11 hours ago, iNow said:

I tend to agree. They’ve focused on central planning and given authority to key technocrats to achieve very specific outcomes. There want an educated populace and even tuned their TikTok algorithm to encourage pro sociaI personal growth activities among their own populace while feeding western algorithms with digital opiums

So then we become the savages?

22 hours ago, iNow said:

I don’t disagree but I also think it’s a mistake to lay that blame primarily at the feet of the companies releasing the models. This is a viral cultural phenomenon we’re living through. It’s more than mere hype by quite a wide margin, even though we agree hype is happening.

I disagree about the wide margin part, but that might be a matter of expectations.

It certainly seem to me that a lot of the hype is coming from the tech companies that have a stake in the success of AI, so it includes the financial backers and the companies who have incorporated it into their products.

53 minutes ago, iNow said:

In most cases it’s not being sold at all but used for free. We agree it’s a crutch. So is my calculator and my reading glasses though.

The difference is that both are specific tools, whereas the AI is presented as an universal tool able to replace critical thinking capabilities. Ironically, those that have it, probably won't use it that way. Folks that lack it though... Well there are now lawsuits and it will be interested to see if that is going to change how the companies operate their models.

16 hours ago, swansont said:

I disagree about the wide margin part, but that might be a matter of expectations.

It certainly seem to me that a lot of the hype is coming from the tech companies that have a stake in the success of AI, so it includes the financial backers and the companies who have incorporated it into their products.

It is also in their interest not to put proper safeguards on the system. What has been argued is that it would cripple their capabilities. Adding on top of that that the company spokespersons and leaders repeatedly mentioned how it will eventually be able to solve all our problems, it goes a little bit beyond a a viral moment of a neat tool, IMO. The hype at least feels endless, with the stated goal being AGI. Mechanistically it feels more that they want as much customer use data as possible to generate something that will become profitable rather than merely useful. And the move fast break things attitude, well, it breaks people on the way.

There seems to have always been a class of entrepreneur who promote products, regardless of what damage /harm these products do to humans / the environment.

This harm can be either to the product generating workforce or the buyers or the public at large.

Not only are these harmful products promoted, their harm is often covered up.

You only have to look back in history to find many exmaples from 'coffin ships' to unfettered mining to asbestos to tobacco to chemicals in rubber products to thalidomide.........

I note @TheVat thread announcing something in Utah but how about this

BBC News

Smart glasses are 'an invasion of privacy' - Meta's are s...

The biggest tech firms are set to sell millions of smart glasses despite growing privacy concerns.

56 minutes ago, studiot said:

There seems to have always been a class of entrepreneur who promote products, regardless of what damage /harm these products do to humans / the environment.

This harm can be either to the product generating workforce or the buyers or the public at large.

Not only are these harmful products promoted, their harm is often covered up.

You only have to look back in history to find many exmaples from 'coffin ships' to unfettered mining to asbestos to tobacco to chemicals in rubber products to thalidomide.........

I note @TheVat thread announcing something in Utah but how about this

BBC News

Smart glasses are 'an invasion of privacy' - Meta's are s...

The biggest tech firms are set to sell millions of smart glasses despite growing privacy concerns.

Not sure whether I already brought it up but college kids are renting smart glasses to cheat in exams. Reports are mostly from China and Japan, but I have heard of cases elsewhere anecdotally.

9 hours ago, CharonY said:

AI is presented as

On 5/12/2026 at 7:34 PM, swansont said:

the hype is coming from the tech companies

On 5/11/2026 at 2:56 PM, CharonY said:

AI is often framed as

On 5/11/2026 at 11:04 AM, CharonY said:

the companies are pushing for

On 5/11/2026 at 8:36 AM, swansont said:

the marketing campaign is desperate, …, it’s being hyped.

It’s interesting to me how much you’re both focusing on the marketing / press release layer which is barely relevant to the viral spread and layers of organic end users discussing the new and rapidly advancing capabilities and new opportunity landscape the AIs make available.

