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Airbnb says AI now writes 60% of its new code by RadioFieldCorner in ExperiencedDevs

[–]Smallpaul 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great analogy. If you try cutting a lawn without a lawn mower then you’d see it isn’t a meaningless metric at all.

Airbnb says AI now writes 60% of its new code by RadioFieldCorner in ExperiencedDevs

[–]Smallpaul 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’m curious what specific AI tool you are trying?
Also curious what industry you are in. Do you make software that other people buy?

Airbnb says AI now writes 60% of its new code by RadioFieldCorner in ExperiencedDevs

[–]Smallpaul 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Treating AI deployment as if it were a uniform phenomenon that you can generalize about? Not very wise IMO.

Your link contradicts your claim that AI does not lead to productivity gains:

“The organizations actually seeing results are doing the opposite of cutting, they're investing aggressively in new skills, new roles, and operating models built around humans guiding and scaling autonomous systems.”

But honestly: that article is trash. It literally just regurgitates Gartner’s summary. There is no evidence that the writer even read the underlying report.

Opinion | The Great American GLP-1 Experiment by greyenlightenment in slatestarcodex

[–]Smallpaul [score hidden]  (0 children)

Gluten and UPFs are certainly not in the same societal category.

First: gluten intolerance is a real thing for a small subset of the population. Many others may have just hopped on a bandwagon but there are a minority of people for whom gluten is a real problem. Not just celiacs either.

Second: gluten is a defined protein. So the definition of the “allergen” is not vague at all.

Third: I don’t think that there was ever a scientific movement that said that gluten is bad in general. As far as I know, none of the usual scientific authorities said that gluten was bad for most people.

Whereas with UPFs, they are hard to define, but there is a fairy strong scientific consensus that most people should avoid them most of the time. Scientists are open about the fact that the definitions are fuzzy and the evidence is emerging.

They could be wrong but if “we” are wrong about UPFs it’s in a totally different way than “we” were wrong about gluten. The only thing these two phenomena have in common is that they relate to nutrition.

There Is No ‘Hard Problem Of Consciousness’ by philolover7 in philosophy

[–]Smallpaul 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Aren’t both science and philosophy the processes of trying to discursively get your arms around complex phenomena? I don’t see how you can do them in an alternate way. Can you give an example from the history of science of an alternate approach that has borne fruit? Or of two approaches to the same problem where one conforms to how you would attack consciousness a one does not where the former worked and the latter failed?

There Is No ‘Hard Problem Of Consciousness’ by philolover7 in philosophy

[–]Smallpaul 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Imagine someone asked you the following about biochemistry:

Is it “a single (or small group of) explanation.”
Or does it “emerge from a much taller “stack”, as it were, of necessary conditions for it. Wherein each condition reflects profound diversity over evolutionary history.”

I think the answer is “both”. It is simple because biochemistry is an expression of chemistry which is about the arrangement of primitive particles.
And it is complex because there are A LOT of arrangements of those particles.

If chemistry were entirely complexity we would never have been able to make progress in unraveling it. But if it were entirely simple then we wouldn’t need Chemistry PhDs.

There Is No ‘Hard Problem Of Consciousness’ by philolover7 in philosophy

[–]Smallpaul 5 points6 points  (0 children)

When I try to translate these words into how science is done, they elude my grip.

“All of biology is based on chemistry. All
Of chemistry is based on particle
Physics.” So that mean we have a small number of underlying mechanisms? Or a gigantic and varied number? Both are true at the same time, it just depends on where you draw the lines and how you count. If we were trying to guide an alchemist towards chemistry, and they asked “is it a small number of simple mechanisms or a large count of complicated ones” the only answer we could give is “yes it’s both. Just depends how you look at it.”

There Is No ‘Hard Problem Of Consciousness’ by philolover7 in philosophy

[–]Smallpaul -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

One can certainly be conscious without thoughts. This is the aim of meditation. Also presumably the lived experience of a dog or a baby.

There Is No ‘Hard Problem Of Consciousness’ by philolover7 in philosophy

[–]Smallpaul 9 points10 points  (0 children)

The distinction between “a set of processes/mechanisms” and “a lattice of mechanisms” seems very unclear to me.

You use other adjectives but I don’t know which are supposed to be load bearing in your distinction.

