> You have not heard any of the many, many excitable AI maximalists in the media address this reality, the bits vs atoms barrier, because they have no response that can preserve their intense attachment to the idea that the world is about to change forever. So they resolutely ignore this basic reality: most of the world is not computers. Most of your life is dependent on technologies other than computers. Inconveniently, we also have few arenas of human endeavor that are seeing rapid development other than in computing.
I suspect stark wisdom of this nature will, unfortunately, not find HN to be fertile ground. At the same time, I am glad these other arenas, few though they be, still exist.
Speaking as someone along the lines of an excitable AI maximalist, I think he never asked one about the "the bits vs atoms barrier". Robots and similar, duh.
This feels to me like someone in 1905 saying ok the Wright brothers managed to fly but does that change my commute? This flight thing is over hyped by crazies. Boring.
I'm recycling below a comment[1] I made a few days ago very similar in tone to what the article conveys in a longer form. Unlike the author I believe that the LLM revolution is indeed the most transformative change in technology that my generation and the younger have wiwitnessed.
Whether it's going to amount to much more is to be seen, I do agree with the author but unlike him I'm somewhat hopeful and perhaps more credulous.
1. "As someone born in 1975 I always felt until the last couple of years that I had been stuck in a long period of stagnation compared to an earlier generation. My grandmother who was born in the 1910s got to witness adoption of electricity, mass transit, radio, television, telephony, jet flights and even space exploration before I was born.
Feels like now is a bit of a catchup after pretty tepid period that was most of my life."
> You have not heard any of the many, many excitable AI maximalists in the media address this reality, the bits vs atoms barrier, because they have no response that can preserve their intense attachment to the idea that the world is about to change forever. So they resolutely ignore this basic reality: most of the world is not computers. Most of your life is dependent on technologies other than computers. Inconveniently, we also have few arenas of human endeavor that are seeing rapid development other than in computing.
I suspect stark wisdom of this nature will, unfortunately, not find HN to be fertile ground. At the same time, I am glad these other arenas, few though they be, still exist.
Speaking as someone along the lines of an excitable AI maximalist, I think he never asked one about the "the bits vs atoms barrier". Robots and similar, duh.
This feels to me like someone in 1905 saying ok the Wright brothers managed to fly but does that change my commute? This flight thing is over hyped by crazies. Boring.
I'm recycling below a comment[1] I made a few days ago very similar in tone to what the article conveys in a longer form. Unlike the author I believe that the LLM revolution is indeed the most transformative change in technology that my generation and the younger have wiwitnessed. Whether it's going to amount to much more is to be seen, I do agree with the author but unlike him I'm somewhat hopeful and perhaps more credulous.
1. "As someone born in 1975 I always felt until the last couple of years that I had been stuck in a long period of stagnation compared to an earlier generation. My grandmother who was born in the 1910s got to witness adoption of electricity, mass transit, radio, television, telephony, jet flights and even space exploration before I was born. Feels like now is a bit of a catchup after pretty tepid period that was most of my life."