jj4211
@jj4211@lemmy.world
- Comment on Bill Gates: People saying AI will create more jobs don’t understand what’s coming 3 hours ago:
Frankly, I feel like the media hasn’t really engaged him in tech for the last couple of decades since he stepped back. So he hasn’t been pushed for takes on tech.
There is zero reason to expect Gates to have particular credibility on this front, he hasn’t been part of “the game” in a long time. Even then his perspective was a bit indirect.
If back in his heydey ou had asked Gates about the core technologies of the Web infrastructure, he would have confidently assumed Windows NT, IIS, MSSQL, and . net would be the foundation of everything. Not because of deep technical understanding and vision, but because his guys were doing it and surely his guys were the best guys.
- Comment on Bill Gates: People saying AI will create more jobs don’t understand what’s coming 3 hours ago:
Yeah, so far when someone shows me a concrete example of this amazingly complicated thing that GenAI helped then realize, I think “really… that’s it?”
It’s a decent reminder that a lot of people have more modest needs and a lot of the enthusiasm can come from that, and maybe that’s more understandable.
- Comment on Bill Gates: People saying AI will create more jobs don’t understand what’s coming 3 hours ago:
Problem is that Gates isn’t really “in the loop” and doesn’t have especially valuable insight.
His position in tech was always a bit removed from the core technologist work, and now his exposure is a telephone game with people that are as distant from the tech as he was.
It is really going around with no shortage of commentators spewing out guesswork, but Gates is given more credibility by virtue of his role 30 years ago.
- Comment on Bill Gates: People saying AI will create more jobs don’t understand what’s coming 4 hours ago:
Generally I’ve found that:
If the facts are painfully obvious from a simple web search, then GenAI has a decent chance of getting it right. This can be useful if you can’t recall any “key” words well and the GenAI can craft several searches and get there.
However, if it does mess up the facts, the result looks superficially the same as “correct”. So while it can give accurate data, you always have to double check. This can still be useful, as finding the right search terms can be a decent help.
In coding, sometimes in some situations, you can have requirements that are absolutely testable, and thus you can have the models retry and retry until it works. This isn’t always feasible. Even when it seems feasible, you may screw up the criteria, or the GenAI when enough freedom disables a probablematic test rather than solve it, and it likely will generate code that’s not really fit to modify. There are a lot of situations where this is useful, but it is infuriating that non technical people and even some low skill technical people assume this is always the case.
Then when you get away from facts mattering, it gets “better”. Example, someone jokingly asked for one to “make gta6”. After a while it came back with a GTA 1 clone. Lots of people were impressed, because whatever it did could be considered a success even as it obviously didn’t match the expectation. The operators also like to GenAI some webcomic, where it is a fiction. They almost always didn’t have any interesting thought going in so they tend to be crap, but “correctness” didn’t matter.
Of course, also making fakes. Supreme case where looking correct matters but being factually correct does not matter at all. GenAI above all else “seems” correct.
- Comment on Bill Gates: People saying AI will create more jobs don’t understand what’s coming 6 hours ago:
He repeats the “better than humans at coding” which is super situational. Executives got so used to “code is code” mentality they can’t seem to understand that just because they can prompt up straightforward apps and other folks have done stunts like “make a knock off of this compiler” does not mean it’s just better than people.
Also very bizarre to say they have perfect memory, they are pretty spotty at that.
On the matter of support, it will generally always such because it’s rigged for the company in all matters where helping the customer would go against the company’s interests. Has been a long time. Why pay warranty when you can make it so painful they will give up?
- Comment on Slash. 4 days ago:
Maybe I just don’t get it, but I just don’t see there being anything vaguely inspiring of that sort of chemistry between the caracters of that specific show. Other duos in other shows, ok, but Sherlock just seemed so far from that dynamic.
- Comment on The reason the right are so anti Mamdani is obvious: they don’t want you to see what your tax dollars being put to work the right way would actually look like. Then everyone would want it everywhere. 6 days ago:
nyc.gov/…/mamdani-administration-advances-plan-to…
Following a competitive request for proposals process, the city selected GFP Real Estate to develop the site.
Note it said only 1,000 affordable residences, but 4,000 overall. A real estate company is happy to cover the cost and cede 1,000 units to affordable terms in exchange for 3,000 residences at market rate.
- Comment on The reason the right are so anti Mamdani is obvious: they don’t want you to see what your tax dollars being put to work the right way would actually look like. Then everyone would want it everywhere. 6 days ago:
Sounds like here it’s letting a private company spend the money to get access to 3,000 residences in exchange for 1,000 affordable ones.
