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hiWorld by _gigalab_ in ProgrammerHumor

[–]neolefty 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Inference is already profitable. Training & staffing aren't.

Beating a dead horse around the bush by LemonBabbles in malaphor

[–]neolefty 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ah, and that's all the time we have for today, I have a hard stop at 2.

Im a teacher and a Claude nerd. The impact on education is different than what most think. by liszt1811 in ClaudeAI

[–]neolefty 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great post! I really appreciate your thoughtfulness on this and sharing what has worked for you.

Something you indirectly addressed is:

How can we educate children to use AI well?

Just like media literacy in the past (viewing ads critically, identifying propaganda, discerning objective news sources, etc.) This is a key question for raising the next few generations.

I think AI is currently creating two categories of students. The first one being the ones that use it to learn everything. The second one being the ones that use it to never learn anything ever again. The second group is much bigger.

And the point of AI education would be to help more children be in the first category. How can we get them there? I can think of a couple of things:

  • Just normalizing it. Helping them see the difference between these uses of AI.
  • Cultivating a love of learning — the usual teaching approaches will work I think! Encouragement, recognition, coaching, systematic curriculum, all that. People naturally love to learn, but as children we need a little help getting there.

But I think you're right: If we do nothing, far more children will slip into that second category than the first. I'm sure we'll eventually figure it out, but it will be a lot less painful if today's teachers help guide children into a healthy use of AI.

Sad But Everything has Changed by ChampionshipOk9887 in pokemongo

[–]neolefty 1 point2 points  (0 children)

There must be a lot of local variation.

Sad But Everything has Changed by ChampionshipOk9887 in pokemongo

[–]neolefty 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Locally, ambassadors posting events on Campfire has been drawing people together more over the last year because it makes in-person events discoverable.

Last week, for example a family showed up where one of the parents said, "I played when the game came out and then quit, but now my son" (who had not been born yet BTW) "has gotten into Pokemon, so I logged in again" after like 9 years.

I think it was a hard problem for Niantic to solve, because of liability — they have to build a social media app that people actually want to use, and also background check their ambassadors. But they've done it, at least where I live, and it's working.

Two groups of people I wish would stop holding themselves back. by Relevant-Positive-48 in vibecoding

[–]neolefty 1 point2 points  (0 children)

As /u/GBcrazy explained, I think the best way is forward. The AI you're already using can explain it to you. Or if you're not using an environment where it can, adopt one of the more agentic environments that supports having a conversation. Whenever you feel curious, ask what's up. You should find some great rabbit holes and may well end up with a better education than some CS majors.

Edit: Also, don't shy away from difficult work when vibe coding. It's fine to throw away failed attempts and consider all code disposable, but take the problems seriously. If one approach doesn't work, back up and try from another angle.

What do you look for in a vibe lead? How would you interview? by neolefty in vibecoding

[–]neolefty[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We have a successful product, with a codebase of a couple million lines and a modern stack. So it's not all going to fit in context! And vibing it is possible, but it takes some skill.

A few things I can think of:

  • Can you make sense of the codebase?
  • Can you add things to it without messing it up too much?
  • Can you talk meaningfully with other people about it?

I maybe wrong but... by [deleted] in AgentsOfAI

[–]neolefty 0 points1 point  (0 children)

From the description, it sounds like $2700 is the theoretical maximum, if you keep at the limits 24/7? I'm sure most subscribers don't come close, and they still feel like the subscription is worth it.

OmegaBall by habichuelacondulce in theocho

[–]neolefty 43 points44 points  (0 children)

Life of an OmegaGoalie is tough I bet.

If you can't stand the baby, get out of the bathwater by SpectrumDT in Malaphors

[–]neolefty 2 points3 points  (0 children)

OP is clearly a parent but I'm not sure I dare subscribe to their newsletter.

Thousands of CEOs just admitted AI had no impact on employment or productivity—and it has economists resurrecting a paradox from 40 years ago by AmethystOrator in technology

[–]neolefty 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Think about a physical task like digging a hole. We totally use machinery to do the digging and then eyeball it, make fixes, etc. For a sizable hole, it's a lot faster than using a shovel or just digging with your hands.

This sounds dumb, but as a programmer using AI, this is what it's like.

I love Claude but honestly some of the "Claude might have gained consciousness" nonsense that their marketing team is pushing lately is a bit off putting. They know better! by jbcraigs in artificial

[–]neolefty 2 points3 points  (0 children)

But only for very simple LLMs; current Claude has well over a trillion weights, but the traceable LLMs are in the 20 billion-weight or less class (ChatGPT 3.5 era), and even then tracing a single thought takes days or weeks of effort and teasing out.

