robotcapital

Right, that’s kind of my point. We call it “hallucination” because we don’t understand it, but need a shorthand to convey the concept. Here’s a paper trying to demystify it so maybe we don’t need to make up anthropomorphized theories.

It’s interesting that most of the comments here read like projections of folk-psych intuitions. LLMs hallucinate because they “think” wrong, or lack self-awareness, or should just refuse. But none of that reflects how these systems actually work. This is a paper from a team working at the state of the art, trying to explain one of the biggest open challenges in LLMs, and instead of engaging with the mechanisms and evidence, we’re rehashing gut-level takes about what they must be doing. Fascinating.

Replace the AI agent with any other new technology and this is an example of a company:

1. Working out in the open

2. Dogfooding their own product

3. Pushing the state of the art

Given that the negative impact here falls mostly (completely?) on the Microsoft team which opted into this, is there any reason why we shouldn't be supporting progress here?

The article's point isn't that globalization (or policy) didn't play a role, it's that the premise of middle class downfall is false to begin with. See the section under the header "The American middle class was never hollowed out".

Given that, would you argue that the main condition needed for UBI, or wealth transfer in general, is increased productivity?

My understanding of marginal propensity to consume is that it decreases as wealth and income increase. The wealthier you are, the less you tend to spend as a function of the next dollar. So the inverse would imply that there would be more spending overall with UBI. We sort of saw this experiment play out with the COVID relief checks.

Given that increase in demand, I'm curious how UBI would affect the supply side. My first thought is that it would negatively impact supply since there would be less efficient allocation of people to supply-related jobs. Unless I'm off here, I struggle to see how increased demand and decreased supply wouldn't impact inflation.

These are (strongly?) correlated though, right? Over-regulating distribution should reduce generation because builders can’t depend as much on pricing signals.

We’re getting off on a tangent here about here about the mechanism behind that polarization, but it reflects the broader point I was trying to make with my comment. That is to be skeptical of simplistic answer, like “economic termites” or “corporate propaganda”, to complex topics like the economy or polarization. It might imply an agenda other than seeking the truth.

Though that does presume being ready to board at precisely that moment while traveling with small children. In my experience I can expect that to happen about half the time.

Some of these regulations seem like they should be aimed at the government, though the article doesn't specify what organizations they would apply to. Behavioral scoring is fine for a private business that wants to prevent spam or fraud, like HN’s own karma system. While arguably the negative consequences of unfettered, untargeted CCTV scanning by the government could be greater.

Is the act meant to be anti-Tech, or anti usage of tech?

> Yup; any department with money in their budget left over at the end of the budget period will see their budget reduced, even if they need it.

Anecdote here. I've been a senior manager at small, medium, and large (ie FAANG) tech companies over the past 20 years and I've never run into this. Teams make a case for the budgets they need and those are approved (or not) based on the finance team's overall guidance and the return on investment. I'd be curious if others have have actually seen this "use it or lose it" mentality for budgets in practice.

> And (I'm theorizing here, I know little of management layers) I'm confident that a manager's wage is a percentage of a department's budget. Therefore, it's in their interest to use up and ask for more budget constantly.

Again, not my experience. Like you say, this would create perverse incentives which would quickly become apparent to a company's overall finances.

I don't doubt these sorts of policy mistakes have happened at other companies in the past, but I'm doubtful that they're pervasive, or even common, in the tech industry.