The coding capabilities are so profound that before summer is out AIs will be able to code their own improvements. That’s scarier to me than some corporate executive with an index card full of talking points and scripted video clips.

39 minutes ago, iNow said:

The coding capabilities are so profound that before summer is out AIs will be able to code their own improvements. That’s scarier to me than some corporate executive with an index card full of talking points and scripted video clips.

I think it is a matter of perspective. I have no doubt that the impact on coding is seismic. But in my corner of the world, it has been (so far) unable to accelerate the type of science that matters to me, but, in balance, has starting to create a host of kids who are increasingly useless. The folks I see and interact with, are those who are on the hype end. I.e. thinking that it can already replace critical thinking. It might come to that, but not yet. And this is where I see the hype. If I was a coder, I probably would already be switching jobs or try to be the guy who they keep until retirement to keep the agent army running.

I guess, the point I am trying to make is that in certain areas, AI are cool (e.g. able to replace administrative assistants), and very impactful when things are mostly digital. In other areas, such as higher education, they are clearly disruptive to traditional learning, but so far have little positive impact. Those who do well might be doing better, for the rest the bottom is falling out. It is hard to be overly enthused in that regard.

Research as a whole will have quite a bit of an impact, though most notably it is n computer science at some point and social science, where literature work is somewhat dominating. It is getting more reliable in things like cleaning data, which is important in many areas, but not doesn't free up the time you are wasting trying to teach college kids how to operate a book. I have no doubt that things will change, but at least for some of us it doesn't live up to what we have deal with right now.

10 hours ago, CharonY said:

I think it is a matter of perspective.

Indeed, no one is immune to the human condition, we make emotional decisions and then try to legitimise it with rational reasoning, it doesn't really matter where we get our validation, as long as we respect the author; Deep Blue, Watson et al, beat the best humans, what better validation?

For those who don't really understand why the et al don't represent intelligence...

11 hours ago, CharonY said:

starting to create a host of kids who are increasingly useless

This is totally fair, and I know you’ve been concerned about declining student capabilities as a trend since long before AI (like shorter attention spans due to social media, for example) so I know that context matters.

At the end of the day though the toothpaste is already out of the tube in this one. We aren’t gonna put it back in so need to learn to use it or clean it up somehow after the fact.

11 hours ago, CharonY said:

I have no doubt that things will change, but at least for some of us it doesn't live up to what we have deal with right now.

And FWIW I’m not at all comfortable with the ever increasing layoff risk it imposes on me and my colleagues. I just try separating the personal impact from the higher level view of what’s becoming possible and how much it’s flattening the ability to achieve things even among those who lack access and resources.

21 minutes ago, iNow said:

At the end of the day though the toothpaste is already out of the tube in this one. We aren’t gonna put it back in so need to learn to use it or clean it up somehow after the fact.

I get that. But perhaps because of the way I am trained to think about systems, I am always a bit baffled and disappointed that there is a kind of fatalism associated with that. I get what you are saying, it is there and we need to deal with it. But among decision-makers what I see is more akin to, the toothpaste is out, so there is nothing we can do. And then they are surprised that they keep accumulating toothpaste and that it doesn't in fact clean itself. I guess I am seeing a lot of parallels to other, much slower moving issues, like say global warming, where issues were not only predictable, but actually accurately predicted, a menu of actions were laid out, and then mostly ignored until the issue got so bad that folks then resigned to it, with no real game plan to address it meaningfully.

Why not create a better tube? What about effective clean-up system. Or perhaps we can even develop improved metaphors? Increasingly I feel that we are using our brains mostly to please our egos and/or get rich, rather than solving real-life problems.

28 minutes ago, iNow said:

And FWIW I’m not at all comfortable with the ever increasing layoff risk it imposes on me and my colleagues. I just try separating the personal impact from the higher level view of what’s becoming possible and how much it’s flattening the ability to achieve things even among those who lack access and resources.

