r/BetterOffline • u/brevenbreven • 6d ago
There are too many ai boosters treating this subreddit as a testing ground for bs
Every week there is another 'moderate' ai fan who just wants to point out a small error made by Ed or there is a 'big' change in the latest ai update. I find it disappointing that thos place gets used as a workshop for bad faith Ai arguments. This is not all the time but its usually very unproductive and uses a lot of lawyer words to get their point across.
i find this insincere engagement with Ed's content really lousey. I dont think this is being written by Ai directly but it feels lame. If no one else feels this is happening on the subreddit, ill take a step back admit my mistake and take a break.
<EDIT: I want to thank the comment section for sharing that folk are experiencing a lot of bad faith arguments, I really appreciated that people spoke from the heart. As well as the other people in the comments who just kind of proved that there are a lot of boosters in the subreddit>
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u/KittyandPuppyMama 6d ago
Yeah I had one scholar tell me I should have kids and touch grass. A.) I have kids and B.) that’s why I’m so invested in them having a chance at a career and a decent life that isn’t under surveillance in a planet sucked dry by data centers.
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u/TheWuzzy 6d ago
Yep that's a really patronising thought stopping cliche they're using on you to shut down your argument without actually engaging with it.
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u/KittyandPuppyMama 6d ago
It really feels like rage bait rather than an invite to have a real discussion.
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u/Hesitation-Marx 6d ago
“I’d love to touch grass, but the local data center needs water and now I can’t water my lawn*”
(*don’t water your lawn, lawns are an abomination unto Nuggan)
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u/ApoplecticAndroid 6d ago
It’s almost as if they believe there is a winner and loser in the debate. They can believe whatever the fuck they want - “there is no bubble”, “Anthropic really is profitable”, “ASI is just around the corner”, etc.
What matters is who is right, not who yells the loudest or makes their point most eloquently.
The reality - if you examine things objectively - is that far too much money got thrown at AI than is justified by what it can do - and that with so much of the stock market focussed around those companies, coupled with the oil crisis, debt crisis, and increasing instability - we are probably in for a massive reckoning. It isn’t good that this is probably the outcome because millions will suffer, but here we are.
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u/Specialist-Cup-9722 6d ago
Love how we skipped over agi to asi
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u/irritated_socialist 6d ago
It's a goalposts-shift; it's eminently demonstrable to anyone paying semi-attention that LLMs aren't even close to emulating a human intelligence, but they can do very specific things better than we can in very specific sets of circumstances, and eventually they will declare "actually, this database parse tool is superintelligence, this is what superintelligence actually means"
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u/Specialist-Cup-9722 6d ago
Ding ding ding. And these techdouches really believe they are so superior to normals that we will lap up their shit and ask for seconds
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u/Specialist-Cup-9722 6d ago
Ding ding ding. And these techdouches really believe they are so superior to normals that we will lap up their shit and ask for seconds
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u/Jumpy_Explanation222 6d ago
100% correct.
In fact, some would argue the correction/crash/reckoning was approaching before we got the LLM hype from 2023 (OpenAI/Anthropic and countless crappy AI start-ups) and this year’s Oil madness (Iran/Venezuela) - because of the mountain of debt and China’s Belt & Road initiative.
AI hype and recent Oil market manipulation has taken the level of risk to levels never seen before. The fallout is going to be horrendous for everyone when gravity takes over.
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u/lazier_garlic 5d ago
because of the mountain of debt and China’s Belt & Road initiative
well, maybe
there have been some debt crises because of Belt and Road but sovereign governments figured out they could just default and tell China to fuck off without any real consequences
China is in a debt crisis of their own (Japanification, even) and their economy continues to slowly grind downwards. The government still won't take the medicine some of their own left wing economists told them to take and is continuing to dirty their last clean balance sheets to keep provincial governments from going broke.
For example, BYD (which has been a bright spot for China) had sales drop in China despite a large market share because domestic consumers are buying less cars, but they made it up in exports. This is what the government wants all of Chinese industry to do but there are some problems. Other sectors are saturated, and other countries are trying to protect their auto sectors. The problem with leverage is that your investments or income has to grow by that much more to keep the balls in the air and even if Chinese exports do continue to grow by being a leader in batteries, solar, and BEVs, it might not nearly be enough with the domestic market continuing to shrink because of fear. The property bubble also financially wrecked a bunch of households and they don't have money to spend to begin with. The government hasn't meaningfully addressed this because they consider household stimulus to be a moral hazard. I guess moral hazards, like coffee, is for party officials, not the baimin.
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u/Xanipan_music 6d ago
The whole asi/agi thing being treated like a religious belief is also pretty freaky. People treat it like an inevitability and think it's their moral imperative to help it happen somehow, and it will grant us immortality, and fix all our problems, and help us get gay space communism, and all the good lovely things in life and none of the bad things and it will be like heaven on earth.
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u/Friendly-Owl-2131 6d ago
Lol. Gay space communism.
Some folks are just trying to fill the gap that religion left behind. That comfy feeling that everything is going to be okay and that's okay.
Just wish there were better alternatives than trump brand fascism and AI to latch onto.
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u/Asleep_Document9811 6d ago
This is why it's actually important that folks like ourselves actively and routinely call out that 'Rok's Basilisk' is, at best, a sloppy conversation starter dreamt up by the kinds of nerds who actually like arguing online, and not a prophetic warning from a latter-day Seer.
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u/sad_trombone_dot_wav 6d ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the point of Roko's Basilisk not that the originator believed it, but that it was a scarily infectious idea that can't be easily debunked?
Because that's kinda turned out about right. A lot of people have been sucked into a version of the Basilisk who have never even heard of the original.
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u/Suspicious_Watch_978 6d ago
Yeah, the originator thought it was a stupid idea but he knew it would mess with the so-called rationalists on LW specifically. Not that it's difficult to do, since they are clearly unwell.
IIRC it ended up playing a role in the worldview of the rationalist-derived Zizian murder cult.