- Comment on Cable management is an art form 6 days ago:
Dear god bluetooth is such an ugly reality that seems like it could have been sooo much better.
- Comment on Cable management is an art form 6 days ago:
Think my biggest complaint is that it kind of established a premise and then quickly left it behind.
Stranded far from home with meager resources and a decimated crew. A renegade force and starfleet having to figure out how to work together. Having to be sparing with materials, no backup or allies.
Then pretty much instantly the two crews are just peachy operating as one under a starfleet command with barely a word said otherwise. They are endlessly replicating everything they might need, with the cook kept around not as a necessity but more like a “fun quirk”. Their relatively run of the mill ship facing off against borg ships multiple times at the same time when First Contract showed a single vessel could still stomp a whole fleet of the most battle hardened ships they had. Their supposed key diplomatic figure seemed ill fitting to the ostensible role.
Felt like they had a mind to try something a bit more “rough around the edges” with more tension, but just didn’t follow through.
Decent enough show, but a premise kind of at odds with the execution.
- Comment on Can also ask your mom 1 week ago:
Forget number 1s, what was your mother’s maiden name?
- Comment on The right kind of vibe 1 week ago:
Really sucked after Michael Jackson did a knock off of one of his songs…
- Comment on The right kind of vibe 1 week ago:
If the school picked Hot for Teacher to play on behalf of the students that would be… Something.
- Comment on Is it okay for a teenager to suck their thumb in public? 2 weeks ago:
Depends, are they biting their thumb at me? Might have to pull out my rapier.
- Comment on Won't you come? 2 weeks ago:
Ooooh… exotic
- Comment on Won't you come? 2 weeks ago:
- Comment on It's The VIDEO GAMES! 2 weeks ago:
Not everyone’s school time was shitty.
Especially those of us who had school before “A Nation at Risk” incited changes in education.
Reagan’s department of education concluded that falling scores meant kids were slacking and needed to be pushed harder on standardized testing. The result was culling of recess, gym, arts, and things like home economics/shop class. To make more room to hammer in “important” stuff. So the experience became razor focused on some of the most soul crushing material without much reprieve. Note that there’s a thought that making people take the tests they didn’t used to take caused scores to go down, rather than some soft laziness of the system, so we might have ‘fixed’ the wrong things.
Then COVID happened and schools dramatically cut back on social events and interactions. Even as the critical threat of COVID subsided, I think administration found it easier to manage the students this way, so students did not access to lockers back (because that would encourage congregation in hallways) and on top of everything else, they have to lug all their school stuff around. Somewhat a mixed bag as most of the 'textbook’s are digital now, but still have a few big ones.
For me, school had carved out time to socialize pretty freely, to be vaguely active in a gym class, to just do some woodworking stuff, to do some cooking and sewing. Recess until like 13 years old. Current kids stop getting recess about 10 or so and unless they join a sports team likely never see physical activity from school again, and while there are still electives, much more rare. I don’t think I even saw an option for a ‘home ec’ class in my kid’s elective options, everything seemed to be more ‘substantial’ than those sorts of classes I had growing up.
- Comment on How hard could it be? 3 weeks ago:
Of course the good human will hopefully comes to not knowing.
GenAI has an unfortunate tendency to output consistent sounding stuff with high apparent confidence that means nothing at all. Which still can be useful in a context where the “correctness” can be objectively validated like certain software development tasks, but terrible for anything where the output cannot be automatically verified. Have to decide if it helps you research more concretely, the output doesn’t actually matter if it is wrong
- Comment on Wait, you mean workers *don't* love the automatic dumbass machines that constantly threaten their jobs? 3 weeks ago:
Sadly, at least for as long as I can tell, the horseshit is simply the language of the executives. They feel like they are being smart and insightful while saying nothing. So of course we are going to be stuck with it in any work that has room for bureaucracy to exist.
- Comment on Wait, you mean workers *don't* love the automatic dumbass machines that constantly threaten their jobs? 3 weeks ago:
It’s peculiar as a thing that acts the same whether it’s right or wrong. That is a pretty big drawback when trying to use it for anything vaguely fact based. The fact that if you don’t know yourself, it sounds credible either way, is super tricky. Particularly when managers that are used to gauging credibility without knowing the material come along. They are complete suckers for AI output since they don’t have good ways to know better.
- Comment on Wait, you mean workers *don't* love the automatic dumbass machines that constantly threaten their jobs? 3 weeks ago:
Yep, used it on my year-end self assessment. Told it what I would have written and it bullshitted it up to the appropriate length. I reviewed it and fixed where it invented some accomplishments out of nowhere that would have been awkward if I ever got called on it. Knowing that my performance assessment would only be glanced at and never read.