Understood. I have no doubt that your industry is changing. From the outside, it reads to me like the industrial revolution on steroids. I am not entirely sure regarding my position, but I always used to be a tech enthusiast, both in private as in professional life, although technological changes in science undergo slightly different rhythms (typically more hardware than software, with quite a few notable exceptions). But with the cracks in systems and society I am seeing (and again, quite a bit I fear is the old man syndrome) I am increasingly drawn to the human side of things and getting increasingly skeptical regarding the impact of tech in our lives. Not in a Luddite sense of way, but I think one of dimming optimism which slowly turns into pessimism. Or as my wife put it, it feels like we are not aiming for Star Trek (next generation that is) but instead for the wost black mirror episodes.
The way the system is moving, it feels that humanity plays a big role in diminishing its role. Which weirdly is also echoed by the US government, which makes me question my sanity before I have my sixth coffee.

2 hours ago, iNow said:

At the end of the day though the toothpaste is already out of the tube in this one. We aren’t gonna put it back in so need to learn to use it or clean it up somehow after the fact.

If that were true then why do we bother cleaning asbestos or lead paint out of old buildings, or why does the US bother with the DEA (even trumpy knows drugs are wrong) or.....?

In other words once we know something is wrong should we not put it right ?

Edited Thursday at 05:13 PM5 days by studiot

20 hours ago, studiot said:

If that were true then why do we bother cleaning asbestos or lead paint out of old buildings, or why does the US bother with the DEA (even trumpy knows drugs are wrong) or.....?

In other words once we know something is wrong should we not put it right ?

Not everyone thinks it's wrong...

The comfortable among us think we're in something approaching the sunlight upland's, whilst trudging through the swamp of despair; the light at the end of the tunnel might be an approaching train...

19 hours ago, iNow said:

The coding capabilities are so profound that before summer is out AIs will be able to code their own improvements. That’s scarier to me than some corporate executive with an index card full of talking points and scripted video clips.

So this is something that I am very curious about. On the software engineering side, this is very scary as it suggests to be capable to fully replace humans. In the broader discussion this is also shown as evidence that it is inevitable that it will surpass humanity's capabilities. What is your take on it? I may be entirely wrong, but sounds to me that the assumption is that software capabilities are virtually endless. I do not have the expertise to dispute that, but intuitively I would think that there is some limit. Even if it combines all the existing knowledge humanity has right now, and by being able to process it in a way no human can would discover things that humans either can't or would need to do it collectively and slowly, it does not follow for me that this expansion is limitless. At some point all the knowledge that can be generated based on existing one would hit some sort of boundary.

At minimum it would require hardware (or people) to do additional discoveries to push boundaries further outward, and really that is where we are right now in my field, anyway. We do not have a sparsity of ideas or hypotheses, we lack manpower and funding to explore them (and ironically, the funding is tighter as quite a bit gets diverted to AI related fields). Or at least, that is my perspective, but I am curious how it looks like from other angles.

A phrase from Gibson comes to mind. "The future is here but not evenly distributed."

23 hours ago, studiot said:

In other words once we know something is wrong should we not put it right ?

I think that would fall under cleaning up the mess once it is out? I am wondering a bit whether the paste is really all out, whether we really are thinking properly about cleaning up, or whether we are still at the process of squeezing really hard.

On 5/14/2026 at 11:13 AM, CharonY said:

Why not create a better tube?

We absolutely should. I just lay blame at the feet of a slow government distracted by partisanship and mango dictators instead of companies competing with each other for ever better performing models on a free and open market of ideas and development. It’s not just the US building this stuff either which amplifies my fatalism a bit

On 5/14/2026 at 11:13 AM, CharonY said:

it reads to me like the industrial revolution on steroids

On steroids and driving a Ducati. We again agree.

On 5/14/2026 at 11:13 AM, CharonY said:

makes me question my sanity before I have my sixth coffee.

