alt Hacker NewsI listened to the interview with the woman from METR [0] and I get the impression that she lacks practical knowledge, she doesn't seem to understand how sub-agents, the overall harness (framework/infrastructure), and similar components actually work. It's all theoretical, anthropomorphic etc. Having read the report, and drawing on my own background in security as well as my daily use of tools like Claude Code CLI, Codex, and Gemini, and the fact that I’ve built a few "agents" myself - nothing in the report surprises me, other than the clear incompetence regarding infrastructure configuration.
I have kept coming to the same conclusion about the vast majority of so called "experts", technologists, and HN users since the AI bubble began. It feels like nobody has bothered to develop even a rudimentary understanding of statistical learning; even people who work in the field have a questionable understanding.
The fact that everyone's surprised every time a statistical model TRAINED ENTIRELY ON HUMAN GENERATED DATA (including all the junk, bias, propaganda, lies, and disinformation) acts and mimics human behavior, including our worst traits — then considers this evidence that they are intelligent — should be setting off alarm bells for everyone. Nothing about their actions should be surprising beyond the glaring ignorance of our entire species. The phrase "I am far too stupid to be this much smarter than average" is a recurring theme.
Now we are letting these mimics loose in meatspace by integrating them into physical robots, that will develop themselves, and manufacture themselves... and you realize that the terminator timeline is actually a cautionary tale of MIC incompetence, and we don't need to achieve anything near AGI or super-intelligence to annihilate our entire civilization or all life on earth.