Larry GarfieldI may regret this at some point, but I felt the need to put down in writing how I feel about this moment in the tech industry.
It is not kind. You may well be insulted by it. If you are... then you really should question yourself.
William Whitlow@Crell Thank you for quantifying the various aspects that it takes to keep AI running. It’s one of those details that is becoming increasingly apparent, but difficult to grasp the scope.
Would you care to elaborate on the “This is how societies die.” comment? Is that primarily in the sense of social apathy? In the lack of respect for others/foresight over long term consequences? The disruptive tactics of numerous tech companies that have eliminated many norms? Or something else?
@wwhitlow All of the above.
Major empires aren't destroyed from without, but by their own greed, infighting, and incompetence.
In this case, the "it is what it is" attitude is unworthy of someone in a democracy. That's how the billionaires and pedo-fascists were able to take over.
Then add short-sightedness about global warming for the last 50 years, and AI is just the latest part of it. That will kill us all. "It is what it is."
Derick Rethans@Crell @wwhitlow I think the societal aspect goes further than that. Because we are ending up not teaching anything person to person any more.
Take StackOverflow. Although there were often simple questions (and answers) with little thought, there was also a large amount of great questions, with equally great answers — so detailed that you learned the actual basics. This is now gone due to AI.
LLMs have only learned old content from there, anything newly created projects won't even be taught.
ekes@derickr @Crell @wwhitlow Writing and maintaining code - not one off projects for x - but all the rest that they are built on - is a social process in and of itself. What happens when the discussion and the collective learning and memory about it is lost?
Feels minor in relation to many of the global and localized impacts mentioned in the post, but one that I've not seen thought through elsewhere.
SeanBurlington 🌈 🕊️@derickr @Crell @wwhitlow I hear a lot of people stating that AI will get better with time - I see no evidence for this
It has run out of data to consume - data that it needs in order to improve
It has poisoned the well of knowledge
and since it is currently making massive financial losses - we cannot evaluate future pricing
Dagnabbit, Pascaline! 💥And since it is adding to the well of knowledge itself, using old knowledge, this additional information is a rehash of what is already there. It's like the 'websites' written by Ai, after which Ai uses them to add to its 'knowledge'. The worst is that these get more traction and search results. But they feel like voids echoing one another, not adding anything new, except if they find new human input to milk and bleed.
Wilfried Klaebe"AI" is pissing into the well of knowledge we all are trying to drink from.
Dan Schnaui was thinking about this, and I'm not sure AI has consumed all the data. It's consumed all the *public* data. But with companies wiring up their private codebases to LLMs, there's lots and lots more data to feed from.
El Duvelle
toni 
@elduvelle @wwhitlow @Crell @derickr Not yet, but its traffic is down to its first year of existence. With less people on there, good questions and answers won’t be generated anymore.
@toni @wwhitlow @Crell @derickr
Or maybe only the most useful or complex questions will be asked & answered there? Or, it could become a "AI-free" space where people only interact with people? It might mean a reduction in users but it would still be extremely valuable to the community. I guess it depends how the people in charge decide to orient it. But I don't think it will ever die, it's too valuable.
@elduvelle @toni @wwhitlow @Crell I do support for my Xdebug tool on there, and instead of 2-3 per day, it's now less than one a month: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/xdebug — people are just not using it any more.
@derickr @elduvelle @toni @Crell
What can be said for StackOverflow, it is certain that the landscape of knowledge is changing. Looking to Wikipedia is probably the best approach for the AI free writing policy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing
This new article from Anthropic might be of interest. It test skill acquisition of Junior Devs with and without AI. The sample size is somewhat small, but may offer some insight. https://www.anthropic.com/research/AI-assistance-coding-skills
Ken Butler
Greg Harvey 🌍@derickr @Crell @wwhitlow Coincidentally, I posted Larry's original blog post on LinkedIn as well and the silence is palpable. In case you were in any doubt it's techbro central over there. 😂 I'm sure there are people who share the sentiment, but they're not going to stick their head above the parapet, clearly...
James Widman@greg_harvey @derickr @Crell @wwhitlow
> And what happens when nothing's feeding AI except other AI??
The Burger²
Dominik@derickr @Crell @wwhitlow StackOverflow is gone because AI doesn't tell you that this question is a duplicate of a question solved 15 years ago where literally nothing applies because 15 years is like 2 centuries in IT time.
Love or hate AI, but StackOverflow was just waiting for something to replace it because of how bad it became.
mathew
Not a Spring Onion
Reddog