AI HYPE - Explained by Computer Scientist || El Podcast EP48

Join El Podcast Host, Jesse Wright, in a thought-provoking conversation with special guest Dr. Emmanuel Maggiori (computer scientist) as they dissect the reality of AI applications amidst the prevailing hype. Drawing from his extensive experience in the tech industry, Emmanuel sheds light on the nuanced challenges and ethical considerations surrounding AI implementation. The discussion navigates through real-world examples, illustrating the importance of practical, problem-solving approaches over exaggerated claims. Listeners are encouraged to reevaluate their understanding of AI's capabilities and explore ventures that offer tangible value. Tune in for a candid exploration of the intersection between AI, business, and genuine human needs.
Subscribe now and join us for this engaging and informative episode!
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CHAPTERS
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00:00 Intro/Start
01:01 Tech Jobs are Overstaffed
10:02 The Boundaries of AI, Machine Learning and Self-Driving Cars
19:22 Bill Gates, Elon Musk & Decoding the Motives of Tech Giants
23:57 From Chat GPT to Skynet
30:01 Career Paths in the Age of AI
40:26 Unpacking AI Research Biases
43:36 AI Girlfriends
48:34 Good Enough vs. Excellent Work: Thriving Amidst AI Transitions
58:44 AI Fears: Surveillance & Censorship
01:05:30 Amazon Fresh and AI Deception
01:12:13 AI…More Fantasy than Fact
01:19:48 Investing in Real Solutions
Special Thanks to Dr. Emmanuel Maggiori
BOOK: Smart Until It's Dumb: Why artificial intelligence keeps making epic mistakes (and why the AI bubble will burst)
a.co/d/6jt4V9E
WEBSITE: emaggiori.com/
Linkedin: / emaggiori
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#elpodcast #elpodcastmedia #TechIndustry #AIReality #PracticalAI #EthicalAI #RealWorldApplications #TechHype #AIChallenges #Entrepreneurship #InvestmentAdvice #BusinessSolutions #ProblemSolving #AIInnovation #EmergingTech #TechEthics #HumanOversight #AIvsHype #AIInvesting #PragmaticAI #AIAdvancement #AIUnderstanding #artificialintelligence

[@mr.fetching2267]

I have worked in Tech all my life and I have never seen someone be so honest about what the industry is actually like as an engineer or developer good work

[@TheManinBlack9054]

But this guy knows nothing about AI. With all due respect, he sounds like a fool. He does NOT understand how LLMs work. they are not coded liek expert systems, they are grown from data, we have no idea how they actually operate and hence why they make certain decisions

[@kozmaz87]

@@TheManinBlack9054and your reasoning is why we can't ultimately trust their output beyond providing entertainment value. If it has any level of importance you have to double check anyways.

[@BillClinton228]

Why is everyone complaining about the "shortage of good developers" if the job is so easy? Why are companies putting candidates through 3 or 4 rounds of technical interviews if you only need to work 6 hours every month? If this job was so easy they could save everyone a lot of time by simply hiring anyone on the spot to work 6 hours in 5 months. Also, it takes years to hone your skill at almost anything, whether you're a mechanic, plumber or architect but the tech industry is the only one where people with tons of experience and knowledge are considered "overpaid". You can't be serious?

[@TheReferrer72]

You know he does not understand software development if he thinks you can change two paragraphs of code? in ten minutes. Did he run any tests, does he understand the system? probably used to altering code on Jupyter Notebooks.

[@alex_lll]

Nah, he took one (let's assume not made up) example of him in investment bank and extrapolated it to entire tech industry. 3 hours of work in 5 months - oh please tell me the name of that investment bank, I'd love to work there because over the last decade all places I worked in (all of them big and well known companies) I and folks around me were constantly overworked and on the edge of burnout.

[@Kobayashhi]

25 years in IT and I confirm 100% what this fellow has said. The stuff I have seen....1GB spreadsheets that require guys working 24/7 to make sure it doesn't cras. AI is still a very very far fantasy for most businesses. In the 90s UML tools were supposed to replace developers...yeah right.

[@OnigoroshiZero]

Only 1 month later, and your comment has aged like milk. Your 25 years in IT just show that you were wasted expenses, because you definitely have no idea about the field or AI.

[@Kobayashhi]

@@OnigoroshiZero I studied AI while you were still wetting your diapers kid. AI is a fraud.

[@tlilmiztli]

@@OnigoroshiZero Nothing has changed fundamentally. You are just buying into the hype. Let me guess - you heard about chatgpt 4o and you think NOW ITS GOING TO CHANGE EVERYTHING! Right? XD Like all the previous ones... Hallucinations are there, will be. It gets marginally better but will not do 100% of work for you. Buy into hype if you want, I really dont care. Its more of the same.

[@danielgrove7782]

Definitely? Aged like milk? That does not sound like a professional...im intrigued..what is your profession?

[@gofastER]

You have 25 years of outdated knowledge…

[@arhabersham]

What a sober, mature approach to these developments ❤

[@OnigoroshiZero]

Sober, mature, and completely ignorant...

[@josiah5776]

Man, what universe are these guys living in? I had 20 years of hard death marches and 60-hour weeks. Nothing but working my butt off.

[@josiah5776]

@@relly793 Mostly e-commerce, but thankfully retired now.

[@sillysad3198]

i am working in software since 1993, the jobs that require actual work are those they pay the least, but the upper stages of the food pyramid do fit his description. the entire industry is mostly useless and where it is not useless it is harmful

[@williamwillaims]

​@@sillysad3198I'm sorry....you just described every industry... software, ai etc are only different in the fast hiring/lay-off cycle. Every industry the people at the top work less. Even middle management with endless meetings with no seemingly productive outcomes (I've wasted so much time in those meetings). Ai agents don't sleep, or.need coffee breaks.

[@sausage4mash]

that seems a familiar pattern in a lot of professions @@sillysad3198

[@2LegHumanist]

@@sillysad3198 I've been in the industry since 92 and I've only heard this narrative recently. The narrative used to be that we all have to leave the field in our 30s due to burnout.

[@GuaranteedEtern]

I doubt the next breakthrough in AI will be discovered by some guy in a garage - the problems that need to be overcome are massive and not even really well understood. A lot of the hype around AI comes from anthropomorphism and sci-fi fantasy.

[@TheManinBlack9054]

"sci-fi fantasy" you're talking about AI systems on your computer using the internet, you're already livin in sci-fi by a wide margin

[@GuaranteedEtern]

@@TheManinBlack9054 The technology we have now is more appropriately called Machine Learning and not AI - but I get it's definitional. I've never once felt that any of the tech I have used is intelligent in the sense it can reason or act with any agency.

[@DarkFox2232]

That breakthrough comes from anyone who manages to persuade dogmatic idiots that AI does not start for "artificial intelligence", because it is not intelligent. So, it can be done by guy in his garage. Then industry starts to focus on meaningful research. To understand what "human like" principle is represented by model instead of "intelligence". And once they do understand, they'll realize that tasks like driving cars are not suitable for this kind of self-arranged spaghetti code. But there are tasks which are suitable. 2nd breakthrough which may come from garage is network-collapse into tiny one doing same thing as big one, but with lower computational requirements.

[@zotriczaoh7098]

Point taken but it neglects human creativity (free!) which, I think, is key to the next steps in understanding the problems. Going back to the 1890s, the next great breakthrough in physics came from a patent clerk. He needed zero investment dollars. This is a problem. We make negative predictions which seem OK until one of those unknown unknowns comes along.

[@GuaranteedEtern]

@@zotriczaoh7098 I get the analogy, but all discoveries build on knowledge from before, and subsequent work builds on that. Even Einstein's theories didn't solve physics - we still have the elusive "theory of everything".

[@rogerbruce2896]

WOW, I have been working for the wrong companies. I have been in IT for 30 years and a developer for 20 plus. At all the companies I worked for I put in at least 50 plus avg of hard code developing a week. Many times over 60 hours and many many all nighters on tight deadlines. I guess those companies need a 'real' tech manager or director. I do agree about scrum, it can easily slow the process down unless you have a strong scrum master. I am currently an IT director and ensure my team stays busy in 'meaningful' work. Help get me work at one of these companies and I will set things straight lol.

