Ernesto’s conflict: thinker v builder? On the “trap of pragmatism” in the age of (statistical pattern matching mistaken for) AI

[…] I am currently writing much more, and more complicated software than ever, yet I feel I am not growing as an engineer at all. When I started meditating on why I felt “stuck,” I realized I am starving The Thinker.

[…] “Vibe coding” satisfies the Builder. It feels great to see to pass from idea to reality in a fraction of a time that would take otherwise. But it has drastically cut the times I need to came up with creative solutions for technical problems. I know many people who are purely Builders, for them this era is the best thing that ever happened. But for me, something is missing.

https://www.jernesto.com/articles/thinking_hard

AI is challenging not only how we work, but who we become through using it. The Mainländer quote at the end suggests to me that the author, Ernesto, is not optimistic about this transformation…

#aihype #theaicon

Ernesto’s conflict: thinker v builder? On the “trap of pragmatism” in the age of (statistical pattern matching mistaken for) AI

[…] I am currently writing much more, and more complicated software than ever, yet I feel I am not growing as an engineer at all. When I started meditating on why I felt “stuck,” I realized I am starving The Thinker.

[…] “Vibe coding” satisfies the Builder. It feels great to see to pass from idea to reality in a fraction of a time that would take otherwise. But it has drastically cut the times I need to came up with creative solutions for technical problems. I know many people who are purely Builders, for them this era is the best thing that ever happened. But for me, something is missing.

https://www.jernesto.com/articles/thinking_hard

AI is challenging not only how we work, but who we become through using it. The Mainländer quote at the end suggests to me that the author, Ernesto, is not optimistic about this transformation…

#aihype #theaicon

[…] at least 70% of the AI hype that’s bottom-up — eg, excited users — is people who never learned how to actually use their computer suddenly realizing the computer can do things for them

https://bsky.app/profile/amyhoy.bsky.social/post/3la6iaxohs22x

#theaicon #aihype

[…] at least 70% of the AI hype that’s bottom-up — eg, excited users — is people who never learned how to actually use their computer suddenly realizing the computer can do things for them

https://bsky.app/profile/amyhoy.bsky.social/post/3la6iaxohs22x

#theaicon #aihype

[2009] When does technology pass from being a tool to being a crutch?

On the fear of ‘systemic deskilling’… turns out 2009 programmers were worried about #IDEs and the distinction between cognitive process and naive tool use when programming 😏 No one even imagined that programmers would want to use tools that generate code that looks right but fundamentally isn’t. And yet, here we are.

https://boston.conman.org/2009/11/03.1

#theaicon #ai #coding #vibecoding

[2009] When does technology pass from being a tool to being a crutch?

On the fear of ‘systemic deskilling’… turns out 2009 programmers were worried about #IDEs and the distinction between cognitive process and naive tool use when programming 😏 No one even imagined that programmers would want to use tools that generate code that looks right but fundamentally isn’t. And yet, here we are.

https://boston.conman.org/2009/11/03.1

#theaicon #ai #coding #vibecoding

Can #AI companies become profitable?

https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/can-ai-companies-become-profitable

Yes, in the same way plantations were.

[…] When executives are threatening to replace your job with AI tools, they are implicitly threatening to replace you with stolen data and the labor of overworked, traumatized workers making a tiny fraction of your salary.

— Bender, Emily M., and Alex Hanna. The AI Con: How to Fight Back Against the Tech Robber Barons.

The gross margin calculation treats some human workforce as basically zero. Kenyan workers paid under $2/day to label child sexual abuse material and gore, workers whose families “fell apart” and who became unrecognizable to their loved ones “after only five months of this work,” working for companies that cynically “profit from catastrophe by chasing economic crises” in Venezuela, Kenya, and Uganda.

Epoch AI’s $1.2 billion “staff compensation” figure only counts OpenAI’s 3,000-4,000 direct US employees earning $150,000-$685,000 (average $310,000), completely excluding the hundreds of thousands of outsourced data workers in Kenya, Venezuela, and Uganda earning under $2/day.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

But it’s not just labor of course that’s stolen or under valued. If you paid data workers fair wages ($2-3 billion), compensated for trauma (hundreds of millions), licensed the stolen content legally ($15-20 billion), and accounted for environmental destruction (another billion+), OpenAI’s real numbers would show catastrophic losses. The “profitability” only exists through the same accounting trick slaveholders used, where you just don’t count certain humans as deserving to be counted.

Under the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 2), three-fifths of the enslaved population was counted for purposes of congressional representation and taxation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_and_the_United_States_Constitution Enslaved people appeared on balance sheets as “property” with monetary value - dehumanized, but at least acknowledged. As far as I can tell, in Epoch AI’s analysis they’re not.

