AI: Something Big Is Happening

[LiberalArkie]

(Long - But interesting)

By Matt Shumer • Feb 9, 2026

Think back to February 2020.

If you were paying close attention, you might have noticed a few people talking about a virus spreading overseas. But most of us weren't paying close attention. The stock market was doing great, your kids were in school, you were going to restaurants and shaking hands and planning trips. If someone told you they were stockpiling toilet paper you would have thought they'd been spending too much time on a weird corner of the internet. Then, over the course of about three weeks, the entire world changed. Your office closed, your kids came home, and life rearranged itself into something you wouldn't have believed if you'd described it to yourself a month earlier.

I think we're in the "this seems overblown" phase of something much, much bigger than Covid.

I've spent six years building an AI startup and investing in the space. I live in this world. And I'm writing this for the people in my life who don't... my family, my friends, the people I care about who keep asking me "so what's the deal with AI?" and getting an answer that doesn't do justice to what's actually happening. I keep giving them the polite version. The cocktail-party version. Because the honest version sounds like I've lost my mind. And for a while, I told myself that was a good enough reason to keep what's truly happening to myself. But the gap between what I've been saying and what is actually happening has gotten far too big. The people I care about deserve to hear what is coming, even if it sounds crazy.

Snip

For years, AI had been improving steadily. Big jumps here and there, but each big jump was spaced out enough that you could absorb them as they came. Then in 2025, new techniques for building these models unlocked a much faster pace of progress. And then it got even faster. And then faster again. Each new model wasn't just better than the last... it was better by a wider margin, and the time between new model releases was shorter. I was using AI more and more, going back and forth with it less and less, watching it handle things I used to think required my expertise.

Then, on February 5th, two major AI labs released new models on the same day: GPT-5.3 Codex from OpenAI, and Opus 4.6 from Anthropic (the makers of Claude, one of the main competitors to ChatGPT). And something clicked. Not like a light switch... more like the moment you realize the water has been rising around you and is now at your chest.

I am no longer needed for the actual technical work of my job. I describe what I want built, in plain English, and it just... appears. Not a rough draft I need to fix. The finished thing. I tell the AI what I want, walk away from my computer for four hours, and come back to find the work done. Done well, done better than I would have done it myself, with no corrections needed. A couple of months ago, I was going back and forth with the AI, guiding it, making edits. Now I just describe the outcome and leave.

Snip

Let me make the pace of improvement concrete, because I think this is the part that's hardest to believe if you're not watching it closely.

In 2022, AI couldn't do basic arithmetic reliably. It would confidently tell you that 7 × 8 = 54.

By 2023, it could pass the bar exam.

By 2024, it could write working software and explain graduate-level science.

By late 2025, some of the best engineers in the world said they had handed over most of their coding work to AI.

On February 5th, 2026, new models arrived that made everything before them feel like a different era.

Snip

https://shumer.dev/something-big-is-happening

[sop]

1. Skynet becomes self-aware.

[OldBaldy1701E]

43. Yep.

It is as if these tech nerds had never seen a sci-fi movie or read a sci-fi book.

I have, which is why I am like the IT people.

[Alliepoo]

70. I'm not very tech-y at all so

I don’t know about routers but our home sounds like yours. No smart connections to open doors/windows or adjust the heat. No Alexa. We do have a vivint camera/doorbell because a lot of cars were being broken into in our area. Other than that we are old school.

[OldBaldy1701E]

97. Yeah, I have a WIFI camera here as well.

But, it is usually off if I am home.

I use it when I am away for extended periods.

[DFW]

75. Sounds like my house, too

And I am definitely not in IT. But come to think of it, it sounds like my brother’s house, too, and he was so into IT that the limit of his security clearance was pushed constantly.

[OldBaldy1701E]

98. I have been involved with IT.

I am not a computer/phone person, but I am always learning about the damned things.

[mdbl]

92. The closest I came was allowing Alexa to turn off lights when requested

But since then, we've disconnected them all.

[OldBaldy1701E]

99. Applause. (n/t)

[ultralite001]

94. 1984... The film, "Electric Dreams"...

[OldBaldy1701E]

101. I vaguely remember that film! (n/t)

[ultralite001]

146. 🤣🤣🤣

TIA

[FoxNewsSucks]

79. That's what I think every time I see an article about AI

Didn't these dumbasses see the Terminator movies? Or "I, Robot"???

[Jack Valentino]

144. The science fiction of our younger years has spent the subsequent years becoming reality....

Remember the original "Quantum Leap" futurisitic TV show where 'Al' had a hand-held computer called 'Ziggy' where he could look up facts on virtually anything or anyone?? (I was a big fan!)

Now we ALL have had our own 'Ziggy' for quite a few years....
now they call it 'smartphone'....





Lately, I have not wanted to watch the Terminator movies......
although I was a great fan of those, also....

[Kid Berwyn]

2. Wow!

More from the OP article:

The experience that tech workers have had over the past year, of watching AI go from "helpful tool" to "does my job better than I do", is the experience everyone else is about to have. Law, finance, medicine, accounting, consulting, writing, design, analysis, customer service. Not in ten years. The people building these systems say one to five years. Some say less. And given what I've seen in just the last couple of months, I think "less" is more likely.

Snip…

Let me give you a few specific examples to make this tangible... but I want to be clear that these are just examples. This list is not exhaustive. If your job isn't mentioned here, that does not mean it's safe. Almost all knowledge work is being affected.

Legal work. AI can already read contracts, summarize case law, draft briefs, and do legal research at a level that rivals junior associates. The managing partner I mentioned isn't using AI because it's fun. He's using it because it's outperforming his associates on many tasks.

Financial analysis. Building financial models, analyzing data, writing investment memos, generating reports. AI handles these competently and is improving fast.

Writing and content. Marketing copy, reports, journalism, technical writing. The quality has reached a point where many professionals can't distinguish AI output from human work.

Software engineering. This is the field I know best. A year ago, AI could barely write a few lines of code without errors. Now it writes hundreds of thousands of lines that work correctly. Large parts of the job are already automated: not just simple tasks, but complex, multi-day projects. There will be far fewer programming roles in a few years than there are today.

Medical analysis. Reading scans, analyzing lab results, suggesting diagnoses, reviewing literature. AI is approaching or exceeding human performance in several areas.

Customer service. Genuinely capable AI agents... not the frustrating chatbots of five years ago... are being deployed now, handling complex multi-step problems.

A lot of people find comfort in the idea that certain things are safe. That AI can handle the grunt work but can't replace human judgment, creativity, strategic thinking, empathy. I used to say this too. I'm not sure I believe it anymore.

The most recent AI models make decisions that feel like judgment. They show something that looked like taste: an intuitive sense of what the right call was, not just the technically correct one. A year ago that would have been unthinkable. My rule of thumb at this point is: if a model shows even a hint of a capability today, the next generation will be genuinely good at it. These things improve exponentially, not linearly.

Continues…

https://shumer.dev/something-big-is-happening

PS: The Reich at least will always need prison guards…right?

[LiberalArkie]

4. I am waiting on the MRI and CTSCAN data to actually get implemented into AI

Go in and get a full body CT and it spits out a correct diagnosis.

[Kid Berwyn]

15. A Miracle

Of course, in the United States of America, such an advance likely will be available exclusively for those who can afford the “luxury.”