[@bloopbleepnothinghere]

How can you possibly sling code for even 8 hrs straight a day, let alone 10 hrs and output quality code? In my 25yr career I've never met anyone who is capable of this. None of my reports can come close to that sort of marathon approach without burning out.

[@rogerbruce2896]

@@bloopbleepnothinghere well I did but never stayed at those companies long.

[@BorikGor]

​@@bloopbleepnothinghere Come over to Mainframe HLASM, mate, you'll see how it's done..

[@jichaelmorgan3796]

​@bloopbleepnothinghere how many hours a day or per week is average or ideal? And for someone more exceptional? Thanks!

[@timothyblazer1749]

Yeah... I certainly did many 60 hour+ weeks from 1993 to 2018ish, but SINCE then I've seen a massive drop-off. In fact I was recently hired by a small company because of my expertise and work ethic, saying to me "I can't tell you how hard it is to find an actual engineer, let alone a senior one."

[@liam3284]

"you need to be either highly positive or highly negative" So much of Tech at the moment.

[@gmdtvh]

I worked very hard and intensly in all my tech jobs. Often in Saturdays and Sundays. I'm software engineer. I'm exhausted.

[@sp123]

the only way to make real money is investing savings overtime or having a successful business. Labor helps for survival, but thats it.

[@piotrd.4850]

That's other facet of same problem - faqed up organisation and non-existant project and resource management.

[@AlvinLeong-me3iu]

We don't even understand human consciousness yet we are talking about giving it to machines

[@kyleolson9636]

Human consciousness formed from natural selection without intent. When the first digital agent gains consciousness, it probably won't be deliberate. It will be a "happy" accident. We likely won't need to understand consciousness to create it. Nature didn't even need to be conscious itself to create consciousness in humans.

[@vitalyl1327]

Consciousness is irrelevant. As soon as AI get a general problem solving ability it's an AGI, and nobody cares if it's "self-aware" or not.

[@haros2868]

​@@vitalyl1327that doesn't mean that when it gets general problem solving it will recursively exponentially get smarter. Also, without consciousness and intention, it cant have its own goals in order to solve them. It eill be blank and just a ML for many fields. So unconscious agi cannot intentionally get progressively smarter by its own even if we wanted it to do so... You are another victim of the fools propaganda about doomsday fictional scenarios... Impudent

[@amdenis]

We are not ‘giving it to machines’ so much as it’s an emergent capability of neural nets at scale, resulting from the fact that we ‘borrowed’ so much architecturally from nature when we created and have refined neural nets. Also, although “consciousness” is a commonly thrown-around term, I would call it “self-reflective capabilities” and the beginnings of metacognition.

[@ChrisAthanas]

Consciousness does not come from matter We can only create clever simulacra with these techniques

[@tincanp38f]

we have a self driving floor cleaner at work. we have QR codes posted all over where we can drive up to the QR code and scan it in training mode and manually drive the scrubber as it cleans to learn the rout for the next time it scrubs. The downside of driving on it's own is it does not know the difference between a more saturated dirty spot on the floor or a mild spot on the floor. Or the difference between dirt or a rug and can run over the rug and get it caught in the drivers that scrub the floor. I link my phone to the machine so when I run it on auto it gives me a play by play. To put it simply... A machine I have to chase around multiple times to hit the reset button because it went off track or it thought something was in its way and does not know what to do.

[@selocan469]

You will be charged and found guilty of not utilizing AI probably, since now every idiot out there believes it (whatever AI it is they speak of I do not know) scores so called Einstein level of IQ. But, people who are trying to utilize AI to do something meaningful already experienced AI, already sees AI is no magic wand at all.

[@DrinkyMcBeer]

We had a similar thing at a warehouse I had worked at. We supplied parts to a single customer that was attached to our warehouse, and management decided to get these automated robots to drive orders back and forth. They ended up having to keep all the people the hots were meant to replace just to cover the robots when they inevitably messed up, and hire extra people to take care of the robots. Their great automation initiative cost them about a million dollars upfront and only managed to increase their overhead. It really is just a bunch of hype so useless middle management types can make themselves seem useful, since without them the workers would just continue to come in and get the job done, and no useless middle manager wants to accept that reality.

[@randymulder9105]

Everyone I know that owned one of those put it in the closet and used a broom. Imagine, a human and broom is cheaper, faster and more accurate. AI..robot expensive garbage. Give it 10 years. Even then. Why spend 30,000 dollars to sweep?

[@KleptomaniacJames]

@@randymulder9105 why spend $30,000 recurringly? If the floor cleaner is good enough, and mark my words they will get good enough, you will save a lot of money paying 30,000 for a floor cleaner with the right application of course

[@andybaldman]

Yet it’s still going to replace some of the jobs at your company.

[@mattjsherman]

What about a "self" driving car that is really just a large front camera where someone in India is "virtually" driving?

[@qweqwe9678]

oh yes 🤣😂

[@Jesus_7_H]

​@qwe😂qwe9678

[@jeronimo196]

I've seen how people drive in India. This should be fun. Also, we'll finally be able to die due to lag irl.

[@gregrice1354]

Ahh, the Mechanical Indian, like the Mechanical Turk.

[@Jesus_7_H]

@@gregrice1354 jesus

[@neohelios77]

App Analyst, here. Can confirm. I probably only do maybe an hour or two of actual work per day, and THAT's just finding busy work to talk about in SCRUM or maybe low-effort service desk work. All other time is spent on meetings as "subject matter expert", whatever tf THAT is these days. THE PROBLEM IS just about every problem I fix, I also fix the root cause (or work with vendor for RC), and the problems don't get repeated. That's fine, but eventually I will be patching myself out of a job. Then, on to the next application, I guess. Kind of self-defeating, and I constantly feel like the other shoe is going to drop.

[@masterpep7218]

Not surprised a bit about the assessment by an insider. I've been saying since the start of this hype that AI is nothing more than a program and it needs a human to program it. The concept of "self awareness" will never be a reality, as it will always require guidelines, so directly (through calibration) or indirectly (through the original guidelines) it will always be under our control. You could see AI as a ship on the sea, that when it reaches land, it cannot go any further, as it was only meant to be on water. In order to be able to transform into a land vehicle, the initial programming will need to contain the concept of land as well, otherwise the ship just stops as soon as it reaches land and you have the BSOD. The misconception on machine learning is that the program will find solutions by itself, without original guidelines. That's impossible: if said ship reaches land and it has no concept of land, it will not be able to continue. If the coding tells it to approach any new problem in a random way however, it also means that there is no guideline tied to any rules, which means that anything goes. So just like in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the program can assume a plant or a whale, as there are no rules any longer. And as a consequence, it will fail, since it will not be able to function within a logical ruleset of its environment, as it behaves totally randomly, hence chaotically. Anything that is chaotic ends in disaster without direction. As for the hype, it's clear why there are so many interests pushing this narrative of self awareness and a plethora of "solutions" (for non-existing problems most of the time, like self-driving): the AI will become the convenient scape-goat. Once the masses are led to believe that AI are more intelligent than humans and can take over tasks (initially only driving, then complex tasks like work and finally ethical decisions, like court cases, war, etc.), AI will be installed instead of critical tasks and the owners and programmers will no longer be accountable. After all, the "superior intelligence" can only make the right decision, no matter what that is! And noone will ever find out how the AI have a pre-set of guidelines along hidden agendas. Just look at how ChatGPT is steering thinking along woke guidelines or the utter failure of Google's Gemini. So the brainwash is in full force to convince the masses that AI use is justified. Hence the lies surrounding its ability to learn by itself and obviously the smokescreen is prepared by using popular and superficial means, like art, music, visuals. People are so gullible, they think that a close to perfect visual picture means intelligence..

