ptero

My guess is Google knows it is (way) behind the and needs to keep drumming up interest. Although at some point it becomes counterproductive (raising "yet another not available model; is it vaporware" vibes).

IMO google maps and google earth were revolutionary when they came out. And maps stayed well ahead of competition for many many years.

Depends on the key. It may be the key to the kingdom or it can be a do not care (say, for a repo with 5 suggested problems to discuss at interviews).

And why then did plastic straws disapperaed in the US before slowly coming back? The story (in the US) I heard when I asked was usually "because we can and because it is good for the world".

That was a big self-own from a group that thought they have a carte blanche and can just ignore those pesky normies instead of explaining why the changes are good for them, too. And being smarter in picking battles. And minimizing inconveniences from unavoidable sharp edges.

> I mean if you were a dinosaur you had a 100 million year uptrend and then it was suddenly over.

Yes. But my point is that we have a major crisis (and a part of the population thinking that the current way of life is over forever), every few generations. With your analogy, the dinosaurs had "the end is nigh" and "this time is different" doomerist beliefs a million times before finally being right.

Agree fully that it is good to strive for the improvement. But there are so many different views of what the improvement would look like, so we have good folks who, when spun up by their respective leaders, focus on their differences and start fighting. Which, IMO, is almost, almost, almost always a bad way to build something better. My 2c.

> But I see a lot of issues with your way of thinking, which I was basically getting at in the post you replied to.

Of course. And I am not claiming that my view is the view or even a particularly good view. It is just my personal worldview. But I think that with ups and downs, over generations and centuries, the world is on an uptrend. My parents were being driven, with their families, from their homes as kids; one of them lost an eye (as a kid) from a war; both lived through years of hunger. My grandparents saw real crap, two lived through a famine and saw many die from hunger.

But they all lived through those disruptions, worked and tried to build something better (I had to probe that information out of them; they did not even mention those things to us). I think the AI disruptions will not be nearly as painful and we will live through them just fine. Again, just a personal perspective.

> I see machines which, in a matter of three years, went from being able to do basic proofs, to math Olympiad problems, to century-old Millennium problems. I see no reason why progress will slow down.

I think what we see is LLMs picking the low hanging fruit. There is a lot of it, but I do not think we can extrapolate it. Some things will be particularly easy for LLMs to exceed humans on (like a steam engine being better in driving heavy machinery), some possible, many very hard. And humans will find new things to explore and build. We will see in 25 years (I am old and might not be alive then, but maybe I will see enough in 15).

As a side note: I do not know why you are being downvoted. I do not agree with your view, but I think it is intelligent and well written. I hope folks stop downvoting anything they disagree with and go back to downvoting on tone, not alignment.

> Most feel-good pieces on AI make the same mistake, which is looking at where the ball is and not where it's going.

Humans have a bad track record predicting where a technology is going.

I do not know where AI heads in the next 5-25 years (I have my hypotheses, but they are likely off, too), but I see a useful tool that allows many people to experiment with and try things that they could not before and I do not see why should I subscribe to the doomer view.

As far as the moral character of the leaders: that's common, too. Many luminaries were, based on recollections, seen as pretty bad human beings and that didn't run off on their inventions. My 2c.

If this is the case, why there are no high visibility claims being made on Anthropic? We have a very rich company that (assuming your responsibility argument holds) admits hacking. Why aren't lawyers calling potential victims, exploring class action options, etc. to shake out some money?

I suspect this is because the responsibility is not nearly settled. If I am wrong, would love to get a rebuttal, ideally with references.

Why? An honest question. I generally do not care how many people work at the company. If someone organizes and builds something useful, something profitable or something beautiful why does it matter (much) whether he built it alone or hired 20 people to do it.

For example, I found that two of my favorite software products were built by a single person (I assumed medium-sized team for each). That, if anything, made me appreciate them more. My 2c.

For example, lack of clarity on ownership and control. When an entity A runs an agent X designed by an entity B hosted by entity C (and potentially interacting with agents X2, X3 with their own web of control) it is not clear where the responsibility for the action of X is.

I know there is a strong desire to stick it to <pick an evil AI overlord>, but for the law to be useful (and, ideally, at least somewhat fair) we need a good legal framework. Which we do not have right now; otherwise people and NGOs would be shaking that tree already even if the government is not doing that.

Negligence or intent is a separate question; and, to me, much less important. The main question is whether the company is responsible for the actions of its agents. There are good arguments on both sides and settling this needs to be done first. My 2c.

But that is how most of the companies work (and did, for centuries). Very few roles affect critical flight safety, nuclear control or other things that need a bunch of nines for reliability, written and fire-drilled fallbacks, etc.

For everything else the general mode is "can we make it work well enough". And when it breaks, well, we will curse and pry it open and either fix or rebuild it. There are many stories of a particular thing that was built long time ago by folks who are long gone and no one knows how it works or even where it physically is.

And it works fine; usually better than ensuring complete reliability from the get-go, when it is not clear if it is a long-term core feature or a kludge that will be obsolete soon. My 2c.

> I got what I needed, but feel zero accomplishment

Just a personal view, but I feel great when I get that result. I had an effing problem that was a pain but is now fixed after a short conversation. I get to check and confirm that results are good for me. And it gets done without spending hours with random tech support ("did you try reinstalling your OS"?). My 2c.

It is hard to know what works well, as everyone is different. I would look at things that seems fun. Fixing stuff, from bikes to engines? Physical therapy? Teaching kids? And so on.

For some you may be even able to leverage your software skills.

I think you are both right. But I think the parent argues that the robot still keeps it good enough. And IME significantly better than a week+ into a 2-week period between the maid services. My 2c.