Majority of AI Researchers Say Tech Industry Is Pouring Billions Into a Dead End
-
They're throwing billions upon billions into a technology with extremely limited use cases and a novelty, at best. My god, even drones fared better in the long run.
I mean it's pretty clear they're desperate to cut human workers out of the picture so they don't have to pay employees that need things like emotional support, food, and sleep.
They want a workslave that never demands better conditions, that's it. That's the play. Period.
-
They're all pretty fired up at the update velocity tbh
Yeah, nothing pleases us more than constant, buggy updates.
-
Yeah, nothing pleases us more than constant, buggy updates.
Don't be an ass and realize that ai is a great tool for a lot of people. Why is that so hard to comprehend?
-
This post did not contain any content.
Worst case scenario, I don't think money spent on supercomputers is the worst way to spend money.
That in itself has brought chip design and development forward.
Not to mention ai is already invaluable with a lot of science research. Invaluable! -
Optimizing AI performance by “scaling” is lazy and wasteful.
Reminds me of back in the early 2000s when someone would say don’t worry about performance, GHz will always go up.
Thing is, same as with GHz, you have to do it as much as you can until the gains get too small. You do that, then you move on to the next optimization. Like ai has and is now optimizing test time compute, token quality, and other areas.
-
They're throwing billions upon billions into a technology with extremely limited use cases and a novelty, at best. My god, even drones fared better in the long run.
I don't think any designer does work without heavily relying on ai. I bet that's not the only profession.
-
Don't be an ass and realize that ai is a great tool for a lot of people. Why is that so hard to comprehend?
It's not hard to comprehend. It's that we literally have jackasses like Sam Altman arguing that if they can't commit copyright violations at an industrial scale and pace that their business model falls apart. Yet, we're still nailing regular people for piracy on an individual scale. As always individuals pay the price and are treated like criminals, but as long as you commit crime big enough and fast enough on an industrial scale, we shake our heads, go "wow" and treat you like a fucking hero.
If the benefits of this technology were evenly distributed the argument might have a leg to stand on, but it is never evenly distributed. It is always used as a way to pay professionals less for work that is "just okay."
When a business buys the tools to use generative AI and they shitcan employees to afford it they have effectively used those employees labor against them to replace them with something lesser. Their labor was exploited to replace them. The people who actually deserve the bonus of generative AI are losing or being expected to be ten times more productive instead of being allowed to cool their heels because they worked hard enough to have this doohickey work for them. No, it's always "line must go up, rich must get richer, fuck the laborers."
I'll stop being an ass about it when people stop burning employees out who already work hard or straight up fire them and replace them with this bullshit when their labor is what allowed the business to afford this bullshit to begin with. No manager or CEO can do all this labor on their own, but they get the fruits of all the labor their employees do as though they did do it all on their own, and it is fucked up.
I don't have a problem with technology that makes our lives easier. I don't have a problem with copyright violations (copyright as it exists is broken. It still needs to exist, just not in its current form).
What I have a problem with is businesses using this as an excuse to work their employees like slaves or replacing the employees that allowed them to afford these tools with these tools.
When everyone who worked hard to afford this stuff gets a paid vacation for helping to afford the tools and then comes back to an easier workload because the tools help that much, I'll stop being a fucking ass about it.
Like I said elsewhere, the bottom line is business owners want a slave that doesn't need things like sleep, food, emotional support, and never pushes back against being abused. I'm tired of people pretending like it's not what businesses want. I'm tired of people pretending this does anything except make already overworked employees bust even more ass.
-
This post did not contain any content.
Technology in most cases progresses on a logarithmic scale when innovation isn't prioritized. We've basically reached the plateau of what LLMs can currently do without a breakthrough. They could absorb all the information on the internet and not even come close to what they say it is. These days we're in the "bells and whistles" phase where they add unnecessary bullshit to make it seem new like adding 5 cameras to a phone or adding touchscreens to cars. Things that make something seem fancy by slapping buzzwords and features nobody needs without needing to actually change anything but bump up the price.
-
It's not hard to comprehend. It's that we literally have jackasses like Sam Altman arguing that if they can't commit copyright violations at an industrial scale and pace that their business model falls apart. Yet, we're still nailing regular people for piracy on an individual scale. As always individuals pay the price and are treated like criminals, but as long as you commit crime big enough and fast enough on an industrial scale, we shake our heads, go "wow" and treat you like a fucking hero.