Similarly, a design document owed to management for something they have no actual interest in. No one honors the design doc, no one expects it to be informative that actually uses the tech, but non-technical management feels ‘included’. Didn’t even need to be reviewed, because all the ones it concretely matters know not to bother with it.
Stuff I always hated and was pointless, but someone wanted to check some boxes.
Though just had someone clearly just feed my email into a prompt and told the AI to use my points to agree with me, and that was annoying to see someone using AI to try to be a sycophant to me. If you are going to be a suck-up, at least suck-up in your own words. I won’t do it to something someone will read in earnest.
- Comment on Wait, you mean workers *don't* love the automatic dumbass machines that constantly threaten their jobs? 3 weeks ago:
If I ignore the datacenter buildout implications and the copyright implications, access to AI facilities might be somewhat useful sometimes. But having it crammed down my throat with management second guessing my assessments of what it does makes it just insufferable.
Also, other people’s AI slop is a huge workload burden too. Even if I am measured and don’t use it much, that doesn’t spare me from the flood of crap from my colleagues…
- Comment on Wait, you mean workers *don't* love the automatic dumbass machines that constantly threaten their jobs? 3 weeks ago:
Management is sometimes ‘true believer’, and only after the bill comes do they decide that maybe their employees shouldn’t burn as many tokens as possible anymore.
They all picture it like AI is a great things and their employees are just not tech savvy enough to appreciate it, so all they have to do is make everyone have a taste and obviously everyone will both love it and become amazingly effective. Turns out that people generally do have a decent impression, for better or for worse, and forced micro management of it doesn’t boost morale nor productivity.
- Comment on Wait, you mean workers *don't* love the automatic dumbass machines that constantly threaten their jobs? 3 weeks ago:
They generally have a hook into the accounts the employees use to access the provider. So you can burn tokens and look ‘productive’ and have it have nothing to do with your work.
A lot of the early adopters have already figured out that measuring employee usage just ends with big AI bills and essentially zero assurance that the AI provider was used productively. Those folks discontinued things like leaderboards and review based on tokens consumed.
- Comment on Wait, you mean workers *don't* love the automatic dumbass machines that constantly threaten their jobs? 3 weeks ago:
Sounds like this could have easily been done without AI, and if the doctor likes things going that well, emailing a questionaire ahead of the appointment would have been even better. Then instead of ‘typical questions the doctor will ask’ being close to what you get asked, you get exactly what that doctor wanted to ask.
- Comment on Min wage in most states is so sad 3 weeks ago:
Think the rough analogy is Jury duty. After going through that, I was frankly surprised how generally decent the folks were that were being vetted. Sure a couple were a bit off, but on the whole the folks seemed pretty reasonable. I didn’t agree with some of them, but at least they seemed to be roughly rational and open to thinking about things.
- Comment on Min wage in most states is so sad 3 weeks ago:
Think this assumes those selected have no friends or family. You can’t uproot a whole family, and it would be unreasonable to break up a family for the extended period of time you imagine.
In practice, it does become making them miserable, because it’s literally forced relocation and isolation from their friends, family, and financial resources.
- Comment on Min wage in most states is so sad 3 weeks ago:
Yes, and thus we should endeavor to find and close the loopholes as they come up.
- Comment on Min wage in most states is so sad 3 weeks ago:
In fact, it’s pretty much already that. While a representative makes a decent salary at $174k/year, that’s not really that much in the scheme of things. Most folks who could swing that job could swing a higher paying one, depending on the location.
So already you kind of either must want to do the job for the sake of doing the job, or (the more usual), the position has a lot of room for various ‘extracurricular’ income, whether it’s bribery or bribery adjacent in the now, promises of future cushy private sector jobs in exchange for favors now, or ability to cash in on the fame with book deals and speaking engagements in the closest to innocuous ulterior motives associated with the position.
- Comment on How do industries that provide goods like lumber or livestock maintain output when their goods take a long time to develop but get used/processed in a short period of time? 4 weeks ago:
Correction that they are also farming lumber, but the cycle is just much much longer.
I know a family that does it as one of a few things they do. Their timber land is relatively small so they have it harvested all at once. Every couple of decades a company pays them a healthy sum to get the timber and then nothing is done with the land for the next couple of decades while trees grow. In addition to the cash payment, they get to own the land tax free as it counts for agricultural exemptions.
Others in the thread are deeper into it and speak of staggered logging so there is annual logging off like 1/25th of the trees at a time.
Not to say there isn’t cutting of totally natural forest, but there is farming too.