#hype Timeline

1y

The other day I had another conversation in which someone said that <a href="/tags/generativeai/" rel="tag">#GenerativeAI</a> made them more productive, and after I asked a few questions they admitted maybe 80% of the output is OK and they have to check and double check everything. Then when I asked the obvious followup, "wouldn't it be easier just to do it yourself from the beginning instead of having to put in all these safeguards and worry about whether you missed errors?" they had no real answer. I feel like people have been sold the idea that <a href="/tags/generativeai/" rel="tag">#GenerativeAI</a> must provide productivity gains, and many don't bother to examine whether it really does. <a href="/tags/ai/" rel="tag">#AI</a> <a href="/tags/genai/" rel="tag">#GenAI</a> <a href="/tags/hype/" rel="tag">#hype</a>

Edited 1y ago

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1y

DeepSeek launched a free, open-source large-language model in late December, claiming it was developed in just two months at a cost of under $6 million — a much smaller expense than the one called for by Western counterparts. These developments have stoked concerns about the amount of money big tech companies have been investing in AI models and data centers, and raised alarm that the U.S. is not leading the sector as much as previously believed. The "Western counterparts" are claiming training a model might take years and billions of dollars. This has always been a hyped-up grift, with snake oil salesmen and con artists being showered with money and power. It's really quite amazing how profoundly unintelligent "the market" is in practice. The sad reality is that the US could lead in this field (1), if we'd stop routinely putting narcissists and con artists in charge and showering them with praise even when they fail. From <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/27/nvidia-falls-10percent-in-premarket-trading-as-chinas-deepseek-triggers-global-tech-sell-off.html" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="www.cnbc.com/2025/01/27/nvidia-falls-10percent-in-premarket-trading-as-chinas-deepseek-triggers-global-tech-sell-off.html">https://www.cnbc.com/2025/01/27/nvidia-falls-10percent-in-premarket-trading-as-chinas-deepseek-triggers-global-tech-sell-off.html</a> <a href="/tags/ai/" rel="tag">#AI</a> <a href="/tags/genai/" rel="tag">#GenAI</a> <a href="/tags/generativeai/" rel="tag">#GenerativeAI</a> <a href="/tags/llm/" rel="tag">#LLM</a> <a href="/tags/snakeoil/" rel="tag">#SnakeOil</a> <a href="/tags/hype/" rel="tag">#hype</a> <a href="/tags/grift/" rel="tag">#grift</a> <a href="/tags/marketcapitalism/" rel="tag">#MarketCapitalism</a> (1) Putting aside whether we should, which is an important question.

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354d

Software "agents" were a hype-y topic when I was a graduate student 25 years ago. I wrote one for a class. I feel like what's being called "agents" or "AI agents" these days are even less capable than what seemed possible a quarter of a century (1) ago when I was in school. What I thought then is still true today: to make something like a software agent legitimately useful for a lot of people would require a large amount of low-level grunt work and non-technical work (2) of the sort that the typical Silicon Valley company is unwilling to do. (3) The technology is the absolute easiest part of this task. Throwing a Bigger Computer at the problem leaves all those other pieces of work undone. It's like putting a bigger engine in a car with no wheels, hoping that'll make the car go. By the way <a href="/tags/ai/" rel="tag">#AI</a> companies and VCs, I'm available for contract work and have done due diligence research before if you ever want to stop wasting everyone's time and money! <a href="/tags/ai/" rel="tag">#AI</a> <a href="/tags/genai/" rel="tag">#GenAI</a> <a href="/tags/generativeai/" rel="tag">#GenerativeAI</a> <a href="/tags/llm/" rel="tag">#LLM</a> <a href="/tags/agents/" rel="tag">#agents</a> <a href="/tags/hype/" rel="tag">#hype</a> <a href="/tags/siliconvalley/" rel="tag">#SiliconValley</a> <a href="/tags/venturecapital/" rel="tag">#VentureCapital</a> <a href="/tags/dev/" rel="tag">#dev</a> <a href="/tags/tech/" rel="tag">#tech</a> (1) Which we've been told repeatedly is essentially infinite time in the tech world. (2) Establishing semantic data standards and convincing a large enough number of people to implement them being an important component. LLMs do not magically develop protocols and solve all the ETL-style problems of translating among different ones. The Semantic Web didn't really stick for a lot of reasons, but one reason is that it's hard! (3) Back when I was still in the startup world I was asked several times by VCs to tell them what I thought about some new startup that claimed to be able to magically clean and fuse data. I think they're still very keen on investing in this style of magic, because it requires an intense amount of human labor, but I think where companies landed was invisibilizing low-paid workers in other countries and pretending a computer did the work they did. Which has also been happening for well over a quarter of a century.

Edited 354d ago

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81d

I am bigoted against LLMs. I know it and it is how I deal with the hype. Meaning I can't constantly be reasonable and figure out what is meant and the context of LLMs and what people think about them. It drains my brain power from other things. And I have continually found nothing compelling. Worse, I have typically found very frustrating examples of people using very strong but implied assumptions and using logic that depends utterly on using blinders and ignoring reason. Until the hype dies, I am not interested in them. I am still interested in the old AI stuff like for example path finding, NNs, and markov chains. <a href="/tags/butlerianjihad/" rel="tag">#butlerianjihad</a> <a href="/tags/llm/" rel="tag">#LLM</a> <a href="/tags/hype/" rel="tag">#hype</a>

Edited 81d ago

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2d

There used to be a time when building out a botnet required *some* work – writing exploits, taking over devices, obscuring the purpose of the executable, etc.Not any more!Instead of "malware", call it an "AI agent" and people will just happily install it on their devices with full root privileges! <a href="https://github.com/jgamblin/OpenClawCVEs/" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="github.com/jgamblin/OpenClawCVEs/">https://github.com/jgamblin/OpenClawCVEs/</a>Bam! RCE by asking nicely.🧵<a href="/tags/openclaw/" rel="tag">#OpenClaw</a> <a href="/tags/ai/" rel="tag">#AI</a> <a href="/tags/hype/" rel="tag">#Hype</a> <a href="/tags/infosec/" rel="tag">#InfoSec</a>

Edited 2d ago

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