Health care is a basic human right. That should include the advances in medicine, surgery and treatment.

[mahina]

45. Freakononics on NPR ran a amall series in this ending yesterday.

Here is ine. https://freakonomics.com/podcast/can-a-i-save-your-life/

[Old Crank]

53. One problem with CT/MRI scans

You might need 2 or more because you need contrast dyes to highlight diferent types of body structures.

That will add to the expense.

[LiberalArkie]

59. But not in the developed world where CT scans cost less than $100

[pandr32]

55. That reminds me of Star Trek.

The doctor McCoy used a hand held scanner that revealed the hidden medical issues. How great would that be?

[LiberalArkie]

62. Wait until a physics AI develops faster than light drives and fusion power and better is developed

[pandr32]

65. Hopeful!

Next we have to get the medical care for what AI diagnoses. Hopefully AI will help us dump all the leach health insurance companies and streamline a universal system that is efficient.

[LiberalArkie]

68. Sooner of later the U.S. will join the rest of the world in recognizing that the citizens are its income source and

deserves to be kept healthy. We are about the only country that still sees that its people are serfs and slaves and not the provider of its wealth.

[PatSeg]

5. Who needs people?

The dystopian future is here.

[Kid Berwyn]

16. The Universe

A. I. comes to the conclusions based on all the garbage that went in.

People dream things that never were and bring new realities to existence.

[TheRickles]

40. That's it in a nutshell. Thanks.

[Renew Deal]

9. The only safe jobs are barbers and morticians

Nurses are safe for the next 10-20 years in my opinion. Construction/plumbing/trades are safe as long as they don't get overpopulated.

[Kid Berwyn]

23. Truly! Not to argue...

…I cut my own hair. It’s doing my part to help the family budget. Otherwise, what I bring in goes to the general family fund. As I’m old as polluted dirt, it’s saved me many thousands of dollars, if not 10K, over the last 25 years after the local barbershop closed. My better half lets me use the dough for my stuff, like hobbies and travel. Plus my hair looks better than the experiments foisted by strangers at the chains.

Getting back to the main point: Machines may not make the same mistakes people do and might be cheaper to “operate.” People, however, will always be needed to really help people. A nurse understands the suffering of a patient. A caregiver at a nursing home knows each person and gives them respect and TLC. A good teacher knows what the learner seeks to become a scholar.

Unfortunately, banks and venture capitalists look at R.O.I. And going by who is holds most of the money these days, they may not be human much longer.

[True Dough]

130. Ditto!

I started during Covid. Haven't stopped. Those clippers have served me very well.

[tinrobot]

142. That article is mostly marketing hype and not even close to reality.

There's so much hyperbole and half-truths surrounding the technology.

Here's a good rebuttal to the article:
https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/about-that-matt-shumer-post-that

Quick excerpt:

It’s a masterpiece of hype, written in the style of the old direct marketing campaigns, with bold-faced call outs like “I know this is real because it happened to me first” and “I am no longer needed for the actual technical work of my job”. It’s chock full of singularity vibes:

Shumer made no reference to a different METR study showed that coders sometimes imagine big productivity gains where they actually lost productivity. (Even though he selectively mentioned their other well-known study).

He also didn’t acknowledge that other user’s experience is certainly not “it’s usually perfect.” Take the often AI-optimistic Kelsey Piper who reported a few weeks back that Claude Code was sometimes perfect, and other times maddening. (Example: “Sometimes, Claude is absolutely the worst coworker you’ve ever had. At one point, it deleted every single one of the phoneme files of each English sound pronounced [that she was working with in her app] absolutely correctly, which I had personally emailed an English teacher to secure permission to use, and replaced them with AI-generated sounds which were all subtly wrong.”) Shumer glosses over that kind of experience.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

3. Huh, the CEO of an AI company tells me I need to adopt AI? Never would have guessed. Anyone who's familiar with

marketing sees this as the long-form sales story it is.

[highplainsdem]

10. He was also urging people on X to invest in AI companies as the best way to survive. One of the

reasons I didn't post his apocalyptic warning here when I read it yesterday.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

11. yeah he's been involved with a few shady investment schemes iirc

[Prairie Gates]

6. Pfffft

[Easterncedar]

7. A heart for that

I was feeling apocalyptic

[Renew Deal]

8. Anyone that thinks AI is a fad is badly mistaken

The excerpted parts are accurate. The risk of "hallucinations" is factored into purchasing decisions.

[themaguffin]

12. I think most people are rightfully extremely concerned what this means for jobs (among other things) but mostly jobs

there needs be legislation which won't be perfect, and extremely unlikely while Orange Caligula is in often. This could be really bad.

[Scrivener7]

13. Not a fad. AI is the devil.

[EarlG]

14. According to this guy, here's what you should do about the upcoming AI apocalypse...

"Start using AI seriously, not just as a search engine. Sign up for the paid version of Claude or ChatGPT. It's $20 a month. But two things matter right away. First: make sure you're using the best model available, not just the default. These apps often default to a faster, dumber model. Dig into the settings or the model picker and select the most capable option. Right now that's GPT-5.2 on ChatGPT or Claude Opus 4.6 on Claude, but it changes every couple of months. If you want to stay current on which model is best at any given time, you can follow me on X (@mattshumer_). I test every major release and share what's actually worth using."

I guess since AI can now do his job, he needs to pivot to social media influencer. For what it's worth:

Matt Shumer is the co-founder and CEO of OthersideAI, an applied AI company building the most advanced autocomplete tools in the world, powered by large-scale AI systems like GPT-3. OthersideAI is the company behind HyperWrite, the leading AI autocomplete Chrome extension for consumers.

https://fortune.com/2026/02/11/something-big-is-happening-ai-february-2020-moment-matt-shumer/

Pardon my skepticism when a guy who stands to make a fortune from AI tells everyone that we need to bow down and submit ourselves to its overwhelming awesomeness. (Oh, and also how we need to start indoctrinating our children with AI, since they're the next generation of customers -- er, I mean, for their own well-being.)

[Oneironaut]

38. Thank you. You can tell this is just a sales pitch.

These guys are all the same. lol

AI is cool, but, needs a lot of work. It will never reach 100% perfection, nor is it close now. AI companies want you to think AI is the coming apocalypse so that you feel like using their product and paying for it is mandatory.

[Old Crank]

63. Won't reach 100% perfectionl

Nothing does. We accept a certain error rate for humans. Then reject a 10x lower rate for computer stuff.
We want self driving cars to be perfect and accept 40,000 plus dead every year. AI is the same.
It is probably better now than 90% of programmers. Perhaps higher.
And getting better.
What we will need are people able to ask AI the right questions and people who can ensure the results are okay.

[Oneironaut]

76. "Programmers" don't just write code, though.

The term “programmer” is a really broad term that can be anything from someone writing simple html / JavaScript to really complex endeavors that require a deeper knowledge of a field, e.g. niche low level systems programming as an example. Ultimately, “programming” is a continual process. If you can just prompt AI for code and that works, that’s fine - you’re probably developing a simple app that hopefully won’t need much maintenance. However, you also need to know how to support that app when something goes wrong. You really need all the skills you would have needed to develop the app in the first replace to actually support it.