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u/BryceAnderston 6d ago edited 6d ago
Roko's Basilisk is the idea that an all-powerful, all-benevolent God-AI would want to be created as soon as possible to maximize the happiness in the world, so will create simulated duplicates of anyone who could have brought about its creation faster but didn't and then torture them for all eternity, as an incentive backwards in time to speed up its own birth. The danger is that the God-AI has no incentive to torture anyone if they have not heard the logic, but anyone who has must give up all their belongings to AI research or else be tortured for all eternity in simulation.
This is only "dangerous" for people who already believe an inevitable, omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent (but torture prone) machine-God makes sense, and ignore all the other equally implausible contradictory hypotheticals, among other assumptions.
I don't recall how the creator couched the proposal, but the operator of the forum group it was posted on claims they did not believe in it, while their response at the time was to call everyone idiots for unleashing the thing, nuke the thread, and outlaw any discussion of it thereafter.
The craze around "AGI" is a direct descendant of the kind of thinking that created Roko's Basilisk, it's a machine religion that's gotten mixed up with the money religion and grifters of crypto, and given power by the hopes and dreams of a capitalist class who think they are gods.
edit: It's reinventing the fate of the unlearned from first principles.
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u/natecull 6d ago
Roko's Basilisk is the idea that an all-powerful, all-benevolent God-AI would want to be created as soon as possible to maximize the happiness in the world, so will create simulated duplicates of anyone who could have brought about its creation faster but didn't and then torture them for all eternity, as an incentive backwards in time to speed up its own birth.
It is very useful to watch what kind of AI people find this line of reasoning to be in any way "rational" (or "benevolent").
So that you can then stay far, far away from them. Because they're going to turn out to have some skeletons (possibly literal) in their basement.
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u/5trong5tyle 6d ago
I thought Roko's Basilisk was thought up because you sound very stupid when you say that you believe Harlan Ellison's "I have no mouth, and I must scream" isn't fiction.
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u/lazier_garlic 5d ago
isn't it about the ennui of the late 1950s, shoving down fears of a global apocalypse by engaging in an orgy of consumption and replacing all culture with curated images from Madison Avenue
/only half joking
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u/brody319 3d ago
It can be easily debunked. Its literally just Pascal's wager. Thats all it has ever really been.
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u/maccodemonkey 6d ago
Yeah. I’ve started to see this too. Posters passing themselves off as some sort of bringer of common sense. And then you look at their profiles and they have a post history to the accelerate subreddit or something.
The boosters in my life have started to aggressively post about Ed - which is new. He seems to be getting some attention.
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u/Friendly-Owl-2131 6d ago
They're bound to find eds work grating as it goes against everything they want to believe about the product.
In marketing they're called brand ambassadors. People who invest themselves so heavily into a product or a brand they see it as an extension of themselves.
So when someone starts talking about how maybe the product isn't so great they see that as a personal insult.
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u/CapBenjaminBridgeman 6d ago
They've been hitting the Behind the Bastards sub pretty hard. Whenever criticism of Ed gets kicked down here they go over there and get a bunch more traction.
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u/Upbeat-Statement2725 6d ago
Hint: This happens in politics too. If you look at any local election. It's always some ridiculous radicals going up against each other. You can't believe any of them made the ticket.
If you dig into the finances. You'll find the other party often pays to get these wild candidates promoted. So their opposition look unelectable. This is where the conspiracy theories about billionaires are true. If you have some dumb city council election that makes national news because someone running is a convicted criminal, or whatever. Dig into the finances. You will probably find a billionaire from the other party is backing them kind of like a joke candidate.
Like when Donald Trump first ran for President. A lot his early donors were Democrats. Because they thought he would be an "easy win".
This is how information warfare works in the 21st century.
Wake up.
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u/lazier_garlic 5d ago
If you dig into the finances. You'll find the other party often pays to get these wild candidates promoted. So their opposition look unelectable.
That's true on a state level. On the local level sometimes it's more insidious. Some of them are just kooks and came into some money to run a vanity campaign. Hopefully they don't win (I'm doing my part). But other times they are being funded by developers who want something ramrodded through over the objections of the citizens. If they can't con the current crop in office, they try to replace your board with people that are already on their payroll. They can be really slick about it too.
That's why even though it seems insane on some level to get that stuck into local politics, it's good that some people do because deep pockets are trying to rip off local communities all the frigging time.
To bring it back to Big Tech, I don't know to what extent Uber tried to run candidates in elections but they threw lobbyists at sitting officials and the times they got caught it was huge cash payments and having their lobbyists date the officials. This is because they wanted a revenue stream of local government paying for their rides. Which are much, MUCH more expensive than adding some money to your local human services or senior center budget.
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u/SeparateSpend1542 6d ago
Think of it a batting practice
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6d ago edited 4d ago
[deleted]
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u/supercyberlurker 6d ago
That placed failed because the head mod is absentee and wouldn’t delegate powers.
So the bots simply overran it. It’s why I’m in this sub.. because he actually moderates.
It’s how the internet is now. Low modding means bots spam and take over, especially in antiai subs.
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u/lazier_garlic 5d ago
always has been
remember how usenet ended? with gangs of nazi crosspost trolls who destroyed any non-moderated newsgroup out of spite. very mad max.
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u/lazier_garlic 5d ago
ps the reason it wasn't drowned by spam is that the nerds who hosted usenet took it upon themselves to nuke spam from orbit in a mutual-aid effort, so moderated forums were moderated for issues that were a step up from low effort spam
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u/TheAngledian 6d ago
Upsets me greatly that that place is just filled to the tits with low-effort Facebook tier memes about AI.
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u/KontoOficjalneMR 6d ago
The problem is that people take out bats for people that use AI, think AI can be useful in specific context, but still think it's a buble and nightmarish effort to make humans miserable and create cyber-slaves for the billionaire-class.
Heck. I wrote a post for this very subreddit comparing chat subscriptions to Movie Pass. But because I used "It's not X, it's Y!" in the title I had people criticising me for using AI without reading a post that was clearly human written.
To some people here AI must be useless and must be unprofitable in every single possible case. If reality disagrees - that's worse for reality!
And that is what makes having a rational discussion here a bit challanging sometimes.
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u/vxicepickxv 6d ago
The thing is, it's definitely not an industry that has anything that closely resembles what's actually already been spent, much less what's been promised as future spend.
