encyclopedism

> AIs are not conscious.

This is a completely reasonable and intuitive conclusion. The burden of proof rests on proving AI's are indeed conscious, the default is that they aren't.

Like AI/LLMS my desktop calculator is also not conscious, even as it is far better than me at computation.

An LLM is an algorithm. You can obtain the same result as a SOTA LLM via pen and paper it will take a lot of long laborious effort.

I really do find it puzzling so many on HN are convinced LLM's reason or think and continue to entertain this line of reasoning. At the same time also somehow knowing what precisely the brain/mind does and constantly using CS language to provide correspondences where there are none.

The simplest example being that LLM's somehow function in a similar fashion to human brains. They categorically do not. I do not have most all of human literary output in my head and yet I can coherently write this sentence.

I am surprised so many in the HN community have so quickly taken to assuming as fact that LLM's think or reason. Even anthropomorphising LLM's to this end.

> but doesn't it also make sense for the government to create the regulations that will make this easier to do in a trustless way?

That's a premise, which is the point. Many (I) think the government should NOT enact regulations. For example regulatory capture to reducing competition is one reason it may not be a good idea to do what is being asked.

I'll leave this here:

https://x.com/DavidSacks/status/2098973625252708460

I'll leave this here:

https://x.com/DavidSacks/status/2098973625252708460

He doesn't need anyones permission to do so, go ahead no one is stopping you! If you feel so strongly about it, lead by example. Perhaps others will follow, maybe even China. Regardless, backup your sentiment with actions.

Also everyone, collectively, stop thinking about neural networks too 'hard'. Whilst you're at it stop doing maths too!

Exactly

He doesn't need anyones permission to do so, go ahead no one is stopping you! If you feel so strongly about it, lead by example. Perhaps others will follow, maybe even China. Regardless backup your sentiment with actions!

Everyone, collectively, stop thinking about neural networks too 'hard'. Whilst you're at it stop doing maths too!

Your point is a tautology. The actual point being made is about changing circumstances affecting large swathes of society which may mean an increased possibility of worsening circumstances for said humans. Not that it will mean humans are no longer able to do programming.

The core issue is that AI is taking away, or will take away, or threatens to take away, experiences and activities that humans would WANT to do. Things that give them meaning and many of these are tied to earning money and producing value for doing just that thing. Software/coding is once of these activities. One can do coding for fun but doing the same coding whilst at the same it providing value to others/society and financial upkeep for you and your family is far more meaningful.

For those who have swallowed the AI panacea hook line and sinker. Those that say it's made me more productive or that I no longer have to do the boring bits and can focus on the interesting parts of coding. I say follow your own line of reasoning through. It demonstrates that AI is not yet powerful enough to NOT need to empower you, to NOT need to make you more productive. You're only ALLOWED to do the 'interesting' parts presently because the AI is deficient. Ultimately AI aims to remove the need for any human intermediary altogether (or for humans to provide intent only). Everything in between is just a stop along the way and so for those it empowers stop and think a little about the long term implications. It may be that for you right now, it is a comfortable position financially or socially but the future you in just a few short months from now may be dramatically impacted.

As someone said "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes".

AI is different.

The exception that proves the rule.

Do what makes you happy? Comment's like these ignore the reality of life for the vast majority of people. Being 'free' enough to say that is a very privileged position to be in. But do take a care and consider others less fortunate.

People have to earn a living, most people can't do what makes them happy and earn a living. In fact ones free time where one lives the very rhythms and patterns of life are dictated most often by your job or your ability to obtain one.

The core issue is that AI is taking away, or will take away, or threatens to take away, experiences and activities that humans would WANT to do. Things that give them meaning AND are tied to earning money at the SAME time.

One can do math for fun but doing the same math where it provides value to others/society and financial upkeep for you and your family is meaningful too and often sought after.

Alarming normalisation. Issues I see off the top of my head:

- Governments can now learn even more about you when they confiscate your device.

- Devices confiscated at airports provide a full history of you.

- Privacy issues: will my conversation with someone using this tech truly be private? Do I have to be careful what I say around everyone by default? Always have clear thought out opinions?

- Personal relations: spouses, friends, relatives demanding to see your history to check up on you and what you've been 'thinking'?

- Society where nothing can be assumed to be private by default

- Slippery slope to a future where you have always on location, cameras, mics for everyone with a mobile device. A complete reshaping of society. Therefore being unable to count on previous societal norms

Anyone got any other issues they can think of?

He is lamenting the tech in a similar manner to lamenting social media. Social media is also 'tech', and yet I don't think we could poor quite enough scorn on it, it deserves more!

I understand the qualities of LLM's but I do fear that we might lose much which once lost may be gone forever. That gives me pause for thought.

> I mean, how many more times do you need to repeat them?

Exactly! It's not as if humans are special (though LLM's certainly are). Humans, they've been the same for thousands of years, same old stories (there's like only 7 archetypal stories they've ever come up with). Same old poems, love this, romance that blah blah blah!

