RobertJohnson's recent activity

  1. Comment on Share your favorite live music performance recordings in ~music

  2. Comment on Where do we go from here? (Regarding AI) in ~tech

    RobertJohnson
    Link Parent
    No worries. "Bless your heart" is essentially equivalent to calling someone a dumbass where I'm from, so that caught me a bit off guard, and who wants to be referred to as a neoliberal? Haha. I...

    No worries. "Bless your heart" is essentially equivalent to calling someone a dumbass where I'm from, so that caught me a bit off guard, and who wants to be referred to as a neoliberal? Haha. I understand your point though and I didn't mean to reduce such a complex issue to a binary categorization.

    This, combined with the fact that this is such a massive cultural shift for us as a society, makes any such evaluation ultimately impossible.

    This is a great point.

    Thanks for your response.

    4 votes

  3. Comment on Where do we go from here? (Regarding AI) in ~tech

    RobertJohnson
    Link Parent
    Agree with a lot of your points and share your concern about A.I. being used as a weapon and tool of oppression. I'm not sure what I said to deserve this insult but thank you for your comment...

    Agree with a lot of your points and share your concern about A.I. being used as a weapon and tool of oppression.

    Oh bless your heart, what a neoliberal way to frame things!

    I'm not sure what I said to deserve this insult but thank you for your comment regardless.

    6 votes

  4. Comment on Where do we go from here? (Regarding AI) in ~tech

  5. Comment on Where do we go from here? (Regarding AI) in ~tech

  6. Comment on Where do we go from here? (Regarding AI) in ~tech

    RobertJohnson
    Link Parent
    I envy you. It's my job so unfortunately, I am exposed to it everyday.

    I envy you. It's my job so unfortunately, I am exposed to it everyday.

    17 votes

  7. Where do we go from here? (Regarding AI)

    ~tech Ask
    TW: AI discussion. Recently, things have been getting rather crazy with AI to the point that I think many are being forced to reckon with its potential. It has been demonstrated that this...

    TW: AI discussion.

    Recently, things have been getting rather crazy with AI to the point that I think many are being forced to reckon with its potential. It has been demonstrated that this technology is capable of solving things like millennium math problems, which has drawn response from many fields medalists. There have been very public instances of big tech losing control of their experiments. Many top researchers are expressing discomfort. Now, of course you could dismiss this all as marketing but I personally think that would be a bit of wishful thinking.

    I would like to have an open discussion about the current moment in time. Therefore, I ask you, people of tildes, where do you think we are and where do we go from here? Please feel free to pull out your crystal ball and speculate wildly. Or, please feel free to call it all bunk. I just want to hear your opinion.

    • Do you feel concerned about AI or are you still unconvinced?
    • Do you think AI will take your job? Why or why not?
    • Are you considering a career change or any other big life decisions because of the changing world?
    • How are you advising your children, regarding schooling and careers?
    • Do you have a subscription to an AI service? If you have one, how do you feel about it?
    • Do you think that this technology will be a net positive or a net negative?
    • How do you think the human race will change, if at all?
    • Do you think we will see a serious incident driven by AI in the near future?
    • Does it bother you that humans may not be the dominant intelligence at some point? Do you think this is even possible?
    • Does any of this affect your sense of identity or individuality? How do you feel about your skill set and hobbies?
    • What do you think it means to be human in a machine dominated world?
    • Overall, are you feeling optimistic or pessimistic?

    For me personally, I have shared my opinion many times before. It is a rather pessimistic one.

    I recognize that this is a heated topic, and I would like to request that even if you disagree with someone, that we treat each other with respect and kindness. Thanks.

    40 votes

  8. Comment on Deciding whether (or not) to have a child in ~life

    RobertJohnson
    Link
    IMO the world has never been a great place to have children. Having kids shouldn't be looked at from an entirely logical lens, IMO. At the very least, I don't think its right to view the current...

    IMO the world has never been a great place to have children. Having kids shouldn't be looked at from an entirely logical lens, IMO. At the very least, I don't think its right to view the current state of the world as any different from the past.

    6 votes

  9. Comment on New worlds, and what was your "Future Shock" moment? in ~life

    RobertJohnson
    (edited )
    Link
    Great article. I think I must have one of these everyday. To be specific though, I remember about 7 years ago when GPT 2 came out and my co worker was telling me how impressive it was. How the...