If the benefits of this technology were evenly distributed the argument might have a leg to stand on, but it is never evenly distributed. It is always used as a way to pay professionals less for work that is "just okay."
When a business buys the tools to use generative AI and they shitcan employees to afford it they have effectively used those employees labor against them to replace them with something lesser. Their labor was exploited to replace them. The people who actually deserve the bonus of generative AI are losing or being expected to be ten times more productive instead of being allowed to cool their heels because they worked hard enough to have this doohickey work for them. No, it's always "line must go up, rich must get richer, fuck the laborers."
I'll stop being an ass about it when people stop burning employees out who already work hard or straight up fire them and replace them with this bullshit when their labor is what allowed the business to afford this bullshit to begin with. No manager or CEO can do all this labor on their own, but they get the fruits of all the labor their employees do as though they did do it all on their own, and it is fucked up.
I don't have a problem with technology that makes our lives easier. I don't have a problem with copyright violations (copyright as it exists is broken. It still needs to exist, just not in its current form).
What I have a problem with is businesses using this as an excuse to work their employees like slaves or replacing the employees that allowed them to afford these tools with these tools.
When everyone who worked hard to afford this stuff gets a paid vacation for helping to afford the tools and then comes back to an easier workload because the tools help that much, I'll stop being a fucking ass about it.
Like I said elsewhere, the bottom line is business owners want a slave that doesn't need things like sleep, food, emotional support, and never pushes back against being abused. I'm tired of people pretending like it's not what businesses want. I'm tired of people pretending this does anything except make already overworked employees bust even more ass.
Your comment is on capitalism, not scaling ai or ai being used with effect.
-
Imo our current version of ai are too generalized, we add so much information into the ai to make them good at everything it all mixes together into a single grey halucinating slop that the ai ends up being good at nothing.
We need to find ways to specialize ai and give said ai a more consistent and concrete personality to move forward.
We already did this like a year ago mate. That was like v3 of gpt
-
Imo to make an ai that is truly good at everything we need to have multiple ai all designed to do something different all working together (like the human brain works) instead of making every single ai a personality-less sludge of jack of all trades master of none
They did that awhile ago, it was a big feature if gpt 3
-
I mean it's pretty clear they're desperate to cut human workers out of the picture so they don't have to pay employees that need things like emotional support, food, and sleep.
They want a workslave that never demands better conditions, that's it. That's the play. Period.
If this is their way of making AI, with brute forcing the technology without innovation, AI will probably cost more for these companies to maintain infrastructure than just hiring people. These AI companies are already not making a lot of money for how much they cost to maintain. And unless they charge companies millions of dollars just to be able to use their services they will never make a profit. And since companies are trying to use AI to replace the millions they spend on employees it seems kinda pointless if they aren't willing to prioritize efficiency.
It's basically the same argument they have with people. They don't wanna treat people like actual humans because it costs too much, yet letting them love happy lives makes them more efficient workers. Whereas now they don't want to spend money to make AI more efficient, yet increasing efficiency would make them less expensive to run. It's the never ending cycle of cutting corners only to eventually make less money than you would have if you did things the right way.
-
Your comment is on capitalism, not scaling ai or ai being used with effect.
If you can't see how the two are inextricably tied together, I don't know what to tell you.
This reeks of "keep politics out of our video games" kind of shit. They're not actually separate issues.
-
As someone starting a small business, it has helped tremendously. I use a lot of image generation.
If that didn’t exist, I’d either has to use crappy looking clip art or pay a designer which I literally can’t afford.
Now my projects actually look good. It makes my first projects look like a highschooler did them last minute.
There are many other uses, but I rely on it daily. My business can exist without it, but the quality of my product is significantly better and the cost to create it is much lower.
Your product is other people's work thrown in a blender.
Congrats.
-
If this is their way of making AI, with brute forcing the technology without innovation, AI will probably cost more for these companies to maintain infrastructure than just hiring people. These AI companies are already not making a lot of money for how much they cost to maintain. And unless they charge companies millions of dollars just to be able to use their services they will never make a profit. And since companies are trying to use AI to replace the millions they spend on employees it seems kinda pointless if they aren't willing to prioritize efficiency.