[@aaronjennings8385]

Pareidolia hallucination in artificial intelligence can be caused by the complexity of visual data, limited or biased training data, overfitting of AI models, and human biases in development and evaluation. To address these causes, diverse training data, robust AI architectures, and human oversight are important.

[@rodeorods5694]

Very interesting to find out that AI is not as advanced as the sales pitch

[@foxt9151]

His core point was litterly that "oh look there are billions in the industry and we havent hit AGI/ASI yet, it wont ever ever happen" Thats his quintecense of it all, like with self driving cars he said. Oh no, the newest study released from waymo recorded that their self driving cars were safer than average human driver by a large margine. Certain projects take a long time, I mean imagine how long it took to get from punchcard machines to computers. we should have given up at the vacuum tube stage. all the money that has flown into computers and nothing! besides a living room sized calculator!

[@seriouscat2231]

@@foxt9151, AGI/ASI is a metaphysical impossibility. It is not within the realm of actual science or physics.

[@tybaltmercutio]

@@seriouscat2231As a fellow physicist I would be curious if you could elaborate on this as I do not really see how it AGI is physically impossible or would violate laws of physics.

[@seriouscat2231]

@@tybaltmercutio, you need to reread what I wrote. Unless you are willfully misunderstanding, in which case never mind.

[@tybaltmercutio]

@@seriouscat2231 No need to feel attacked. I actually was genuinely curious about your take. But after reading it again carefully - and combining it with your reply - I realize it is just a bunch of non-sense put together to sound smart.

[@karenreddy]

He's talking about narrow AI, which we're very aware is what we currently have. He's essentially stating "it's not really AI and will collapse because it's narrow and now AGI". Narrow ML is still amazing and can be incredibly economically disruptive. I am using it to summarize and highlight important details of legal papers which are over 500 pages long with dead on accuracy. This would have taken many hours, costing thousands prior to now. Poof, gone. He thinks AI *today* may only replace 10% of jobs. I agree with that. But it will keep improving. The larger the context window the more useful it becomes. Making it more accessible in local hardware will provide a further step. Agent workouts will replace some more people in there. Then the raw extra capabilities we'll keep adding as more narrow AI which does some functions very well will keep chipping away at employment.

[@joanvallve7647]

This interview is just great. Not only because of the AI analysis but because of all extremely bright statements on Scrumm, Self driving, how the soft industry worked last decades because of low interest rates, etc. This content is a sample of genuine natural superior intelligence. Thanks for that!

[@socialmedianewsnetwork9598]

i remember bill balmer saying people would not use phones without buttons.

[@arcomarco7131]

And I remember people saying planes will replace cars (it was 50 years ago) or that by 2010 we will have a moon colony. P.S. It was Steve and people give him too little credit for what he actually did.

[@deker0954]

But they do have buttons.

[@2LegHumanist]

​@@arcomarco7131 I remember people making the OP's argument when I said ipads won't replace laptops, especially for software engineers.

[@danwilms]

Having worked in the semiconductor industry for 40 years I can say it was very different where I was. Of course I was writing software and designing hardware to test products under deadline and once one project was done there was another to be done.

[@piotrd.4850]

See.... in semiconductor industry your work was ultimately validated by PHYSICAL PRODUCT.

[@stefangunnarsson1189]

AI might have some crazy hype going on right now, like claims that we will see AGI in 2 years. But in the mid to longterm, its a no brainer where we are heading with AI and ALL of big tech is jumping on the AI train. There have been multiple big discoveries in the last 20 years in AI and computantional power per dollar is increasing on an expontionital rate and that is not slowing down at all. We are heading into a very interesting future.

[@stephantual]

It's far worse than this. Reddit and KZbin are filled with people who believe AGI is already here because of the stochastic parrot effect, which was described in a paper warning this would become a problem over a year ago. 99% of these people have no computer science knowledge and couldn't even tell you what a context window is, but somehow have convinced themselves that 'chat GPT' as they refer to LLMs is fully capable of human reasoning. They are no words.

[@Astro2024]

It's a computer program, not AI

[@nodell8729]

​@@Astro2024A computer program that runs AI. Why brother with naming, it's doing very impressive inteligent work as we speak.

[@memegazer]

@@Astro2024 A computer program that can explore a problem space and produce solutions better than programers working alone on that same problem without ML. The AI part is how the data has been modeled as the result tasking machines to learn from that data.

[@cristianandrei5462]

​@@Astro2024So what AI is supposed to be if not a computer program?

[@unrealdevop]

Yeah Ai won't be replacing Tech jobs anytime soon. If Tech Jobs are being laid off it's because they are over-staffed not because Ai is replacing them.....simply put the Tech field is too over-hyped and everyone wants a Tech Job.

[@rursus8354]

Thank you! I knew intuitively that the ChatGPT and OpenAI stuff are hypes, but I had too few arguments, just a gut feeling.

[@OnigoroshiZero]

You clearly don't know anything if you think that.

[@rursus8354]

@@OnigoroshiZero I certainly do know something about neural nets and language models. (And using AI)

[@howmathematicianscreatemat9226]

@@OnigoroshiZero can it be a new Mozart or DaVinci without copying those works before ?

[@stevrgrs]

It’s not hype. This guy is delusional. Just because he worked as a guy in Ai doesn’t mean squat. The reason he didn’t have any work is probably because he wasn’t trusted with the important stuff :P Ai is already drastically changing Art, music, writing, programming, computer animation, videos , editing etc and it’s only getting more insane.

[@stevrgrs]

@@howmathematicianscreatemat9226of course it can. But who cares ? Davinci was mentored by Veroccio and Mozart was mentored by Haydn and others. It’s the ability to take information and twist it and use it in unique ways that make “geniuses”. AI can LITERALLY mash up millions of disparate topics / ideas instantly and try novel techniques in simulations etc. Even if it never saw a Davinci painting , or heart a Mozart concerto, it would discover it on its own by basically simulating all the possibilities of painting and music from the initial fundamentals of color and sound :)

[@badpuppy3]

Every AI image generator should be required to record every output on a blockchain, so that image can later be traced back to that AI.

[@goodrobotsai]

I work in tech as a Machine Learning / AI Engineer and I gave up looking for fulfilment after my 5th job role. I earn 6 figures, work from home 5 days a week and only work ~3-5 hours per week. No joke. Nothing new. Like seriously, the most little task that can be done in 1 hour takes 5 sprints (1 sprint = 2weeks). Like bruh, it's 10 lines of codes..

[@ricardogarciarevilla6922]

and what's the problem? lol or are you braggin'

[@ruffethereal1904]

​@@ricardogarciarevilla6922I feel a sense of "Is this it?" An easy job can feel like bullshit and devour your soul, material compensation is just one aspect of job satisfaction.

[@ricardogarciarevilla6922]

@@ruffethereal1904 You are probably depressed or have some sort of mental illness. It's not normal to have a huge profit low risk job and feeling quite down about it.

[@totalermist]

@@ruffethereal1904 that's a problem of the individual then. I've been working in tech for almost 3 decades now and I live in this awful parallel universe where compensation is shit , expectations are high, and the workload can be overwhelming. Software "engineers" in particular seem to be so mentally dysfunctional that they don't even realise they actually live in paradise. The US corporate structure also seems to amplify this by a lot. I mean, come on, what do think working at a factory production line, a cashier job, data entry clerk, or being butcher in a large-scale slaughterhouse feels like? Sometimes a job is just that - a means to an end, something to bring food on table and pay your bills. It being "fun" or "fulfilling" is just a bonus. If you want meaning or fun - that's what hobbies are for and if someone claims to only work a couple of hours per week, there's plenty of time for fun projects, self-improvement, education, etc.

[@pablovirus]

@@totalermist agree 100% with you. Lol if I was earning 6 figures working a couple hours per day, you bet I'd be learning new crafts, trying out new sports, and other hobbies. IMO if one wants fulfillment one can help others by volunteering for local causes.

[@yapdog]

I wrote an AI-centric novel where I actually predicted much of what's happening. Of course, no one cared since the story was neither dystopian nor utopian.

