mwhitfield (u/mwhitfield)

mwhitfield commented on AI is a front for consolidation of resources and power chrbutler.com/what-ai-is-... · Posted by u/delaugust

Kiro · 4 months ago

> it’s a useful technology that is very likely overhyped to the point of catastrophe

I wish more AI skeptics would take this position but no, it's imperative to claim that it's completely useless.

mwhitfield · 4 months ago

I've had *very* much the opposite experience. Very nearly every AI skeptic take I read has exactly this opinion, if not always so well-articulated (until the last section, which lost me). But counterarguments always attack the complete strawman of "AI is utterly useless," which very few people, at least within the confines of the tech and business commentariat, are making.

mwhitfield commented on I am just sooo sick of AI prediction content, let's kill it already verdikapuku.com/posts/i-a... · Posted by u/frenchmajesty

nathan_compton · 4 months ago

> The worse thing about this parasitic trend is that most of the time it’s basically a dude who wants to appear visionary and so he makes a prediction of the future.

This is basically an entire genre of low effort Hackernews posts.

mwhitfield · 4 months ago

Or the twitter account of any VC

mwhitfield commented on Google uses AI to reduce stop-and-go traffic on your route blog.google/outreach-init... · Posted by u/alach11

caust1c · 2 years ago

Google needs to stop re-routing mid-navigation full stop.

The number of times that I've had to miss exits or turns because google re-routed without sufficient lead time has caused me to stop using it for driving navigation.

It's no wonder you see crazy people swerving across 3 lanes to make an exit these days. I blame google maps navigation for a lot of unsafe driving I see on the road today.

mwhitfield · 2 years ago

Huh? On Android at least, re-routing in navigation requires an explicit confirmation from you.

mwhitfield commented on Microsoft blames EU rules for allowing biggest IT outage to happen telegraph.co.uk/business/... · Posted by u/riv991

mwhitfield · 2 years ago

The headline, as always, is disingenuous. They were asked why they couldn't lock third parties out of this level of unprotected system access, and said that the 2009 ruling prevented them from doing so. Which is simply factually correct.

mwhitfield commented on How much electricity does AI consume? theverge.com/24066646/ai-... · Posted by u/doener

1-6 · 2 years ago

With today’s AI, we’re taking a big hammer to the problem using unoptimized but vastly flexible machines like GPUs. Once the code settles down, expect ASICs to run much of the show and lower energy consumption.

mwhitfield · 2 years ago

You're maybe not wrong, but I'm pretty sure I was reading this same comment 10 years ago, when we were just calling it deep learning.

mwhitfield commented on Is A.I. The Death of I.P.? newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/thm

Intralexical · 2 years ago

Idk man; I think our values and the enforcement of those values should have some moral self-consistency to them on a cultural level too.

mwhitfield · 2 years ago

There are hundreds of millions or billions of us, though, depending on how broad a brush you use. Any given issue or value is going to have someone, in fact quite a lot of someones, on every conceivable side of it. Even if you limit your scope to the people who have a substantial voice in the culture.

mwhitfield commented on Is A.I. The Death of I.P.? newyorker.com/magazine/20... · Posted by u/thm

reb · 2 years ago

This is the right take — whatever your position on the future of this technology or its costs and benefits for humanity, the hypocrisy mentioned here shouldn't go unacknowledged.

mwhitfield · 2 years ago

It's only "hypocrisy" if it's the same people saying it. The media zeitgeist is not a person.

mwhitfield commented on Sam Bankman-Fried Convicted nytimes.com/live/2023/11/... · Posted by u/donohoe

zztop44 · 2 years ago

The whole Sequoia thing is so interesting. Here is an excerpt from their (now taken down) profile of SBF, highlighting the moment he convinced them to invest:

> That’s when SBF told Sequoia about the so-called super-app: “I want FTX to be a place where you can do anything you want with your next dollar. You can buy bitcoin. You can send money in whatever currency to any friend anywhere in the world. You can buy a banana. You can do anything you want with your money from inside FTX.”

> Suddenly, the chat window on Sequoia’s side of the Zoom lights up with partners freaking out.

> “I LOVE THIS FOUNDER,” typed one partner.

> “I am a 10 out of 10,” pinged another.

> “YES!!!” exclaimed a third

Like, he’s rambling about how you should buy bananas with Bitcoin. How was this compelling to people who control serious money?

It always struck me as the opposite. If someone running a crypto futures exchange said they wanted people to buy bananas and groceries on their platform that’s be a signal to pass, right?

mwhitfield · 2 years ago

You gotta remember, what's being sold in this kind of pitch is not a business model. They're looking for unicorns. What's being sold is the maximum possible size of the market you can extract value from.

I'm no VC, but I feel like if I am and you're telling me that _all_ consumer transactions of any kind are going to flow through a portal _you_ own, it doesn't get much bigger than that. The odds of success don't have to be that high, and in principle you just factor the possibility that the founder's full of crap into those odds; you don't have the time to understand every possible market and every person pitching you in the depth necessary to make that determination, right?

mwhitfield commented on Silicon Valley doesn't understand the concept of fun fastcompany.com/90965361/... · Posted by u/mariuz

nameless912 · 2 years ago

Right, because it's the streamer's JOB to be an entertainer. There's no misaligned incentives here, it's just like how people playing pickup basketball aren't "playing to earn" and can still enjoy an NBA game.

mwhitfield · 2 years ago

Not to mention the "Earning" medium is independent of the "Playing" medium. The conflicting incentives don't come into play (as much), i.e. the game can still actually be fun.

mwhitfield commented on Silicon Valley doesn't understand the concept of fun fastcompany.com/90965361/... · Posted by u/mariuz

rhizome · 2 years ago

The fish rots from the head, blame MBAs and Stanford GSB in particular. Google e.g. "Peter Thiel laughing" and click on Images to view a panoply of boundaries in executive humanity.

mwhitfield · 2 years ago

> a panoply of boundaries in executive humanity

Anyone else's brain kind of error out trying to parse this phrase?