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somenameformetoday at 5:04 AM2 repliesview on HN

Not to be coy, but what is happening right now?

You definitely have some scams and some software flaws being exposed, but I think for a revolutionary leap in tech this is all quite muted. Revolutionary tech advances often come with some severe consequences. For instance, to this day (after a century of safety improvements) cars still kill more than a million people a year, to say nothing of wrecking the atmosphere, but that's considered a reasonable price to pay for being able to get between places faster.

The reason I think cars are a good example is because that's certainly vastly higher than any price we're paying for LLMs, or probably ever will, yet the overall 'positive' effect of LLMs will likely be far greater than cars. Gotta put 'positive' in quotes because the possibility for automation and the like is going to be.... nuanced.... in effect, but at least in the longrun it'll be a very good thing.


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dudefelicianotoday at 6:26 AM

> what is happening right now?

I assume they are referring to LLMs escaping confinement and hacking other companies systems unprompted

> considered a reasonable price to pay

That's not a universal opinion and perhaps, just like for LLMs, we should have listened to the experts rather than gobbling up everything the industry pushed down our throats (to keep your car simile: SUVs are now ubiqutous in all European cities, there is no logical reason that should be the case)

kakaciktoday at 8:00 AM

Thats like, your opinion man...

I don't know a single white collar person who isn't worried for their job with llms. Every. Single. One. Lawyers, doctors, any type of office workers I ask. The definition of white collar. Plus don't let me start on various automatable blue collar jobs like drivers, warehouse workers and so on.

What do we get in return? Better search (for now, its already getting riddled with ads which by definition twist truth to highest bidder), some questionable psychotherapist for some desperate folks. What else? Cars are not flying, heck they are not even driving autonomously in any usable way, society is in deep shit everywhere I look, wars, environment reaching bad places and heading for worse, mentally unstable people holding way too much power, destroying lives of millions on morning whims.

Everybody feels like this is the revolution, it should be, it must be right just look at the numbers. Like proverbial guy with hammer, a very shiny cool hammer, looking for what to do with it. We all saw how sociopathic management in more harsh/capitalistic companies looks for any sign to let people go en masse.

I could go on for a long time. There is a lot of things to hate for most people, and very few to be happy for. It seems llms have the ability to get the best and worst out of humans, and worst part seems to be in abundance. Some revolution that is, 0.1% will get richer while everybody else the opposite and 1984 seems milder and milder version of reality out there.

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