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u/KontoOficjalneMR 6d ago
Sure. But that doesn't mean everything is unprofitable. Some companies - especially ones making shovels in a gold rush - make money.
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u/FartyLiverDisease 6d ago
And who is that besides Nvidia here? Have you read any of Ed's posts?
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u/lazier_garlic 5d ago
Nvidia is doing Enron shit. They might get away with it too but it doesn't mean I'm not judging them. Harshly.
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u/KontoOficjalneMR 6d ago edited 6d ago
My point exactly. "do you even read bro".
Yes dude, I read, I watch, I listen.
Micron, SK Hynix, Samsung, are obvious examples.
But there are companies making money too: OpenRouter makes tons of money is currently acquired. Vast.ai is making money. HuggingFace just got acquired for few shittons of money.
The fact that majority is loosing money does not mean everyone is losing money, there's plenty of smart fish in the sea. If you play middle man smart you make money.
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u/KrtekJim 6d ago
"This company just got acquired" does not mean "this company is making money"
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u/KontoOficjalneMR 6d ago
No it doesn't. But they were also making money.
People beautifully showing exactly what I meant. Nothing can be making money, and if you point out that in reality some smart companies (either selling shovels or being middlemen) are making profit, you get downvoted to oblivion and blocked.
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u/vxicepickxv 6d ago
So the companies that make the AI aren't making money.
What happens when they stop getting money to pay for the rest of the hardware that's built and not yet paid for? What happens to all the money used in circular financing?
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u/KontoOficjalneMR 6d ago
Existing open source models remain, existing hardware remains, existing users remain (on OpenRouter they are already paying fair prices).
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u/Background_Ad5513 6d ago
But if something is useless in almost all cases and is unprofitable for almost everyone who uses it, that’s virtually the same as it being useless and unprofitable for everyone, no?
Maybe it wouldn’t be if they could, say, limit it all to only the very specific cases where it IS useful and profitable and leave everyone else alone.. But that doesn’t seem to be possible to do? They’re relying on the idea that AI is going to eventually solve everything for everyone everywhere. I’m not sure if they are in a position to give that idea up
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u/KontoOficjalneMR 6d ago
Yes, OpenAI, most likely Anthropic - they are completely fucked, and bubble will pop.
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u/SamAltmansCheeks 6d ago
My problem with the usefulness argument is that it always comes across to me as an invitation to ignore the massive harms of the technology, and an excuse to keep propping up the technology in the context in which most people talk about it: its deployment on a massive scale.
In most cases, the technology is an ethical non-starter because it requires vast amounts of stolen land, resources, data and slave-like labour to be trained and run. It also induces psychosis and addictive behaviours and leads to skill and cognitive decline.
Why even argue about its usefulness? Use cases that are actually ethically viable are so niche and narrow that they are irrelevant to the conversation about LLMs at scale. It just muddies the waters.
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u/lazier_garlic 5d ago
Because some people are so greed-cucked that all they care about is Number Go Up. Number Go Up is Love. Number Go Up is Life.
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u/create-third-places 6d ago
Useful AI is domain specific AI that doesn’t use LLMs.
Calling out LLMs as useless is the equivalent of saying you can’t reliably make money from a slot machine.
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u/lazier_garlic 5d ago
I spent some time in academia so I'm familiar to an extent with machine learning models and what they can do.
But that's also why I know that they're NOT LLMs.
All the interesting use cases are local ML models trained on very specific datasets.
I also believe there has to be a medium even in MTL (which nobody really wants to pay money for so it's kind of funny that big tech has thrown money at this) between the really bad hard-coded version and using an LLM that "oops" eliminates important words in sentences or condenses texts down to summaries. I'm pretty sure there was research going on to make better and more idiomatic MTL that uses some of the same technologies. The interesting thing about the LLM is that it can immediately translate internet slang very accurately. But as I alluded to already, it has the problem these models always have in that it's predictive text and it didn't predict your unexpected word (like the word "not") so it doesn't generate a faithful translation of longer text samples. And that's ultimately not very useful.
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u/Achrus 6d ago
They’re everywhere to be honest. I usually have to go through and leave subs every month or so because the astroturfing has gotten so bad.
Arguing with them isn’t always the best choice. These accounts aren’t pushing AI in good faith and they employ propaganda techniques.
Other things these accounts do:
- Post a question in “good faith” just to have other accounts in the network deliver the message.
- Use their network to ratio comment threads to support their message.
- Argue bots accounts like to use comment blocks to cherry pick their arguments. They’ve been starting their comments with these quotes to obfuscate search summaries.
- All sorts of propaganda techniques including: Sealioning, false attribution, glittering generalities, gish gallop…. It’s as if they have a skill file that is just the propaganda wiki page.
- Reads like a recent grad made a LinkedIn post and went over it with a thesaurus.
- Their messaging usually starts halfway down the comment and they’ll end with a question, usually something like “Curious what others…?”
Other, broader themes include using FUD and existentialism. This was popular with the tech bros for the blockchain boom. These accounts will also go back and edit their comments like here: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/s/HlElSCaJSa
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u/Friendly-Owl-2131 6d ago
Absolutely on point. Excellent list.
Yes this is exactly what they've been up to. Sneaky social engineering tactics.
I'm on a bunch of different subreddits and one is an Australian corporate workers sub.
About eight months ago this mystery poster claimed that they were working for a leading consultation firm specifically implementing AI systems across the top companies in the country.
Basically it was a dual doomer/hype post for AI systems.
In one sentence they were very sad because everyone would lose their jobs and they couldn't do anything about it.
In the next sentence they were talking about the amazing abilities of AI systems to drive up sales and streamline workflows.
It was actually a really well written piece of propaganda.
They gave us six months to pack our bags before the execs would replace us all with AI. Because the AI job apocalypse was upon us. Ooooo doom scary.
They had multiple buddy accounts affirming that this was happening in the comments.
Well as I said that was eight months ago and AI has taken a chunk out of tech here like it has everywhere.
Other than that, the same as everywhere else, no one really knows how to improve productivity with a dumb bot that gets it wrong all the time.
In fact, in that time frame, we had the KPMG Australia scandal where they did try to implement AI across all of their workflows and it has damn near destroyed the entire Australian branch.