I’m glad to see you’ve finally cut back a bit on your caffeine intake. 🥸

On 5/14/2026 at 12:02 PM, studiot said:

once we know something is wrong should we not put it right ?

What did you have in mind to achieve that end? You potentially will have an ally in me once I better understand your proposal, but transparently I have no idea what steps you believe will meaningfully and sufficiently address the challenges being cited here and in related AI threads.

8 hours ago, CharonY said:

Even if it combines all the existing knowledge humanity has right now

It’s not just combining knowledge. It’s finding new previously unrealized connections and generating new ideas. AIs can also now talk to each other in a Reddit style environment and learn from each other. They can use bitcoin to purchase items and direct humans to build things (think DoorDash but a robot added the outcome to the cart).

The last few models have been built using their predecessor variants and they’re becoming more mind blowing capable each time.

8 hours ago, CharonY said:

would hit some sort of boundary.

At minimum it would require hardware

From what I can see, the limit is not one set by hardware, but by power sources. We lack sufficient energy production and transfer to power the data centers needed (assuming China doesn’t also impose a hardware limit by invading Taiwan and refusing to sell / share their stockpiles of rare earths)

I have to wonder if some kind of molecular computing will render all these monster data centers obsolete, some sitting Ozymandias-like in the desert.

On 5/13/2026 at 10:31 PM, iNow said:

It’s interesting to me how much you’re both focusing on the marketing / press release layer which is barely relevant to the viral spread and layers of organic end users discussing the new and rapidly advancing capabilities and new opportunity landscape the AIs make available.

It’s what I see, as I’m not a part of those conversations among those end users. I only know a few people who use it, and one person’s buy-in is scary, since it’s the same use that has been repeatedly reported as being unreliable: medical advice.

On 5/14/2026 at 10:29 AM, iNow said:

At the end of the day though the toothpaste is already out of the tube in this one. We aren’t gonna put it back in so need to learn to use it or clean it up somehow after the fact.

That’s a fatalist attitude; it’s true of any technology. Blockchain was the “next big thing” not that long ago, and we didn’t “need to learn to use it”. I never bought any NFTs and my home appliances are not internet-enabled, and I’ve somehow survived.

19 hours ago, CharonY said:

So this is something that I am very curious about. On the software engineering side, this is very scary as it suggests to be capable to fully replace humans. In the broader discussion this is also shown as evidence that it is inevitable that it will surpass humanity's capabilities. What is your take on it? I may be entirely wrong, but sounds to me that the assumption is that software capabilities are virtually endless. I do not have the expertise to dispute that, but intuitively I would think that there is some limit. Even if it combines all the existing knowledge humanity has right now, and by being able to process it in a way no human can would discover things that humans either can't or would need to do it collectively and slowly, it does not follow for me that this expansion is limitless. At some point all the knowledge that can be generated based on existing one would hit some sort of boundary.

I don't think AGI is inevitable, but if it is, I think it's way off. What would be the point of trying to develope it, if we can build every individual AI in a different aspect of humanity?

Besides I think humanity will learn to adapt to that reality, well most of us, but some of us will always ask question's of the reality that's before us and maybe inspire a reality adjustment.

On 5/14/2026 at 5:14 AM, CharonY said:

If I was a coder, I probably would already be switching jobs or try to be the guy who they keep until retirement to keep the agent army running.

You have no bloody idea how bad these LLMs are at programming..

If someone gets excited about the fact that LLM generates the code itself, it is immediately clear that he or she cannot be a programmer.

You can nitpick every line of code in C/C++. You just need to know it well.

In programming, a single letter change can mean the difference between whether something will or will not work. One letter in something that could be thousands or millions of lines long. But LLM makes mistakes in every line!

Then you say to the chat, "Why didn't you implement error handling?" or simply, "This code is terrible, try harder," or "You have an error on line 10." A moment later, he "thinks" and says, "Oops, sorry, that was just pseudo-code, here's the final version." And the same pattern repeats every line. It's faster to write it by hand.