[@ricardogarciarevilla6922]

I asked

[@yapdog]

@@ricardogarciarevilla6922 If you don't mind my asking, what did you ask?

[@vis4083]

That's still great, and a big accomplishment that you wrote an entire novel! good for you!

[@yapdog]

@@vis4083 Thanx😁

[@satvikarora5813]

where can i read it?

[@nvjt101]

These AI folks who are trying to build AGI, are doing the same thing as the Physicists did with String Theory to build a Theory of Everything... We as humans like generalities but in practice it's very very difficult to do so :)

[@MarcGyverIt]

It already exists.

[@nvjt101]

@@MarcGyverIt then you are nothing but delusional

[@dungeonmaster217]

31:00 So basically AI will totally obliterate a lot entry-level jobs, raising the ridiculous requierments even more.

[@bitmanagent67]

There is no single experience in tech. If you work for an enterprise, software, SaaS, consulting, or small business you will see similarities and difference. Even within organizations, there are people who do all the work 60 hours a week, and there are people who take 2 hour lunches, play ping pong for 3 hours, and leave early because they have nothing to do. Don't let this one take define the entire industry.

[@webopa7497]

My impression is that many people who have been working on machine learning for a long time have not yet grasped the latest generation of AI. It seems they think in their old (outdated) models. It's like with the engineers who have been working on the combustion motors and who now (try to) talk about electric motors and EVs.

[@kristinabliss]

Yes. And generally people who have all their lives identified as the smartest person in the room desperately grope for ways to call b.s. on recent tech to prove they will always be intellectually king of the hill.

[@obsoquasi]

Best Podcast I heard in a while. I admit to having been sucked into the hype and thinking about "post labor economics", when the reality is so much more evident. Looking forward to Dr. Maggiori's next book!

[@johanmeijer133]

Dr. Emmanuel makes a great observation that neural nets can only solve for instances that are in it's data set of training. The edge cases for self driving cars are such an example. Us humans with much smaller training data sets can solve these kinds of problems in short order thanks to our abilities of abstraction, general world comprehension and reasoning.

[@sshreddderr9409]

humans, and any kind of animals, basically inherit a functional system that was "trained" and adapted during each previous generation of all ancestors that ever lived, down to the earliest form of matter. its basically like a system where the hardware and software has adapted over billions of years, and besides its many dimensional parameters, its dataset is also the result of all other living and non living systems any generation of life ever interacted with directly or indirectly in any chemical or physical way cause all perception is like its input that can be processes. basically, life is the result of a system that can alter itself in any way with a virtually unlimited degree of freedom, and has had access to nearly all information encoded into the ecosystem of the entire planet, all at once at any time through indirect influence. it doesnt take a genius to understand that recreating anything remotely similar in performance is completely impossible

[@JCAtkeson3]

​@@sshreddderr9409 You make a really good point but I wouldn't say impossible. Never identical to life, but instincts are not a moving target and can be overtaken in finite time. Not even by AI, but by biology, genomics and robotics, which are all exploding right now.

[@geno755]

Great interview - thank you very much. Finally someone rational and proficient on this topic.

[@SleazyMartines]

Such a refreshing talk hearing someone with sensible views

[@TheManinBlack9054]

No, its not a rational or proficient interview

[@RadiantMantra]

I largely, largely agree that AI hype is overblown, and it's a bubble. What I disagree with is the point of view that whatever it is that is there today, will benefit society. These are decently powerful tools just waiting to be abused by companies, and streamlining production, cutting unecessary people, saving on production costs these are not things that benefit society. These are things that benefit people that have like, workers, y'know?

[@WisomofHal]

I needed that first 5 minutes. I've been in the dumps. I studied CS and programmed like a mad man to get good enough to do really fun things. My first job, I really enjoyed it. I was writing tons of code, but it was nothing new. It wasn't exciting or innovative. I thought joining one of the big tech companies would give me that itch. I somehow made it to one of the big tech companies and I feel so empty, oddly enough my ambition is actually draining. I'm making great money, but I honestly didn't do this for the money. I did it to make an impact. I'm actually getting depressed because I don't feel like I'm making an impact. I'm actually taking a role in tech that is considered less "prestigious" then software engineering, but I actually find it to be more satisfying and it requires you to actually work constantly. I mean, where is my head at - that I'm willing to actually take a role that requires me to work when I can literally cash in on stock, continue making well above six figures and coast? I am really on a dry spell right now and I need to build something, but idk how I lost my edge.

[@amdenis]

You are working for the wrong companies. Do your research and make sure to invest in learning what you find interesting, and then research and find companies where you can do that sort of work that you find interesting. YOU are the solution yo that problem, but you have to take that initiative.

[@WisomofHal]

I completely agree. I have a one or two domains that I'm very interested in, but I've been pursuing roles that are outside of those domains and I work on things that are, sadly, uninteresting to me. @@amdenis

[@darylallen2485]

You say you're making good money. Why not save a money cushion and launch your own business doing what you find fulfilling?

[@BruceWayne15325]

You and the guest speaker are both working for the wrong companies. You can find jobs where you are a high paid lump if that's really what you want, but I've only ever been in one job where that was even a possibility. Most places that I've worked, if you tried to work 3hrs in a month or more like the guest speaker says he does, you'd be tossed out on your butt, as you should.

[@Karim-ik5ij]

DOuble dip and work 2 jobs at once. Just don't tell anyone.

[@Billy4321able]

His explanation of how AI works was presented as if it were damning evidence against current methodologies, but that's not the case. The "function finding" capability of AI in controlled environments is what makes it so powerful. Machines can learn to perform a wide variety of tasks without explicit instruction, which is crucial in domains where the steps are unknown or too complex to write out. Interestingly, adding more real-world tasks to a model's training set can improve performance across those tasks, even if they seem unrelated. For example, teaching a model the difference between a dog and a cat can enhance its ability to perform other tasks. Some researchers believe this might be due to a form of model pruning, where useless paths are avoided, hinting at an emerging general intelligence. This has led to the adoption of a "more data and modalities" approach, hoping for exponential performance increases. However, so far, the gains have been marginal. We still don't know if this generalization will extend to edge cases not in the data. Technologies like self-driving cars continue to struggle with edge cases and lack a comprehensive world model. As far as whether or not AI will go rouge, I think that is unlikely. That doesn't mean it isn't possible though. You talk about how the constraints put on AI are currently integral to their success in completing their tasks, but that doesn't preclude someone from making an AI without such limited capabilities. So I don't really understand how you can state the problem, but in the same breath claim it won't be a problem, just because. In an almost child-like curiosity I have to ask, "because why?" I understand we don't yet have the level of AI that would even be considered dangerous, but I don't want to risk everything "just because". So maybe we should start thinking about the why right now.

[@02Lemonhead]

I actually insulted Meta's AI. I told it to stop helping me do searches. Then I asked it to tell me how to block it. It got petulant and stated, "so you don't want me to help you do searches but you want me tell you how to block AI." It apologized later on and then I uninstalled the Facebook app from my phone.😄Meta AI is a douchenozzle.

[@josketcha]

AI "Art" is overhyped. I still think digital art is safe. AI is limited to it's database and it can't make anything new or original. It might look impressive at first glance but it has a lot problems and doesn't understand the fundamentals of art or color theory. It only understands patterns. Honestly do what you love and keep drawing.

[@zacharychristy8928]

Im not even an artist and I feel like I can always tell AI art because it lacks any sense of composition at all levels. For example, when a person decides they want to make a picture of a hyper-detailed scifi cyborg woman flying through space, there'd be intentionality in the woman's pose, how it shows off different mechanical details, they might choose to give her an open cybernetic ribcage to add an element of body horror, or instead make the robot body parts look sleek and smooth, like an Apple product. Then the background and other scene elements come together in a cohesive way that takes lighting and perspective into account. Maybe there's a ringed planet, or an asteroid belt, or something causing conflict or intrigue like a spaceship flying after her. Whenever I see AI art try to make something like this, it always seems like it combines the elements at random, because they can technically make sense, but don't cohere into a complete vision. It feels like it was created through cold iteration on forms (because it basically was). Not to mention, there isn't nearly as much control over these tools as people like to think. You can't really make minute adjustments with the level of precision and control that an actual artist has, and those details are what separate art that's great, from art that's "good enough".

