this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2025
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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at frickin last - I wrote this in January and it's finally been published

archive: https://archive.is/RSU91

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Thank you for this much needed reality check. I don't understand why the Government are doing venture capital's bidding.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

Labour are all about the billionaire donors these days.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Presumably 'AI' can make simple rules based decisions, if done properly (unfortunately, being the UK government this is a big 'if').

But what exactly is sacking a million people supposed to do to the economy?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Presumably ‘AI’ can make simple rules based decisions, if done properl

honest question: was this meant seriously, or in jest?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Serious.

  1. Fill in form online
  2. AI analyses it, decides if applicant is entitled to benefits.

Why do you ask the question?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 week ago (1 children)

why do you think hallucinating autocomplete can make rules-based decisions reliably

AI analyses it, decides if applicant is entitled to benefits.

why do you think this is simple

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

My excel spreadsheet does it on a daily basis.

This is boring.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago

good, use your excel spreadsheet and not a tool that fucking sucks at it

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

You should not need an AI to do that if it's not a freeform text input?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Who knows what the British government acutally means when they say 'AI'? I doubt they do.

And I assume there is a sliding scale from what I described my excel speadsheet is capable of today, to whatever it is they hope AI will eventually interpret. And in fact barring the inevitable fuckups AI probably can eventual handle a lot of interpretation currently carried out by human civil servants.

But honestly I would have thought that all of this is obvious, and that I shouldn't really have to articulate it.

My main point is that they claim they will save one million jobs (so sack one million people) and this will somehow boost the UK economy. I don't see how it can.

Covid really showed that most jobs are not essential. I would suggest most jobs exist because the people exist to do them: a situation an increasingly small number of people have got themselves into a position to profit from.

What happens when AI takes away swathes of bullshit jobs but the people still exist? Silicon valley is hoping to make AI functional enough essentially leave somebody else holding the bag, after emptying it of goodies. For some reason, the UK government seem to think this will be a boost to the UK economy: I'll assume basic cluelessness until I see some other reasonable suggestion.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

And in fact barring the inevitable fuckups AI probably can eventual handle a lot of interpretation currently carried out by human civil servants.

But honestly I would have thought that all of this is obvious, and that I shouldn’t really have to articulate it.

you keep making claims about what LLMs are capable of that don’t match with any known reality outside of OpenAI and friends’ marketing, dodging anyone who asks you to explain, and acting like a bit of a shit about it. I don’t think we need your posts.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 week ago (1 children)

the post history is very infosec dot pub

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

a terrible place for both information and security

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 week ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago

Jury's still out on the Damage Over Time effect.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

"AI" in the context of the article is "LLMs". So, the definition of not trustworthy.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 week ago

citation/link/reference, please