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Thought this comment was pretty solid.
hartebeest
My instinctive reaction is to wonder how many different iterations of the monorail episode of the Simpsons the world has to live through (crypto, metaverse, augmented reality, Mars colonies, NFTs, blockchain, flying taxis, AI etc etc) before we stop falling for it.
But then, the point is that a lot of the people supposedly falling for it each time are in fact in on it. The point isn't to deliver on the grandiose promises but to use these to continually pump up asset price bubbles and then get out before the bottom drops out.
I will say, though, that the idiotic cod philosophy, sociology, and political economy of the tech bros (and the credulity with which this is met in most circles) is a great illustration of what happens when societies worship STEM to the extent that there's hardly anyone in power with the skills and knowledge provided by social sciences and humanities education any more.
Amyway, $7tn is roughly equivalent to the combined GDP of Africa and South America. You're not kidding that there's.better uses for that amount of money than spending it on LLMs.
Having worked for a lot of my life with entrepreneurs I shouldn't be surprise by how much they're all winging it, but it still does. There are so many downsides to modern public companies - but you also see why the rules and culture try to turn them into these massive beasts. Silicon Valley though seems to love staying true to their roots of selling the sizzle and always over-promising and under-delivering.
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what happens when societies worship STEM to the extent that there's hardly anyone in power with the skills and knowledge provided by social sciences and humanities education any more. No one is able to call bullshit when presented with "science".
I'd say if anything the opposite is true (in the UK at least and it doesn't seem much different in the US). Lots of people in charge with no STEM background, our whole cabinet has one person.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/aug/03/open-ai-sam-altman-chatgpt-gary-marcus-taming-silicon-valley