    Great article. I think I must have one of these everyday.

    To be specific though, I remember about 7 years ago when GPT 2 came out and my co worker was telling me how impressive it was. How the folks at openai were doing amazing work. We started to use GPT 2 for various natural language tasks and it worked so incredibly well. I was floored at the time. It felt as if a whole new field opened up to me. All of the sudden, I was having visions of specializing in natural language processing. I was quite excited to be part of the field of AI. What amazing strides we were making.

    About a year later gpt 3 came out and I was double floored. Started applying it to more problems and saw great success. Some years go by, a paper comes out called "Training language models to follow instructions with human feedback." I had read about some of the work google was doing related to this, and knew it was impressive. When I read this paper though, I was completely shook. The architecture was frankly genius and clearly had room to grow.

    Well later that year, chatGPT came out. I don't think I'll ever forget this day. I talked with my coworker about it, we tested it, and I told him I felt that the world would not be the same from that day forward. I called up my software developer friends and told them about it too. We passed in a project that we remembered struggling with in college. Of course, in seconds it produced several hundreds of lines of Java that seemed to accomplish the goal. Candidly, we didn't review it line by line but it seemed reasonable. We were all stunned. I think many of us went through spells of depression afterwards. I know that I did.

    I went back to my coworker later, asked him if he thought our jobs were at risk. He told me he thought that it would take time for this stuff to be truly integrated into society. Not long after that we started experimenting making and using agents. Next thing I knew, codex and claude code existed. I was at a different job at this point and a senior dev of mine had been given access to claude code. Described it as "insanely powerful". Now this guy wasn't impressed by anything, so I knew something was up. I got access to claude code not long after, and was left speechless. All the concerns I had for my job were amplified by 100 at this point.

    Now here we are. In a world where my grandma who didn't even go to high school, interacts with AI everyday. The field of NLP that I thought I was going to specialize in and build my career on is essentially decimated or at least, completely changed from what it was. I still have my job, I still have concerns for my job. My career is now radically different and I spend many days wondering what I'm doing. All the excitement I once had for the field has mostly been replaced for concern for the ramifications of this technology upon society. I used to feel good about what I do, but now I sort of feel that I am enabling evil tech bros to do evil things. Every day I wake up and wonder how it all got to this. I don't even know why I wonder that question because I watched it happen in real time. I know how we got here. I just can't believe it happened in my time. Everything that I dreamed about when I first started studying neural networks, my wildest fantasies, have come to pass and then some.

    What happens from here? Based on what I've seen thus far, I know one thing and that is that I know absolutely nothing. All the studying that I did, all the models that I trained, all the research that I labored over, none of it prepared me for understanding the reality. The dog has truly caught the car. Hopefully all of this leads to something positive, like the eradication of diseases and the automation of unfulfilling work, freeing up people to live their lives in a better way. That is certainly a possibility. Judging by how things are going though, I have doubts.

    11 votes

  10. Comment on What's something that you missed out on? in ~talk

    RobertJohnson
    Link Parent
    Friend, I am sure you still have a lot of potential. Just do your best. All of us walk a different path and the things we experience, for better or worse, make us who we are.

    I think I had a lot of potential and talent

    Friend, I am sure you still have a lot of potential. Just do your best.

    But it’s hard not to think if I had a more mainline childhood and adolescent experience things would be different.

    All of us walk a different path and the things we experience, for better or worse, make us who we are.

    1 vote

  11. Comment on What's something that you missed out on? in ~talk

    RobertJohnson
    Link Parent
    Similar story here. My parents pulled me out of school entirely because they thought the world was going to end any day. Decades later and the world is still here. I used to feel like I missed...

    Similar story here. My parents pulled me out of school entirely because they thought the world was going to end any day. Decades later and the world is still here.

    I used to feel like I missed something too. When I was younger, I always felt like an alien because I was raised in relative isolation from "normal people". That haunted me for a little while. Thankfully, I found a lot of good people who accepted me for my quirks and oddities.

    Hope the same has happened for you and you can break free of any religious trauma you experienced.

