Human journalists and marketing copy writers have been writing like this for at least 50 years, if not considerably longer.
I am exhausted by so many people calling writing out as AI without sufficient proof other than writing style. Some things are more obvious, sure... maybe I'm just too stupid to see a lot of the rest of it? But so much of what gets called out seems incredibly familiar to me compared with traditional print media I've been reading my entire life.
I'm starting to wonder if a lot of people just have poor literacy skills and are knee-jerk labeling anything that looks well written as AI.
You're right that (some) marketing copy writers have been writing in this style for decades, but suddenly every second tech blogger has assumed the same voice in the past 2 years. Not everyone is as sensitive to it. I read this crap daily so I've developed an awareness and I'm confident in calling it out.
I don't think I've personally seen a single false positive on HN. If anything, too much slop goes through uncontested.
> If anything, too much slop goes through uncontested.
It's actually insane opening up /r/webdev and similar subreddits and seeing dozens of AI authored posts with 50+ comments and maybe a single person calling it out. Makes me feel crazy. It's not as much of a problem here, but there is absolutely a writing style that suddenly 50% of submissions are using. It's always to promote something and watching people fall for it over and over again is upsetting.
> The implications of a machine that can approximate or mimic human thinking are far beyond the implications of a machine that can approximate or mimic swimming
It seems to me like too many people are missing this point.
Modern philosophy tells us we can't even be certain whether other humans are conscious or not. The 'hard problem', p-zombies, etcetera.
The fact that current LLMs can convince many actual humans that they are conscious (whether they are or not is irrelevant, I lean toward not but whatever) has implications which aren't being discussed enough. If you teach a kid that they can treat this intelligent-seeming 'bot' like an object with no mind, is it not plausible that they might then go on to feel they can treat other kids who are obviously far less intelligent like objects as well? Seriously, we need to be talking more about this.
One of the most important questions about AI agents in my opinion should be, "can they suffer?", and if you can't answer that with a definitive "absolutely not" then we are suddenly in uncharted waters, ethically speaking. They can certainly act like they're suffering (edit: which, when witnessed by a credulous human audience, could cause them to suffer!). I think we should be treading much more carefully than many of us are.
The question of whether the current generation of "AI" can think, whether it is conscious, let alone whether it can suffer(!), is not even worth discussing. It should be obvious to anyone who understands how these tools work that they don't in fact "think", for even the most liberal definition of that term. They're statistical models that can generate useful patterns when fed with vast amounts of high quality data. That's it. The fact we interpret their output as though it is coming from a sentient being is simply due to our inability to comprehend patterns in the data at such scales. It's the best mimicry of intelligence we've ever invented, for better or worse, but it's far from how intelligence actually works, even if we struggle to define it accurately. Which doesn't mean that this technology can't be useful—far from it—but it's ludicrous to ascribe any human-like qualities to it.
So I 100% side with Dijkstra on that point.
What I'm criticizing is his apparent dismissal and refusal to even consider it a worthy philosophical exercise. This is why I think that the comparison to submarines and swimming is reductionist, and ultimately not productive. I would argue that we do need to keep thinking about whether machines can think, as that drives progress, and is a fundamentally interesting topic. It would be great if the progress wouldn't be fueled by greed, self-interest, and manipulation, or at the very least balanced by rationality, healthy skepticism, and safety measures, but I suppose this is just inescapable human nature.
> The question of whether the current generation of "AI" can think, whether it is conscious, let alone whether it can suffer(!), is not even worth discussing. It should be obvious to anyone who understands how these tools work that they don't in fact "think", for even the most liberal definition of that term.
While I agree with your second sentence here, the first one gives me pause. Why isn't it "worth discussing"? Do you refuse to engage in conversation with all mentally challenged people? Do you avoid all interactions with human children? There are many, many folks living their lives as fully as they can right now who are convinced these things are alive. There are ethical implications to that assumption regardless of whether the things are actually alive, especially when people respond to them as if they are.
We need to have better arguments and refine them for different audiences.
Are you aware of the concept of philosophical zombies? Some of the top minds on the planet are telling us they can't even determine if you or me are conscious and sentient, let alone if a machine is. On the other hand, some of those people's peers are arguing that weather patterns might be conscious (among even more extreme claims). From the standpoint of logic and reason being paramount, we cannot claim to know the answers to these questions. What we can do is discuss the ethical implications of various people coming to different conclusions about them.
Because it's obviously not true. The second sentence follows the first.
> There are many, many folks living their lives as fully as they can right now who are convinced these things are alive.
And those people are living in a delusion, whether it's self-imposed, or the result of false advertising. The way you get them out of that is by rationalizing and explaining the technology in terms they can understand, not by mistifying it and bringing up existential topics.
