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xg15 17 hours ago [-]
> It also appears to be true of organizations too. How many startups were just handcrafted answers to a specific problems? The big labs are a general solution with loads of compute.
If he continues this worship of the "bitter lesson" to its logical conclusion, why stop at startups? All economic, or even human, activity could be seen as "handcrafted solutions".
So is the idea that the big labs should take over everything in the end? Why is that a good idea? Why would you want to live in such a world?
leecommamichael 1 days ago [-]
The kind of work we were "geared up to do" was what the industry was paying for at the time. For a very long time the industry has paid for trivia experts. If you were gluing together libraries and microservices, you resonate with the author. Not all "code" is the same, nor "programming."
bryantwolf 1 days ago [-]
I don't agree. For example, I think they're very good at writing physics simulators, they're great at writing shaders, they seem to have done a good job formally verifying the signal protocol[1].
That's not all code, to be sure but it's not what I've ever heard talked about as pipe fitting.
But aside from that, I think there are lots of things that made people's lives better and are now irrelevant, and people enjoyed that time. It's gone now, and we'll adapt. But it felt worth capturing the feeling.
It's not just code, it's "intelligence." Everybody has it now.
dead_hn_theory 1 days ago [-]
That was a good episode. I miss these spooky anthologies (Twilight Zone, The Night Gallery, etc...)
Before AI, chop wood, carry water. After AI, chop wood, carry water.
bryantwolf 1 days ago [-]
There is a fifteen hundred and thirty sixth dimension beyond that which is known to man.
It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge.
This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the the embedding space.
If he continues this worship of the "bitter lesson" to its logical conclusion, why stop at startups? All economic, or even human, activity could be seen as "handcrafted solutions".
So is the idea that the big labs should take over everything in the end? Why is that a good idea? Why would you want to live in such a world?
That's not all code, to be sure but it's not what I've ever heard talked about as pipe fitting.
But aside from that, I think there are lots of things that made people's lives better and are now irrelevant, and people enjoyed that time. It's gone now, and we'll adapt. But it felt worth capturing the feeling.
[1]https://deepmind.google/blog/introducing-alphaproof-code/
That's what I'd focus on for a career or business, because code is getting darn cheap.
[0]: https://matthewsinclair.com/blog/0195-taste-as-art
Before AI, chop wood, carry water. After AI, chop wood, carry water.
It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge.
This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the the embedding space.