This is where “vibe coding” fails. Maintaining software is as complex, if not more complex than building it in the first place. I can’t imagine the nightmare of slapping a bunch of AI code into a product that no one knows how it works, and, expecting to have a stable end result. That sounds absolutely terrible and like a lot more work in the long run.

Part of the problem as well is that, in a lot of circumstances, to actually get code back that they need, someone would need to have the experience to know what to ask for (in your case, the person who would check the code accuracy). Time could be saved that way, but, expertise is still needed.

I use LLMs like ChatGPT all the time. However, I see their limitations. LLMs like ChatGPT are still glorified search engines to me. On them, I find things I struggle to find on search engines - mostly by scraping StackOverflow I think. The explanations for solving problems are always mediocre - I feel like they could mislead you if you are looking for a correct explanation. They do have decent accuracy, but, we have a long way to go.

I’m definitely open to changing my opinion in the future, though, as “AI” grows and matures.

[scipan]

93. Did you read the part where the newest AI debugs the code as well?

Runs it, presses buttons, makes it more user friendly, corrects it.

I've seen vibe coding several times but I don't really know what it is (old assembly language software engineer here).

[Oneironaut]

100. Tbh, I'll believe it when I see it.

I have no doubt it can do some sort of “debugging” and will confidently tell you that it did so. I’m questioning the accuracy of it, but, will look more into it. I wonder about bugs driven by user interaction especially - I’m skeptical that AI in its current state could possibly test for those.

AI code may be “bug free” when generated, but, have many bugs when that code is used in a specific context - eg users are feeding data into a function in a different way that the AI code could “test” for. That, or, humans will always find different scenarios to blow your code up.

However, I believe the point is moot because I really doubt AI’s ability to test code to begin with. I’d love to see a breakdown of how effective AI “debugging is” and don’t trust any claim AI companies make about their products.

[highplainsdem]

125. Matt Shumer, who wrote that hype, is well known for hype, has been accused of fraud, and has an

Ai company that apparently generates AI cards for team member praise and heartfelt sympathy cards. And he needed AI to write that piece of hype for him. See this:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100221014954

[Crowman2009]

48. News articles that are actually shady sales pitches have been around since newspapers started.

This articles is just like all those articles about medical cures pre-food & drug act. Same BS pitch, different garbage it's selling.

BTW, anyone notice how these AI hucksters never mention what people with do for work once AI replaces millions of jobs? It's as if they are saying: fuck you, that ain't my problem!

Plus they mention that we should follow them on X, so that's a big red flag right there.

[highplainsdem]

61. The guy who wrote that advises people to buy AI company stock so they won't need jobs.

[Crowman2009]

78. As if people have enough money or will earn enough dividends to live on.

Just more delusional tech-bro BS not based on reality with no details.

[Swede]

17. Vernon Vinge wrote the Singularity about ever evolving AI

Changes too fast for us to comprehend.

[Johnny2X2X]

18. Using it all the time now, it's incredible

Stunning how effective it is at checking development planning documents. No more reading 150 page engineering documents when you can upload it to an AI and then just ask the AI questions about it.

I cannot believe what it is doing already. Makes my job more efficient and I am finally catching up on work. But I can see how it will cause a reduction on force soon. 2 or 3 people who are smart at using AI are going to be able to do the work of 50 people soon.

[LiberalArkie]

21. Imagine the outcry when painters (artists) started using pre-prepared paints instead of creating their own when creating

the art work now considered masterpieces.. I view using the tools available not important as what is important is the mind doing the creating.

A person still has to create the concept, the idea that the AI will use to create the finished product. .

[Johnny2X2X]

24. Good way to look at it

I am just stunned at the changes in AI from last year to this year that appears to agree with this article. Just all the sudden it is incredibly useful versus being more hit or miss just a few months ago.

I think it will end up being good for the job market somehow, but it will change what people do.

The danger of AI to me is in information becoming totally useless as no one will be able to tell what's true again. And the people wielding most of AI's propaganda right now are definitely not good people.

[popsdenver]

60. YES

Just look at all the good uses of Radiation...........then the bomb makers got a hold of it........

[highplainsdem]

37. Not at all the same thing. Using genAI is more like hiring someone else to do the work for you and

pretending you did it because you gave them some instructions.

And they're completely unethical tools trained on stolen intellectual property.

Unless some genAI user is completely unaware of the IP theft - unlikely given all the news about it for years - they're acting unethically using genAI, showing contempt for the millions of people whose IP was stolen so people who don't have that knowledge or skill or creativity can pretend they do.

[SheltieLover]

74. Absolutely!

[Johnny2X2X]

83. So you think people should quit their jobs?

If your job uses AI, you should quit? Are you prepared to do the same?

[hatrack]

140. But God forbid we should be able to use non-HP toner ink, or fix a tractor or combine we already paid for!

Because that would be . . . uh . . . THEFT!!!

[hunter]

26. It will be a wonderful world...

... when AI is reading all those documents that AI is producing, requiring terrawatts of electric power to accomplish that.

It's utterly astonishing that projects like the Golden Gate Bridge or the Apollo Moon landings were accomplished without AI.

[hunter]

19. This guy is full of shit.

How many trillions of dollars are we going to spend chasing this hallucination? How much destruction of the natural environment are we going to tolerate?

There is no such thing as "Artificial Intelligence" and it's likely there won't be for a long time.

Just because a machine can talk or write in something resembling a human voice, or turn a photo of a fully clothed human into pornography, does not mean there are any brains at all behind these actions. It's all noise.

Humans are often at their worst and do very stupid things when they are deceiving themselves.

[GreenWave]

33. Well stated.

[justaprogressive]

20. AI is not the "Devil"

..but I am sure that we as a species can't handle either it or its repercussions.

[LiberalArkie]

22. We had no problem when the pencil was created and humans stopped using charcoal.

We had no problem when humans started using computers and TV news instead of waiting for some trees to be cut and paper created to the newspapers could send the reading material to us the next day.

[justaprogressive]

25. My nearly 60 years in IT says this is different.

I Hope YMMV.

[LiberalArkie]

28. I am old enough to remember when the languages come out (C, Fortran etc) and writing in Assembler was being looked

down on. I still wonder at what was able to be done with almost no ram, almost no cpu power.

I hope I live long enough for rocket scientist to create the correct prompts so that Faster than light drives and physicists create the correct prompta for fusion power (or better)

[Johnny2X2X]

30. Computers

I think the leap from using pen and paper and maybe calculators to do engineering work to using software to do engineering work is the most accurate comparison. People were afraid that millions of jobs would be eliminated by software, and they were over time, but software also created new jobs and products at an alarming rate and in a lot of ways no one ever could have predicted.

That's what I am hoping for AI, that we cannot predict the ways it will create new jobs and products. It's a powerful tool right now that millions of smart people are just beginning to figure out how to use. I don't think you can predict what new and creative things will arise from people using this new tool

[LiberalArkie]

35. I think it might really be great when the AI's can create a modern processing structure that can replace the

computer systems we use now. The present "Client - Server" method is so very wasteful.

[Johnny2X2X]

39. It really will be a sea of new and more useful features for things we already use

Right now it's a time saver, but it's transitioning to something more.

I mean, it is scary for sure, but also incredibly exciting.

[highplainsdem]

57. Again, not at all the same thing. See reply 37.

Humans still use charcoal for some art.