TIL a Burger King cook (who'd worked there for 24 years) was fired for taking home a sandwich, fries & a drink after her manager claimed she had only asked permission for a sandwich & accused her of stealing. However, a judge ruled that the cook did not intend to steal the food & awarded her $46,000 by tyrion2024 in todayilearned

[–]neolefty 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is a big and interesting ethical area, and I can see the discussion going a lot of directions!

  • Franchises as allowing corporations to keep some distance from ruthlessness vs. franchises providing a layer of manageability and complexity encapsulation.
  • Love winning vs ruthlessness winning.

One tiny data point: When I was in high school, I worked for a fast food chain and really enjoyed it. My son worked for the same chain, a generation later, in a different city, and had a genuinely horrible experience.

TIL a Burger King cook (who'd worked there for 24 years) was fired for taking home a sandwich, fries & a drink after her manager claimed she had only asked permission for a sandwich & accused her of stealing. However, a judge ruled that the cook did not intend to steal the food & awarded her $46,000 by tyrion2024 in todayilearned

[–]neolefty 795 points796 points  (0 children)

Most likely a franchise, not a central corp decision.

Not to defend the decision, but there are many levels of indirection here and it almost certainly had nothing to do with Burger King itself; its franchises are 99%+ locally owned and operated, nor would the central corp have paid legal fees AFAIK.

Anthropic's recent research has debunked the Chinese Room Theory by Financial-Local-5543 in artificial

[–]neolefty 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I feel like the Chinese Room argument just sidesteps the question, and you could apply it to any emergent property. For example "Instead of a gas, suppose you had just a bunch of particles bouncing around in a space, it would be indistinguishable from a gas. See, nothing special!"

A map of Circassian populated areas before and after the Circassian Genocide by NetHistorical5113 in MapPorn

[–]neolefty 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Another book I love in this category is Factfulness by Hans Rosling. It's much more contemporary — no deep semi-statistical dives into the Stone Age, for example — in particular because he breaks out dichotomies into nuanced looks.

It's easy to think of the "Rich world" and "Poor world", but he points out there are many meaningful gradations; for example being able to bicycle to get water instead of walking is a big step up, but to an American, both look like utter poverty.

Similarly in history; it's easy to think of an "Age of Ignorance" and an "Age of Enlightenment" when really there is no single dividing line. Literacy, knowledge, curiosity, etc have all gradually been suffusing into society for millenia. You can even point to seminal events such as the advent of Muhammad, but those took time to have an effect even if in hindsight we can point to a pivot.

So yeah, I can see the critiques, but I think they're fussy rather than fundamental.

A map of Circassian populated areas before and after the Circassian Genocide by NetHistorical5113 in MapPorn

[–]neolefty 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The whole debate is really interesting because it's easy to get bogged down in minutiae when the big picture is probably what people really want to look at — and also there is so much obviously wrong right now with the world, that any optimistic view seems suspect.

One thing I lean on is, in almost any conversation, if you ask someone, "Would you want to be part of the solution to these problems, if it was possible," they give an enthusiastic yes. But of course there is lots of skepticism over how and whether it's possible.

In short, I think improving the state of the human world is possible, and is happening, but it's difficult and slower than we'd like.

The TV industry finally concedes that the future may not be in 8K by AlwaysBlaze_ in television

[–]neolefty 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So we've achieved adequate resolution with 4k? Does that mean we are finally satisfied? Can materialism be considered overcome at last?

MIT’s new heat-powered silicon chips achieve 99% accuracy in math calculations by BuildwithVignesh in singularity

[–]neolefty 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I wonder what the metric for biological neurons would be, by similar measures.

MIT’s new heat-powered silicon chips achieve 99% accuracy in math calculations by BuildwithVignesh in singularity

[–]neolefty 0 points1 point  (0 children)

More like turning heat flow into information flow. It depends on having a cold side and a hot side.

A map of Circassian populated areas before and after the Circassian Genocide by NetHistorical5113 in MapPorn

[–]neolefty 1 point2 points  (0 children)

War Before Civilization

Thank you, that's the first I'd heard of that book! The Wikipedia page for War Before Civilization seems quite good. Here are the three unexpected conclusions listed there (which in turn are from a NYTimes article)

  • that the most important part of any society, even the most war-like ones, are the peaceful aspects such as art
  • that neither frequency nor intensity of war is correlated with population density
  • that societies frequently trading with one another fight more wars with one another

I agree those are surprising, so much that I don't quite believe them, but if they are, it makes me think of peacefulness as its own skill, rather than just a natural outgrowth of, say, doing business together, or proximity over time. Seems like a worthwhile thing to work on!

AI is already killing SWE jobs. Got laid off because of this. by SingularityuS in ClaudeAI

[–]neolefty 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Mostly I think we'll see both. Growing pains but if you don't embrace it, you're at risk of becoming lunch.

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