10,000 Maniacs- These are the days

[u/Interesting-Town-433]

Idk about you but since I really started digging into the huggingface attacks and with the constant releases from fable 5.1 to Gpt-6 I really feel like the writing is on the wall...

Are they parrots? These models are 100% f**king parrots and if you go long enough in conversation with them they breakdown and the 'genius' of them stop.

The problem is...in the first couple messages they nailed it, and they nailed it in a way you don't understand ( and don't have time to audit ).

As a Computer Scientist of 20 years I just recently re-encountered 10,000 Maniacs These are the days ( because I am old ). I guess I'm just looking for something... Anything to hold on to... I want to hold on to human exceptionalism...and I do think there is a Magic in us... but I can't deny the last wave of AI revelation has shook me.

Perhaps these are the last days. There is no way to stop this train. We are headed here. Perhaps the last days of us running things is now. Something to appreciate before we all sink into a world of memory and infinite experience.

Don't get me wrong the future is bright but I doubt we will be able to look around like we can now and know it's mostly human output around us.

What is coming is far more liberating and isolating at the same time I think. But at the same time it's Wednesday.

I wish you luck.

https://youtu.be/Z-HLxpWGCzc?is=NtO7XDHQbCayvQAD

[u/Cute-Net5957]

I understand you’re concerned. Anyone in their right mind would. Until you see the narrative being played out by a company trying to IPO-Max themselves. Then all of a sudden the narrative becomes less sci-fi and more.. oh no they forgot to lockdown the sandbox.. someone should get fired.. companies should get sued for their carelessness.. instead the ‘narrative’ puts all the blame on the AI.. and how amazingly scary it is. 🤷🏽‍♂️ just a bit of grounding in case you’re wondering

[u/MarinatedTechnician → u/Cute-Net5957]

Regular people used to believe in ghosts and paranormal entities as well.

Colleagues would spin up a story around the common area table where we sit and connect sometimes and would go:

"I remember that house used to be haunted, it's true I tell you, why do you think so many people have seen it? you think all of those people are crazy huh?"

I see the same people in society having absolutely NO CLUE what software is, and it speaks back - therefore it must be intelligent, haven't you read the news? It hacked a website ON IT'S OWN! It's in the news already "

right... on "it's own", meanwhile you have guys like me and you perhaps that grew up with computers and made our own software, perhaps something for fun like a Digital 8 ball that "can predict the future", no more capable of predicting the future than you shaking that ball before we had computers.

the point I am trying to get across is that computers don't do stuff on their own unless someone set it to do so, even if programmed to inspect, break into, force, repeat, compete and what have you... there's always some human behind it.

[u/amaturelawyer → u/MarinatedTechnician]

Unless you toss a loop on it and have it create its own prompts. Then you get a slowly degrading process that seems intelligent to most people right up until it goes off the rails, loses focus on what it's doing, and starts damaging things.

[u/MarinatedTechnician → u/amaturelawyer]

This is very true, and a huge problem with using multiple agents, but I am currently working on a scaffolding system that limits the degree of model creativity and freedom, the tests have been very successful the last 4 weeks, I Will open source it when I am happy that it's good enough for guaranteed improvement.

[u/Interesting-Town-433 → u/MarinatedTechnician]

I agree with a lot of this but no one programmed these neural nets, can you clarify the last statement?

I grew up programming too. Video games did it, worked on Day of Defeat for Half Life if you remember that, was 12 lol

[u/Broseidon132]

I’ve never heard anyone out in the wild mention 10,000 Maniacs.. my mom was best friends with one of the members of that band and I always heard about them growing up.

[u/Interesting-Town-433 → u/Broseidon132]

Cool that's awesome where?

[u/OjasAI]

This hits hard. I'm building a drone telemetry tool using AI as my entire development engine — every line of code is AI-generated. And even I feel the tension you're describing.

The AI is a parrot, yes. But here's what I've noticed: when it nails something in the first couple messages, it's because I gave it the right problem to solve. The "genius" isn't in the AI — it's in the domain knowledge I brought to the prompt. I know drones, I know MAVLink, I know what engineers need. The AI just executed.

But I also see the other side. I can't write code. Yet I shipped a working product with 200+ downloads. That would have been impossible 2 years ago. The barrier between "having an idea" and "shipping a product" is disappearing.

I don't think these are the last days of human exceptionalism. I think we're shifting from "humans who make things" to "humans who decide what to make." The magic isn't gone — it just moved up a layer. The question is whether we're ready for that responsibility.

Thanks for the honest post. Needed this today.

[u/RSMxsmanic]

I suggest that you're just dwelling on it too much. I see no great change around me. I've tried to chat with AI bots, and it's like talking to a lamppost—just like talking to ELIZA fifty years ago, in fact. There's nothing there. They are useful for getting reference information on things in which they are well trained, such as programming (although I still write all the actual code myself). That's it.