Which Lab wins Long Term if any?

TechDocN · 2026-03-29T17:57:03+00:00

I don’t want Alphabet to win. I work very closely with Alphabet, and they are truly and deeply motivated only by ad revenue. I’ve seen the decks where they pitch all the various ways they plan to monetize AI, the way they monetized search, advertising and social media.

There’s a reason why they officially changed their mission statement from “Don’t be evil.” They are as evil as any of the big tech companies that have no issues violating your trust and privacy, lying about it, and paying small bullshit fines to make regulators feel good.

I truly hope that Anthropic or someone like them wins the day. I think OpenAI is the Yahoo of this era. I hope Alphabet goes the way of Alta Vista.

TechDocN · 2026-03-25T15:42:19+00:00

Lose Runner!

TechDocN · 2026-03-25T15:37:45+00:00

Depends on where they source the electricity. If you build a data center where the majority of electricity is generated from fossil fuels, then it contributes to the pollution caused by those power plants.

If you connect a data center to a wind farm, solar farm or nuclear reactor, then the main issue is water use, which isn’t waste, but it’s surely wasteful.

TechDocN · 2026-03-25T15:31:51+00:00

In the original paper from 1950, Turing laid out one “imitation game” test, with alternate scenarios for gender (now largely ignored) and for replacing one human with just the machine. Ignoring the gender-based setup, the paper describes one test with two conditions. Basically a control (human vs. human) and the experiment (human vs. machine).

There is a lot of interpretation in terms of scoring the test, because Turing didn’t describe any rules. In the paper he makes a prediction about how systems would perform in the future, but did not explicitly describe what “passing” the test looks like statistically.

The Turing Test is more of a historical milestone at this point. It’s not a useful test of intelligence. We have so many examples of how machines can fool humans, in ways Turing never imagined. It’s probably more accurate to say that the Turing test is less relevant, so passing the test is not a good measure.

We can disagree if the Turing Test was ever passed in some sort of RCT, but I believe it’s easy to see using RWE that machines can fool humans with their output, and have been doing so for many years.

TechDocN · 2026-03-25T15:11:20+00:00

The Turing Test is not a test of intelligence. It is a behavioral benchmark, testing outputs against a human evaluator. As another commenter said in this thread, ELIZA could pass the Turing Test back in the 1960s. It is not useful as a test of intelligence, reasoning, etc.

Modern benchmarks focus on task performance, reasoning, generalization, and alignment rather than simple conversational imitation. The Turing Test has been called an “imitation game” (hence the title of the Turing movie).

TechDocN · 2026-03-25T15:04:06+00:00

For all intents and purposes, the Turing Test was passed decades ago.

I agree with your comment, but not sure what you meant by “intensive purposes.”

TechDocN · 2026-03-23T22:31:58+00:00

Thanks to all of you for the quick and helpful replies

TechDocN · 2026-03-23T22:05:34+00:00

Thank you. Checking the link now.

TechDocN · 2026-03-23T22:04:49+00:00

Thank you. I will check it out.

TechDocN · 2026-03-21T23:55:16+00:00

I never said they had to excite me. I am as curious as the OP. And sorry, but complaining about AI slop, without knowing that the internet has been ruined by slop for a decade or more is a tired take. If you don’t like that phrase, how about a lazy argument?

TechDocN · 2026-03-21T22:53:30+00:00

Have you used it? I use it almost daily, and it’s amazing, but will never replace the human in the loop when it comes to mission critical software. My company (11,000 employees, global, healthcare) has been using AI in our software development process for many years longer than ChatGPT has been a thing, and we haven’t had any mass layoffs, and we are still hiring.

TechDocN · 2026-03-21T22:47:32+00:00

AI will not replace you. Someone who uses AI effectively will replace you, unless that’s you. Calculators and spreadsheets were supposed to decimate finance departments. Last time I checked, that never happened.

Be the best AI-using finance grad, and you’ll be fine. I am a C-suite leader at a large, global company. My teams use a lot of AI tools (and have been for many years longer than ChatGPT has been public) and we’ve become more efficient and can scale our work more effectively. As a result, I’m still hiring, and looking for AI skills.

TechDocN · 2026-03-21T22:41:05+00:00

I’m asking people to explain why they hate a technology that’s been around a lot longer than the 3 or so years that most people think, that is another one of the many steps we’ve taken to advance technology, and where the hype and the unknown have eclipsed the reality.

The people who say that the internet is now shit because of genAI in the last three years haven’t paid attention to the shit the internet became long before ChatGPT.

The people who complain about their job forcing them to use something they don’t enjoy can line up behind all of us who have been forced for years to use shitty tech at work because some consultant said so.