#ai #theaicon #environment #nerdreich

Can #AI companies become profitable?

https://epoch.ai/gradient-updates/can-ai-companies-become-profitable

Yes, in the same way plantations were.

[…] When executives are threatening to replace your job with AI tools, they are implicitly threatening to replace you with stolen data and the labor of overworked, traumatized workers making a tiny fraction of your salary.

— Bender, Emily M., and Alex Hanna. The AI Con: How to Fight Back Against the Tech Robber Barons.

The gross margin calculation treats some human workforce as basically zero. Kenyan workers paid under $2/day to label child sexual abuse material and gore, workers whose families “fell apart” and who became unrecognizable to their loved ones “after only five months of this work,” working for companies that cynically “profit from catastrophe by chasing economic crises” in Venezuela, Kenya, and Uganda.

Epoch AI’s $1.2 billion “staff compensation” figure only counts OpenAI’s 3,000-4,000 direct US employees earning $150,000-$685,000 (average $310,000), completely excluding the hundreds of thousands of outsourced data workers in Kenya, Venezuela, and Uganda earning under $2/day.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

But it’s not just labor of course that’s stolen or under valued. If you paid data workers fair wages ($2-3 billion), compensated for trauma (hundreds of millions), licensed the stolen content legally ($15-20 billion), and accounted for environmental destruction (another billion+), OpenAI’s real numbers would show catastrophic losses. The “profitability” only exists through the same accounting trick slaveholders used, where you just don’t count certain humans as deserving to be counted.

Under the U.S. Constitution (Article I, Section 2), three-fifths of the enslaved population was counted for purposes of congressional representation and taxation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_and_the_United_States_Constitution Enslaved people appeared on balance sheets as “property” with monetary value - dehumanized, but at least acknowledged. As far as I can tell, in Epoch AI’s analysis they’re not.

#ai #theaicon #environment #nerdreich

👾 Just another day at the office XPUB 🤖

Currently preparing the printed publication of Special Issue 28. All the work we are doing is public ✨

(I love being the first in the @xpub studio in the morning 🍵)

#MediaWiki #SI28 #WritingMachines #TheAIcon #AIcon #UncreativeWriting #XPUB

@emilymbender and @alex

In your book #TheAICon you have an "alternative" term for hallucinations. As I have a paper copy of the book I couldn't find the place where 😕

Would you be so kind to remind you which is the term you use?

Het is ellenlang, maar de moeite waard om er de tijd voor te nemen.

Als je één tekst over de AI-zwendel leest, laat het dan deze zijn: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-case-against-generative-ai/

#AI #Nvidia #OpenAI #EdZitron #TheAICon #VentureCapital

Het is ellenlang, maar de moeite waard om er de tijd voor te nemen.

Als je één tekst over de AI-zwendel leest, laat het dan deze zijn: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-case-against-generative-ai/

#AI #Nvidia #OpenAI #EdZitron #TheAICon #VentureCapital

What a brilliant session with @emilymbender in conversation with @Kobotic at #RMIT tonight.

Key takeaways:
- #BenderRule - name the language you're working in
- #AI is not one technology - it's many in a trenchcoat. Be specific.
- Who benefits from the changes wrought by AI and who bears the harms and externalities?
- AI is hype - learn enough to cut through it, ask difficult questions
- "Pile of racist linear algebra"
- Read everything by @karenhao
- Read #TheAICon by Emily and @alex
- Read @CriticalAI

Geloof de hypemachine niet. Met hun boek #TheAICon willen Emily M. Bender en Alex Hanna de AI-bubbel doorprikken en tonen hoe we ons kunnen verzetten tegen de #AI-zwendel van Big Tech.

“Het narratief dat dit alles onvermijdelijk is, is nergens op gebaseerd. Het dient enkel de belangen van de mensen en bedrijven die deze technologieën verkopen.”

Ik had het genoegen om te spreken met @emilymbender & @alex.

https://apache.be/2025/03/14/emily-m-bender-en-alex-hanna-zeg-nee-tegen-ai-hype?cdlnk=MGdrOTZIeDRPRFc5WWRTdHJZZndYOFhVSWwwUlhxQzI5UlNjV1BMc08vajA1N3hmNmphSWQzclAwbVpTRDU4ZHYvQTkxV25tVk1Lb2R3S2dLcXNoOjoxODFjNGNkNTEwZDQ4ZmE0NmZhMTM4NTJiYWY5YTg3Zg%3D%3D

#AIslop #AGI