As Rocks May Think

> If we consider life to be a sort of open-ended MMO, the game server has just received a major update. All players take note: consider playing differently.

Some of the ugliest prose I've read in a while. Thanks for that.

	▲	zozbot234 2 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Nah, the ugliest prose is clanker prose and this definitely isn't. This stuff comes 100% from an actual carbon-based lifeform.

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alsetmusic 27 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This person doesn't understand how LLMs work.

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esafak 38 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This looks like a survey. Is there a thesis; any claim?

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lawrenceyan an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Biggest update I see is that he thinks AI 2027 is actually going to happen.

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TacticalCoder 18 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> As Rocks May Think

I thought they meant the plural of ASRock as in "ASRocks May think" and thought this was about ASRock motherboards getting a BIOS/UEFI with an integrated LLM or something.

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munificent an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> We are entering a golden age in which all computer science problems seem to be tractable, insomuch as we can get very useful approximations of any computable function.

Alternatively, we are entering a dark age where the billionaires who control most of the world's capital will no longer need to suffer the indignity of paying wages to humans in order to generate more revenue from information products.

> the real kicker is that we now have general-purpose thinking machines that can use computers and tackle just about any short digital problem.

We already have those thinking machines. They're called people. Why haven't people solved many of the world's problems already? Largely because the people who can afford to pay them to do so have chosen not to.

I don't see any evidence that the selfishness, avarice, and short-term thinking of the elites will be improved by them being able to replace their employees with a bot army.

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Centigonal 30 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I don't understand why you're being downvoted. This is a topic worth discussing.

Like every previous invention that improves productivity (cf. copiers, steam power, the wheel), this wave of AI is making certain forms of labor redundant, creating or further enriching a class of industrialists, and enabling individuals to become even more productive.

This could create a golden age, or a dark age -- most likely, it will create both. The industrial revolution created Dickensian London, the Luddite rebellion & ensuing massacres, and Blake's "dark satanic mills," but it also gave me my wardrobe of cool $30 band T-shirts and my beloved Amtrak train service.

Now is the time to talk about how we predict incentive structures will cause this technology to be used, and what levers we have at our disposal to tilt it toward "golden age."

	▲	beeflet a few seconds ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Unlike every previous invention that improves productivity, It is making every form of labor redundant.
	▲	keybored 12 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		People fought back. Who is fighting back now? Capitalists have openly gloated in public about wanting to replace at least one profession. That was months or years ago. What are people doing in response? Discussing incentive structures? SC coders paid hundreds of thousands a year are just letting this happen to them. “Nothing to be done about another 15K round of layoffs, onlookers say”

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measurablefunc 38 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

What you fail to understand Bob is that as long as we let the billionaires do what they want then we all automatically win. That's just how the system is designed to work, we can't lose as long as Musk & his buddies are at the helm.

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munificent 22 minutes ago | parent [-]

Gazing up at them adoringly, mouth open, waiting for it all to trickle down on my face.

	▲	measurablefunc 14 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		It's the only thing us plebeians can hope for. When all is said & done the people at the top are the only ones that can truly create wealth w/ their innovative genius. The rest of us should just shut up & follow their orders for our own good.

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measurablefunc an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Yes, yes, we are all going to be living in an automated & luxurious communist utopia. Here are some material facts to ground the exuberance: 1) Lifecycel of typical GPU in a data center is 1-3 years, 2) Buildout is already limited by production capacity & will hit production walls by 2027-2028 when turnover matches & exceeds production capacity, 3) TSMCs projected capacity is ~130k wafers/month & it is not keeping up w/ demand which is more than doubling, 4) Power consumption for these "geniuses" & "thinking rocks" in data centers requires lots of power & the capacity was saturated in 2025, 5) So along w/ production capacity limitations power production is now another gating factor.

Anyway, like data centers in space there are lots of material limitations that all of these exuberant "ZOMG rocks can think now" essays all sweep under the rug to drive a very biased narrative about what is actually happening & the fact that all those binary bits are produced by real materials that have lifecycles & production limits not visible in the digital artifacts.

	▲	zozbot234 5 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		GPU lifecycle is 1-3 years because GPUs are becoming obsolete for cutting-edge work (especially re: power use) in that timeframe. This is good news if you'd like to see expanded use of AI. Production walls at fabs will matter little since future silicon dies will be capable of far more per unit area than current ones, so there will be plenty of incentive to upgrade.