alt Hacker NewsI don’t think it’s an extrapolation from the ML community into other industries. This evolution of society is objectively happening - artisanship, care for the work beyond capital gain, and commitment to depth in a focused category - are diminishing and harder to find qualities. I’d probably label it related to capital and material social economics. It’s perhaps more unfair and unjustified to not recognize this as a real societal issue and claim it only exists in the ML community.
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Just yesterday I saw this YouTube rant from someone called Jaiden Animations, about how everything is just shit now. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBZv0_MImIY
She opens with an example of a bank. She walked in and asked for a debit card. The teller told her to take a seat. 30 minutes later, the teller told her the bank doesn't issue debit cards. Firstly, what kind of bank doesn't issue debit cards, and secondly, what kind of bank takes 30 minutes to figure out whether or not it issues debit cards? And this is just one of many examples of things that society does that have no reason not to work, that should have been selected away long ago if they did not work - that bank should have been bankrupt long ago - but for some reason this is not happening and everything is just getting clogged with bullshit and non-working solutions.
It's a poor extrapolation. The issues with the ML community have more to do with the exponential growth of the "AI" industry, the resulting flow of capital, and the outsized role these conferences provide for establishing a researchers value to the industry. These conditions are fairly unique.
I would propose that the evolution you speak of is more related to our technology (and I am not just saying AI, far from it) and how it is now possible to perform the very minimum requirements of a task with little effort.