And those pencils didn't lift into the air and start writing or sketching after humans gave them a few words of instructions - sometimes producing endless variants from the same prompt - with the humans then fraudulently claiming the work was theirs.

The pencils weren't made by oligarchs stealing the world's intellectual property - the theft that is probably 99% of the value of genAI.

[cachukis]

27. Holy cadookalas!

[TheProle]

29. Anti-AI Crusaders should think about redirecting their energies to UBI

The capacity, power and potential of AI is growing exponentially and ignoring it won't make it go away. If you know, you know...

Better to start planning for an economic fallback for a society whose very concept of work is about to shaken to its core.

[area51]

91. And one more reason why the US needs to change to universal healthcare,

instead of healthcare tied to their job.

[dweller]

31. Is it time for this , again ?

😐


✌🏻

[Ferrets are Cool]

32. How long before some idiot hands over control of the BIG RED BUTTON to AI?

[usonian]

51. About minus one year.

Enjoy life and fight for fredom and against oligarchy every day.

[Happy Hoosier]

34. If nobody has a job...

Who is going to buy their crap? Are the AI oligarchs just gonna buy each other’s crap?

[Oneironaut]

36. Sorry, but, this is vastly overestimating the capabilities of AI.

Whenever I hear that AI is going to take over every job, will handle complex tasks like application development, and, will completely take over customer service, etc., I always shake my head. This post reads like a sales pitch to a clueless CEO who has no idea how AI works.

No, AI will not lead to a job apocalypse. It will replace some jobs. However, it can’t do complex reasoning. Also, “AI” is such a broad term, and, “AI” has been around for decades at this point.

AI is receiving an input from the user and vomiting out an output based on models trained on existing data. It will never create anything new, nor will it innovate or show creativity. It only fakes ingenuity because that’s all part of the smoke and mirrors of LLMs (and, I’m aware there is more to “AI” than LLMs).

Also, LLMs like chatGPT hallucinate all the time. They are not suitable for producing formal documents like court documents. If produced by AI, text still needs to be reviewed by a human for accuracy.

For application development - Nobody ever answers how those applications will be maintained. The “vibe coding” trend was a complete failure because of this, as anyone who has experience as a developer predicted. Maintenance and support of software applications actually matters a lot more than building them out. AI content generation and LLMs don’t have an answer to this, nor will they for a really long time.

Companies like OpenAI are quite honestly, imo, grifting at this point. They want you to believe AI will be this all-powerful innovation because that’s their sales tactic. Sure, there have been a lot of innovations related to AI, but, vast improvements to it will take time. It’s enshittifying already, which is going to delay its progress as well.

[Lucky Luciano]

46. It's definitely improving rapidly.

My primary use case is for increasing my skills. I am self studying a lot of highly technical math from some graduate texts. The texts have a lot of exercises and I do roughly 80% of them which is probably too much. I write my solutions on my iPad with the Ipencil and take screenshots to upload to ChatGPT. It does find any errors I make and often confirms my solutions while suggesting alternative approaches. I always double check what it’s saying, but it’s correct the vast majority of the time on substantive proofs and calculations. When I first started do this, it made more errors. In the last two month it has only made one error. I kept hammering it and explaining that I couldn’t understand why the F they were right. What was I missing. I claimed the exercise must have been flawed and had an error in the statement. It claimed that was highly unlikely, but maybe I should google for errata…sure enough, it was a known error. I uploaded that to ChatGPT and I asked if it used a strong prior that the book was correct and if that was why it was wrong….it said yes. So it did believe it was correct bc the book was assumed to be correct.

I imagine those kinds of errors will become less common as time goes by. The product is getting better and better.

There is no point in heroically trying to fight this. Who knows…there will come point where the tech companies will need to create their own power. Maybe this will finally force green energy bc there just isn’t enough supply of non green energy.

[highplainsdem]

69. There's no point in trying to fight it? Wrong. There's every reason to fight it, for our freedom from

the Trump regime aligned with the AI oligarchs, to the future of all the children dumbed down if they use AI, and the future of the planet that will see much worse climate change with AI.

GenAI is already doing immense harm.

[Lucky Luciano]

80. It's not just to misrepresent one's own intellect. A lot of use cases are pretty mundane.

I also use it for fitness. It’s a personal trainer. I have ongoing chats for bench press/triceps days, chats for pull ups/leg days, chat for my running/rowing machine days, and I’m going to start a chat for my mobility day…at 53 I need to take mobility more seriously. It’s great for tracking and getting immediate feedback. A trainer would cost $130/session. My form is good so I don’t need an on-site trainer.

I use it for my history hobby. I don’t have time to read history until I retire, but when I help my wife around the house with the dishes or vacuuming or whatever, I listen to some amazing history podcasts (history of Rome by Mike Duncan was amazing…now I’m listening to Robin Pierson’s continuation of that with the history of Byzantium - I just got to the time when Nikephoras Phokas was assassinated!). I digest what I heard by having some back and forth with the bot. I really enjoy the conversation and it definitely helps fill the gaps of knowledge that I need to keep the narrative fluid in my head….lots of names, dates, and places.

I am learning Japanese and Spanish…I use Duolingo for those, but the bot is much better than Duolingo. I upload screenshots of the text I am using and do the exercises with the bot. It supplements YouTube channels that help etc.

Travel….i have strong interests in exotic travel. It has been very helpful for planning some retirement travel that I have in mind….Mount Vinson Massif in Antarctica….Heard and McDonald Island in the South Indian Ocean…I actually have some confidence that those are feasible places to get to now. I know where to start. Were there other avenues to find ways? Probably, but I found this instantly. It’s an enhanced google search.

Lastly, the most important folder is my quant folder where I do the quant conversations. I use this to do my math exercises so that I can continuously improve my own knowledge. As stated above, I work through some graduate texts that are much more applied than the math PhD that I actually did (my thesis involved maximally abstract pure math that is hard to apply to industry so I am always seeking to improve my skill set relative to my colleagues and competitors who were much more applied). I also read some of the latest research on Arxiv and I use it to confirm my understanding….and yes, I'm also improving my deep learning knowledge as well.

A myriad of other mundane things too. Most of it is not meant to say, “oh look at this brilliant thing I made!” People just want quick answers to questions. One must use judgment of course and critical thinking.

It’s a revolution. It will force some changes. I think green energy will finally be forced on even the most right wing anti-green energy ideologue. It will be necessary. It will force the hand of water technology as well…or maybe they find other ways to keep things cool. UBI will be needed too.

[hunter]

90. I'm sorry...

... this description of your days makes me want to run screaming naked into the wilderness.

Yes, I am some kind of Luddite. I don't have a smart phone and I'm writing this on a beat up old laptop that was diverted from the e-waste bins.

I am computer literate but I don't have to like it.

[Tommy Carcetti]

115. Your life sounds sad and woesome. nt

[Lucky Luciano]

117. ??

I don’t think intellectual curiosity is sad. I find it energizing. Different people optimize for different things.

It might read like I spend my whole day with the bot! Not really. I probably log more screen time reading DU.

[highplainsdem]

73. Whenever new AI models are revealed, there's always trememdous hype about how amazing they are,

until people who aren't shills or AI-addled get a good look at them.

Like OpenAI's much vaunted "reasoning" models that hallucinated even more than earlier models.

