MurphyA/hacker-news huggingface dataset:
by smackeyacky | 2025-09-04 02:56:01+00:00
The central issue here is whether the money pouring into AI companies is producing anything other than more AI companies.

I think the article's premise is basically correct - if we had a 10x explosion of productivity where is the evidence? I would think some is potentially hidden in corporate / internal apps but despite everyone at my current employer using these tools we don't seem to be going any faster.

I will admit that my initial thoughts on Copilot were that "yes this is faster" but that was back when I was only using it for rote / boilerplate work. I've not had a lot of success trying to get it to do higher level work and that's also the experience of my co-workers.

I can certainly see why a particular subset of programmers find the tools particularly compelling, if their job was producing boilerplate then AI is perfect.
by breuleux | 2025-09-04 02:57:55+00:00
You're right, we probably have different ontologies. To me an intelligent system is a system which aims to realize a goal through modelling its environment and planning actions to bring about that intended state. That's more or less what humans do and I think that's more in line with the colloquial understanding of it.

There are basically two approaches to defining intelligence, I think. You can either define it in terms of capability, in which case a system that has no intent and does not plan can be more intelligent than one that does, simply by virtue of being more effective. Or you can define it in terms of mechanism: something is intelligent if it operates in a specific way. But it may then turn out to be the case that some non-intelligent systems are more effective than some intelligent systems. Or you can do both and assume that there is some specific mechanism (human intelligence, conveniently) that is intrinsically better than the others, which is a mistake people commonly make and is the source of a lot of confusion.

I tend to go for the second approach because I think it's a more useful framing to talk about ourselves, but the first is also consistent. As long as we know what the other means.
by bave8672 | 2025-09-04 02:58:01+00:00
Related - Charles Foster has put perhaps the most effort of any individual to try to really understand what it's like to live as an animal. From the blurb or 'Being a Beast':

> He lived alongside badgers for weeks, sleeping in a sett in a Welsh hillside and eating earthworms, learning to sense the landscape through his nose rather than his eyes. He caught fish in his teeth while swimming like an otter; rooted through London garbage cans as an urban fox; was hunted by bloodhounds as a red deer, nearly dying in the snow.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_A._Foster
by refulgentis | 2025-09-04 02:58:42+00:00
This is quite reductive and sophomorically so - "tech bros" as signifier of moneyed & tasteless? on HN? :) - reMarkable has been around for years, well-reviewed, and rightfully so - it's a quite distinctive experience from "an ipad [with] a matte screen protector."

I am not sure I will invest this much, but it's pleasantly surprising to see meaningful advancements in form factor and technology enabled over the longhaul in the products remarkable has made.
by ferrous69 | 2025-09-04 02:59:42+00:00
my grand theory on AI coding tools is that they don't really save on time, but they massively save on annoyance. I can save my frustration budget for useful things instead of fiddling with syntax or compiler messages or repetitive tasks, and oftentimes this means I'll take on a task I would find too frustrating in an already frustrating world, or stay at my desk longer before needing to take a walk or ditch the office for the bar.
by noduerme | 2025-09-04 02:59:43+00:00
But we don't need to know all the things that could happen if M joints moved in every possible way at the same time. We operate within normal constraints. When you see someone trip on a sidewalk and recover before falling on their face, that's still a physical system taking signals and suggesting corrections that could be simulated in a relatively straightforward newtonian virtual reality, and trained a billion times on with however many virtual joints and actuators.

In terms of "world building", it makes sense for the "world" to not be dreamed up by an AI, but to have hard deterministic limits to bump up against in training.

I guess what I mean is that humans in the world constantly face a lot of conditions that can lead to undefined behavior as well, but 99% of the time not falling on your face is good enough to get you a job washing dishes.
by godelski | 2025-09-04 03:00:12+00:00
> you can trivially wire an LLM into a Turing complete system

Please don't do the "the proof is trivial and left to the reader"[0].

If it is so trivial, show it. Don't hand wave, "put up or shut up". I think if you work this out you'll find it isn't so trivial...

I'm aware of some works but at least every one I know of has limitations that would not apply to LLMs. Plus, none of those are so trivial...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_intimidation
by sarchertech | 2025-09-04 03:01:52+00:00
With a greater than 99% probability that this is a real effect, i wouldn’t expect this to be difficult to reproduce.

But it turns out I misread the paper. It was actually an 80% effect size so greater than 99.9% chance of being a real effect.

Of course it could be the case that there is something different about young college students that makes them react very; very differently to LLM usage, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
by zdragnar | 2025-09-04 03:02:46+00:00
I recently found out that my nephew's school had no take-home homework before high school, instead having kids complete assignments during class time. At first, I was flabbergasted that they would deny kids the discipline building of managing unstructured time without direct supervision. Homework- at home- seemed like such a fundamental part of the schooling experience.