[@ricardogarciarevilla6922]

Worst part is, AI dummies don't care. The fact that they can write a prompt, makes them look intelligent in their own eyes and they have started to belittle other humans with actual skills and calling his shit 'art' better because it takes less time to produce (newsflash, it's shit, no matter how much they tweak it, only anime art looks barely decent, but it's AI shit it could look good but it's the same vaseline crap!)... then they start to cope that they can fix it, it's all so tiresome, the technology of mediocre people

[@joshualossner2328]

Isn't that how humans work. What is original? When I see some drawing of a Sci-Fi alien creature, its usually put together of parts from existing creatures. Everything you know and create is based on a database of experiences and consequences in your life. This is the same for all of us. None of us go deep into minds and create anything new. At least my thoughts, based on the lectures I've listened to, and my experiences.

[@ricardogarciarevilla6922]

@@joshualossner2328 you are not an artist and don't understand the difference between "AI" art and actual art done by humans... my god, the fallacy of everything has been done is the most ridiculous one. Then AI art is shit by definition, and most people defend it to death given they lack any artistic merit without it.

[@zacharychristy8928]

@@joshualossner2328 it's "part" of how humans work, but humans do a LOT more. Humans can take inspiration from different contexts and re-shape them into new ones. Humans can form more global compositional intentions and make far more cohesive art. We are not simply statistical collage machines. Think very hard about how would go about making something creatively. Yes, you may be able to relate every element to some inspirational source, but you did much more than just place those elements together and make them roughly fit. That's more or less all an AI is doing.

[@marcfruchtman9473]

So what you are saying is that big tech companies are absorbing so many programming engineers just to "have them" around, that they are more like "Patents" used in Patent denial practices? ... They buy up all the patents to prevent someone else to access it? So, same process, hire all the programmers, just to prevent other businesses from having them? As far as the claim of "without human knowledge" for many AI advances, yes... this is a common theme, tho I personally would not include "rules" for games as in that scope specifically because we humans created the game, and we can't have the AI solve the problem of winning the game if we don't actually tell it "the rules"... so, that seems like a bit of stretch, and clearly that should be an exclusion from the "without human knowledge" issue.

[@MarekFajkus]

I work in tech for almost 15 years and what this guy says is 100% correct in 90% of cases. The rest 10% is the extreme opposite. In reality there is a lot of work being done on software and even more work that needs to be done. But allocation of resources and skills required to do them is poorly distributed. Most tech companies are less effective in managing engineering projects than USSR was in managing their economy. That's also why USSR lasted much longer than average software project does.

[@parkerbobby808]

There were times in my past when was making more money than I ever had before and by extension, was "doing better in life" than ever before and yet, I felt like a fraud.. Having meetings and talking about what we're going to do, then fleshing out the plan and working out the kinks only to have everyone else want to change scope or fall short of deadlines.. I don't miss it.. I can totally sympathize with you on 'tech is a fraud'.

[@machinized]

I work in IT, - never had a minute of free time at work 🤯 Yeah, but everything is legit what is said here.

[@dadlord689]

Damn. I was hard on myself for procrastinating some days after a month of 10+ h/d coding. But I still suffer from bad choices later in development. I found that not forcing myself actually just let me avoid getting too deep into a bad choices consequences. I just don't really see all the problems I will have to handle, and no one actually ready to pay/wait for me to finish the feature/project. It feels like the only way to make software responsible is to consume your personal budget on your self as employee. Everything else may lead you to f up scenario.

[@EndingSimple]

I remember the Dilbert character Wally proposing to management that his next task should be testing 'system volume stresses.' And when he got refused he said 'Damn! I almost made it my job to watch [pron] all day."

[@kajkabea]

Very interesting. Thank you.

[@languagepool-germanusingli9902]

This is the best video I've seen for ages. Thanks so much.

[@memegazer]

When most people say AI, they mean what the machine has actually learned. Or at least how that knowledge is being applied. That is the intelligent part, the part that the engineers could not do independently of ML given the same data and seeking to produce the same results. The model of the data that produces a given output relative to a given input was arrived at by the AI, not the engineers, and this is not trivial bc that gap in understanding is what creates alignment problems so it is a misconception to suggest that gap in knowledge is not an issue. And the reason why AI is smart until it is dumb.

[@aubreyj.tennant1123]

What does AI have in common with a blow up doll? a) looks, b) nothing, c) everything, d) all of these. Find the correct answer in Cgbt.

[@dailyhubranx]

I'm just wondering how to get these jobs where I do nothing and get paid a lot

[@ellow8m]

We all haha

[@supernova2875]

Nepotism

[@TheGammelfjols]

Read the book Bull shit jobs by the late David Graber, it hits this phenomenon right on the nail

[@LukeAvedon]

This dude's book completely blew me away. BRILLIANT book.

[@AndrewKieran]

I feel like noone who talks about ai professionally has ever worked with their hands and have no idea how much of the economy can't be automated away because multipurpose, agile, intelligent robotics is still really not a thing.

[@jimkorovessis5255]

Firm believer in the variant of Price's Corallary. Roughly the square root of the number of employees in an org do about half the work. Saw a lot of "make-work" and mismanagement in my time (40 yrs), 50-60 hours a week of hard work, with minimal concrete, deliverable outcomes. Think video hit the mark, in many aspects.

[@kevint3522]

Best discussion I've heard so far.

[@JCAtkeson3]

As a software developer I actually quit a job because there wasn't enough to do. I'm working harder now and much happier. I can ask for a raise and actually justify it! 🙂

[@ac0rpbg]

As someone in the aviation industry, and what you described in gatewick with the A-SMGCS system. I can give you some insights why that is the case. First of all such systems exist for very very long time. But they are expensive and the certification for aviation safety of such system is very very complex task. The GPS/GNSS used to have too large of an error for ground movement operations and there are way way too many vehicles so you can't really have them all equipped with Squitters because you will just just block the frequency. Parked vehicles will always have squitters off. GPS is also not secure enough and can be easily jammed, thus in order to use for operational purposes ASMGCS system you will also have SMRs(Surface Movement Radars), From concept to operations of a technology in the sector takes more than 20 years. It is not cost or investment that is making it so long but the whole Safety First culture and the extreme regulation. About some of the points of AI I think your view is way too balanced and you are downplaying some facts. Yes it is basically machine learning but how is human learning diffferent? The chat GPT Kenya RLHF example is not different than a human going to school being tought and shown how to solve tasks,write essays etc. The fact is that LLMs and some other AI models have shown to develop emergent properties very similar to how humans do. Even tho current models are narrow they tend to scale a lot with more compute and even tho Moore's law is dead in the sense of transistors scaling compute is actually increasing, and the fact that Mixture of Experts or multiple interacting agents that are very narrow and specific can work together and show synergy means that even tho we may hit a ceiling that it might be so high that the world can change very very fast.