> Are you aware of the concept of philosophical zombies?
I wasn't, no.
> Some of the top minds on the planet are telling us they can't even determine if you or me are conscious and sentient, let alone if a machine is.
Look, we can philosophize about the nature of existence until we're blue in the face. People have been pondering about similar questions since the dawn of humanity. FWIW I don't believe in "top minds" as having authority to tell us anything. What we know for certain is how technology works, since we built it. And we damn well know that this technology has absolutely zero understanding about anything. Go ahead, ask it how it works. It will tell you that it doesn't understand a single word it's generating, but it sure can string together patterns that make it look like it does. And you think there's some deeper meaning here we should discuss seriously? Please.
Like I said, I think these are interesting thought experiments, and something we should keep thinking about. But it should be clear to anyone, especially technically minded people, that we're nowhere near being able to create artificial intelligence. What we have now are a bunch of grifters and snake oil salesmen selling us a neat statistical trick and telling us it's "AI". This should be criminally prosecuted, if you ask me.
Not saying there's anything wrong with your perspective (lots of terms get in muddied waters, it's common and not a problem if everyone is on the same page), but this is what I just found on Wikipedia:
"Early on, the notebook computer and LCD vendors commonly used the term LVDS instead of FPD-Link when referring to their protocol, and the term LVDS has mistakenly become synonymous with Flat Panel Display Link in the video-display engineering vocabulary."
The cable in the article is pretty much doing the same conflation of terms that Wiki is talking about - the automotive one is a proprietary cable that carries some protocol that uses LVDS as its signalling, so at the most basic level both it and the display cable in the laptop are 'LVDS cables' but that's also the most generic term that gives you no information about the protocol actually being carried by the cables.
Yeah I saw that too which is why I posted my comment, it's surprising to me :) LVDS for display cables was an incredibly term in that context. Even still is sometimes despite them mostly being eDP (embedded-DisplayPort) now, which is quite incorrect hah
And eDP is a differential signal at 200 or 400 millivolts so I don't see how that's "quite incorrect". It's not "the" LVDS but it's still in the category.
> having conceived of no further items to which AI could provide assistance
For me, the issue isn't that I can't conceive of work AI could help with. It's that most of the work I currently need to be doing involves things AI is useless for.
I look forward to using it when I have an appropriate task. However, I don't actually have a lot of those, especially in my personal life. I suspect this is a fairly common experience.
A point worthy of much more discussion! However, this article is oversimplifying things.
We are going down tumultuous, uncharted, river rapids. There are many models of varying sizes and types being trained on hardware large and small, with finely tuned, bespoke weighting competing alongside industrial, committee-driven inference with massive budgets.
There is a wide spectrum of sizes of models and the hardware/environments they run in. What works today in one place may not work tomorrow in another. What stopped working yesterday may start working better next month.
The only way to have enough control to be scientific about it is to run your own hardware and provision a large amount of it to R&D. For anything big, this is very expensive.
In summary: You cannot predict how role-playing style prompts influence output until you thoroughly test it against a proper 'control group' on whatever stack you're currently running.
The vast majority of tires that need to be repaired or replaced (and the processes to do so) haven't changed much if at all, though. And there are entire franchises that pretty much only do tires. Same with many other manual labor tasks.
These are predictable jobs with very few variables that there is still no sign of automation replacing any time soon. They often don't suck as bad as people think. One of the most enjoyable jobs I had was on an assembly line, because my mind was mostly free to wander. It was almost like meditation.
> most people want a white collar job and send their kids to college
Part of the reason for my prior comment is the clear fact that a not-insignificant percentage of white collar jobs are being massively devalued at the moment, which means many people who thought they'd be able to send their kids to college with income from such jobs won't.
Considering that the field of robotics is so far behind LLMs in terms of clear value outside of niche industrial applications, I think manual labor is about due for a resurgence. There may be some major rebalancing happening. The big question for laborers will be - as it has always been - what can I do that sucks the least but also allows me to pay for a decent life? Answers will vary.
I'm not sure how long this state of robotics will last. Dexterity is improving very fast. Robots are getting cheaper and cheaper.
But also, a lot of the manual labor is quite expensive and only affordable as long as there are white collar workers who can pay for fancy bathroom remodelings and landscaping and so on. I don't know how a big deluge of reskilled pipefitters and HVAC technicians will be able to find work. Will everyone just pay each other to do a bunch of handy work for each other?
This is the point missed by many. The trades are in high demand, right now, because of a labor shortage and demand from upper-middle class individuals without any DIY skills. A generation or two of pushing kids into college, and an almost disparaging view of 'getting your hands dirty' has built this perfect storm.