    5 votes

  12. Comment on Single, solo, poor, woman gets $500k pre-tax, how to make the most of it? in ~finance

    RobertJohnson
    Link Parent
    I mean, at the end of the day life isn't all about money. I am sure you can find a nice balance. Also, my condolences for your loss.

    I mean, at the end of the day life isn't all about money. I am sure you can find a nice balance.

    Also, my condolences for your loss.

  13. Comment on Single, solo, poor, woman gets $500k pre-tax, how to make the most of it? in ~finance

    RobertJohnson
    Link
    TBH, your best option is to continue living as you are and not touch it for awhile to let it compound more. That said, none of us can really help you without exact numbers regarding your spend....

    TBH, your best option is to continue living as you are and not touch it for awhile to let it compound more.

    That said, none of us can really help you without exact numbers regarding your spend. You need to plug your exact numbers into a FIRE calculator and if you are going to try living off of this/withdrawing from it, check out the 4% rule. I sort of doubt 500k is enough for you to live off of in perpetuity but you might be able to continue living how you are now with it as a supplement. Sort of a Coast Fire. If you can afford to not touch it though, I would not.

    I would also check out what the asset allocation is. If you're gonna try to live off of this, you probably need some of it in a stable source like bonds.

    This is just my opinion, check out the fire community and the bogle head community. Learn some about investing and retirement. Broad index funds and all that.

    14 votes

  14. Comment on Can a country get too rich? Norway shows the potential pitfalls of uncommon prosperity. in ~finance

    RobertJohnson
    Link
    Is this article an ad for moving to Norway?

    Is this article an ad for moving to Norway?

    26 votes

  15. Comment on Against the state – a primer on terrorism, insurgency and protest in ~humanities.history

    RobertJohnson
    (edited )
    Link
    Thank you for sharing. I found this deeply interesting. The described framework is both useful and correct, by my estimation. I must say, I find the article to be rather optimistic given our...

    Thank you for sharing. I found this deeply interesting. The described framework is both useful and correct, by my estimation.

    I must say, I find the article to be rather optimistic given our current situation. Multiple people have been murdered and the regime is still functioning, still in power, and continues to attack states like Minnesota. Meanwhile, from my perspective, much of the protest seems ineffective. In my local area, there are groups that protest every week. Yet despite me being aligned with their position, I would never attend these. Their protests fail to affect anything at all, let alone things like will. If anything, these protests burn through the will of the protestor by highlighting their apparent futility.

    It seems to me that many modern protestors are limited to holding up a sign and getting brunch afterwards. Part of the issue being that it is not obvious what actions should be taken to effectively influence the levers of power. The civil rights movement had specific goals to desegregate certain restaurants, businesses, and public transportation. What are the clear goals of the current movement? What exactly is this movement? The article seems to indicate that the current movement is anti ICE, but ICE is just one manifestation of the growing authoritarian state. Even if ICE were abolished tomorrow, there would still be databases tracking American citizens, run by private corporations. There would still be AI systems identifying protestors. Public institutions have already been eroded and continue to be dismantled.

    If we don't see progress soon, I fear the odds will only worsen for modern protestors. If technological and economic power continues to concentrate in the hands of a few, no amount of non violent protest will be able to save us.

    I am trying to figure out how to get involved in my local community, but as I stated, I am not inspired by any of my local groups. So I feel quite powerless at the moment, a feeling I suspect many share. Our only hope might be a strong rebuke of the current administration in the midterms, with results that aren't tampered with. However, that relies on the assumption that Democrats will actually do something meaningful. In my opinion, it's far more likely that the oppression of the public will continue, with a new figurehead at the helm.

    I would love to hear others thoughts, or a rebuke of my pessimism. Again, thanks for sharing this article. I am glad to see discussion on this topic.

    6 votes

  16. Comment on Any software engineers considering a career switch due to AI? in ~comp

    RobertJohnson
    Link
    This topic has been discussed some before. In fact, here is my comment on that thread. I have been thinking a lot about this recently. For context, A.I. is basically my life and has been for a...
    • Exemplary

    This topic has been discussed some before. In fact, here is my comment on that thread.

    I have been thinking a lot about this recently.