Now, I'm thinking that was pretty much they only way they could think of to ensure kids were doing things themselves.

I know it was a rough transition for my nephew, though, and I don't know that I would have handled it very well either. I'm not sure what would be a better option, though, given how much of a disservice such easy access to a mental crutch is.
by jplusequalt | 2025-09-04 03:03:00+00:00
>Do you also expect I mention that I used Intellisense and syntax highlighting too?

No, but I expect my software to have been verified for correctness, and soundness by a human being with a working mental model of how the code works. But, I guess that's not a priority anymore if you're willing to sacrifice $2400 a year to Anthropic.
by frollogaston | 2025-09-04 03:05:02+00:00
Maybe they can allow AI for writing but raise the bar on quality so the blind copy-paste submissions still fail. I've still never read a good AI-generated doc at work, it's always verbose and aimless. At this point I close the doc if I catch a whiff. Unlike the AI code which is fine.

It's probably either that or ban it and do everything in-person, which might have to be the stopgap solution.
by 9rx | 2025-09-04 03:07:08+00:00
GitHub Copilot was out there in 2021. The "chat about anything" era hadn't really begun, but "your computer can write code for you" era was well underway. And given that said business wanted to retain the people it had with AI/big data backgrounds, strongly suggesting it isn't like a restaurant where it would be unlikely that any staff would have that kind of experience, we can reasonably assume that they are in that particular niche.
by rayiner | 2025-09-04 03:07:21+00:00
That makes it sound like anything I'm saying is new, which it is not. I'm just expressing how people understood the constitution to operate for the first 130 years of its history. For example: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/272/52/#tab-opin... ("Montesquieu's view that the maintenance of independence as between the legislative, the executive, and the judicial branches was a security for the people had their full approval. Accordingly, the Constitution was so framed as to vest in the Congress all legislative powers therein granted, to vest in the President the executive power, and to vest in one Supreme Court and such inferior courts as Congress might establish the judicial power. *** The debates in the Constitutional Convention indicated an intention to create a strong Executive, and, after a controversial discussion, the executive power of the Government was vested in one person and many of his important functions were specified so as to avoid the humiliating weakness of the Congress during the Revolution and under the Articles of Confederation. *** The vesting of the executive power in the President was essentially a grant of the power to execute the laws. But the President, alone and unaided, could not execute the laws. He must execute them by the assistance of subordinates. This view has since been repeatedly affirmed by this Court. As he is charged specifically to take care that they be faithfully executed, the reasonable implication, even in the absence of express words, was that, as part of his executive power, he should select those who were to act for him under his direction in the execution of the laws.").

The mid-20th century precedent was an erroneous deviation, driven in large part not by legal analysis, but FDR's threat to pack the Supreme Court unless it ruled the way he wanted.
by Lerc | 2025-09-04 03:07:29+00:00
By what mechanism can you distinguish a decline from one cause compared to another?

I could understand if, given enough time for all of the factors involved to occilate that you could pick out a signal, but that's not the data that exists right now. Surely the only way to identify the first time instance of a cause of decline could only by accumulating a count of clear instances where the cause occurred and measuring those as a proportion of other cases.
by Raphell | 2025-09-04 03:07:40+00:00
The most helpful advice I’ve heard is not to aim for perfection. When you focus too much on structure and technique, the talk often feels stiff. What really connects with people is speaking about something you truly care about. The first time I gave a talk, I memorized the entire script and completely blanked on stage. Later, I spoke from the heart instead and it worked much better. Instead of trying to impress the audience, it might be more important to ask yourself why this matters to you.
by SilverElfin | 2025-09-04 03:08:06+00:00
As mentioned in my earlier comment, the same political side and I bet the same judge, would support discriminatory requirements for the hiring practices of federal contractors. The question is whether the government can include things in its contracts to attain whatever political goals are desired, even if people have personal freedom of association. Whatever the answer, it has to be enforced equally in all circumstances. To me this judge is making a politically motivated ruling.
by BobbyTables2 | 2025-09-04 03:08:07+00:00
I’ve seen a similar change but didn’t realize this, makes sense.

Combined with a complete lack of textbooks, college is going to be quite a surprise!!

Oddly, English teachers tell students to use Grammerly and standardized tests use AI for grading student essays.

