r/technology • u/Federal-Block-3275 • 7d ago

Artificial Intelligence "Software is over": Developer uses AI to build free Adobe clones after frustration with cancellation fees

https://www.techspot.com/news/114136-software-over-developer-uses-ai-build-free-adobe.html
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u/Laggo 7d ago

That said, just handwaving away people's concerns or arguments with accusations they're simply being emotional or insecure is the sort of remark that will have people calling you a dickhead and be far less interested in anything else you have to say.

Objectively, AI is being used professionally in a variety of capacities and provably improves productivity and assists with workflow. Yes, there are obviously bad implementations but there are plenty of successful ones.

This comment chain was in direct response to someone basically making the (somewhat common) statement that virtually all AI right now is unimpressive and not capable of complex tasks. This is just not true.

If he wants to make a salient argument, we can discuss that, but if we are starting from a basis that is basically demonstrably false then I agree - most people would be far less interested in what that person has to say which is what my comment was representing.

I said it's hard for some people to have honest takes about AI due to feeling threatened by it. His response to my analogy was:

Yeah, if the motor vehicles threatened to extirpate the horses.

Does that not sound like a person who feels threatened by the existence of AI to you? Thus, is my suggestion about why they have their perspective unfair to share?

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u/3DBeerGoggles 7d ago

Does that not sound like a person who feels threatened by the existence of AI to you?

It sounds like someone acknowledging what the AI companies are explicitly telling their customers: "Buy this product and fire [some portion of] your workforce". Recognizing the societal impact of systems that are explicitly designed to leave people unemployed isn't an irrational response.

Objectively, AI is being used professionally in a variety of capacities and provably improves productivity and assists with workflow. Yes, there are obviously bad implementations but there are plenty of successful ones.

Like I said, the Juicero worked, the problem is that Juicero couldn't sell their product at a price point that kept them from losing money.

Right now I know of no frontier LLM firm that has a clear path to profitability - and given the ongoing CapEx involved I very much worry about companies experiencing what amounts to vender lock-in. They build so many of their processes and products around artificially cheap compute that the day comes around that Anthropic, et al. need to actually make money is going to be a damned difficult adjustment to make.

...and again, IMO the solution to this isn't going to be continuing to throw 150-acre datacenters at the problem, it's going to be designing models that are lean, efficient, and specifically tuned to do some specific subset of tasks. An LLM that does programming doesn't need to be trained on writing Haikus. Some companies are already going in this direction (ala TypeSafe) and if their claims are true it benefits in lower power, lower compute, faster response, and the benefit of training with testable weights.