Give Smart People the Tools to Do Smart Things

I just don't understand why people are incapable of extrapolating. AI can't do this blah blah, my brother in spaghetti monster, have you seen the curve? ChatGPT launched in November, 2022. Opus in December last year. Do you see where this is going?

AI may be a tool and add 50 IQ points to a 100 IQ person today but what happens when its adding 10000 IQ points. The 100 base doesn't quite matter as much does it? What does that world look like?

No, it's not just next word prediction. No you can't just wave your hand that it's probabilistic, so insert bad analogy to compiler or calculator and go about your day. And no, you can't just look at its limitations today, make a conclusion, and go back under your rock.

I was earlier of the belief, Oh my god, now nothing is impossible. Ai can market, ai can create video, ai can sell, i can build and make a great product. we will win.

I realized all this was quite wrong, AI just helps people who already know become more efficient. It just gives confidence to people who dont know anything by the sycophantic nature of AI. AI is just a tool for smart people to become smarter.

Love AI and what it allows us to do. But, it does give some superpowers, but the problems that existed before still do and they need to be solved for. with or without AI.

The problem is not AI. It's an excellent technology. The problem is there's an underlying power grab (e.g. layoffs). When humans do that to each other they inherently dehumanize/invalidate/insult each other. Implement strong labor protections or basic income and a lot of this dog-eat-dog toxicity goes away.

>>> CAD systems did not replace engineers.

It did replace draftsmen and designers, and changed the work that the engineers do. It's now more efficient to let engineers be their own draftsmen and designers. And design work has changed -- a lot less "hard" quantitative engineering, and a lot more "bureaucracy in three dimensions" as things have gotten more complex.

> Compilers did not replace programmers. Spreadsheets did not replace accountants. CAD systems did not replace engineers.

In the long run, this is as misleading as saying: Humans did not replace animals.

Normies just don’t understand what all is involved in running and evolving a production system. They think all programmers do is write code. Of course they believe that AI could replace programmers.

My in laws smugly asked me what I would be doing for work since AI would take away all the programming jobs and I said its not gonna happen and they laughed in derision.

... And watch stupid people do stupid things even faster

When I think about the typical team composition needed to build a typical app in a lot of companies, well, actually what do I think about? I think, okay, that’s how many people we need to build a typical app - some number. That’s what we should all think … like, what is that “number” of people we need?

So, today, if I think really really really, and I mean, really fucking hard about that “number”, I really really really come up with a number close to 1 (we need one person to type in the instruction at least, maybe two? Maybe three? Definitely not a team … no not that at all).

That means, for everything that we build today, before we even build it, we’ve already mentally replaced people. People be replaced yo, in your mind, in your company, in your reality. That’s it.

It’s a replacement, not a tool. And if you reaaallly think a bit more, you’ll see that it is truly the stupidest possible thing if in your scoping of what needs to be built, you didn’t scope out people. You’d have to be crazy not to scope out people.

Trust me, I never thought we’d get to this point either. I thought it was going to be an “assistant” too.

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The layoff numbers still look “normal “ to us. 75k here, 20k there, all numbers we’ve heard before. It hasn’t even really happened yet, the true numbers should be in millions. I didn’t believe the number “trillion dollar company” until, BAM, here’s a trillion dollar company.

Best we can do is kinda get used to the numbers, like the number 0 on one end (how many people you need), and some number N (in millions) that we won’t need anymore. We’ll just slowly get used to these new numbers.

This shit ain’t no tool.

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> Anthropic claims AI will replace industry X in Y months

False, Anthropic didn’t claim what was linked in the article.

> OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speculates that enough AI compute could help figure out how to cure cancer

Idk likely true? What’s so wrong here.

> Elon Musk says there will be no need for compilers as AI will write the binary directly

What seems so off about this? AI can write binary and probably better in a few years. Higher level languages would still be efficient probably.

> Anthropic claims that Mythos is super dangerous, the people can’t possibly handle such a powerful cyberweapo

Well it was?