We certainly don't need yet another anti-AI article, same as all the others. Though as it's written entirely by a human who must have thought about every word, certainly poles apart from an LLM generated article one, I'll give him credit for making the effort.

I agree with your sentiment. Simply saying 'AI' is not the reason, clouds what is actually happening. To illustrate I suggest playing the word swapping game. Swap AI in the sentence "AI isn't the problem" with, guns, drugs, gambling, or dare I say social media!

Human behaviour is complex. Patterns of behaviour that occur in general (there are always outliers of course) dictate so much in society, culture, politics and inter-human relations. Changing these behavioural patterns will affect meaningful real world change.

Social media has affected change in human behaviour. I suspect AI will too. We are starting to see the first shoots of the changes AI will bring.

Human behaviour on the average will choose convenience over effort. It is very difficult to buck this trend societally. To be clear, AI provides an immense amount of convenience.

Imagine a multi-modal model with 1000's of tokens per second. Realtime inference for a host of applications. This is a BIG deal and will change the landscape in unfathomable ways.

The https://chatjimmy.ai demo was impressive.

Once models settle down this makes sense. Imagine a cartridge with a physical model on it. You purchase a cartridge and stick it in your computer/phone/server. Want to upgrade? By a new 'cartridge'.

This should bring inference cost down dramatically, I wonder how OpenAI/Anthropic feel about that.

It's worse, HN seems to suffer from a higher than average pedant count. The analogies are missed completely!

I agree the bottom line ROI largely isn't there and won't be in the future either. The upside for companies is not the bottom line but the potential savings from hiring fewer developers or cutting jobs.

As AI based development processes continue to improve, the confidence level employers will have in safely cutting jobs will increase. The longer term impact of AI is HR savings rather than introducing new capabilities into business.

Economics drives behaviour more than people think. Your employer cares about results. It's 'YOLO, LGTM' all the way down now.

A more reasonable extension is:

machine code > assembly language > high-level programming language > what ever works for business i.e. prompts/ai/LLM

If it works for business then increasingly that's all that will count. Clean code, static vs dynamic any the other principles or debates will give way as long as AI produces results. The economic ends justify the means.

I couldn't find the prompts you used. They are the source code now so would be interesting to view them.

> Why must this result in less joy.

The parent's point is better articulated as: programming COUPLED with being paid do it is what is now less enjoyable due to AI.

You are free to enjoy pretty much anything but you may not necessarily be paid to do it.

> We are no longer the only world in existence, we are no longer the center of the universe.

Nothing has changed in this regard. We were the centre prior to AI then we still are after it. The human ability to comprehend makes us the centre. The squiggle: 8 means nothing to an ant but to a human it is the number eighth. AI is something only humans comprehend beyond that what does AI matter and to whom would it matter to?

Anecdotally at least I've seen devs who have checked out by completely flipping careers or doing something zany such as living off grid. Unfortunately like most things your options are limited to your economic circumstances.

I'm not saying it's economics in a vacuum. I'm suggesting that it is LARGELY economics.

> There'd be middling salaries for developers across the country, and probably actually the bulk of the work would actually happen in say latvia or laos

Yes that's what happened and it's called offshoring. If you're in the US or Europe it happened to manufacturing too. It's in China for economic reasons. That doesn't mean there isn't any manufacturing going on in your country.

It is not always the case that there is a way to adapt to a certain thing.

How can the immense investment in AI pay off? AI is doing away with human intellectual input.

There are 25 million developers globally, AI efficiency may mean in the future we need only 15 million. That 10 million saving is the return on investment. Those 10 million developers aren't adapting sorry.

For many people coding isn't just a means to an end but a pleasure in itself. Coding by hand, the raw intellectual challenge to my mind has been one of the greatest 'jobs' you could have. Earning money for what is essentially 'solving puzzles' is amazing!

With vibe coding that's out the window and a race to the bottom to remove as MUCH intellectual human input is at hand. To reiterate Human intellectual input is what AI is attempting to do away with or reduce as much as possible.

I would guess that most HN users are employees. By far the largest dictator of your day to day life is your employer. Sentences such as this one from the article

"Hopefully, many developers will slowly rediscover their love for programming when they can apply it to problems that actually interest and challenge them"

Simply to not understand this dynamic. The economics will dictate what will happen and NOT much else.

Precisely my point. Say for examples planes, trains or automobiles, humans may make way more errors than a computer does but you can bet your bottom dollar the threshold for allowing computers to autonomously control the above is way higher. Because the expectation is that if it is a computer it ought do it far better/safer.

Because Claude isn't a human the perception of it is different.

Humans can fly planes, computers too can fly planes. I'm not going to give the same leeway to a 'computer' flying a plane that I would to a human. Because we understand that humans are just that, humans. The demands placed on a computer are so very different.