[@tobyhendricks9951]

While Neural Net AIs learn in a way that's... similar... to humans, they lack the logical association that humans use to learn. Knowledge, to a human, is interconnected in a way that today's LLMs could only dream of. When person A says "I want an apple", there's A LOT of meaning/processing behind that statement. This person has recognised a state of hunger/craving, they can visualise the presence of an apple alleviating it, based on past experience. They understand that the apple is food, they have an understanding of what it takes not only to acquire an apple, but how the apple comes to be in the first place (and most steps in-between). So in addition to intent, a statement like this typically communicates an understanding of what fulfilling that intent will cost as well as why the intent is there in the first place (among many other things). When person B replies "How about an orange?" it holds a similarly ridiculous amount of meaning underneath. Both AI and humans decide through likelihood, but the likelihood estimations are happening on completely different levels. When person B replies "How about an orange?", many layers of meaning have been exchanged, whereas, when ChatGPT replies "How about an Orange?", it's because it calculated that those are the most likely words to follow the statement "I want an apple". So yeah, when a human goes to school, hopefully they're extracting a vast amount of meaning from every lesson. When an AI reads a book, it's (mostly) skipping over the meaning and saying, "Ah, so this word is more likely to occur when preceded by these words". Completely different ballpark of intelligence. (Attention and embedding are cool, but they're a single step on the thousand mile journey to human level intelligence)

[@enilenis]

I'm in the same position as the invited guest. There was a short period of luxury time, when there was no hostility towards AI, when it was all magic, but there were no user interfaces yet, so only the coders could produce said magic. And now, that all the tech goes mainstream, the barrier of entry goes lower. Almost everything AI related is instantly replicated and diluted to the point of being worthless. You get no time to recoup your investment. I've done IT since the 80's. Seen the whole tech evolve from 2MHz 8 bit machines all the way to today. It's all been inevitable. To some, it was clear from day one, where the tech was headed. People like Alexander Bard did lectures on these matters back when the audience had no clue what the lectures were about. To some, everything was obvious. You just had to follow the right set of thinkers and futurists. People like Daniel Suarez, who foresaw the influence of social media, before there was any social media. Many visionary fiction books already described the world we are entering. And most of them weren't as optimistic as our corporate CEO's and politicians. Most of such books were dystopian.

[@tromboneface]

I work in tech and I’ve been working nonstop for about 25 years. Inefficiency comes from management leading us in a bad direction, but we never stop working. We have tons of technical debt that we can address during lulls in new projects. We should be spending more time on upgrading skills.

[@francisco444]

I was expecting a solid argument, got nothing new

[@artscollab]

The thumbnail for this video is really misleading.

[@jgonsalk]

Interesting conversation. I didn't have time to watch the whole thing but didn't watch part of the section on ChatGPT. I do think you are mistaken on the idea that ChatGPT doesn't have an understanding of the world and that hallucinations can't be understood. The architecture of ChatGPT (particularly transformers and vectors) do create an empirically derived view of the world. It is a pity we don't get the probability distributions generated by each individual prediction, but OpenAI can investigate this. Also, the embeddings do seem to extract a semantic map of human language across that 12K dimensional space (in the case of GPT 3, it's likely much more for GPT4). I do agree that it is overhyped but the scaling laws are yet to be broken and we might see more emergent capabilities from larger models and will likely see smarter ways to apply them (i.e. multi-agent approaches) that lead to improvements. That said, the idea that we'll be able to generate literary works of art with a prompt is clearly misguided, as are similarly fanciful notions based purely on AI hype.

[@elliotanderson1585]

When the best AI scientists suddenly start working on AI safety, you know it's not just hype.

[@nbaprophet100]

It is indeed refreshing to hear a more measured and nuanced point of view. 100% agree on the waste generated by tech teams especially in investment banks.

[@timothyblazer1749]

MIT students found out that they could beat Alpha Go etc by using "stupid but effective" strategies. They just did things that a "good" go player would never do, since a person would see it immediately. Basically, the training data was all from good players. So using "impossible" strategies went outside the training.

[@hydrohasspoken6227]

in chess, that strategy would backfire in a heartbeat.

[@timothyblazer1749]

@@hydrohasspoken6227 yeah. Of course. This is about Go.

[@piotrd.4850]

@@hydrohasspoken6227 Except it hasn't in one of Kasparov vs. Deep Blue matches.

[@liam3284]

Idleness in the states, while in China they are required to work 9-9 6 days and are all too exhausted to actually work.

[@KeithAllpress]

There was a lot of prestige and money behind those early human vs computer contests. Not only did they use human knowledge they actually employed Go experts and specifically fed it all the games of the world champion so it could learn his style of play. This was unknown to the champion and it threw him off balance because it was playing the moves he would play. The chess Big Blue vs human scandal was also rigged as a team of grandmasters reprogrammed it between games.

[@nitesh-maharaj]

Majority of the tasks people are trying to resolve with AI can be done with a where clause.

[@qweqwe9678]

when

[@bloopbleepnothinghere]

Example?

[@lalnuntluangachhakchhuak5767]

IF Else can still do so much

[@HablaCarnage63]

So IT slacker assumes AI will be a slacker too. I wanna hear this.

[@casxdillia]

Yo glad to see that my personalised profile on youtube picked up this vid, may you reach opulence!

[@f4ust85]

I didnt expect much but it actually turned out to be one of the best podcast on AI I heard so far, very informative and without all the fluff and clichés. Thank you.

[@elpodcastmedia]

Thank you for your kind words

[@TheManinBlack9054]

Its not informative, its the opposite

[@nickspeelman9174]

As an all-purpose coder/developer for a small, not-tech, mission-driven, high-performing organization I am consistently shocked at how long it takes entire teams of people to do the same amount of work as me. And it's not because I'm particularly talented. (I'm competent but not a genius by any stretch.) It's just because most for-profit organizations are so incredibly bloated I'm surprised they're able to function at all.

[@justinanderson267]

59:45 This is a HUGE problem in the gaming industry. That, combined with people learning improper techniques from KZbin University like destroying game objects instead of caching and reusing them. That's why all your favorite videogames lag out and crash constantly these days. People are just using copy pasta code.

[@ChrisAthanas]

Yes cult of agile is way overblown 6:45

[@bloopbleepnothinghere]

What are the alternatives though? I've seen a lot of all of it and agile is as good as any. The problem is dogma. You can't be dogmatic about agile, that defeats the whole purpose. Agility accommodates the nature of tech. Engineering is ambiguous at times, and an engineering team needs to be able to accommodate spikes, injections, outages, change in business demand, etc. Other industries can't do that, manufacturing requires rigid planning because once a die is set, it is expensive to change. Software enjoys the ability to pivot at a moment's notice but to be able to take advantage of that you need a process that embraces that. That is where agile comes in. It's tried and tested, but often abused, and seen as the end, rather than simply a means to an end. On my team we work in whatever way makes sense for the work we are doing. We change processes whenever we feel like it. We can adapt to a significant roadmap change without too much fuss because there really isn't anyone stopping us. We are asked to deliver, and no one cares how we do it. To me, that is an agile team.

[@piotrd.4850]

@@bloopbleepnothinghere Decades of experience in legitimate project management methodologies?

[@bloopbleepnothinghere]

@@piotrd.4850 lol, agile is a decades old legitimate project management process. Waterfall is up there too, but it doesn't fit all either. People hate on agile, but that's because they take it as gospel which is basically the antithesis of agile. If you start believing in Jira, and heavy process and think that's agile and you've already lost your way.

[@AnimeGIFfy]

so basically, people who hype up AI think like this: AI = complex real world = simple

[@peterlaanguila5098]

AI = supernatural magic, we are all doomed, oh no, oh no

[@howmathematicianscreatemat9226]

Sadly you are wrong..we teachers are alread discussing emergency strategies because we are already becoming mostly obsolete in Schools besides supervising that the students truly learn with their AI step by step App instead.of.going to social media AGI will certainly be able to solve all computationally decidable problems. However, non computationally decidable problems like another Mozart, Evariste Galois, DaVinci will not be solved by AI in our lifetime… it doesn’t count to study Mozart to become one. Authentic Coolness doesn’t study, it just creates. The AI would need to be able to create tear dropping phenomenal classical music WITHOUT training !

[@deker0954]

Not at all. Teachers are being replaced by good teachers. Have you heard of KZbin? You are like the movie rental store being replaced by Red Box . Get on KZbin and run your skills by the people already learning there. See how you do against the competition. Oh and no union support/emergency strategy suppression of the talent already in place. What I'm saying is that you need to look a little ahead because this is the direction learning is going in.