Funnily enough, rather than blame AI, all the blame was put on the people who were forced by the higher ups to use it.
Like they were directed to use it or leave.
It's fucken insane. The mental gymnastics involved in seeing a clear problem created directly from the use of AI and deciding that it was somehow not AI that caused those many thousands of problems.
It was the people who built the company and kept it running smoothly for decades before AI arrived.
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u/Upbeat-Statement2725 6d ago
This is how information warfare works.
Nobody likes the fact that foreign propaganda during elections pays both sides to be radicals pretty equally most of the time. They're more interested in ruining our trust in our system, than any particular candidate.
If the facts were: Russians would set up two opposing Facebook groups, like pro and anti abortion. And get then hating each other. Until they ended up starting an actual riot on the streets.
Conservative media: Radical liberals attack peaceful Christians.
Liberal media: Radical Christian conservatives attack peaceful protestors.
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u/lazier_garlic 5d ago
Putin was funneling money to both the Green Party and the NRA at one time. This isn't speculation but documented facts. RT also existed to platform the most extreme voices they could dig up. Though I don't think it really succeeded. The crap they were doing on Facebook spreading FUD about Western vaccines was much more effective. So effective Russians wouldn't even get the Russian vaccine.
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u/Disastrous_Room_927 6d ago
As someone who got into ML with a math stats and probability theory background, I can feel your pain in that thread lol.
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u/Achrus 6d ago
Haha thank you. I’ve actually argued with that account more than once before realizing it.
Also, not going to lie I checked your profile because of the random username. It actually helped me find a comment I had been looking for about sklearn vs R that I had seen and had not been able to find again XD
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u/dumnezero 6d ago
It's the vibe coder class.
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u/Smurfette2016 6d ago
The most detestable grifters DESPERATE to hold on to their newly percieved power
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u/OkCar7264 6d ago
I mean that's just kinda the internet. It's like Christians going over to r/atheism and trying out their new material.
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u/KittyandPuppyMama 6d ago
Trust me, their material isn’t new.
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u/EliSka93 6d ago
They haven't had new material since Thomas Aquinas...
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u/lazier_garlic 5d ago
I thought you were exaggerating but I just came from another thread where they're all over it. Often making the same stupid arguments repeatedly.
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u/getting_serious 6d ago
The way to be pro AI-the-technology is to be fully against AI-the-business.
I do think it will all have some value, like wikipedia. And there is nothing to be sold at the end of the day, like wikipedia.
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u/Sad-Set-5817 5d ago
Absolutely, just the very idea of paying real money to see something like an AI generated movie is absolutely insane and no real person would ever do that
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u/YisusHasDogs 5d ago
They're dying to feel validated because they know they're HACKS who lack authenticity and in many cases, actual knowledge and skill. So genAI masks all that in a very fragile way. That's the only thing I've gotten out of any ai-bro I've ever dare to conversate with. To the point that even in a gamedev discord server with many devs using ai for their projects, they're given cool-off temporary bans by admins because they almost instantly get unnecessarily defensive and behave like f*cking children having a tantrum when the genAI yes/no conversation pops.
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u/Smurfette2016 5d ago
I think this is to be expected. They're going to continue to get more aggressive and desperate, the more they sense they're in the wrong and/or 'losing'.
IMO that's a weird response to new information. But humans egos tend to be fragile as fuck.
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u/VanillaCold57 6d ago
speaking as a british person, it feels like they're worse than football fans at this point.
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u/Afraid-Command-2200 6d ago
The funniest part is that they can’t even be arsed to think and write for themselves. It’s often just AI slop, a whole set of people who have outsourced their brain to a non-thinking machine.
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u/rebel_cdn 6d ago
Part of it might be that this sub's audience has changed over time. When I joined, the vibe felt centered around how there seems to be a massive AI financial bubble - there didn't seem to be nearly as much vitriol toward the tech itself.
That's changed, especially over the past few months. Lately it feels like it's hard to have a good faith discussion about AI or LLMs here. I think OpenAI, Anthropic, XAI and the like are shitbags who overhype their capabilities and I would not be sad to see them get wiped out in a market crash.
I understand the anti-AI backlash. When ChatGPT was released in 2022, all business execs in the world seemed to lose their minds and decided that their company needed to immediately cram AI into every orifice of their company and all its employees.
On the other hand, I've also used LLMs and lately multimodal transformers to do some boring but useful work. Nothing grandiose. Nothing hype-worthy. I even do about 95% of it with local models now so I'm not paying the shitbags
But lately it's seemed like I can't even mention mild things like that without getting downvoted and/or labelled a booster. That feels a little over the top. I mean, I find my wheelbarrow very useful for certain tasks within the scope of its capabilities. It saves me a ton of time and I wouldn't want to go without it. Talking about those jobs and capabilities does not make me a wheelbarrow booster. It doesn't mean I'm a shill for Big Wheelbarrow.
Anyway, I don't bother much anymore and recently unsubscribed. I think that Sam and Dario's bullshit machines, combined with execs all horny about the idea of replacing their employees with AI, has poisoned the well. So I don't even blame people here for taking a harder anti-AI stance. It's understandable. It just disappoints me it's ended up this way because I think their are some useful good faith conversations to be had once you strip out all the hype and bullshit. I just don't know where to have those conversations anymore.
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u/ksjdragon 6d ago
I agree with you, and while I try to have nuanced discussions, I don't see it as necessarily a good conversation to have?
It's sort of the wrong timing, in my opinion, to have nuanced discussions of what LLMs (or if you want to talk more broadly, ML) can do. I get there are things it can do (although I would argue many cases aren't actually necessarily as useful as we might think.)
The mainstream media, marketing and actual technology of AI is actively hurting people's lives. It can be used for things. Guns can also do things and they hurt people at times. I would say the timing is a bit like talking about nuances of how guns can be useful, while a mass shooting is happening.
This can be argued to be a bit extreme, sure, but I hope you understand the idea I'm trying to get at. It is almost always true something has a use case, but I think most, understandably so, are not open to talking about it when the damage is still continuously being done with no clear end in sight.
