That was software engineers in 2024. We went from “no way a language model can code, it can’t reason and the context window is only 4k” to total disbelief.
We went through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Most are still somewhere in that process because humans are terrible at understanding exponentials.
Uber drivers in San Francisco are now saying the same thing: “There’s no reason Waymo should deploy this fast.” But that’s progress. It’s deeply uncomfortable, and it will keep accelerating. Every other field will have this realization sooner or later and it will be terrifying.
Terence Tao gets a tiny taste of what the average American worker went through when we offshored all their factory jobs to China and imported 100M foreigners to take whatever jobs were left, and he immediately decides that all technological progress must cease and Heaven and Earth must move so that he can keep his job.
In fact he’s not even really getting a taste, since even after AI has made him useless, he will still be rich and famous. He will probably never turn to fentanyl or drink himself to death in despair of ever providing for his family.
A good reminder that the “elites” who destroyed this country are the most cowardly and self-centered people to ever exist.
On est en train de découvrir que les grands esprits de ce monde ne sont que des boutiquiers comme les autres, mus par leur intérêt propre, à des années-lumière des objectifs nobles et désintéressés qu'on a toujours attribué à la blouse de scientifique.
Je trouve cela absolument hilarant.
A small reason to be fast is saving millions of lives, but no worries: we should slow down so Terence Tao can still feel important & valuable in math.
This sort of attitude to AI from scientists causes me to lose my respect for them. Tao is becoming one of them unfortunately…
"No reason at all"?
Curing disease, technological progress, and solving countless problems are the reasons.
Precautionary pauses guarantee the default disasters of human fragility.
Terrance Tao was doing ads for OpenAI saying how AI will be great for maths and now that AI is on its way to automate maths he is tracking back
#NotMyGoat