[@Auurify]

@@deker0954 Im of the belief that a lot of "bad teaching" you see is more of a disrupted classroom management by weak and gentle admin policies. Teachers are tied to what admin and district says, so if they say you need to tolerate the disruptive student, you must tolerate the disruptive student that is making the class quality go down. Im also of the belief that a lot of "school/teacher is bad" hate is because of an effect of spatial association, a lot of people immediately associate "school as a place" as a bad thing and therefore will act unwilling in such a space, affecting the quality of their learning and reinforcing the belief. Whereas KZbin is associated with positive things and fun and dopamine bursts. It's far more complicated and boiling it down to "youtube being better" is naive of the current state of education. This doesn't rule out an actual bad teacher case existing, but you'll be surprised how minuscule that factor is affecting the outcome, it's probably less than 10% by just observation.

[@JeffreyWongOfficial]

Hard to care to individual needs over KZbin. Guess an AGI or individual mentor/tutor might be better here than someone creating content for a huge diverse audience of million potential listeners

[@hwhack]

I did Support Vector Machines (SVMs) in grad school. I laugh my butt of when people think NNs and Machine Learning will be sentient. It's nothing more than a really complex spell check.

[@toulaishsharma9255]

My sincere admiration for your deep insights and perspective of things, Emmanuel! Thanks you El Podcast ❤

[@shyft09]

This is kind of hilarious, he talks like a junior dev on their first job. There is an element of truth to what he's saying and you'll find that in all large companies, not just software developers. But the newbies who think they can do a task in 20 mins are forgetting that this isn't a small personal side project. They don't realise the build takes half a day to run the tests to make sure the change doesn't screw something else up, and then it needs to get reviewed by more experienced developers, QAd, and then merged with the things that other developers are doing. If it takes down some important service because they broke something unexpectedly it can cost a multiple of their yearly salary per hour while it's down etc. It will depend wildly on the specifics of the project, but a new dev wont know that

[@projectsspecial9224]

AI engineer for over 20 years here.. He looks like that guy from the "transformers" ? 😂

[@ncnhomegrown]

This video is the 100% honest truth as I've been in the technology industry for 14 years and I am currently responsible for software and services solution scope, design and pricing for our entire business unit for Automation, Data & AI. We have had a lot of business success and expanded from a team of 3 to 30 in about 2.5 years most of our growth has been demand driven not just growth at all cost and I am responsible for profitability. We mostly sell solutions to handle mundane tedious business information tasks, most of what we sold that drives real value to a business is automation and data engineering with some AI solutions for very, very specific use caes and everything sold has been analysed for return on investment and future strategic goals. All our solutions solve the most boring tasks that people and businesses strongly dislike. Fundamentally no one cares about technology, no one cares about how much public image status your company has, everyone wants problems solved to drive value through efficiency at a price point. Edge caes and having a really good understanding of them is the difference between a successful project/business and total failure.

[@MrMichiel1983]

AI is going to change lives for the better and the worse as every technology has done. Hype and actual improvement are not mutually exclusive. Yet, even though there are exponential input curves for AI (computing, storage, electricity) it's reasonable to assume improvement of AI systems will feel linear as capability probably scales logarithmically. An analogy for the gamers among us, it's like grinding 10x EXP per level, but each level gives you only one additional stat point. I would hazard to guess that AI hallucinations might go away if transformers and token prediction are combined with other architectures and not with scaling the existing approach more and more. 1. Energy based "Diffusion" models, meaning given a particular working context the iterative improvement of the text output after its initial generation whereby tokens can also possibly be removed again at the behest of said working context. The generative AI is supposed to try and minimize the response of the working context so the interaction does not diverge like it does with current LLMs (they keep on saying they got a mistake even if they happened to get it right). That minimization tactic would be very reminiscent to energy based setups which some researchers are currently looking into. 2. Meta context-driven iteration. This would feel like GPT instructions, but not just invisibly pasted it in the front of a giant prompt you just see the tail end of. Rather achieved by training the system from the ground up with a meta context window that denotes the task at hand, or in other words a clear separation of the static aforementioned (hidden) working instruction, and the dynamic subject data to be altered which can be any format including text and images through the use of transformer NNs and latent space representation (ie. context driven data compression). 3. Cross-embedding tree search, meaning not tree search of a plethora of badly generated answers like some researchers speculated on, but a tree search of the proper minimal embedding. Herein can the context of different situations be contained as tokens might not mean the same thing in one context than the other. Now I hear you thinking, but that's the token predictor job, right, to understand the different situation based on preceding tokens? Well yeah, and the context awareness of embeddings can also be improved by just having an embedding with more dimensions and bigger coordinates. But more dimensions make the algorithm sluggish, and bigger coordinates can make neural networks divergent and unstable. Now that's where tree search can be very helpful in maintaining that stability, because as a game we can have that system provide the minimal "slice" (subset of a longer coordinate with more dimensions) of a huge embedding space. This way the generative system can discover different patterns for different tasks and contexts, while also trying to minimize computation for the iterative part that is supposed to improve it and the tree search can help in reducing the embedding dynamically. But computation costs for such architectures will currently be staggeringly prohibitive, however, as it shifts computation from training time to inference time. So it's still quite a long time out before LCOE curves fall low enough to support such architectures (80-90% in the next 10-15 years due to SWB). Of course there is too much hype and too many failing products shipped to market for text generation purposes. But exponential growth does seem a powerful argument as to expect positive effects too. Currently all the narrow AI like AphaZero and AlphaFold I feel are also super underhyped. Now in the future general purpose AGI like GPT can be positive too... Yet I do wonder how far into a what can easily become a dystopian future those positive effects will be. (I am using the definition AGI there not to denote the reliability required for what most people would think of as AGI, but to denote the purpose for which the AI is used which in the case of LLMs is the general purpose of text generation and processing).

[@enermaxstephens1051]

Well it's always "just a matter of time" so I don't think you have an argument there. If this was the year 1890, you'd be saying the same thing about cars replacing the horses. You'd say "Oh yeah suuure, we'll see a Model-T Ford... I'll believe it when I see it!" But it was just a matter of time wasn't it? Sure it was 20 years later. But 20 years is a matter of time. And the way Ai works is that once a certain point is reached (which we haven't reached yet) it is capable of improving itself. So that "matter of time" is smaller than waiting on the Model T Ford. It's 5 or 10 years from GPT 3. Or you could say 20 or 30 years from OpenAi's inception. So while you do make a lot of other good arguments, that isn't one of them.

[@morthim]

'maybe there will be a reduction of mid skill consultants' that is an obfuscation of the elimination of the middle class

[@codester1111]

Jeeze im in tech for a mid sized luxury business, i work my rear off and never have idle time. Crazy that exists out there.

[@bluex217]

8:46 - The answer is obvious, really.. because you're stuck either online and/or in an office doing a job already.. You can TRY to remotely make more money with the rest of your working hours, if it's a desk job at least. But you'd get fired if caught. The fundamental issue therefore lives in the fact that we're working only an hour per day and satisfying our superiors enough to not be terminated, and yet we're still expected to sit there and ROT for the remainder of the time, just so everything looks good on paper; waste of life.

[@user-bb8sw1jo6o]

Man, I thought the same about self driving cars. It requires an answer to impossible philosophical questions and measurements. Then the question becomes who is it serving? I just don't see anyone solving this in the way society is structed right now.

[@garyhuntsr71698]

😂 thanks a lot... since about more than 10 years ago when AI became a little disturbing, I decided that I can always convert my law firm into a huge SPA/ massage Palace, like what they have in Bali and all these super resorts❤

[@tinad8561]

1:23:48 If you blitzscale, you attract more investment from people hoping to hitch their wagons to the next Apple, then you can (maybe) use that money to buy out/out-market the competition in that space, becoming your own moat. That’s the thinking, anyway. The problem is that in most cases these businesses sell features, not solutions, and customers easily walk away from features. (How many people still eulogize Windows 7?)

