blahbwah777

Sure, but I wasn't making any rigorous statements around human brain power vs Google ML

I was suggesting more simply that the original comment talking about 10x developer wasn't referring to just AlphaGo.

Apparently it wasn't clear that I'm limiting my comments strictly to what's observable in the chat forum and not making sweeping statements about humans.

Though I suspect self-selection bias might also explain the downvotes. Of course everyone on HN is better than a machine, right?

And the brain itself may be. But is the average developer?

I too get annoyed when people don't abide by history as I know it.

Then realize it's a silly thing to waste focus on and move along.

IMO, you're comparing from the wrong things.

AlphaGo is good at playing Go specifically, sure. But AlphaGo was built by machine learning infra that is capable of doing more than just playing Go.

Google's ML capabilities as a whole are the 10x developer.

In the case of building a nuclear reactor, the knowledge one relies on must be vetted by experts.

In the case of building web apps and such, sure, why not put it out there ASAP?

If the complaint is "cross-platform apps would be ubiquitous if not for Player X" why stop at Apple?

Can't we point to this trend more generally being driven by Microsoft for years?

Or IBM before them?

This is a symptom of our economy as a whole. A big player dictates what is acceptable output. Not directly, but through a kind of market capture.

I get tired of these very specific, customized complaints about society, that ignore the bigger picture cause.

Along those lines:

I've setup family members and closest friends with a Raspberry Pi or in a couple cases cheap Intel Atom machines, that I can configure with Ansible.

I run a minimalist "Facebook clone" UI with photo gallery on each box. From their phones or laptop people drop files into a bucket, mostly just photos, and it's SyncThinged over to all nodes. When on local wifi, we can browse each others content.

It wasn't too difficult as we're a DIY group. Not at all interested in feeling like we're friends with the world or even just our former high school classmates.

I have no problem with notions that our government and laws should require our society fair and protective of everyone. That sort of thing. But giving it all up for private interests to enrich themselves, while life generally gets more expensive for the rest of us is bullshit.

Undermining this thing is do-able, in a simple to manage way these days thanks, once again, to open-source and commodity computing.