It's basically the same argument they have with people. They don't wanna treat people like actual humans because it costs too much, yet letting them love happy lives makes them more efficient workers. Whereas now they don't want to spend money to make AI more efficient, yet increasing efficiency would make them less expensive to run. It's the never ending cycle of cutting corners only to eventually make less money than you would have if you did things the right way.
Absolutely. It's maddening that I've had to go from "maybe we should make society better somewhat" in my twenties to "if we're gonna do capitalism, can we do it how it actually works instead of doing it stupid?" in my forties.
-
This post did not contain any content.
Meanwhile a huge chunk of the software industry is now heavily using this "dead end" technology
I work in a pretty massive tech company (think, the type that frequently acquires other smaller ones and absorbs them)
Everyone I know here is using it. A lot.
However my company also has tonnes of dedicated sessions and paid time to instruct it's employees on how to use it well, and to get good value out of it, abd the pitfalls it can have
So yeah turns out if you teach your employees how to use a tool, they start using it.
I'd say LLMs have made me about 3x as efficient or so at my job.
-
This post did not contain any content.
Pump and dump. That’s how the rich get richer.
-
Meanwhile a huge chunk of the software industry is now heavily using this "dead end" technology
I work in a pretty massive tech company (think, the type that frequently acquires other smaller ones and absorbs them)
Everyone I know here is using it. A lot.
However my company also has tonnes of dedicated sessions and paid time to instruct it's employees on how to use it well, and to get good value out of it, abd the pitfalls it can have
So yeah turns out if you teach your employees how to use a tool, they start using it.
I'd say LLMs have made me about 3x as efficient or so at my job.
Your labor before they had LLMs helped pay for the LLMs. If you're 3x more efficient and not also getting 3x more time off for the labor you put in previously for your bosses to afford the LLMs you got ripped off my dude.
If you're working the same amount and not getting more time to cool your heels, maybe, just maybe, your own labor was exploited and used against you. Hyping how much harder you can work just makes you sound like a bitch.
Real "tread on me harder, daddy!" vibes all throughout this thread. Meanwhile your CEO is buying another yacht.
-
Your labor before they had LLMs helped pay for the LLMs. If you're 3x more efficient and not also getting 3x more time off for the labor you put in previously for your bosses to afford the LLMs you got ripped off my dude.
If you're working the same amount and not getting more time to cool your heels, maybe, just maybe, your own labor was exploited and used against you. Hyping how much harder you can work just makes you sound like a bitch.
Real "tread on me harder, daddy!" vibes all throughout this thread. Meanwhile your CEO is buying another yacht.
I am indeed getting more time off for PD
We delivered on a project 2 weeks ahead of schedule so we were given raises, I got a promotion, and we were given 2 weeks to just do some chill PD at our own discretion as a reward. All paid on the clock.
Some companies are indeed pretty cool about it.
I was asked to give some demos and do some chats with folks to spread info on how we had such success, and they were pretty fond of my methodology.
At its core delivering faster does translate to getting bigger bonuses and kickbacks at my company, so yeah there's actual financial incentive for me to perform way better.
You also are ignoring the stress thing. If I can work 3x better, I can also just deliver in almost the same time, but spend all that freed up time instead focusing on quality, polishing the product up, documentation, double checking my work, testing, etc.
Instead of scraping past the deadline by the skin of our teeth, we hit the deadline with a week or 2 to spare and spent a buncha extra time going over everything with a fine tooth comb twice to make sure we didn't miss anything.
And instead of mad rushing 8 hours straight, it's just generally more casual. I can take it slower and do the same work but just in a less stressed out way. So I'm literally just physically working less hard, I feel happier, and overall my mood is way better, and I have way more energy.
-
If you can't see how the two are inextricably tied together, I don't know what to tell you.
This reeks of "keep politics out of our video games" kind of shit. They're not actually separate issues.
Nah bro, you were in an argument about wether or not AI can be a useful tool only to then pivot to a meta argument about ethics (which I agree with btw). But something can be a useful tool and unethical at the same time so your line of argument is nonsense.
