This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I find investing on this weird. It's essentially investing in Theranos because they said they can tell diseases from a single drop of blood. They never proved they could, and none of the frontiers have even proven an inkling that RSI is possible, let along that it can be applied across a wide distribution of industries at a cheaper cost than skilled humans. It's investing in hype and dreams. I think any investment in frontier IPO should not depend on the speculation of what they could figure out but on the business case for what they can do and shown improvement in being able to do now.
Why wouldn't RSI be possible? Of course it's possible. The most accurate predictors rate it not only possible, but likely, and soon.
That doesn't mean that Anthropic will be "winner" of AI or that shareholders will make any money of course.
By what scientific or engineering evidence have you seen of it doing so? Lot of hypers think it's possible and soon but do they have any research to point to it being the case? The theorize it to be the case, but that's a theory on faith not evidence.
Keep in mind that the current "theory" on AI is "Moore's law for AI via Data". That is completely at odds with the RSI theory unless that RSI is creating additional synthetic data that actually beats the sim-data distribution problem.
I'm not sure what you're even asking. You want a research paper that says its possible for AI to develop an AI that is more capable than itself? Are you asking for like an official statement or a mathematical proof or something? You want 100% certainty?
Its self-evident that AI's are becoming more and more capable, tackling longer term tasks without human intervention, and now even solving problems which humans are incapable of. Furthermore, all of this progress falls along a trajectory which has been predicted for years by the same people who also predicted RSI.
RSI is already here. AI's are already heavily involved in the design of AI systems. There are still humans in the loop, but the human contribution gets smaller as a percentage with each generation. All that is missing is the final step removing humans from the design entirely.
The magical thinking is that AI progress will suddenly stop now even though it has substantial runway to advance by scaling alone if nothing else.
That is not at all self-evident. I have seen no such increase in capability, and I still consider LLMs to be poorly suited for the programming world despite the continued hype.
I'm creating new apps every couple days from a small local model. The time from idea to implementation is at least an order of magnitude shorter than it was, and the code is more consistent and better documented. It is not (only) hype, it is reality.
Yes. To me it is quite obvious as well.
I went from.
Chat-GPT 4o - Useful as a reference. Can write small scripts and functions.
Chap-GPT 5.5 - Can understand my projects, fix bugs. Still does annoying stuff.
Chap-GPT 6 Astra - I no longer write any code or even check the code that it writes.
The speed has improved by a lot as well.
I use Astra for work stuff, mostly coding and research. But the idea that you don't check it is wild to me. If it fucks up, and it can, it is incredibly professionally embarrassing. People will rightly blame you for the AI-fuckup, they will think less of your competence, and in a research/engineering setting that's professionally bad.
I have a junior that uses Astra for a ton of his work. It keeps tunneling on stuff that doesn't really matter or not really core to the goal of the project. Loses the forest for the trees so to speak. He uncritically just reports what it says and when questioned about why, or what it means he can't explain it. We've extensively talked to him about his AI usage, and honestly if it continues my boss is considering putting him on "PIP" (We don't really pip in the traditional sense).
Yes, this does happen still quite often. There's some common sense element still missing, kind of like an autistic savant.
But code correctness is largely solved. At least, it's going to be more correct than any human.
Sounds like they should just fire him since he's a thin layer between his boss and Astra. Too bad most of us will be in this place before long.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link