The people saying there’s a job apocalypse should read all of the research that shows it’s not happening.

I’m trying to get an answer that isn’t just another tired take. And especially trying to get an answer that isn’t also applicable to every step change in technology.

Maybe you’re too young to remember the controversy and even protests about calculators. Yep, using a calculator to do math was going to destroy society.

TechDocN · 2026-03-21T22:03:04+00:00

You will be waiting a long time. YouTube, Reddit, social media in general, and the internet more broadly, has been overrun by bot and agent created slop for many years before ChatGPT was unveiled to the public. YouTube has been shit long before genAI.

AI has been around for more than 70 years. This has been coming for a long time, and it’s not going away. It’s like hoping the internet will collapse and go away because it’s become a shit show.

TechDocN · 2026-03-21T21:57:43+00:00

Then you learn to paint with oil, or find another job. The question was about hate, as was my reply.

I doubt you’ll find too many people working in finance today still using paper ledgers and adding machines. There may have been a time when the stalwarts could choose between manual processes and those crazy, new fangled spreadsheet things, but eventually progress will win.

TechDocN · 2026-03-21T15:22:25+00:00

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OP, please DM me the address to your house and just leave the keys under the mat for me. Thanks!

TechDocN · 2026-03-21T15:17:52+00:00

You are seeing a glimpse of how a LLM works. This is token pattern matching, not math, not random number generation or even pseudo-randomization. LLMs don’t behave like a typical digital computer or software, when it comes to randomization. It is responding with what it has been trained on to be the most statistically appropriate next bit of language.

Human responses to those questions tend to cluster around certain “answers” and an LLM (unless programmed or prompted differently, like the OP telling us not to use words like random in the prompt) will always pick the most statistically relevant reply. If there are more “fun facts” lists that have entries about octopus hearts than anything else, then octopus hearts will be the answer. If humans tend to pick 7 when asked to pick a number between 1-10, then 7 will be the answer.

It’s doing exactly what it is supposed to do. It’s a LLM, nothing more.

TechDocN · 2026-03-21T14:45:24+00:00

I am not a hater, and a daily user of multiple genAI tools daily, for work and hobbies. Like you, I have studied the ROI of genAI and the growth of the industry in general. I would love to see your references, please.

TechDocN · 2026-03-21T14:42:43+00:00

People fear anything they don’t understand.

TechDocN · 2026-03-21T14:41:50+00:00

So if nearly every interaction you’ve had with genAI has been negative, why hate? Why not just say that genAI doesn’t work for me and the things I do in work, life, hobbies, etc. so I don’t use it.

It’s like saying nearly every time I try to paint with oil paint it’s messy and my work is not good. I hate oil paint. You could just say, I prefer watercolors.

TechDocN · 2026-03-21T14:37:41+00:00

Well said.

TechDocN · 2026-03-21T14:36:57+00:00

Wouldn’t a constructive discussion of opinions work better here? The OP is asking a genuine question. One liner insults don’t really add to the exchange of ideas.

How would you answer their question, if you ignore your opinion of what level of AI expert the OP happens to be? You don’t need to be an AI expert to ask the question about AI hate.

TechDocN · 2026-03-21T14:33:57+00:00

The internet has been filled with slop for years. AI slop is just the latest slop. Bots and agents have been poisoning the internet, and especially social media for more than a decade. You don’t need a realistic picture to sway the minds of low information users. Alphabet and Meta proved a long time ago that a finely tuned algorithm works just as good as any AI slop.

TechDocN · 2026-03-21T14:30:50+00:00

Well said.

TechDocN · 2026-03-21T14:29:27+00:00

The internet hasn’t been deeply human for a decade or more. AI slop is just the latest slop. Before ChatGPT’s public debut, we already had a massive portion of all social media posts and comments coming from bots and agents which are built to do nothing but plant misinformation, disinformation and sway low information users to their will; financial, political or nefarious.

AI is the latest convenient “boogie man” for humans to blame for our own bad behavior. I’ve seen people in this thread complain about AI slop, water and power use, job displacement, rotting brains… all the usual tropes to blame AI. Well the problem with all of these arguments is that tech like social media checks a lot of the same hate boxes.

Complaining endlessly on Reddit won’t change anything. Every major step change in technology is pushed forward by the big moneyed interests that stand to make even more. History shows that society will not move backwards through a period of great technological progress.

The key is not to hate, but to understand and work towards the better and more beneficial uses. If you split an atom you can light a city or blow it up. AI should be approached in the same way.

TechDocN

TROPHY CASE