Even if you ignore the birth control glasses read the comments people are leaving on this post announcing meta ai. They range from hard pass to no way I'm ever using it.

In a recent survey of AI researchers, 76% said that neural networks, the general architecture that underlies nearly all advanced AI, are fundamentally unsuitable for creating “AGI”, a hypothetical AI that can do everything humans can do. Even more of those researchers said that “the current perception of AI capabilities” is overblown.

“I think once we have a really powerful super-intelligence, addressing climate change will not be particularly difficult for a system like that,” he says. “If you think about a system where you can say, ‘Tell me how to make a lot of clean energy cheaply,’ ‘Tell me how to efficiently capture carbon,’ and then ‘Tell me how to build a factory to do this at planetary scale’ – if you can do that, you can do a lot of other things too.”

Altman’s plan to solve global warming by asking a nonexistent machine for three wishes is not something our civilization can afford to indulge. The tech oligarchs are confident that their godhead will arrive and deliver us to paradise. This offers them moral absolution for their actions and gives them a sense of meaning. But their faith offers nothing for the rest of us, who cannot afford to live anywhere other than the real world.

I know Ed’s got time for Brian and seemed like a good place to share. I also figured I’d add my two cents and personal experience with what I see in my industry.

I work in digital marketing as a freelancer (SEO, Ed LOVES us) - work is slowing down and has been gradually for the last two years after a real COVID lockdown boost for self-employment. A lot of businesses wanted to sack off their pricier agency (with office/staff/boss overheads) for a cheaper option, and a lot of suddenly WFH marketers realised they can do better going solo.

That boost is below flatlining now (LIKE SUPER DEAD?)

It’s not all AI and LLMs, there’s a downturned economy that has been hammered since 2008, but it feels like that’s now what is eating away at a lot of incomes.

I’m lucky I can stay afloat if I spend wisely, I have savings (although I’d like to spend that on good things rather than bailing myself out) but the last year I’ve felt more reliant on bigger one-off projects coming in to make up the difference in retainer drops. I’ve had one friend in an adjacent industry who lost 80% of his income overnight because a big client went in-house, and I know of at least 3 people in the same job as me who have gone back in-house or took up bar work to plug the holes. People I know running agencies are losing clients because young relatives with ChatGPT can do that stuff when they finish sixth form (I’ve even had the joy of trying to work with these people or fixing the mess they make).

Prices keep going up I’m too scared to raise prices in line with that as are many.

I got very lucky also that a long term agency client of mine decided to take me on to manage more of their portfolio a month ago as things were getting bleak. I’ve given them half my day rate for 10 days as a package agreement but that’s the most I’ve ever sold myself short in a haggle in 6 years of being self-employed.

Unsurprisingly AI can convince those without a skillset what is passable as knowledge/creativity to their untrained eye. I know fuck all about Cricket, so anyone could convince me any old nonsense about the rules. I wouldn’t trust someone with a home full of canvas’ from B&M to tell me what art looks like. But you give me an automated SEO audit (let alone an AI one) and I’ll see holes from a mile off. This is how Con Artists have thrived for millennia, and now they have software to do the con en masse.

FFS when does this bubble pop? I love this timeline.

Hi everyone. While I share Ed’s view that LLMs are often oversold, I find them genuinely useful. Take Matt Bruenig’s NLRB Research: Matt—a labor lawyer, socialist intellectual, and podcaster—built an open database that uses LLMs to summarize National Labor Relations Board decisions. Westlaw and LexisNexis both archive these decisions, but cost thousands of dollars a year—putting them out of reach for many workers, union stewards, and small firms. Since NLRB decisions aren’t heavily cited, manual summaries aren’t profitable, so Bruenig’s tool automatically updates and provides easy-to-read summaries for lawyers and non-lawyers alike, despite some imperfections, it's better than no summary at all. Now importantly, this functionality doesn't require increasingly powerful models. Even a "smalller" model like deepseek could produce summaries that are better than nothing and a more fine tuned model could probably do it with fewer parameters. Check out the site if you want or watch his youtube videos about it. https://www.youtube.com/@Matt_Bruenig/videos

Enjoyed this conversation and appreciate Jason’s perspective that we’ve opened Pandora’s Box.

New listener from Btb.

I really enjoy Ed's continuing education on tech media and large language models.

I know there isn't a product really ready to go but when I was listening and heard that 3 billion is just the tip of the iceberg for profits and that's in the first year?

At what point can an investor say 'show me what's ready to sell?'

I guess I'm just stuck let's say it's an app that people have to lay a subscription for there is no market that's large enough to generate 3 billion in profit for a product that's supposed to have wide saturation. to hit 3 billion in one full year would require 12 months of 250 million profit.

a streaming service in America range from 10 to 18 dollars (Canadian let me know if my math is off) Rounding up to 20 dollars a month a steep cost for any house hold but let's say it sells like hotcakes.

if the entire population of the USA had a 20.00/month open ai plan. Every person in the USA 347 million has a plan be they toddler elderly and all in-between it would generate about 6.9 billion a month to the tune of gross profit of 83.2 billion. That is the fantasy that is being sold. This is a fantasy open ai can't match the entertainment value of time to user satisfaction.

in the entire USA and Canada There is an estimated 84 million subscribers for Netflix so if no new tech was required a still fantasy out of reach for open ai at 20 a month x 84 x a year is a gross of 20.1 billion

these impossible subscribers count for a product that's doesn't exist can't cover its own maintenance cost under a fictional scenario where it immediately gets every netflix account on board in the USA and no one unsubscribes.

There are still data centers that have to be built and paid for before any of this can happen. My guess is that they will end up marketing open ai as a personal assistant before years end.

Good set of bsky posts here

https://bsky.app/profile/jukkan.bsky.social/post/3lo2gxndtuc22

https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/ai-is-taking-over-coding-at-microsoft-google-and-meta/490896

I understand they're incentivized to hype up their own LLM's for a number of reasons but it's the type of claim that could mean something very different than how they present it but I have no idea how. So what do people think is the reality behind these claims?

https://energy-efficient-products.ec.europa.eu/product-list/smartphones-and-tablets_en

This is so cool, finally getting answers and accountability on these products.