For writing assignments, students are given a “prompt”. Never heard it called such in my schooling…
by tamimio | 2025-09-04 03:08:36+00:00
I don't think it's AI primarily, but rather AI is being used as a justification and a blame, and what's a better blame than this new trend that will last years and nothing can be done about it? I think it's just companies' greed, another excuse to lower the wages more and/or use ones who are ok with lower wages. It also has to do with procurement that's already using AI to process applications, with all the negative impacts this will have. I also did notice something when it comes to the job market: mostly those who are suffering are men, not women. I initially thought maybe because of the nature of the jobs, but that wasn't the case. Looking around on LinkedIn, a lot of women are doing product/project management jobs, analytics, business-related roles, even HR and procurement aren't impacted, and I have yet to see a single woman personally or online that was let go because of AI, even jobs in legal work, administration work -none of them are impacted that much. Meanwhile, I personally know several engineers (not software engineers) who are jobless with years of experience, and a LOT of software programmers too! I was discussing this with a friend and he also brought up a new term, "boomers' harems," as in, managers who are mostly old men prefer to hire young women now, and he did support his claim with many examples of fresh graduate girls that are working as engineers in aerospace or similar industries already, and their male classmates are still looking around.

So in conclusion, while AI does have an impact, personally if I would quantify it, it probably won't exceed 25% of the issue. Other factors make up the rest, but everyone is distracted by AI for all sorts of reasons.
by paulgerhardt | 2025-09-04 03:09:09+00:00
> Cash is also—I regret to say—disgusting.

Not true!

For a while I was manufacturing cash and did some research on the hygiene component.

Surprisingly, I learned tap to pay was the most hygienic iff one didn’t use a common terminal for tips or signing.

Coins were the second most hygienic with a germ score of 168RLU . Cash third. Credit fourth, and dead last was shared payment terminals one physically touched (this includes tap to pay if one “answers a couple of questions.”) A separate study found smart watches were dirtier than terminals.

[1] https://www.electronicpaymentsinternational.com/news/what-is...

[2] https://www.self.inc/info/dirty-money/

[3] https://www.nmi.com/blog/how-contactless-payments-impact-glo...

And amusingly [4] https://nocash.ro/oxford-university-european-bank-notes-on-a...

Reports in this space are full of confirmation bias so take the RLU scores with a grain of salt. Likewise some cultures have cleaner methods of dealing with cash than others.
by TuringNYC | 2025-09-04 03:10:08+00:00
You are right that it creates residual value which might be purchased for value (probably at a discount.) However, it doesn't help the startup actually pay the bills while it operates.

Historically, the R&D payroll just wiped out same year revenue and you essentially did cash accounting. After Section 174, you had to finance the R&D by borrowing or just hiring less.
by jules | 2025-09-04 03:10:14+00:00
The type of reasoning by the OP and the linked paper obviously does not work. The observable reality is that LLMs can do mathematical reasoning. A cursory interaction with state of the art LLMs makes this evident, as does their IMO gold medal scored like humans are. You cannot counter observable reality with generic theoretical considerations about Markov chains or pretraining scaling laws or floating point precision. The irony is that LLMs can explain why that type of reasoning is faulty:

> Any discrete-time computation (including backtracking search) becomes Markov if you define the state as the full machine configuration. Thus “Markov ⇒ no reasoning/backtracking” is a non sequitur. Moreover, LLMs can simulate backtracking in their reasoning chains. -- GPT-5
by bb88 | 2025-09-04 03:12:47+00:00
I'm not saying you're wrong, but I would like to point out that a phone doesn't need active cooling. I just don't know if Graviton requires active cooling.

And I don't know if that statement is accurate, since passive cooling would be even better than active cooling from an efficiency perspective and particularly if you also consider reliability. Less moving parts would mean higher reliability unless, eg., the thermal paste evaporated on the cpu.
by ethagnawl | 2025-09-04 03:12:48+00:00
Wow! That is very cool. I'd love to see a more detailed write up or video about that system. I really miss that era of multimedia. So much of it seems hokey and awkward in retrospect but I feel like there are lots of unfinished thoughts and experiments in that realm that are only starting to be revisited now in the AR/VR/experiential context.

I thought my elementary school was pretty baller (it wasn't -- especially in comparison!) because its library had an LD player which got pulled out once or a year to show the same space race video -- complete with frame indexing and crystal clear frames on pause. Until I bought one for myself in the 2010s, that was only one of two times I saw LD players in the wild.
by tibbon | 2025-09-04 03:13:05+00:00
I hate to admit it, but I saw similar things.

I referred someone incredibly qualified for a Chief of Staff role at a company. Their resume was well beyond what the company could have hoped to find. The executive recruiting firm was over the moon with him. However, they basically told him that this company was looking for a 'more diverse background' and as a straight white guy, he wasn't it - but they were excited to take him around to other clients.

For a few years, the hiring process seemed broken overall, and in retrospect, it didn't do much to actually help the people it claimed to.

I'm all about strength from diversity, but you can't throw away everything to get there.
by AdieuToLogic | 2025-09-04 03:13:08+00:00
>> It is apparent to me you have a firm belief in your position regarding consciousness. I disagree with this position while respecting your right to have it.

> It's a textbook ad hominem ...

This has been shown to be false elsewhere in this thread.

> there's no reason to make the statement other than to undermine the credibility of the person's claims.