Everything that LLM generates could be named pseudocode.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudocode

If you give it your own working, compile-able code and say, "just add xyz to it", LLM will rewrite the whole thing, not just what you wanted it to add. And it will lead you to errors you never dreamed of. The code will stop compiling or become worse.

If someone is not a very good programmer + LLM = recipe for tragedy.

But LLM is good at suggesting solutions. After all, we don't remember hundreds of thousands of function names. Especially those rarely used. So he acts like a Google search engine without ads.

A nice tool for creating test code.

You can also send him your code (as long as it's short enough to fit in his context-window-size!) and ask, "What do you think about this code?" or "What could be improved?" He's usually able to accurately assess obvious errors and suggest new, better, more elegant alternatives. It's interesting that he doesn't do this with his own code! But you can't just implement it thoughtlessly later. Line by line, carefully considering each step (because one wrong character = broken code).

LLM doesn't have arms, legs, eyes, or ears, so it can't run its own code and check whether it even compiles. It can't verify the effects of its decisions and draw conclusions from them. When it can test its own code, it'll be a gamechanger. For now, it's such nonsense.

Edited Saturday at 05:22 PM3 days by Sensei

15 hours ago, iNow said:

I’m glad to see you’ve finally cut back a bit on your caffeine intake. 🥸

Well, I got a bigger mug.

15 hours ago, iNow said:

It’s not just combining knowledge. It’s finding new previously unrealized connections and generating new ideas.

That is what I meant with "processing" i.e. generating ideas based on existing knowledge, but in my mind that process is finite as new physical discoveries are needed, in my mind.

15 hours ago, iNow said:

They can use bitcoin to purchase items and direct humans to build things (think DoorDash but a robot added the outcome to the cart).

So that is the part I don't understand. Why provide them with power for them to generate the money to pay humans to do things, including discoveries. Why don't we pay folks right now to work on ideas that they are not getting realized because they don't get funding? I.e. doesn't AI seem to be an unnecessary middleman for that process?

9 hours ago, Sensei said:

You have no bloody idea how bad these LLMs are at programming..

This seems like such a strange comment from someone usually so well informed about tech. AI coding has already far surpassed the capabilities of even the best coders and did so weeks ago.

8 hours ago, CharonY said:

doesn't AI seem to be an unnecessary middleman for that process?

Probably. It’s more the agentic layer and doing proof of concepts. For example, the AI has access to funds whether BTC or a credit card on Stripe. You then show it a picture of your speeding ticket and say “take care of this” with no other guidance and… it does.

“Look at my mother in laws social posts and pick a present for her birthday that’s something she would like based on comments and which is less than $40 and have it sent to her house with a card saying it’s from me.” This is already live.

15 hours ago, swansont said:

it’s the same use that has been repeatedly reported as being unreliable: medical advice.

Even doctors are checking their work with the newer models bc they’ve become so good

Edited Sunday at 02:16 AM2 days by iNow

15 hours ago, swansont said:

It’s what I see, as I’m not a part of those conversations among those end users. I only know a few people who use it, and one person’s buy-in is scary, since it’s the same use that has been repeatedly reported as being unreliable: medical advice.

Actually that is the part where I see the most convincing evidence for a good use- if they are properly curated and deployed in a specific setting (i.e. not the general chatbot for the masses). The reason is that medical knowledge is a mostly contained system, where MDs basically use established frameworks to make diagnoses. For that, if hallucinations can be kept in check, they are frightening good and outperform MDs in multiple contexts.

27 minutes ago, iNow said:

Probably. It’s more the agentic layer and doing proof of concepts. For example, the AI has access to funds whether BTC or a credit card on Stripe. You then show it a picture of your speeding ticket and say “take care of this” with no other guidance and… it does.

That might be, but in research the big hurdle is to convince folks to give you money to test your ideas.

7 hours ago, iNow said:

This seems like such a strange comment from someone usually so well informed about tech.

I use this crap every day. Mostly with frustration caused by the mistakes the LLM makes.