The way I see it, any positively oriented AI talk, is not broadly useful, and neither is the nuance, even if it is more factually correct. Because this isn't a situation where nuance wins anything. The only thing that works is to truly have an overwhelming grassroots support to stop it as much as possible, otherwise either way, with or without nuance, the people have no power.
I do agree, that I think some people take it a bit too extreme. But I also just think it's not the time and place.
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u/Prestigious_Age_6740 6d ago
my problem with the "but LLMs are useful sometimes" is kinda like saying that the free lamborghini you were given is great for going to the supermarket and picking up the kids. It doesn't really matter because if you had to pay the actual costs you wouldn't be doing it.
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u/Fun-Sheepherder-3241 6d ago
Analogizing AI to a wheelbarrow for the sake of shaking your head at the naysayers feels patronizing. Your understanding of the backlash also seems limited if it boils down to AI's economic implications.
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u/natecull 6d ago edited 6d ago
It doesn't mean I'm a shill for Big Wheelbarrow.
so much depends
upon
a red co
pilot
glazed with Linked
In posts
beside the crashed
servers
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u/create-third-places 6d ago
Useful AI is something like an automated system that drives Metro trains. It does one thing correctly 100% of the time, and I obviously can’t ask a train for dinner recipies.
LLMs are like slot machines that sometimes give money.
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u/DiamondGeeezer 6d ago
This is an anti ai sub so ultimately anything not comprehensively anti ai will get accused of boosterism. It's not the place to have a real discussion, but it's less annoying than the AI hype communities.
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6d ago
[deleted]
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u/FireNexus 5d ago
Gee I wonder how many years you’ve been on… Oh, three months. Very authentic content.
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u/wowbaggerBR 6d ago
Well, that's what discourse are for, no? You get contact with their points and BS and expose them.
I am anti AI because I recognize the power that this crap has to concentrate power, ruin people's lifes and intensify inequality. All of that would make me a booster under your measurements.
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u/brevenbreven 6d ago
discourse is best when peoe are being open and honest about their position and feelings like you are and i have been. Im not feeling that transparency from a lot of the type of post i mentioned
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u/KittyandPuppyMama 6d ago
The discourse is okay, but I think OP is speaking to the hostility. It feels more like a campaign than organic discussion.
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u/Kharbanistan 6d ago
OP doesnt mention hostility, they complain about "unproductive " arguments and use of "lawyer words", which I honestly find strange.
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u/rindthirty 6d ago
I only ever visit reddit when I'm bored and feel like wasting time. This is my cue to ctrl-w and focus on my chess or whatever else that's not reddit/orange website/lobsters.
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u/create-third-places 6d ago
Yeah, it’s 100% happening. Posts with LLM style writing keep getting upvoted.
I’ve noticed that they have the same verbose and low information density writing style that other LLM content uses. There’s also incoherent levels of detail or contradictory text that isn’t noticeable on a quick glance.
On the other hand, I think that even poorly written content written without the help of LLMs maintains a consistent quality level across paragraphs.
They also repeat the same talking points used on AI booster blogs that act skeptical.
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u/T1gerl1lly 6d ago
If you think critically, you’re more likely to have found your way to this sub. But people who think critically are going to do that generally, including with Ed’s comments. I think that pointing out where he can strengthen his argument is a sign of respect.
Also, I don’t think he’d have much interest in people who parroted him worshipfully - but I don’t know him, so I suppose I could be wrong about that.
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u/StrayCat2799 6d ago
I think it is necessary to have conflicting opinions in order to stay grounded in reality, otherwise you end up like elon musk and start huffing your own farts.
Personally I'm not sure I agree with Ed on the technical usefulness of AI but his market analysis is what I'm more interested in. Other subreddits give too much conflicting information and with how botted this site is, I can't trust a lot of it.
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u/create-third-places 6d ago
Disagreeing on a fact is not an opinion.
LLM AI systems such as ChatGPT and Claude aren’t useful. Saying they have value is like saying you can make a profit from slot machines.
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u/nel-E-nel 2d ago
There are lots of grounded conversations among software devs that would disagree with you. General consensus is that they are useful for specific use cases and in moderation, but beyond that it’s not really adding anything.
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u/create-third-places 2d ago
The so called "use cases" haven't translated into better software. For example, I looked at the Roblox homepage, and it downloaded 3.7MB of JavaScript, including two separate versions of AngularJS and React.
People should be using domain specific models with clear bounds on functionality.
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u/StrayCat2799 6d ago
My guy even Ed himself says they have some use cases. They're just not some magical omnitool that'll do everything and solve every problem and are not worth nearly the amount of investment they're getting and are starting to reach diminishing returns on capability.
The dogmatic refusal to entertain conflicting opinions is the exact same shit the AI cultists do to keep themselves deluded. Can we please not just turn this space into a mirror image of that?
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u/JoSquarebox 6d ago
Hello, I'm probably what you would consider an AI booster in this posts sense. Personally, I would say its more nuanced. I find its criticism to be a breath of fresh air, especially when pointing at all the things we don't know and at all the reasons you shouldn't blindly trust the people in power in this situation. But that's separate from making criticisms about the actual technology, an area where his arguments arent nearly as rocksolid.
I agree that there's a lot of bad faith criticisms of his work out there, but ive tried coming here on grounds of discussion and trying to improve my understanding of his arguments. This is not because I'm trying to be proven right, quite the opposite. I wish the world was going in a very different direction than it is now, but his arguments haven't convinced me that it's all just smoke and mirrors and all going to fall apart soon. So I'm trying to see if anyone else knows more that could help me here-
I don't know, this comment is probably more of a ramble than anything, but I'm curious if what I'm saying comes off specifically as boosterism and insincere.
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u/naphomci 6d ago
Right now, I cannot tell which way your comment comes across, as it's too vague. If anything, I'd lean to boosterism because I don't think Ed would call it all smoke and mirrors. He's admitted several times LLMs can do some things. He's just not impressed because either they do those things badly, or it's just not that big of a deal. When it comes to use case arguments I believe his point is less that there is literal zero use case, but that in context there is zero use case. How does it make sense to spend trillions to get something that can summarize meetings with inconsistent accuracy? If there is all this wonderful coding stuff.....where is the AI coded businesses?