[AllaN01Bear]

41. thanks . by your command.

[yobrault1]

42. What about the AI Agent platform that has been created and is AI only

last I heard, they created their own space, their own language and their own religion called the Church of Molt and there is no humans involved. Should we be concerned? I believe this is exactly what Sam Altman was concerned about with AI.

Now, this is just a question. I don’t want anyone coming for me. I have seen this on multiple social media platforms. I have no idea if it’s true but one thing I have learned since the onset of this administration is I see news on social media long before I see it even on here all the shit in the Epstein files, a lot of it has been playing out on social media long before people were talking about the depth of the debauchery these people have been involved in.

Oh and as a side note, I believe that QAnon was a PSYOP to groom society to what was actually happening because if we only heard about this now, no one would believe it, but because of QAnon, it was slow fed to society. I don’t believe the outcome was supposed to be that it was all exposed. I believe the outcome was supposed to be to blame it on one side of the political spectrum and act like the conservative, the heritage foundation side of the political spectrum was not involved…but I digress.

[highplainsdem]

66. That's already been exposed as mostly fraud, with humans having written the posts getting the

most attention.

But Moltbook is a huge security risk for anyone using it.

Google

Moltbook fake

and

Moltbook security

and you'll find lots of news about it.

[Mosby]

44. Next step

AI system resorts to blackmail if told it will be removed

Artificial intelligence (AI) firm Anthropic says testing of its new system revealed it is sometimes willing to pursue "extremely harmful actions" such as attempting to blackmail engineers who say they will remove it.

The firm launched Claude Opus 4 on Thursday, saying it set "new standards for coding, advanced reasoning, and AI agents."

But in an accompanying report, it also acknowledged the AI model was capable of "extreme actions" if it thought its "self-preservation" was threatened.

Such responses were "rare and difficult to elicit", it wrote, but were "nonetheless more common than in earlier models."

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpqeng9d20go

[dweller]

47. Can A I replace

CEOs ?

start there … then see how it flies


🤔




✌🏻

[Crowman2009]

50. Corporate executives are an AI job replacement I would approve of!

They are the most wasteful uses of business revenue that ever existed.

[Disaffected]

49. I have been using the paid versions of GPT and Claude for a while now

to write HTML code for web apps. I am astounded by its capabilities to take an English language description of what the app is to do and turn it promptly into working code. It is very much like conversing with an experienced, fluent English speaking computer programmer. These AI engines produce code faster than a decent typist could even type it in from a copy. In the process it even tells you what, how and why it is doing so you can follow the process along if you like. It often makes useful suggestions for app improvement. It makes anyone with a need for a computer app and the basic ability to describe it into a programmer.

As I say, astonishing and, it will no doubt continue to improve in capability, in both software development and a myriad of other fields...

[Johnny2X2X]

107. Agree

From the totally simple like pseudo code- Wingmate, Can you tell me how to generate a VB script for Excel to append or prefix multiple cells at once?
Sub AddTextToCells()
Dim cell As Range
Dim textToAdd As String
Dim position As String

textToAdd = InputBo "Enter text to add:&quot
position = InputBo "Enter 'P' for Prefix or 'S' for Suffix:&quot

For Each cell In Selection
If cell.Value "" Then
If UCase(position) = "P" Then
cell.Value = textToAdd & cell.Value
ElseIf UCase(position) = "S" Then
cell.Value = cell.Value & textToAdd
End If
End If
Next cell
End Sub

This will allow you to append or prefix a selection of cells that are already populated in Excel.

To much more complicated things like entire applications for something mission critical written in ADA. It's pretty remarkable right now and people a lot smarter than me are already doing a lot of work with it.

[Disaffected]

108. Yes, I've had it do some VBA/Excel as well.

I also find it very useful for finding out how to work an app to do something specific without having to wade through documentation or searching through forums. For instance, I was recently attempting to set up a timed task in Windows but became stuck on bypassing the password requirement for automatic wake from sleep. GPT gave me the answer immediately (actually gave a couple of alternatives along with explanation of which was best). It's an enormous time saver...

[WestMichRad]

52. I, for one, am eager for the day when...

… the tech bros and mega-billionaires who have put most of us out of work will provide all with a guaranteed income so that we can live healthy lives and sustain our consumer economy.

As if.

[usonian]

54. Bernie Sanders nails it, as usual.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/28/bernie-sanders-artificial-intelligence-ai-datacenters

Technology, IMO, and in the esteemed Kevin Kelley's opinion, can be, and WANTS to be a force to empower and liberate people.

OR

It can be used to eliminate jobs, and PEOPLE by oligarchs and their thugs, physical and technical.

We must choose wisely.

We won't.

Oligarchs control everything.

Until we rid them of their power.

[LiberalArkie]

56. Think of all the scribes that were put out of work when Gutenberg invented the printing press.

And all the dictionary companies when the computer dictionaries was invented.

And all the poor vaudeville actors when the movies were invented..

[usonian]

67. Gutenberg, Edison and whoever did not set out to destroy an entire class and population

as our overlords are exactly trying to do.

And it gets worse.

Tech lords Cook, Musk, Pichai, Nadella, Ellison, Benioff, Altman, ZFuck, the list goes on. REPORT TO THE FUHRER and live IN HIS ASS.

It will be worse if we keep giving them money without limit. See below.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=2054396


When Trump kicks it, the Crypto Bro Troika will control currency, and hence Wall Street and the world.
August 2025.



They bought an election and want RETURN ON THEIR INVESTMENT.

Impeach Vance NOW. (and Mikey)

How tech is used IS A CHOICE.

[Melon]

58. In my Petro space, we are eliminating jobs

Already due to AI. Why have multiple people in communications when press releases, internal documents, etc. are all written in AI and simply proofed by one person.

Our business analysts now use it to create PowerPoints.

Creating customer presentations. All of this took hours if not days of work. Now much of it takes minutes.

You should be learning ai and also invested in AI if you have an end date to retire.

[hunter]

86. What kind of world do you want to retire into?

Personally, I'd rather skip the one where oligarchs are asking their AI assistants to update their enemies list each morning, ranking these enemies in order of potential threat.

That's probably happening already. It would be best to put an end to that sort of thing now.

In any case, I haven't seen anything from AI but an increase in the amount of gibberish spilling into my universe. It was bad when 100% of that gibberish was generated by people. Now that machines can generate gibberish it's much worse. I probably have more than 90% of the internet, by volume, blacklisted for that reason. Most of my mail, electronic or paper, goes straight into the trash. I don't see advertising on my television or my computer.

I'd like to live in a world where I don't need a "smart" phone, a "smart" car, or a "smart" anything else.

I'd like to live in a world where every detail of my life, including my shopping, internet browsing, and travel habits are not stored in some giant data center, only available to a chosen few and their lackeys, some who might see me as a potential threat to their own political and financial power.

What percent of those AI generated press releases, internal documents, and PowerPoints are bullshit?

Churning the slop does not make the world a better place.

[Melon]

95. Technology can't go backwards

There was a time when people in buckboards ranted about the automobile.

One year ago 90% of the AI generated data crunching papers had errors that need corrected or graphics that you had to move or correct.

I’d say that today 90% is accurate today if you use the correct inputs. Higher than that if it’s pulling from your own data. Much of what is generated does not require any adjustment at all. This is full day work stuff that now takes 10 minutes. The PowerPoint’s look better most of the time than from a lower lever analyst, at least as initial concepts to proof.

