lbrito

https://trustworthy.technology/ is throwing a 502

Dear God, why would anyone - more than once - downvote this? Its simply one of the best novels ever written. I hope it was downvoted by a clanker, not a real person.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, by Shoshana Zuboff. Can't recommend it enough

There are movements against consumerism and the environmental impacts of industry in general. Greenpeace is over half a century old.

The differences with AI are: 1) we are starting off (mid 2020s) from a baseline point of already being in a hopelessly shitty situation, past the 1.5C warming target; and 2) Electronics, chips, data centers etc were already a thing for a long time, but industry took _decades_ to ramp up production to pre-AI levels, and these things are used everywhere for a huge number of things. Now we're consuming electronics/data centers/water/power at an unheard-of rate, and for a single purpose (AI) with questionable benefits, besides the private interests of a handful of people.

If you recall history past the last 5 minutes, you will remember that people have indeed been enraged with the environmental costs of things for a long time. Its just that AI seems to have induced a mass amnesia, and people tend to forget about what happened pre 2024.

>and wives forbid the partnered up guys to hang out with their single male friends on the other days

Sounds pretty mean!

A safer currency and rate would be $1MWh/hr

Yes, but Have You Tried the Latest Model?

/s

Can you link that? I'm pretty certain Matz is fully AI pilled. Most of this recent Ruby work is "Co Authored by Claude".

I've been reading such arguments more or less every day for years now: dude, you need to try the latest model. Forget about last week's model, it didn't work. This week's model is the real deal.

Jira, is that you? Have you become sentient?

That worldview assumes that technology is like rain or an asteroid shower, and we just have to accept it. Its not. Humans make technology and decide what is going to be used.

No technology is inevitable. Technology isn't nature.

Can you expand on that? I couldn't find sources

10% of a software engineer salary is a lot of money. That's just ridiculous.

Like the other commentor said, its just going to be a net negative, because whatever productivity increase you supposedly do get, you will see exactly 0 of that translated into salary increase.

Worry not, for I am using Claude right now. I would never question the doctrine of AI usefulness and productivity. Please scrap that J'accuse draft, sir, for I would never commit blasphemy against AI, I promise.

Its easy to be optimistic when you're sitting on millions (dhh). You literally don't need to care about how any of this affects your job security.

AI-psychotic and proud!

>or they can't figure out how to become profitable after all this.

The AI white pills will argue they already are vastly profitable - although they always, always leave out the small detail of externalities (AI R&D costs and data center-related capex). Of course if you remove the two largest costs, the thing will be profitable.

My intuition is that ultimately the US federal government sustains the whole thing financially, and profitability questions will be dismissed for as long as it continues to do so

Shit, I'm also hosting with them. Somehow I missed that post. I've been watching Kurt's AI-pillness advancing over time, but I didn't expect it to metastasize so quickly.

What a strange time. Kurt himself writes that they've had the best quarter ever, and yet he feels confident enough to steer the ship in a completely new direction.

The US side, of course. The last 100 or so years of history make it very clear.

I don't understand what is supposed to come next. So its not Ruby on Rails anymore. What is it? Are agents going to magically convert all the RoR ecosystem to Rust or Whatever?

He's celebrating it as a reality that is already here.

The author uses a strange definition of teleoperation.

Following GPS directions is no different than assembling an Ikea furniture by following the instructions. So I guess Ikea has been teleoperating millions of humans for decades?

Some devs are, some aren't. I've seen some numbers and its more or less a 50/50 split. HN comments kind of confirm that anecdotally.

Engineers seem to fall within a spectrum between "building" (enjoy the task of designing and programming something) and "completing" (enjoy seeing a finished product). AI enthusiasm correlates neatly with that dimension.

I feel no one talks about this, and yet it is glaringly obvious. Are we even solving the right problem? No one cares. Push code. Number go up.

That's an excellent point and kind of summarises the tension in LLM coding between the people being told to use it (developers) and the people doing the telling (managers). The latter are laser focused on the final product, the outcome, while the former are (were) more invested in the process.

Developers intuitively know that the development process would inevitably yield learnings that would shape and change what the final product could and should be, while managers typically dismiss this in favour of an illusion of productivity.

Claude Bopus has it for you. Its literally in the MCP. You should have harnesses with Sonneto. Have you even used the latest models? GPT Optimus have them.

Yes.

Their core belief system is morally abhorrent.

I'd rather have the world end than live in a world where EAs are listened to or respected.