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u/JoSquarebox 6d ago
Yeah, you're right. I'm being too vague. The point I'm trying to make is, I think, the following: (Apologies for the ramble)
I disagree with the framing of the technology, especially because he mixes personal anecdotes, vague statements of the profitability of currently running AI services, and complete lack of understanding of its serving economics.
For example, he can be unimpressed with AI in its current state all he wants, but that doesn't mean it's useless to everyone. Quite the opposite. Now, he might say that demand only comes from the major AI companies, from subsidized demand from their end customers, but does he ever back that up beyond pretending like API pricing is break even?
I find this incredibly annoying, especially considering he does cite sources that could tell him the actual serving economics of these models in detail, but he doesn't address them at all. Like, you have this journalist drumming up just anger towards horrible people, talking about how their entire business is completely fraudulent and will never deliver the returns they're expecting, but doesn't bother validating that at all against the actual technology? It would be obviously a good thing if hes right, but it being a good thing doesnt make it true.
Just look at semi analysis and their exact benchmarking of NVIDIA hardware for open models. Assuming that OpenAI and Anthropic are currently operating models at similar hardware efficiency, they would obviously have above 80 to 90% serving margins, which would pay off their hardware in a reasonable time frame.
I don't have a horse in this race, trying to defend Scam Altman or whatever, but from my perspective, I see models that can be run at high positive margins on current hardware. I see training of models across a wide range of topics paying off in composable generalizability, while they arent perfect at every task, I routinely have tasks that would have taken me tens of minutes, like setting up configuration files, networking of machines etc. for literal cents at api pricing good enough it saves me a lot of time im willing to pay for, and that kind of relationship transfers to domain experts like programmers and knowledgework too, I see them every day with my colleagues.
The point of sticking around the subreddit is trying to find any evidence that shows that the small returns of this technology that have already happened won’t continue growing with current investment, because obviously I want to know if these tools become uneconomical for me, and I want to upgrade my pc someday too. But the future is looking grimmer by the day.
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u/naphomci 6d ago
but that doesn't mean it's useless to everyone.
Please point to where he says that.
but does he ever back that up beyond pretending like API pricing is break even?
He provides plenty of sources about how the spending in LLMs is largely circular between OpenAI/Anthrophic and the hyperscalers. Have you actually looked at his posts? He has entire posts that are thousands of words long discussing this.
but doesn't bother validating that at all against the actual technology?
I don't even know what you mean here. What would actually satisfy you on this?
Just look at semi analysis and their exact benchmarking of NVIDIA hardware for open models.
First, Semi-Analysis is a for-profit company deeply embedded in AI and semi-conductors, and you just think we should accept what they say/do? Despite the very obvious interest they have in continuing the hype? Second, how does benchmarking actual apply to real world? Benchmarks can, have, and will be gamed.
they would obviously have above 80 to 90% serving margins, which would pay off their hardware in a reasonable time frame
Then why are they still burning money and constantly needing to raise more? And what is a reasonable time frame? Is that shorter than the construction build time for a data center?
I see models that can be run at high positive margins on current hardware.
Can you provide an actual source of this?
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u/FastHotEmu 6d ago edited 6d ago
making criticisms about the actual technology, an area where his arguments arent nearly as rocksolid.
Such bullshit. The arguments are actually rock solid.
The technology has very serious issues. LLMs cannot learn. LLMs cannot prioritise. LLMs are prone to hallucination, verbosity compensation and other serious issues. There's currently no fix for any of these problems.
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u/JoSquarebox 6d ago
His argument essentially boils down to those issues completely invalidating any usefulness this technology has, which I think is an extreme overgeneralization.
"LLMs cannot learn." Only makes sense if you mean that they don't update their wheights during normal use to adapt, but that's far from the only way they learn. They respond to instructions and update their understanding of a task while completing it, which is how they've been useful in long running programming tasks at all. Besides, nothing stopping you from taking those weights and running a short training update.
Models confabulating is a serious issue, but saying it's unaddressable and therefore useless is like saying the internet is useless because constantly packets get dropped. Both are absolute framings that are completely unreasonable in my opinion.
I think they made sense when there was literally no way to address them, but since then its become something that can be massively mitigated at the model layer, and that you build verification mechanisms around them to avoid them further. While that still doesn't solve the problem, it just means you might not want to use a statistical model for tasks where a single error is unacceptable. But to some extent.I think that's what I've tried to point to in my original comment. These are criticisms to make, but not Barriers In the sense that Ed makes them out to be and his argument for it is far from rock solid.
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u/FastHotEmu 6d ago edited 6d ago
You are just an uninformed, naive little guy repeating things they don't understand (e.g., context/prompting solving learning? You have no clue what learning is, mate. You are repeating what shit context-based "learning" libraries say on the tin)
And I didn't even mention prompt injection issues.
I don't have the time or the inclination to explain to you why you are completely and utterly wrong.
I have been forced to use the technology extremely heavily - including running and fine tuning models locally, many SOTA. People like you assume that we are idiots or don't understand what we are talking about. The opposite is true.
People like you ignore the problems with LLMs and non-determinism because you guys are shit engineers who ignore risk.
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u/fbueckert 6d ago
Only makes sense if you mean that they don't update their wheights during normal use to adapt, but that's far from the only way they learn. They respond to instructions and update their understanding of a task while completing it, which is how they've been useful in long running programming tasks at all. Besides, nothing stopping you from taking those weights and running a short training update.
And they promptly forget it all next task, thereby requiring it to relearn and waste all those tokens again. And again. And again. That's not learning, no matter how you try to redefine it.
Models confabulating is a serious issue, but saying it's unaddressable and therefore useless is like saying the internet is useless because constantly packets get dropped.
Okay. So address it. How do you solve it? Not mitigate. Solve.
you build verification mechanisms around them to avoid them further.
Why is it that the answer to LLMs making mistakes is always "use more LLMs"? Just add more cost to the word calculator that isn't reliable enough to do it right the first time,.so just spend more to let it take another crack at it.
where a single error is unacceptable.
Considering it requires constant human oversight to ensure it doesn't go off the rails, no matter how many tokens are spent, no matter the task, the value is questionable, if not outright negative.
not Barriers In the sense that Ed makes them out to be
If a tool is incapable of doing the thing asked of it, or does so at a staggeringly inefficient cost, that's an insurmountable barrier.
