It stands out to me that people like Hinton aren't boosting and aren't seeking stonks. I suspect he's aghast.
::applause::
Calling humans "stochastic parrots" implies that there's no actual thought or meaning behind what they say, that their output is a probabilistic process with no "driver". The author points out that his own output in response to this idea is driven by his feeling of disgust towards it. A disproof by counterexample.
1) Because the thing you are talking about is just rebranded thing that existed 20 years before
2) Because boosters are egocentric drug addicts, pederasts, druglords with crypto stashes, raped their sister, or everything altogether
3) Because it failed to solve MY task
4) Because it can't be more important than a sunshine
5) Because it attacks my intellectual property
2) Kind of hard to argue that for electricity and phones. Internet, maybe because it was a bunch of academics. TV was boosted by big business.
3) It fails to solve any task, in particular LLMs. You're tricked into doing the work instead. Other kinds of machine learning are useful and do solve tasks. TV also didn't exist to solve a task, at least it was honest about it. Phones solve the task they were meant to, as did the internet until it got enshittened. (Still does, but worse.)
4) whut.
5) It actually steals information. All the other tech didn't.
It's Not "AI" Its Boosters Are Misanthropic The Hype Sucks And It’s Encroachingly Ubiquitous Its Obsequity Is Annoying And Its Prose Is Vapid Its Boosters Don’t Give A Shit About Consent So What Am I Even Fucking Doing Here
Sure, the stuff is bad. You can use the same arguments for any tech: Internet, mobile phones, social media. But for most of the people, the stuff is good. ChatGPT has hundreds of millions of active users. Those users are happy, because it creates enormous value for them.
AI affects non-users in a substantially different way to phones or social media. When I phone someone, it doesn't matter if it's a landline or mobile phone (though, in the UK we can tell by the leading digit). But when I read someone's pull request or press release, it does matter whether it's vibe coded, or made by the person. Looking at the person using the tool does not show the whole picture. You're welcome to have different values, but don't hide from me what I apply my values to.
- Believe in capitalism and that venture capital allows us to build things that are better for humankind
- Technological progress is good
- Automation and the increased productivity it brings is good
- Individualism: people should be allowed to use tools as they wish, and they not should not be limited to the use cases someone else finds acceptable. Are people allowed to do stuff we don't like?
- Freedom of speech: If it is AI generated slop, you are still allowed to say it even if it makes you to look like an idiot
Let's take vibe coding as an example. The user tobylane would prefer not to allow vibe coding to exist, because it causes him personal nuisance to see vibe-coded pull requests. But then, most people who do vibe coding do it because they like it and it brings them joy and productivity.