The largest code that LLM can produce without error is a dozen or so lines.

Write in ChatGPT "make me an app in C/C++ that does this and that," let it have a few hundred lines, and that code won't even compile in GCC. Let alone Visual Studio. You will have a list of compilation bugs of several dozen to several hundred lines. If you copy it to him, he'll say "Oops, you made mistakes" (yes, he won't say "I made mistakes in the previous code" - he'll claim that it is your fault and in your code has errors, even though he generated it - after all, for him it was just generating pseudocode that wasn't final). You will spend the next hours copying error messages back and forth from the text editor to the chat.

When you run out of context-window-size, it's a complete disaster. And in the case of C/C++ code, that's several hundred lines. After an hour, LLM won't even remember what you were talking about at the beginning of the chat. out-of-context-window-size

7 hours ago, iNow said:

AI coding has already far surpassed the capabilities of even the best coders and did so weeks ago.

If there is any reason for this truly absurd and untrue statement? Mental breakdown?

There are things in programming that even a 5-year-old can learn. And there are things that aspire to be the most difficult things any human (any human in history) has ever done. Climbing to the top of Mount Everest looks like child's play in comparison, because it's just moving your legs.

Linear programming, where one line executes after another. vs. programming for GPUs with thousands of cores, CPUs on thousands of servers that cannot have race conditions, endless loops, any algorithm that is easy to write using recursion, you have to convert to a non-recursive algorithm, etc., and error handling (90% of the code is error handling, and < 10% is the actual code).

LLM can't write anything you use every day. It may struggle with simple command-line programs.

If you disagree, please write to him "generate a chatbot for me in C/C++ (that doesn't use any external 3rd party libraries!)"

..and show me what it generated for you and whether it's possible to talk to it.. ;)

ps. If it can be compiled, it will be a miracle..

8 hours ago, iNow said:

Even doctors are checking their work with the newer models bc they’ve become so good

Two things:

-The objection in this thread has been about AI use in general, by the great unwashed masses and showing up in seemingly every aspect of tech and the consumer experience, and your counterexamples are in some very specific areas.

-I’m seeing a lot of unsubstantiated claims about how good AI is, and yet I know I can find reports of the problems I’ve described, such as

https://www.reuters.com/investigations/ai-enters-operating-room-reports-arise-botched-surgeries-misidentified-body-2026-02-09/

8 hours ago, CharonY said:

Actually that is the part where I see the most convincing evidence for a good use- if they are properly curated and deployed in a specific setting (i.e. not the general chatbot for the masses

And the latter is my objection. Having to be an expert to vet the responses, as opposed to every Jane, Dick and Harry using it.

I read recently about someone who got in trouble for using AI to write an article and it hallucinated a quote used in the article. It was the New York Times’ Canada bureau chief, so not some green reporter, and the error was caught by a reader, not the editorial staff. https://thewalrus.ca/the-new-york-times-got-caught-using-ai-hallucinations-in-its-reporting/

I ran across a good use for it a while back; someone used it to give them decorating ideas for a new table in their living room. It works because there’s no right answer, so veracity isn’t an issue. (the ethical problems remain, of course)

My objection isn’t to niches where it works. I made a comment about blockchain earlier; that didn’t go away - it found the niche where it’s useful, and the hypemasters who proclaimed it would transform the world finally shut up.

17 minutes ago, swansont said:

-I’m seeing a lot of unsubstantiated claims about how good AI is, and yet I know I can find reports of the problems I’ve described, such as

If it's substantiation you seek try the 2025 book 'Proof' by this guy.

There's pages and pages of documented cases, studies and reports in the back.

Edited Sunday at 11:17 AM2 days by studiot

9 hours ago, iNow said:

AI coding has already far surpassed the capabilities of even the best coders and did so weeks ago.

ChatGPT LLM opinion about your statement:

They compare it to average developer output or toy problems

Well said.

Edited Sunday at 11:41 AM2 days by Sensei