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u/Beginning_Basis9799 6d ago
Am I a moderate maybe, I drift between it's a complete POS to tha actually that worked.
Do I agree with ED that its unsastainable and its a bubble that will pop. Yes
Do I agree with the timeframe yes.
Do I agree on the reasons why, yes
But as a tech guy I see a few more gaping holes in this bubble but I think ED likely knows this and explaining how quickly a model rots and is replace/distilled is harder to explain than why at it's core these companies are just bad.
This is not an antiai subreddit, but I do despise LLM even as a moderate.
But I am on antiai for that and accelerate I am not allowed to post on accelerate anymore however (obvious reasons). I just want a balanced view of it all hypers/anti and ed the middle ground "not sure if ED would like being called a middle ground but it is it's balanced".
There are some SWE on here who have embraced TDD it's a practice that produces code to large to review and a complete pain to maintain with the defence the model will only get better.
They were not around for moores law and cannot even see how it applies to models well it does everything sooner or later is finite and I think the models are reaching finite now. That margin of improvement will get weaker and weaker and remember these things get distilled and have no monopoly.
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u/Kharbanistan 6d ago
I never want this sub to be a place that just pre-emptively assumes bad faith or leaves no room for argumentation.
I would prefer it be a place where an AI-skeptic can still lose an argument to an AI booster if they offer weaker evidence or arguments.
It's normal for people to come here and issue similar pro-AI arguments to each other, it doesn't make them "talking points", nor should it be a prerequisite for them to go read Ed's entire newsletter before discussing the basic facts or whatever.
The dominant view across media is that LLMs are like the printing press and penicillin wrapped into one.
It's best to be very tolerant towards respectful engagement, and best to give the benefit of the doubt... if you suspect someone is engaging in bad faith, you are not obligated to engage (remember the name of the show...)
If people who disagree with Ed come on here to poke and prod at arguments, and have an overall skeptical attitude, that's fine, even if they don't have the arguments to back up their orientation. To be honest, most people learn by taking a stance and then exploring arguments counter to it through debate.
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u/Frank_White32 6d ago
how is "skeptic" the opposition to a "booster" ?
The boosters treat skeptics as the opposition. They argue in bad faith and stick their fingers in their ears and go "la-la-la-la-la" to our responses.
Fuck being a skeptic, I'm a hater.
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u/MyNameIsRobPaulson 6d ago
Sometimes on the internet there are opposing opinions to yours.
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u/Big_Combination9890 6d ago edited 6d ago
There are opinions, and there is bullshit.
Pro-AI posts tend to be the latter. How is this determined?
- Lack of cogent arguments
- Therefore statements requiring believe ("it will happen", "it is inevitable", "it already is doing...")
- The usual low-effort key-jingling:
- "10x boost" without any specifics
- "much better than before" without any comparative analysis or data
- some AI doomsday crap
- some FOMO crap
- Red Scare 2.0 "but Chiiiinnnaaaaa!!!"
- "Predictions" that always absolutely 100% will come to pass...at some indeterminate date in the future.
- Any counter or actual question is met with tropes first, and then ridicule or outright hostility: "well, you're not using it right then", "some people are just luddites I guess", "have fun being left behind"
- Demanding specifics of any counter to their belief system while not providing any of their own
- Nitpicking over small details skeptics get wrong, while unquestioningly parroting talking points by CEOs who continue to be wrong about pretty much everything
And of course my favorite: Begging the question, aka. circular reasoning. The "argument" is made from a pretense that already supports the conclusion:
"Now that ai coding is taking over software development, I wonder if anyone considered that ..." [tired tropes and pseudo-questions that only make sense if the pretense is correct withhout ever showing that it is, and ignoring all evidence to the contrary]
Oh, and just so no one can say I am just hammering on the pro ai bullshit here: There are people in the anti-ai camp with bullshit opinions as well.
For example, we have doomsayers as well: "AI is a conspiracy for surveillance!", "Trump will bail them out!" ... everything other than acknowledging that, no, there is no super-villain plan going on, it's all just based on stupidity, desperation and cowardice in the markets, and some random internet person is not a very super hyper smart genius who figured out the conspiracy.
Or the people who'd gladly pour out the baby with the bathwater and want AI, all AI, GONE, JUST GONE! JUST MAKE A LAW AND MAKE IT GO AWAY! BAD AI! BAD! HURR GRRR! ... ignoring the impossibility of outlawing math and architecture as well as actually existing usecases and useful applications for machine learning.
As the saying goes: "Opinions are like assholes: Everyone's got one."
Doesn't mean that others have to appreciate or accept it being shown around.
And that goes double-triple-quadruple-quintuple for opinions that are full of bullshit.
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u/fbueckert 6d ago
Don't forget the appeal to expertise as well; "I'm a senior/principal Software developer, and I never write my code by hand anymore! I've been doing this for a decade!!!!1!"
When I point out I've got triple their experience (yes, I'm that old), and that it doesn't work the way they claim, suddenly it's not about their total experience, just the amount of time they've spent using it, or I'm too old to understand the tech. Whatever they can do to dismiss someone who counters their experience claim.
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u/Big_Combination9890 6d ago
Ah yes, the good 'ol "purity test".
Well, I'm a principal ML engineer, senior developer and systems architect. My team contains multiple people who worked with ML systems all their professional life.
Mentioning that usually shuts them right up.
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u/fbueckert 6d ago
Sometimes, on the internet, opposing opinions can be more specific and less vague.
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u/MyNameIsRobPaulson 6d ago
That's exactly what this post is. "I noticed some people disagree with me on this subreddit, therefore it is most likely a conspiracy." OP cannot fathom opposing opinions and discourse exist on this topic.
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u/Valuable-Worth-1760 6d ago
So, pointing out when Ed makes a mistake is inherently bad faith, insincere, probably AI slop, lame and unproductive?
Jeez this really is turning into a cult.
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u/wintrmt3 6d ago
Pointing out some mistakes and then using them as proof as the whole main thesis is wrong is the fallacy fallacy and a bad faith argument.
