Comment by stillpointlab
6 months ago
There is an old cliché about stopping the tide coming in. I mean, yeah you can get out there and participate in trying to stop it.
This isn't about fatalism or even pessimism. The tide coming in isn't good or bad. It's more like the refrain from Game of Thrones: Winter is coming. You prepare for it. Your time might be better served finding shelter and warm clothing rather than engaging in a futile attempt to prevent it.
If you believe that there is nobody there inside all this LLM stuff, that it's ultimately hollow and yet that it'll still get used by the sort of people who'll look at most humans and call 'em non-player characters and meme at them, if you believe that you're looking at a collapse of civilization because of this hollowness and what it evokes in people… then you'll be doing that, but I can't blame anybody for engaging in attempts to prevent it.
You are stating a contradictory position: A person who doesn't believe AI can possibly emerge but is actively working to prevent it from emerging. I suggest that such a person is confused beyond help.
edit As an aside, you might want to read Don Quixote [1]
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Quixote
The last tide being the blockchain (hype), which was supposed to solve all and everyone's problems about a decade ago already.
How come there even is anything left to solve for LLMs?
The difference between hype and reality is productivity—LLMs are productively used by hundreds of millions of people. Block chain is useful primarily in the imagination.
It’s just really not comparable.
> productively used
This chart is extremely damning: https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-o...
The industry consistently predicts people will do the task quicker with AI. The people who are doing the task predict they'll do it quicker if they can use AI. After doing the task with AI, they predict they did it quicker because they used AI. People who did it without AI predict they could have done it quicker with AI. But they actually measured how long it takes. It turns out, they do it slower if they use AI. This is damning.
It's a dopamine machine. It makes you feel good, but with no reality behind it and no work to achieve it. It's no different in this regard from (some) hard drugs. A rat with a lever wired to the pleasure center in its brain keeps pressing that lever until it dies of starvation.
(Yes, it's very surprising that you can create this effect without putting chemicals or electrodes in your brain. Social media achieved it first, though.)
No, it's overinvestment.
And I don't see how most people are divided in two groups or appear to be.
Either it's total shit, or it's the holy cup of truth, here to solve all our problems.
It's neither. It's a tool. Like a shovel, it's good at something. And like a shovel it's bad at other things. E.g. I wouldn't use a shovel to hammer in a nail.
LLMs will NEVER become true AGI. But do they need to? No, or course not!
My biggest problem with LLMs isn't the shit code they produce from time to time, as I am paid to resolve messes, it's the environmental impact of MINDLESSLY using one.
But whatever. People like cults and anti-cults are cults too.
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Reminder that the Dutch exist.
"Stopping the tide coming in" is usually a reference to the English king Cnut (or 'Canute') who legendarily made his courtiers carry him to the sea:
> When he was at the height of his ascendancy, he ordered his chair to be placed on the sea-shore as the tide was coming in. Then he said to the rising tide, "You are subject to me, as the land on which I am sitting is mine, and no one has resisted my overlordship with impunity. I command you, therefore, not to rise on to my land, nor to presume to wet the clothing or limbs of your master." But the sea came up as usual, and disrespectfully drenched the king's feet and shins. So jumping back, the king cried, "Let all the world know that the power of kings is empty and worthless, and there is no king worthy of the name save Him by whose will heaven, earth and the sea obey eternal laws."
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cnut#The_story_of_Cnut_and_the...
I know what it's a reference to, I'm calling skill issue on King Cnut.
They're not stopping the tide, they are preparing for it - as I suggested. The tide is still happening, it just isn't causing the flooding.
So in that sense we agree. Let's be like he Dutch. Let's realize the coming tide and build defenses against it.
They are kinda literally stopping the tide coming in though. They're preparing for it by blocking it off completely.
That is a thing that humans can do if they want it enough.
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