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ivraatiems • today at 6:26 AM • 2 replies • view on HN

This is one of the most artfully positioned, full-throated, thoughtful, and capable takedowns of the AI hype (not necessarily LLMs as tools) I've read. It doesn't try to speak doom to AI companies, it doesn't suggest the tools are worthless at things they're good at. Instead, it disassembles the assumptions underlying ideas about frontier AI labs' promises (of both utopia and doom) by explaining in simple terms what the real accomplishment they've made is:

They are thieves who turned their stolen goods into a pretty neat invention.

They are not prophets of the end times or messianic figures bringing in a new age of human relaxation or the biggest trillionaires since Tim Cook and Elon Musk. They are people with one good tool that they think can and should be used to do everything. They won't accept that their tool is just useful, or helpful. They want it to be _more important than the humans and human work it was based on_, and nothing less will do. They want to replace effort and thought with simulacra of both and be applauded for it.

Lest this go down as an anti-AI post: I use AI tools. I use LLMs every day. They are useful... but they can't do on their own what we did not demonstrate how to do first, because they are tools.

I could be wrong, but I don't know that I see this changing.


Replies

visarga • today at 7:09 AM

> but they can't do on their own what we did not demonstrate how to do first, because they are tools.

Funny thing to say here, where an agent swarm (1M hours agent time) just did something no human did. If someone else solved NS blowup before OpenAI we would have heard their claims already. And we did hear partial claims, "they rushed in the same direction" kind of claims, not "they copied my fully developed idea". I think this is Move 37 moment for math, when we realize we might not be the top anymore.

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starkshift • today at 6:39 AM

That is very much the case at the current iteration of AI, but that should change with the introduction of world-mapping, computer vision, and world interacting AI. If machines are built out so that they are constructing accurate world-maps of how the physical world works and how to operate in it, then AI will begin to be able to out-invent human tool concepts and push past the horizon of what humans have so far been able to dream

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