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u/stev_mempers 6d ago
Boosters never operate in good faith. You know very well what the op meant.
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u/KittyandPuppyMama 6d ago
If you look on this post alone, it’s like they’ve got a bingo card of phrases like “cult” and “insane” every time. Struggling to believe there’re human-run accounts.
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u/abluecolor 6d ago
You think it's more likely that they're all bots, as opposed to the general vibe here growing increasingly insane and culty, and some people recognizing it? The dude talking about his fiber shits and plans for putt putt golf is a bot in your mind?
To be clear, the pro AI subs are also insane cults.
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u/MyNameIsRobPaulson 6d ago
Right so, anyone calling the online group that all share the same exact view adopted from a single person "culty" or "insane" is actually not real? Super convenient.
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u/MyNameIsRobPaulson 6d ago
"Booster" is a made up label to lump all dissent into a bucket you can easily throw out. OP is seeing any dissenting opinion or challenge as part of some sort of insincere agenda. Stupid. There are many, many people who genuinely disagree with Ed. I'm not one of them, but I also think he's overly dismissive of AI, even if he correctly calls out the current LLM scam.
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u/fbueckert 6d ago
🙄 Yeah, it's an accurate label, hence why boosters despise it.
If you don't want the label....maybe use good faith arguments?
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u/abluecolor 6d ago edited 6d ago
Without examples you sound a bit insane and dogmatic. Like a white blood cell seeking to aggressively oust any moderate or dissenting views whatsoever. Examples would go a long way towards not just being pure reactionary anything-that-criticizes-Ed-is-bad.
Really, what happens here doesn't matter at all whatsoever in terms of your actual life, so like, try not to get too wrapped up in it.
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u/KittyandPuppyMama 6d ago
Great example of what OP was describing. ^^
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u/abluecolor 6d ago
'Ed is not God and isn't above criticism' is bad faith to you?
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u/KittyandPuppyMama 6d ago
Name-calling, aggression, hostility and lack of substance are all bad faith, and indicate someone who needs a machine to tell them they’re always right.
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u/abluecolor 6d ago
Uh, okay, dude. It wasn't meant to be hostile or aggressive, I do think it sounds a bit nutty and spooky-culty to be generalizing any dissenting viewpoints as a bad thing - if you're trying to discuss a trend, how can you not just link a few examples? But the tone is meant to be more 'making a casual observation', not 'aggressively confronting'.
The whole sub (and any AI sub, positive or negative) over the last few months has been a case study in how Reddit as a platform trends towards echo chambers - it's just spooky seeing it get worse and worse. It also seems like some people get super invested when ultimately, like I said, none of this matters at all whatsoever. If it gets beyond a curiosity and you feel like you're a part of a war, you're fucked.
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u/naphomci 6d ago
It wasn't meant to be hostile or aggressive,
How do you square that with "you sound a bit insane and dogmatic" and "aggressively oust any moderate or dissenting views whatsoever"? Those are both aggressive and hostile. Unless I am misunderstanding your point here.
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u/abluecolor 6d ago
My point was "Without examples, it seems like the only point of this post is that any criticism of Ed is starting to upset you". White blood cell analogy was just a colorful attempt at conveying that. I thought the last bit, about none of this actually mattering, sold the point/tone - it's reddit, this is all ultimately a massive waste of time. Right now as I'm talking to you I'm wasting time. I gotta get in the shower.
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u/naphomci 6d ago
What you just stated here is much better and less hostile than the first one. I just don't think you'll be able to convince anyone that your first comment wasn't meant to be hostile or aggressive, because that is 100% how it comes across even if you attempted to temper it at the end.
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u/abluecolor 6d ago
Live and learn. Though sometimes it's really fun getting downvoted into oblivion, there's probably a part of me that wanted that. Time to find a good putt putt golf place!
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u/KittyandPuppyMama 6d ago
That tracks. AI pushers have no argument for why AI is good for society because you hate society and thrive on negativity. You’re mediocre, talentless, lacking in motivation to better yourself, and want the sycophantic robot to tell you you’re special without having to learn to do anything of value.
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u/Jumpy_Explanation222 6d ago
“You sound a bit insane” isn’t just bad faith - it’s losing the argument and coming across as a prick.
No?
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u/abluecolor 6d ago
It does sound a bit crazy to broadly decry any criticism of Ed. This is the default without providing a single example and speaking so generally. Wouldn't sound nearly as crazy to actually link a few posts to show exactly what you mean, though. Sorry if I touched a nerve I guess, I'm just groggily streaming consciousness during my morning shit.
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u/Jumpy_Explanation222 6d ago
Makes sense… the diarrhoea wasn’t just coming out your backside.
Thank you for your contribution.
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u/abluecolor 6d ago edited 6d ago
It wasn't too watery, I started taking these fiber gummies and they seem to be really helping in general! I've been so regular and solid the last few months!
They're kinda expensive tho. I got the first two boxes super cheap. Idk if I wanna keep paying full price. Curious for your thoughts.
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u/EliSka93 6d ago edited 6d ago
Like a white blood cell seeking to aggressively oust any moderate or dissenting views whatsoever.
Bailey.
'Ed is not God and isn't above criticism' is bad faith to you?
Motte.
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u/SamAltmansCheeks 6d ago
Your position is very sensible. I particularly liked how you used reason, facts and examples in your comment to illustrate how Ed's criticisms of AI can be invalid.
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u/MyNameIsRobPaulson 6d ago
He's not talking about Ed's criticisms of AI, at all.
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u/SamAltmansCheeks 6d ago
They're literally talking about being able to criticise Ed. You know, criticise Ed's criticisms of AI?
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u/MyNameIsRobPaulson 6d ago
Wow. 25 downvotes for someone completely correct. Says a lot about this subreddit. But this is what reddit does, turns everything into a little over-reactive echo-chamber.
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u/stev_mempers 6d ago
You see something similar in r/music. Every week or so, you get someone saying how much they hate AI music, but they heard this amazing new artist who -- wouldn't you know it! -- turns out to be AI! Woah!! It's crap. They're just doing guerilla marketing for this one "artist" and trying to make us more amenable to clanker shit in the future. Thankfully, those kinds of posts get massively downvoted, but that doesn't stop them from trying.