[@glennm7086]

The last 17 years of my 30yr career was at Intel. I never had a job that was working only a few hours a week. It was normal to work 50 to 70 hours a week. One time I was scolded by the boss, “we missed you on Saturday“. I had another boss who called his staff meeting on Saturday morning at 10 AM. There’s a serious lack of credibility of anyone who had a real job at a real high-tech company, saying he wasn’t working very hard. He would’ve never made it off probation at Intel.

[@piotrd.4850]

For one 'tech industry' is stretched. But yeah, cheap money made a lot of project look EXACTLY like the guy describes.

[@computerjantje]

wauw some usa expert from my country says exactly this about usa culture. He litterly said: In the USA people work a lot of hours and have only very few holidays and yet the production level is so low that our country we do a lot a lot more while we work shorter days and have triple of free days per year.

[@Acguarnica]

This was a live interview right? I noticed several jump cuts when your guest is talking. It's somewhat distracting. I'm left wondering what got cut out.

[@RichardRoy2]

I get the impression most are interested in how much money they can make off of AI. It tends to make me think there's a lot of undue hype. And probably a lot of misrepresentation. I have no doubt people will make money off of it. But they use it the same way scammers tack on "hyper," "Quantum," or any number of other words onto something that add nothing but mystique.

[@DJRonnieG]

When I worked in retail, it used to piss me off knowing that more educated, or folks in higher-paying jobs with more complicated tasks were often getting paid more to slack off. I knew people who worked for universities and CPS; in both cases the more educated employees were paid more to do less. Of course sometimes that highly paid individual has more responsibility, so to be clear my observations may not match up with everyone else's experience.

[@xlerb2286]

There are times when it is hard to work. I quit my prior company because for 18 months we were in the middle of an infrastructure reorg that was supposed to take ~3 weeks and 18 months later we were still down. I could write code (without requirements), but there was no path to getting it built, tested, or deployed. Though that was an unusual situation. The prior 12 years had been full time good solid work - real work. The place I'm at now, it took a few months to really find a spot for me so there was a lot of thumb twiddling there as well at first. I'm about a month away from retirement, can't say I'm sorry about that.

[@calmhorizons]

Really enjoyed the book. Great interview.

[@merdanethubar-sarum9031]

I don't hallucination will go away, but that doesn't matter, because we also hallunicate, and we have learned to develop methods to counteract this. Mostly metacognitive abilities. We reflect upon decision, evaluatie, double-check in our head. Especially if we consider the answer important. But people definitely make up bullshit a lot. You don't notice it a lot because they tend to do it in situations where it matters. So, there is already a methodology, we don't need to invent it, as the AI system mimics human system. We just need to figure out a cost-effective efficient way to do it. What we do need to do is making systems much faster to do this effectively.

[@user-zr1dr7nz8e]

What I want is an AI that can do what Adobe InDesign can do but based entirely on verbal commands, and has an in-built library of all published literature and real-time search capabilities. What I got is a snarky robot that reminds me that diversity and inclusion is important to consider if I ask it a question about Templars or alligators or something. I've come to the conclusion there are no real philosophers in the tech industries.

[@sillysad3198]

worked for 2 years, wrote a book, became a superstar. this corraborates his story perfectly.

[@OnigoroshiZero]

He is completely ignorant about the subject, and even his intelligence is questionable. He is the one riding the AI hype train with negative views that are easier to get people's attention (as everything negative).

[@sillysad3198]

@@OnigoroshiZero AI is fake though. don't get me wrong, i have no questions to the person, he is an example not an agent in this story. the issue is in the societal perception of the "intelligent" a noob writing a guru-book is the OK.

[@manw3bttcks]

None of the AI disaster people have explained how a Super AI would wipe out all people and then somehow live on. It needs people to run all the chipfabs that make the cpus that runs the servers it needs. Without people, all the power plants would break down and run out of power. So do they think AI would just be vindictive and wipe out people just because it can even if it means sealing its own doom?

[@sp123]

A lot of people saying that are uneducated. They think Terminator is non-fiction.

[@skylark8828]

Once you have robots to replace humans for the physical jobs, they can run the chip fab plants too. They are already replacing humans in warehouses, and remember that car manufacturers eg. Tesla don't need much human intervention to build mass produced cars. Companies will automate anything if it becomes cheap enough to replace human labour, that's how capitalism works in practice, so we humans will be the ones create the automated factories ... there's the irony.

[@LordSimonTemplar]

Actually, there are several AI alarmists who in recent years outlined many scenarios how it could happen. It's just that these scenarios mostly sound like outlandish, paranoid visions of a future that looks nothing like the world we currently live in and resembles dystopian sci-fi stories, which makes many people dismiss them as such (see the reply above). Many people can't grasp the concept of exponential change and as a result can't imagine how rapidly the world around us can change. Add to that the fact that it is practically impossible to forecast exactly how it would play out, so you won't find an actual, detailed prediction. That's why e/accs usually call safetyists alarmists, not realizing that the burden of proof is on AI developers to prove there is nothing to worry about, not on alarmists to prove there is. No AI company came up so far with a concrete, actionable solution to the alignment problem that provably works. As a matter of fact, OpenAI just disbanded its Superalignment team that at least seemed to be a small light of hope in this regard. The point of exploring these possibilities is not to predict exact ways how things will go wrong. It's not possible to tell in advance, just as it's not possible for a rookie chess player to predict how a chess master will beat them. The point is rather to show that it is far from unimaginable, and thus we should take all precautions necessary. Which is not an easy feat, because the short term incentives to keep going are much stronger than the incentive to prevent some major negative outcome that we have never seen yet and that may or may not come real in 5 or 10 or 20 or 100 years by slowing down or stopping completely. To your points: first, AI could very well wipe us out accidentally, or could be used by malicious people or groups to take actions that result in catastrophic events. Second, if we do assume that the AGI understands well how its existence depends on humans initially and won't make the mistake of wiping us out too soon, the first logical step for it to carry out would be to remove humans from the loop entirely. It wouldn't have a particularly hard time doing that since humans are already working on humanoid robots to further reduce human labour as much as possible. Once that's done, it no longer needs humans to operate the fabs or maintain its servers. Once it gradually reaches the point where it no longer needs us for it to survive, and has grown strong enough that we can't really shut it down anymore (because our economy depends on it, because we can't produce enough food without its help, because of its physical/military power), we basically lost control and can't reverse it. That is a point where our survival is not in our hands anymore and depends entirely on what it wants. It won't necessarily kill us willingly (it probably wouldn't have a particular reason to), but it may decide to pursue goals that require actions on its part which as a side result kill us or restrict our living space and possibilities severely (for example by covering all terrain with solar panels, or building massive power plants that pollute the environment extensively). Again, this is not a prediction, this is a possibility. One that I find very real. The odds of such a series of events occurring if we keep following the current trajectory of AI development are way above the level I'd be comfortable with. And the risk is taken by a few tech bros on my behalf and on behalf of my beloved ones as well as that of billions of other people too. If they win, they win alone (I'm not so naive as to think otherwise). If they lose, we lose with them. I find that outrageous beyond measure.

[@LordSimonTemplar]

@@sp123 quite many of today's top AI researchers have very similar concerns. I assume you wouldn't call them uneducated, at the very least not in the field of AI research, would you?

[@youjean83]

Good talk. Can relate. Thanks

[@InnocentiusLacrimosa]

There was discussion on management consultants here. Good consultants do not often work that much on insights. They work more on changing systems and especially on changing behaviours of people and shifting company culture. Many times companies know much of what needs to ve done, but they lack the capacity to implement those changes.

[@piotrd.4850]

To all in comment session: I have seen both: 6 day a week death marches and projects where finding anything to do, much less meaningful, was next to impossible. Life changing products and vanity projects. Both due to faulty project management. *Guy is spot on about SCRUM and infantilization of workforce* and pet projects driven by cheap money. Meritocratic, hacker-mentality climate has been replace in many organisations by unicrons and rainbows. Service industry is more about talking cutomer into thinking something is done, than actually doing and once prided deep knowledge of something has been replaced by pressure to go for 'low hanging fruit' and superficial familiarity with all hyped keywords pushed into the project.