    For context, A.I. is basically my life and has been for a long time. I have spent over a decade dedicated to the subjects of machine learning, statistics, and neural networks. I watched the development of ELMo, GPT-2, and BERT in real time. I have implemented agents made in langgraph and other frameworks. To be clear, there are many who have studied the subject longer and who know more than me, but I just want to highlight how much the topic of A.I. has been a direct and personal interest of mine.

    It is very hard to decipher whats true regarding A.I. because of all the money and feelings involved. There are a lot of people whose livelihoods are dedicated to convincing folks like you and me that these tools are legit. That LLMS and agents are revolutionary, life changing, corporate buzzwords. I recently lost a lot of passion for the field due to the wave of generative A.I. in the corporate world. There are also a lot of people who refuse to use anything A.I. related and want to convince you that it is the spawn of Satan. Both could be correct.

    I'm gonna give you my straight opinion. In my experience, the recent waves of models are legit. Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Open Code are all insanely capable. The coding world has shifted immensely because of this. To not use A.I. tooling is going to limit you. If you have a morale conundrums, then you might consider using some of the open source models in combination with a tool like open code. I believe this combo should utilize your computers GPU which may help alleviate concerns related to privacy, energy consumption (to some extent) and the funding of big tech while still offering you a powerful tool.

    On the positive side, the technology is certainly interesting and has the potential to speed up a lot of coding aspects if implemented into your workflow correctly. Anecdotally, these models have helped me in my personal projects. Take that for what it's worth. They also might be used to cure diseases or make other rapid advancements in medicine and science.

    Regardless, this stuff isn't going anywhere. Ultimately, to reject A.I. entirely will likely be a very challenging thing in the same way that it is hard to avoid the internet and cellphones. At the individual level, we can do our best to try and work within the confines of our situations by utilizing open source tech and local tools or at the very least, voting with our wallet to fund the decent A.I. use cases and companies.

    Of course, you and I have the right to decide if we want to continue in the field given the direction it is heading. Whether the field will still want us in X amount of years is anyone's guess. There is certainly a reality where CS jobs become more valuable because they need to clean up poor A.I. implementations. By the same token, there is a reality where white collar work continues to be decimated and wealth continues its rapid movement to the rich. The reality of the situation is that the world is changing very quickly. All we can do is run with it, or run from it.

    Here is a paywalled article about the subject that has a lot of good discussion.

    Hope this helps. Best of luck out there!

    14 votes

  17. Comment on Any software engineers considering a career switch due to AI? in ~comp

    RobertJohnson
    Link Parent
    I have to agree with you to an extent. I've recently started incorporating agentic coding workflows into my projects, and it's been a positive experience. It has helped me tremendously with my...

    I have to agree with you to an extent. I've recently started incorporating agentic coding workflows into my projects, and it's been a positive experience. It has helped me tremendously with my personal project and significantly accelerated my development time. I'm now optimistic about finishing a longterm project that simply wasn't feasible before, given my day to day life.

    5 votes

  18. Comment on US Democrats successfully strip all anti-trans riders from final appropriations bills in ~lgbt

    RobertJohnson
    Link Parent
    I didn't even realize what group this was. Apologies for the overly political discussion. Thanks for pointing that out.

    and I don't want to talk too much politics on this particular subtildes because it's an upsetting time for many right now

    I didn't even realize what group this was. Apologies for the overly political discussion. Thanks for pointing that out.

    8 votes

  19. Comment on US Democrats successfully strip all anti-trans riders from final appropriations bills in ~lgbt

    RobertJohnson
    Link Parent
    I feel like I am taking crazy pills here. What exactly did they achieve? It seems like the conservatives slipped some super insane shit in so that democrats would accept the slightly less insane...

    I feel like I am taking crazy pills here. What exactly did they achieve? It seems like the conservatives slipped some super insane shit in so that democrats would accept the slightly less insane shit. Why are we celebrating the democrats being horrible negotiators? Why shouldn't they shut the government down entirely? If they did not pass any funding, these policies wouldn't have passed anyways.

    12 votes

  20. Comment on US Democrats successfully strip all anti-trans riders from final appropriations bills in ~lgbt

    RobertJohnson
    Link Parent
    Yeah, they helped fund ICE. Great job, Democrats.

    Yeah, they helped fund ICE. Great job, Democrats.

    6 votes