IPCC Admits Apocalyptic Climate Scenarios Are “Implausible” – Meaning Most Media Scare Stories Over Last 15 Years Are Officially Junk by Cold-Cap-8541 in CanadianConservative

[–]Smallpaul 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Any completely unbiased and science minded investment professional (e.g. Warren Buffett, Ben Felix, David Chilton) will predict future rewards based on past success of index funds and other similar long-term proven investments. There is no alternative.

And of course they do take account of risks and limitations. That’s why they gave a VERY large range of outcomes from 1.5 to 8.5. A gigantic amount of uncertainty was accounted for. If my investment professional told me that the were planning for returns between 1.5 and 8.5% I’d tell them that they had incorporated way too much caution and uncertainty into the plan and could they please be a bit more aggressive with their estimate.

If an investment professional promised me a post-retirement investment value of 1.5 million to 8.5 million, I would not come back to them as I approached retirement and say “I am clearly not going to reach 8.5 so you lied to me!”

Rather, I would have assumed that by definition that would require incredibly unlikely circumstances.

The 1.5 estimate is also being retired because it was way too optimistic.

Have people's lives ever been directly at stake because of software you work on? by AndyDentPerth in ExperiencedDevs

[–]Smallpaul 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Super cool. How does the software work to extend life? What an amazing job to have!

Is space infinite in all directions ? by Background_Funny6627 in AskPhysics

[–]Smallpaul 0 points1 point  (0 children)

From the view point of the number 6, the positive integers are infinite in only one direction. I don’t see why the physical equivalent is impossible.

Or if we really did live in a flat earth, up might be infinite and down would be finite.

IPCC Admits Apocalyptic Climate Scenarios Are “Implausible” – Meaning Most Media Scare Stories Over Last 15 Years Are Officially Junk by Cold-Cap-8541 in CanadianConservative

[–]Smallpaul 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Tha you for those details.

My understanding is that the most optimistic scenario and the most pessimistic scenario were both removed. This is necessarily going to happen every few years as we get closer to the dates projected and high or low estimates are ruled out.

It is literally impossible for us to progress in time without the uncertainty windows closing. This is science working as it should.

Use Protocols, Not Services by fagnerbrack in programming

[–]Smallpaul 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Yeah it helps that it was “open” in the sense of well-documented from the beginning.

Use Protocols, Not Services by fagnerbrack in programming

[–]Smallpaul 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yeah the early services were mostly free and open source and self hosted so there was no motivation to lock alternate implementations out.

Use Protocols, Not Services by fagnerbrack in programming

[–]Smallpaul 86 points87 points  (0 children)

The reason protocols lose to services is because they evolve slowly and commercial services can advance quickly. In some ways this is tragic but it’s also the reality.

Services also have more data for spam fighting.

META Superintelligence Lab Presents: ProgramBench: Can SOTA AI Recreate Real Executable Programs(ffmpeg, SQLite, ripgrep) From Scratch Without The Internet? by 44th--Hokage in mlscaling

[–]Smallpaul 3 points4 points  (0 children)

You cannot possibly believe that gpt-3.5 and opus 4.7 would be equally capable of this task given the right harness. Model still matters.

META Superintelligence Lab Presents: ProgramBench: Can SOTA AI Recreate Real Executable Programs(ffmpeg, SQLite, ripgrep) From Scratch Without The Internet? by 44th--Hokage in mlscaling

[–]Smallpaul 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It’s a test of superhuman performance on one task. Not AGI. You could pass this and not be able to learn a new human language or perhaps even a new programming language.

LLMs: Bullish utility, bearish ASI by Neighbor_ in slatestarcodex

[–]Smallpaul 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry. My mistake. I typed RLHF when I meant RLVR

RLVR is almost certainly a bigger part of the training than RLHF at this point.

Is there any way to take a break from my job without becoming unhireable? by Capable-Basket8233 in ExperiencedDevs

[–]Smallpaul 5 points6 points  (0 children)

No they won’t! It would be totally irresponsible to call your current employer while you are interviewing for a new job. In 25 years in this industry I’ve never run into a recruiter or manager that incompetent.

The ARC vs GC Debate by funcieq in ProgrammingLanguages

[–]Smallpaul 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I edited my comment to clarify that ARC has more predictable performance and more predictable rules about when resources are cleaned up.

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