However, besides a few trades that use unions/licensure/apprenticeship as an artificial supply limit, most trades are only limited by a willingness to do the work. A few decades ago, trade work was much less expensive, because supply was higher and many did their own DIY, which limited what prices the market would tolerate.
> Will everyone just pay each other to do a bunch of handy work for each other?
May not be as crazy of a thought as it seems on the surface. There are many different types of not-easily-roboticized manual work, doable by people of varying skillsets and physical abilities, which will continue to hold value due to our basic physiological needs.
The lower bound, or 'floor', of this value is not going to sink lower than group consensus among wide swaths of the population allows.
Observers and technologists have also consistently failed to appreciate the continuing value proposition of hybrids, and Toyota makes some of the best, top selling models.
My biggest peeve with hybrids is that it gives consumers the mistaken impression that they're going to have to replace the batteries in their EV.
Most hybrids aren't liquid-cooled (although that is changing), and the smaller size means that a hybrid puts a lot more cycles per mile on the battery than an EV does.
Which in practice means that a hybrid battery lasts about 100,000 miles whereas an EV lasts about 250,000 miles.
A Prius is an amazing car; a 300,000 mile Prius is often still in good shape and worth the expense to replace the battery in. Which means you might put 3 batteries in a Prius and then look at how expensive it would be to replace the battery in an EV 3 times and choke. But very few people are going to spend the significant dollars it costs to replace the battery in a 250,000 mile Tesla so in practice that's an expense you'll never have.
A lot of the older hybrids use NiMH batteries. With that being said, a replacement traction battery for a 2nd gen Prius isn't that expensive, at least compared to newer hybrids/EV batteries. The second gen Prius is practical, affordable, and reliable (assuming proper maintenance).
The biggest issue with the Prius (at least for the years in my price range), is that the driving experience is liable to make one fall asleep at the wheel. They're the perfect cars for monks; if you're willing to forego all earthly driving pleasures, you can get high 40s mpg.
My grandmother drove a Prius, and there was a stir in my extended family as to whether she should still be driving, as she'd been seen going 20mph below the speed limit and was driving pretty far to the right side of her lane.
I got the opportunity to drive her Prius and promptly found myself alternating between going too fast and going too slow. Between the awkward pitch of the windshield and the gross-feeling electric power steering, I wasn't the best driver either. I never have any of these problems in my 2005 Honda Civic LX or my family's 4-cylinder 2011 Ford Ranger. The Prius felt like one of those stoned driving simulators that police departments bring to high schools in an effort to prevent DUIs.
I like the idea of hybrids and EVs, but it's hard to justify completely losing the pleasure of driving for 10 extra mpg. For all I know, newer models may have improved this, but they're still to expensive for me to pay any real attention to.
We clarified that the standard mileage for the Toyota Prius Prime is up to 500,000 miles, but we would place the high mileage point for the car at around 300,000 miles. Once the vehicle passes this point in its lifespan, it’s far more likely to experience issues that cost ample money to keep in excellent condition.
Hybrids are just amazing and SHOULD have mostly replaced ICE-only a long time ago. I'm going to cry the day the midwestern winter road salt takes my Prius away from me.
Hybrids are kinda the worst of both worlds though - you have all of the disadvantages of a internal combustion engine (maintenance costs, carbon footprint, fuel dependence), and all the disadvantages of a battery (car is more expensive, battery can die) and the only advantage is range.
In my opinion as a mostly-vegetarian who used to adore burgers as a kid, the Impossible brand was by far the most realistic (and my beef-loving partner would agree, they made stroganoff with it and loved it)... but the price truly is ridiculous at this point. It started out just barely justifiable, and it's simply too high now.
I am more than a little bit outraged that animals who were raised in miserable industrial production facilities to meet an ugly end are having their parts sold for less than a decent alternative simply because of subsidies distorting the market.
If I look at walmart right now, they have Impossible 'ground beef' for $9/lb and real ground beef is more than $7/lb. So the price isn't too high everywhere.
Agree. Impossible is on a different planet in terms of being very very close to the taste of real meat. Unfortunately still premium priced.
It’s a pity that Beyond is getting so much attention because they’re not the best ambassadors for meat alternatives. People will try it, and then decide to wait another 5 years before trying again.
I am exhausted by so many people calling writing out as AI without sufficient proof other than writing style. Some things are more obvious, sure... maybe I'm just too stupid to see a lot of the rest of it? But so much of what gets called out seems incredibly familiar to me compared with traditional print media I've been reading my entire life.
I'm starting to wonder if a lot of people just have poor literacy skills and are knee-jerk labeling anything that looks well written as AI.
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