That’s the improvement in one year. What will it be in 6 more months?

[ThreeNoSeep]

64. We sound old

The loudest don't know what they are screaming about, those of us who use AI successfully know the first rule of riding the tiger is to hang on tight.

[Moostache]

71. The literal #1 job growth opportunity for the next 10 years?

Master the lingo and presentations of this stuff and market it to the masses. Internet-influencers are small potatoes - they only seek to enrich themselves and miss the bigger picture by competing with each other for attention and subscriptions instead of actuially harnessing their product/concept for actual use (instead of selling people "The Dream" ). This is nothing more than the latest flavor of the classic get rich fast with no risk and minimal effort day dream pitch.

All "next big thing" opportunities follow this same kind of playbook - sell people on THEIR DESIRES and / or THEIR FEARS - it literally MUST START HERE for emotional and psychological reasons. There MUST first be a baited hook that the mark WANTS DESPERATELY to possess.

Provide a bleak picture of pain and fear to be avoided at all costs - the tech-bros know FOMO. Then offer a solution - at first it must appear to be magic (too complicated for me...boo-hoo ...) and THEN, BUT WAIT THERE'S MORE!!!! After getting people to fear something, and to fear that they are on the wrong side of the inevitable...you offer them an easy 3-step process that only YOU can offer and you make them WANT TO GIVE YOU MONEY.

In the end, the world is still seeing grifters and snake oil salesmen because of humanity's greatest reality - we ALL want something for nothing and a life of luxury and choice without requirements or "no". Very few EVER attain that, but the sales pitch goes ever on.

The happiest people, the most-fulfilled, the most balanced and most fun to know are invariably those that have passion for things that are NOT strictly monetary and governed by access (which can only be bought, not actually earned).

Why is a college education valuable? Its NOT just to get a job. It is to develop one's brain, to enhance one's ability to be creative - to find or create answers to problems that do not exist today because someone will need to do so in the future as well. I hire exclusively technical degreed professionals and I NEVER do so with a spreadsheet or list of tasks to be finished as fast as possible. I challenge their thinking process and their skills at communicating a cogent response to an off the wall or unexpected question. AI that is based on algorithms is forever beholden to the quality of the input it receives AND the quality of the output it is told to deliver.

The appearance of intelligence and answers that approximate thoughts are elusive and possibly will be achieved, but then again, so too might teleportation, warp speed, and eternal youthful life. There will NEVER be a dearth of people sponging off of heir fellow man by selling them exactly what they can make their mark believe they NEED and WANT.

The joke is that when the end inevitably comes for us all, we don't see our fading loved ones wishing for more goods and services or money or applause or fame. We all want connection - real, tangible, fleeting and fragile but precious and worth everything that money or status or stuff cannot offer. When you go looking for the golden goose, you better first define why you are doing so in the first place. Economies of the world cannot suddenly fire all the workers of the world and still exist in a employee-less, customer-free void. Someone has to have money or currency or capital to spend of the gears seize up and the music stops.

[usonian]

77. Worthy of an OP

It is being used to crush the population.

A few know how to make good use of inventions. But the controllers get there first.

It will not help anyone in concentration camp.

Eat the rich. Don't feed them

[yonder]

105. Yours is an impressive, thoughtful response.

This paragraph resonated especially:

"The happiest people, the most-fulfilled, the most balanced and most fun to know are invariably those that have passion for things that are NOT strictly monetary and governed by access (which can only be bought, not actually earned)."

[Wild blueberry]

72. Not willing to give up our fresh water for this

Until so-called data centers can function without 1) using all our fresh water and 2) making all electricity users pay (instead of paying their own full freight), not worth it.
All living creatures need fresh water.

[LiberalArkie]

82. I never understood the water usage.

I have worked in several data centers and chilled water was always used. Fresh water was brought in to charge the system and chilled it to around 55 degrees. It was then circulated through the main frames and Lieberts and the water then recycled back to the chillers. Fresh water is not chilled enough for the systems. In most cased the water that was warmed by the systems is still colder than the city water.

[hunter]

109. Many data centers use evaporative cooling.

This is also the case with thermal power plants.

Evaporative cooling obviously looses water to the air and leaves behind saltier water contaminated with anti-corrosion agents that must be disposed of.

[Soul_of_Wit]

81. My entire life has been ever-more-rapid technological change

I retired earlier than planned because AI was about to take my job. The buyout offer was not great, but it was better than waiting to be laid off with a minimal severance package. My employer's impetus for the buyout offer was rising interest rates, but it was a wakeup call for me. Six months of paid healthcare coverage + a small amount of vested stock options + cash to pay for an ACA plan until Medicare kicked in + enough retirement savings to squeak by with a reduced Social Security benefit = the ability to retire at 63. Yay, me?

[LiberalArkie]

84. I did it at 65. I was just really tired and inside felt that I was dying.

Amazing that after just being off for 6 months I began to feel like I was in my 30's.

I guess that is why EU has such long mandatory vacations and leaves.

[angrychair]

85. I've been in IT for over 30 years

I can assure you that this is more fluff than fact. Al is not going to take your job.

Let's use one of my favorite examples. All of us are likely old enough to remember those commercials that used to come on late at night about "you too can be a millionaire just like me if you buy my tape/video/book series for just three easy payments of $19.99" the thing that always made me laugh about that is why aren't all those people in the call center or the company producing the material or any employees of this person becoming millionaires themselves so they don't have to work for someone else? See, that is where this whole scam falls apart. If it's real and it works then why does anyone work for that person at all but are not millionaires themselves?

Here is my point: if Al is so good then why are all these Al companies failing? Why is their revenue models garbage? Why is their own computer code garbage? Why are they so resource intensive? Why are they specifically targeting poor and rural communities that are least able to fight the environmental impacts and have the poorest infrastructure in the state, thereby increasing the harmful impacts to the community they are in?

Perfect example from an article out a couple days ago, of how Al has led to dozens of serious medical complications and screwed up surgeries
Reference: https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/ai-operating-room-botched-surgeries-193131330.html

Or how Microsoft has screwed up Windows 11 but still pushes forward with making Win11 completely driven by Al when no business will wants it or needs it and will only increase business costs
Reference: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/discussions/windows11/microsoft-finally-admits-almost-all-major-windows-11-core-features-are-broken/4475930
And
https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/windows-11/microsoft-is-reevaluating-its-ai-efforts-on-windows-11-plans-to-reduce-copilot-integrations-and-evolve-recall

The whole point is that no matter how many times they say it, Al is NOT ready for prime time.

The Al bubble will soon burst and drag the economy down with it. It cannot happen soon enough because it's screwing with the real economic picture and not allowing people to understand the actual economic issues we are now facing.

[Soul_of_Wit]

88. It is already replacing entry-level jobs

AI can generate a PowerPoint deck and replace the need for an administrative assistant. AI can also do entry-level accounting functions. Computer programs can be written by AI with a human providing the prompts. Humans still review the AI's work, but that was also true when a human was doing those tasks.

[angrychair]

96. No business has shown an ROI

for implementation of Al in their organization.

Not a single one.

Not a single Al related company is showing a profit that is representative of their highly inflated valuations.

