derangedHorse

This is why I’m starting to shift to Google’s antigravity as my daily driver. Lagging behind in the race has made them more competitive and less prone to pull stunts like this (which seems like they’re taking because they’re in a position of power in the market).

> every time you use a credit card or book an airline flight, it goes through that half-century old code

Funny that you bring up airline flights because I've never been to an airline's website and had a pleasant experience. The only service that's given me a quick seamless experience is Google Flights, but airlines only allow for search and not checkout.

Ironically I thought of the notification systems of social media when I think of encalming. Like seeing the blue dot above the notification bell on X and not having to engage with it immediately.

I think we’ve been able to integrate these concepts well into modern software but maybe we need to tackle new problems towards working towards products that encalm. For example, establishing general design rules to make the center have a clearer distinction between things we care to action, and things we don’t. Maybe something small decision models can help with.

> Was the problem proven by using a collection of everyone's work, or was it due to a brand-new insight?

Loaded question. A "brand-new insight" is still built off the work of others. A possibly better way to frame it would be in how many subjectively unintuitive logical leaps have been made from prior work.

> AI will eclipse humans in every possible domain, leaving everyone without direct control over the most powerful models completely powerless, economically redundant, and at the mercy of the new AI hegemony

I disagree. I believe access to AI will shift the power balances of the world, but I wouldn't say people will be left completely powerless. But maybe our definition of powerless differs.

What is your definition of powerless? Unable to influence? Physically outmatched?

um...what is going on here? bots? lol

Adapting to the times, nicely done!

I like both. From an economic perspective I'm a little sad my programming skills give me less of an edge in the job market, but I still hand program here and there for fun.

> If you genuinely, genuinely, believed artificial superintelligence was coming, why would you want to work at the company that would be in the best position to replace its employees?

Just because the job becomes obsolete doesn't mean the employee has to. Some employees have adapted to different jobs and roles many times in their careers.

> I think I could have been a pretty formidable startup founder had I been born five or ten years earlier

I used to think this around 10 years ago. I eventually learned this kind of thinking is defeatist and figured if others are able to succeed in this environment then I can.

> there are only "AI startups", where you build a company that somebody else can write a prompt for in 30 seconds.

Just like how people think ideas are a dime a dozen, software will be. The value will be in polish, ongoing maintenance, feature development, and the incorporation of customer feedback.

> I can't think of a single piece of software I use that has gotten better

Users are notoriously bad at noticing small improvements over time. A more interesting thing way to see the impact of AI is to ask employees at big companies what it has allowed them to work on and release in a previously unimaginable time frame.

> infinite growth in MMR

Dating apps are a race to the bottom. They're collecting a tax on the lonely and desperate of dwindling populations. Ironically it's not sustainable over the long term.

I think it's unlikely for your worst case scenario to be realized. Underspecified objectives can cause unexpected results, but it can also lead to desired results. Fortunately experimentation is relatively cheap and tuning optimization metrics is the norm for most apps.

> they would rather be single than pair with any of the options that are realistically available to them

I don't know if the matching problem has been fully explored enough to ascertain this is the case.

In the western world, people will go out with someone they find undesirable with the intention of reaping the benefits of short term relationships. I think this sometimes sets unrealistic expectations on those undesirable people and further muddies the water. I wonder if there's a way to impose a cost on those who are not in it for the long term.

The sentiment of the linked post is different than the one you describe. The post is explaining why it's ok to have a non-zero value for a metric seen as objectively bad (like fraud) if there's high confidence that the non-zero value can be traded for a disproportionately larger metric somewhere beneficial (user acquisition).

In this case the undesirable metric is divorce. If the parent comment's feature for measuring marriage lengths and estimating likelihood of divorce were implemented, what disproportionate benefit would allowing more matches with a nonzero likelihood of divorce bring? The app wouldn't be enforcing whether divorces happen, it would just use the estimation of it happening as a matchmaking metric.