they can print money to buy" to it, and not be limited.
As a for profit company, google has a fiduciary obligation to not piss away money on projects that have no foreseeable commercial value ( unless fee contracted by an external entity to do so ).
I'm sticking with "flight validation for AI super weapons" as the only revenue stream I can foresee.
It ticks both the "potential revenue stream" and "legit R&D tax benefits" boxes.
NIMBY numbers rising on recent data center buildouts. People who think AI is going to destroy humanity. People experiencing real financial hardship due to AI job displacements.
If google is going to issue press releases, which sounds better ?
"Google putting data centers in space, not your backyard"
or
"Google testing TPU chips for doomsday skynet laser weapons"
The boys at the pentagon procurement department can read between the lines.
The AI industry spends crazy money to reduce latency and increase density. The act of placing resources in space, to be used by people on earth, only increases latency, and reduces density. The performance metrics are ops/power/space/$, not G ratings, unless its being validated for flight.
Aliexpress has Intel N100 barebones fanless units with 4x2.5G ports for $117
Passmark rating on the N100 is 5,556.
So ... 4-5 times faster, for 20% more.
Maybe thats why ?
3500 calories is the rule of thumb used by fitness enthusiasts to represent one pound of fat. Ignoring the fact that it takes about 2 calories per day to maintain 1 pound of body fat, eating an extra 100 calories per day ( half a can of soda +/- ) would result in 1 lb of weight gain in 35 days, or just over 1 month, without the person ever being aware they are overeating. Carry that forward for 10 years, and theres the extra 100 lbs many people are carrying.
This is a simple example, as other factors like processed vs unprocessed also come into play, but I think the point is clear:
Eating food without accounting for calories, is like running a business without accounting for the money. Both tend to not end well.
I've found that fasting, for 16-24-48 hours at a time, is simple, easily doable, and doesn't prevent me from sitting at my desk and getting work done.
After the fast is over, I switch back to normal meals and weight lifting.
For anyone else out there that needs to lose some pounds, you can do it. Find a method that works for you and do it.
You can view a slideshow of the gems here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTW2BzdsiOU
[NSFW] warning. Don't show it to your kids, but as an adult that can wrap their head around the idea of a greedy filthy female version of Gorden Gecko, you should be able to handle it. It's just art.
EDIT: I saw the highly sexualized images someone else was making, so yeah, there really is no safety rails on the generative possibilities that I noticed.