AI, the Sad Engineers and the Myth
Great cartoon by Forrest Brazeal (@forrestbrazeal).
As a bonus, the post of the day from François Chollet (@fchollet).
My view of the capabilities of LLMs is probably far below that of the median tech industry person. And yet, the more time passes the more I realize my 2023 views were actually overestimating their future potential and current usefulness.
Parallel to self-driving: circa 2016-2017…
— François Chollet (@fchollet) March 1, 2024
My view of the capabilities of LLMs is probably far below that of the median tech industry person. And yet, the more time passes the more I realize my 2023 views were actually overestimating their future potential and current usefulness.
Parallel to self-driving: circa 2016-2017 my view on the timeline for full-scale self-driving deployment was much more pessimistic than most people in the industry — I was envisioning ~2023, when everyone else targeted 2020 or earlier. And yet, as time passed I started realizing that I was being grossly overoptimistic.
Of course factualism doesn’t sell — if I wanted to be more of an AI influencer I would have to be constantly tweeting about how AI is going to replace all programmers and doctors and so on in less than a year. That sounds exciting and positive, and it gets great engagement!
Instead, I’m giving the impression of being an AI pessimist — despite having being extra-bullish on deep learning and AI for over 10 years straight.
I have been a huge believer in AI’s potential for a long time. Still am today. But I’m allergic to mindless hype.