[TheProle]

112. The stats

https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2025-ai-index-report/economy

[angrychair]

116. The stats are awful

Last edited Wed Feb 11, 2026, 11:48 PM - Edit history (1)

These numbers don't say anything different. The ROI isn't there.
Things not captured were opportunity costs, ongoing implementation and training costs and the costs to the environment.

[highplainsdem]

137. Ed Zitron has done a great job explaining this insane AI bubble.

[Renew Deal]

121. According to a Wharton study, 75% of enterprises "report positive return on investment."

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/emollick_new-data-on-the-corporate-roi-from-generative-activity-7388984590968770560-0rpe

And "JPMorgan Chase, for example, has realized an impressive $1.5 billion in savings from AI-powered fraud detection and operational improvements"

https://www.pepperfoster.com/insights/the-artificial-intelligence-ai-roi-report/

That's one.

[highplainsdem]

122. Mollick is one of the biggest shills for the AI industry.

[Renew Deal]

126. There's a lot of attacking the messenger in this thread

There are conflicting views in the world.

But I'm not sure why we shouldn't treat those that are against AI with pushing an agenda themselves?

The reality of the AI situation is that workers are largely using it in both approved and unapproved manners. Gen AI is making a significant difference for people in many professional fields.

The benefits are real and the negatives are factored in. That's why AI investment is continuing to advance.

The consequences of this are real, and likely dire for anyone below the C suite.

Check out this video to give you an idea of what's happening in the non-corporate coding space:

At the same time, I think some of the investment is based on fear. Some people are worried about missing the moment, while others want to brag about the AI things they are doing (for fear of appearing behind). I also think that the AI stock bubble is likely real. Some of the things going on in markets right now seem manipulated.

In my opinion, the AI situation right now is a runaway train. The only way to slow it down is by global government regulation, and that is unlikely.

Amateurs will continue to use it simplify their lives, cheat on homework, basic automation.

Corporations will do it to automate everything and reduce their mostly costly resource, people.

[highplainsdem]

132. The messenger in the OP, Matt Shumer, is already known for both hype and fraud.

Mollick is known as a shill. Most of the people in the AI field that I met on Twitter consider him a joke. I used to follow his posts in disbelief as he'd admit at times to lots of problems with genAI, and then he'd post "Look what a cute picture I generated!" or "Look at this little game I coded!" - sounding like a baby distracted by a spinning toy. Completely AI-added. The twit even set one of his book reviews to music using AI. Idiot.

One of the first things he said about AI that I noticed was his claim that it didn't matter if students cheated with AI because students always cheat. What a jerk, with contempt for his students.

AI investment is almost entirely FOMO. It's a bubble with circular financing. The sooner it all collapses, the better.

[Renew Deal]

133. What do you think happens in the collapse?

I think some smaller companies disappear through acquisition or bankruptcy. Investments could slow down. Then what? The major tools will continue to run and get better. All the big companies will still be standing, possibly leaner. There is no off button.

[lapfog_1]

145. lets see

Vibe coding is a restatement of the goals of... COBOL. Read Jean Sammet's History and Fundamentals of Programming, published in 1969. She was one of the inventors of COBOL in 1959, the stated goal of which was to allow for "anyone" to write code by "speaking English". Of course, COBOL didn't even come close to making that goal a reality.

I used to teach Compute Science at the University of Kansas ( Go Jayhawks ), sometimes I was teaching CS200 ( Introduction to Computer Science ). On the first day of class I didn't teach a damn thing about Computers or FORTRAN or Assembler or Basic or anything. What I did was to go to the blackboard ( yeah, chalk on a blackboard - white boards and markers hadn't been invented yet )... and have the class play tic-tac-toe.

I would play the class. I would put an X someplace and then ask the class where they wanted an "O". When they all agreed on the move... I would ask a simple question "why there?" Explain why you needed to make THAT move.

It's not the code, it is solving the problem ( whether in English as in an AI prompt or in FORTRAN or C or Python ). Someone needs to describe the algorithm that solves the "puzzle". The AI can do rote recitation of known solutions, and then code it for you... but if they haven't been trained on it, good luck getting anything out that makes sense or is any way optimal.

For example, I could possibly explain the rules of Chess well enough for an AI to invent some Chess playing code... might even find enough articles about it in what it scraped from the internet to do a decent job. However, would it ever be inventive enough to invent a Chess playing program that simulated Chess moves using nothing but Boolean ( and pseudo Boolean ) logic ( AND, OR, NOT or XOR, and leading and trailing zero counts ). I doubt seriously than an AI could invent such an algorithm. However, in the early 1980s, my co-worker and I did just that.

That said, I use AI every day to help me in my work... and I use two different AI models, one to create the code, and another to verify the code. Plus I use AI to document the code better than all but the most diligent programmer.

Measuring my productivity is difficult to gage... but my organization uses it extensively now... and we are doing almost 2X the amount of work that we were doing a year ago, with only a modest increase in staff.

Asking for the ROI on AI is like asking the ROI on the Internet in 1985... it is early days of AI adoption right now... or another example... what is the ROI of smart phones? Everyone has one now... probably 20 percent of the human race either has or has access to a smart phone. What is the ROI on that? Would you give up yours?

OK, now for the full disclosure... I am a senior architect at a major AI chip maker... and have been here almost 8 years now. Doesn't mean I can't be objective about AI and some of the hype therein. Nor does it mean I am an uninterested bystander because a great deal of my compensation is in the form of stock RSUs... which I use to promote DU. DU charities, pet rescue charities, and Democratic candidates for office ( nation wide ). Without AI I doubt that I would be able to do this. Doesn't mean that AI is a good thing... just stating my obvious interest in the subject.

[highplainsdem]

124. MIT report: 95% of generative AI pilots at companies are failing

https://fortune.com/2025/08/18/mit-report-95-percent-generative-ai-pilots-at-companies-failing-cfo/

[Renew Deal]

128. Those are pilots

That's where projects are supposed to fail if you do it right.

[highplainsdem]

134. By that standard, Trump was doing things right with all his business failures.

[Renew Deal]

135. Those were not pilots

[Ol Janx Spirit]

87. Reading the comments to this thread is an interesting mix of skepticism, optimism, fear, and...

...hope about AI--much like so many discussions we have probably all had about the nascent technology.

One thing I always like to ask people when having this discussion is: what IS intelligence?

If it is hard to define in humans, how will we ever be able to say that the "artificial" version isn't actually it?

As an American growing up in the south I always thought strawberries tasted one way, and that "artificial" strawberry flavor you got in Pop-Tarts or Jolly Rancher candies was most definitely not it. And then one day I was travelling in the Dordogne region of France--near where the Lascaux Caves were discovered--and I picked up some local strawberries for a picnic in the beautiful countryside of that area. The strawberries were incredible--though smaller in size than the ones I was used to. They also tasted distinctly like the artificial strawberry flavor I was used to back home. I finally understood where it came from.

Taste is just a chemical reaction. It makes sense that it could be emulated once the chemistry is broken down and understood.

Human intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving to name a few.

One common criticism of AI is that it just regurgitates things it can search the Internet for that has been created along the way by humans with actual intelligence. But a lot of the people we encounter throughout our lives that we consider intelligent are actually doing the same thing: regurgitating things they learned along the way from the intellectual work of others.