Nowhere did I assail the credibility, validity, nor intent of the person with whom I disagreed. All I did was identify the disagreement, acknowledge the position communicated is held with conviction (my interpretation), and convey my respect of their right to have a differing opinion.

It is difficult for me to interpret your post as being anything other than a form of projection[0].

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
by noobly | 2025-09-04 03:13:14+00:00
I only began to love my RM2 when I stopped trying to use it as a PDF reader and writer and instead only a scratch paper replacement. But it’s not as economical if limited to this.

I do wish they’d improve the PDF usability or embrace open sourcing the UI. There’s a lot of features that should be easy to implement, like split screen or floating sticky notes, but they seem almost wholly focused on the hardware. I thought it’d be the ultimate tool for studying math and saving money on books, thus paying for itself, but it’s just not there yet and I’m not sure they plan to get it there.
by bluGill | 2025-09-04 03:14:45+00:00
> The shopkeeps who are also the owners are so appreciative as it's essentially a 5-7% "tip

this is false reasoning on their part. They never have thought about how much cash costs them so it looks like extra money but it really isn't. they need to count the time lost to counting the cash as you pay, then the time to count the money in the till at the end of the shift. Each count above is 2 counts at best the average is closer to 3 because you sometimes get it wrong. There is also theft costs which is generally ignored but a real problem.

credit cards is money right to the computer which is not only fast it makes less mistakes.
by bbkane | 2025-09-04 03:15:21+00:00
Maybe I could convert every table into a "log" table (i.e., append only similar to your blog) and add a timestamp column to each table (or UUID). Then I also store all of these UUIDs in another table to keep track of the global order. To "undo" I look up the previous UUID, find entries with that UUID, and append to the log table the values that make the state the same as the previous UUID....

This isn't as general as your setup, but I think it would work ok with my foreign key issue.
by JustExAWS | 2025-09-04 03:15:24+00:00
> Let’s say I have points to get a free flight. Great, now I’m also spending money out of pocket on a hotel, meals, entertainment, etc. That “free” $600 plane ticket actually costs $5k in other expenses, but it’s ok, because we’re earning $100 more in points for spending that $5k.

I just flew to London for free and our hotel was free (the Westminster) on points. Earlier in the year we stayed in a $900 a night hotel free on points in Quepos Costa Rica. We flew there on a Delta companion pass by having a $350 AF Delta credit card that also has a $200 Hotel credit (Delta Business Platinum).

I almost always fly to see my parents free on points (AirFrance 20K points to book Delta flights round trip). Of course I don’t pay for anything when I go home.

But if you are getting most of your points via spending instead of sign up bonuses, you’re doing it wrong (See r/churning). That is unless you do a lot of business travel.

Either way, we travel a lot anyway. Credit card points increase our travel budget.
by nightsd01 | 2025-09-04 03:15:33+00:00
I am not an expert in AI by any means but I think I know enough about it to comment on one thing: there was an interesting paper not too long ago that showed if you train a randomly-initialized model from scratch on questions, like a bank of physics questions & answers, models will end up with much higher quality if you teach it the simple physics questions first, and then move up to more complex physics questions. This shows that in some ways, these large language models really do learn like we do.

I think the next steps will be more along this vain of thinking. Treating all training data the same is a mistake. Some data is significantly more valuable to developing an intelligent model than most other training data, even when you pass quality filters. I think we need to revisit how we 'train' these models in the first place, and come up with a more intelligent/interactive system of doing so
by robinsonrc | 2025-09-04 03:16:26+00:00
Depending on the number of plugins you have, you may not notice the difference in practice. I certainly don’t but I’m very much on the minimal side of things. This all said I’m definitely of the school of thought that plugin developers should be responsible for ensuring their plugins are lazy loaded, rather than leaving it up to the user, who is not as well placed to make the decision.
by atleastoptimal | 2025-09-04 03:17:20+00:00
Yeah AI code is ideal for boilerplate, converting between languages, basically anything where the success criteria are definite. I don’t think there is a 10x productivity upgrade across the board, but in limited domains, yes, AI can produce human level work 10x faster.

The fundamental difference of opinion people have here though is some people see current AI capabilities as a floor, while others see it as a ceiling. I’d agree with arguments that AI companies are overvalued if current models are as capable as AI will ever be for the rest of time, but clearly that is not the case, and very likely, as they have been every few months over the past few years, they will keep getting better.
by socrateswasone | 2025-09-04 03:17:59+00:00
Saying it might be on a continuum just obfuscates things. What do you mean exactly?

If there is no sense of self or personal identity, how is that different than a block of wood or a computer? That there might be "mental" functions performed doesn't give it subjectivity if there is no subject performing them. And if there is no persistent reflective self there is no subject. You could call instincts or trained behaviors mental, activities of a kind of mind if you wanted to. But if it's not self aware it's not a moral subject.