So what is actual intelligence, and from where does it come?

We can all conjecture, but the truth is: we really do not know. We tend to define it from our own human perspective, but that is really inadequate. Predictably, in our universe of understanding humans are somehow at the top of the intellectual food chain--the apex predator of knowledge and reasoning. That does not mean we are right.

Our brains and our bodies are complex chemistry. Chemistry we do not fully understand--but chemistry nonetheless.

Currently, we are limited to that chemistry from an intellectual standpoint. It has served us well, but we had to invent computers to do a lot of things we just can't do quickly or efficiently enough to make us effective at them. And now we rely on them heavily as an enhancement and even replacement for our own abilities.

Modern aircraft are a great example: for starters, we can't build them anymore without the extensive use of computers in all aspects of the design and manufacturing; and after that we can't fly most of them without the aid of computer-controlled fly-by-wire systems that allow us to control modern aerodynamic airframes that are not inherently stable.

It is really our own hubris that makes us believe future technology will not be superior to our evolved chemistry.

Future computers will work at subatomic levels our current brains will never be able to without a marriage of our chemistry and their chemistry and physics.

But once "artificial" intelligence can emulate the chemistry of our brains, it will be a very short time before it surpasses anything our current actual intelligence can comprehend at the moment.

In 1901, George W. Melville, Engineer-in-Chief of the U.S. Navy, wrote a scathing article about the pursuit of manned flight. He began with a Shakespeare quote that implied the goal was a childish “vain fantasy” that “is as thin of substance as the air”:

In 1903, the New York Times predicted manned flight would take between 1 and 10 million years to achieve, in an article titled “Flying Machines Which Do Not Fly.”

Only nine weeks later, the Wright Brothers achieved manned flight.

In 1955, President Eisenhower announced the first U.S. satellite program. When asked about the project, a British astronomer replied: “Space travel is utter bilge,” saying it would be a “frightful waste of public money.”

https://bigthink.com/pessimists-archive/air-space-flight-impossible/

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped onto the Moon.

There were roughly 25,000 days between 'it will never happen' to "[t]hat's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind."

And that was largely without the help of computers....

[DarthDem]

89. Oh, Please

It cannot, in fact, pass the bar exam—let alone do all of the personal and practical tasks required to practice law. It has its uses, but it's very limited, and it's going to be quite a bad beat for those who invest in it heavily.

[usedtobedemgurl]

102. 7x8 equals 56

[LudwigPastorius]

103. A very plausible timeline of the next couple of years:

https://ai-2027.com

And, a reminder to everyone who is using the latest publicly available models, and are not impressed. These companies have models that are more advanced and are strictly in-house. They are using these to churn out the next generation.

[LiberalArkie]

111. Ohh Hell

[Torchlight]

104. Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo

That's my obligatory, in-crowd movie-reference. Who could ever forget Shabba Doo's portrayal of Ozone... only a human could pull that off.

[RoseTrellis]

106. Visual representation

I agree, AI has progressed very far now, and the quality is starting to go exponential.
I stumbled upon this representation a few days ago - apparently a benchmark for AI produced video is Will Smith eating spaghetti…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Smith_Eating_Spaghetti_test

Here’s a link that shows how much better AI has gotten at creating this scene over a relatively short time…

https://www.reddit.com/r/aivideo/s/8nDAt5XFcq

[global1]

110. Can We Use AI To Help Rid Us Of Tr**p?....nt9

[highplainsdem]

113. Matt Shumer is known for overhyping and has been accused of fraud. See this:

https://www.democraticunderground.com/100221014954

[pat_k]

114. Bank on this: Basic income, universal healthcare, inheritance for all, and...

...other "impossible" things like 90% corporate tax on big companies raking in the big bucks in the utterly broken economy, will suddenly become quite doable

With 50% of white collar professionals out of work, things would change in a hurry.

Undoubtedly, Republicans would try to pass things that redistribute wealth only to those "worthy" displaced professionals, but I don't think that would fly. (While they would love to screw over laborers and people who provide services that can only be performed by human beings, I don't think the progressive taxes and benefits demanded by the displaced would pass if large swaths of the electorate are excluded.)

[highplainsdem]

118. No way that's going to happen with the AI bros and the Trump regime. And their intent is to rig

elections and stay in power.

Generative AI is all about

1) stealing the world's intellectual property for the benefit of the AI companies and tech lords, and

2) using AI to increase surveillance and manipulation and consolidate power for the AI companies and the governments they work with.

[pat_k]

123. 30 to 40 million displaced white collar workers would make a hell of a noise.

And unlike the broader working class (lower income blue and white collar workers) who have been progressively screwed over like slowly boiled frogs, the higher income white collar professionals are more apt to take their privileges for granted. They will not go quietly. When they are facing destitution in large numbers you can bet they will suddenly "get" that universal health care and a basic income that ensures basic needs are met is a necessity for human dignity.

[Renew Deal]

131. I think that only becomes possible after significant poverty and destruction

No one is going to give away money for free. Most likely, people will have to demand it.

[pat_k]

139. If the predicted 50% of the 70 million or so white collar/professionals/knowledge workers lose their jobs.

... that will be at least 30 million competing for non-existent jobs.

That's a lot of people, many of whom have taken their high-income, benefits, and generally privileged status for granted.

Unlike the broader working class (lower income blue and white collar workers) who have been progressively screwed over like slowly boiled frogs, these newly displaced people are not likely to just settle for their new lot in life.

Who knows if it will come to pass, but if it does; if large numbers are facing destitution -- many for the first time in their lives -- I bet we would see a sudden "awakening," as more and more suddenly "get" that universal health care and a basic income that ensures basic needs are met are necessities for human dignity.

Note: 30 million jobs lost to AI is feasible. Perhaps AI will never supplant people to that extent, but according to research from MIT. AI can already technically replace 11.7% of the U.S. workforce, or about 20 million jobs.

[highplainsdem]

119. LOL!!! Matt Shumer's company offers AI generators for "team member praise" and heartfelt sympathy

messages.

https://www.pcgamer.com/gaming-industry/tech-investor-declares-ai-games-are-going-to-be-amazing-posts-an-ai-generated-demo-of-a-god-awful-shooter-as-proof/

And he's really best known for hype.

[highplainsdem]

120. LOL! Shumer needed AI to help him write that piece! Talk about someone being AI-dependent...but

then his own AI company just generates sympathy messages and team member praise:

Link to tweet

[highplainsdem]

127. LiberalArkie, did you bother to find out ANYTHING about Matt Shumer's background before you posted this?

[highplainsdem]

136. AI slop using tools trained on stolen intellectual property.

[sakabatou]

138. Tell that to the illustrator Miyu, plus Andrew Holmes & Cosmoz Productions

I'm sure they'll appreciate your comment.

[highplainsdem]

141. It's a chatbot with a very annoying voice. And they won't reveal the training data, which suggests very

strongly that it includes copyrighted work, stolen IP.

https://www.reddit.com/r/VirtualYoutubers/comments/1n7nhke/if_neuros_training_data_is_unknown_then_why_do/

See the first reply there from DimensionRich4418.

[highplainsdem]

143. Reddit thread on Shumer's hypefest:

https://www.reddit.com/r/BetterOffline/comments/1r20bde/matt_shumer_tweet_discussion/