Clojurians Log v2
ai-skeptics 2026-10-07
So this happened today: https://openai.com/index/sharing-ai-progress-in-mathematics/ Also, a link to the HN discussion, which, for once, includes some fascinating anecdotes from people who have allegedly worked hard on some of the (claimed to be) solved problems. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49984923
Clearly there is a counter-culture of sorts brewing.
what’s the complicity in violence reference?
Not sure. I think it may be related to the university owning shares in an Israeli company through an investment fund, so the students or whoever put this up make the claim that the university is complicit in the Gaza genocide (or something to that effect).
Anthropic, OpenAI, etc all have contracts with the US Department of Defense
does slack?
I'm not sure if you're trying to ask a "gotcha" question or not, but I am providing examples of why orgs like this would make such a claim
fair enough
Anyway... it's definitely an interesting period to work at a university. The exam system is being totally overhauled so that oral exams become the norm for most things. But the university is also investing in a local on-campus AI solution, which had some of the more radical student groups up in arms. I think the university is managing this alright all things considered.
Anti-AI sentiment is strongest in younger generations is what the data seems to say. Which is normal, they are having one of the worst economies for finding work and starting a career, and also all suffer from brainrot and other such things, so probably don't love increased AI brainrot content (the latter is just a guess though).
Yup, agree with that assessment.
It seems the Dutch are among the most AI skeptic (when it comes to job replacement) 🇳🇱
I don't think we (🇳🇱 ) know something the rest doesn't.
The most secure spot to work at may be US border control. It seems they were still living in the 80s (in Philly at least)
I mean there are some many jobs in the Netherlands that could be cancelled without any AI and people are not affraid. Maybe ignorance is bliss or they are just very lucky so far
I'm probably just an uneducated rube, but I associate many of those countries that are least skeptic with jobs that are inherently more physical (apart from call center and similar work, which might be more prevalent than I think), so it seems strange that those ones think replacement is coming in under 5 years 👀
Is the Netherlands the one with all the pot? They may be right though. I am finding the final stages of development agonizingly slow, tho I am keeping up with housework six minutes at a time waitng on AI to make trivial changes. I'll drag this over the finish line, but my next app will be AI for infrastructure and FLutter/MX for the rest. To hell with housework.
The Dutch government doesn't approve of pot but they condone it. This has fostered an interesting production and consumption pattern over the years.
I recently learned a bit about the history of the Netherlands and the scale of the industrial engineering efforts to keep ocean water out. I'm not surprised. It seems unlikely that a nation that built its country in the ocean would be fazed by a next-token predictor lol. Technically, "only" 17% of the territory is reclaimed ocean (!!), but the scale of the flood-prevention systems that keep the rest of the land dry is truly staggering. AI ain't building something like that anytime soon.
@asier as a Dutchie I would point out that such a sweeping statement could very well be related to something we call "beroepsdeformatie" in Dutch. Not sure how it translates, maybe to "professional deformation". We are in the tech industry here which colours our views heavily. A bus driver, a carpenter, or a owner of a restaurant will have a different view on this entirely. This has nothing to do with living in a fairy tail. Just a very different perspective.
I have no idea, I do see a lot of people worried around me. But these worries seem directed to more direct things like the ease with which countries start wars , that prices are going up, and the cost of living becomes a problem. I think when the dust settles down people in white collar jobs will see AI as a threat.
@U0BHKM127SQ What do you think people can do about it? Start using AI won't help them prevent their job from being automated
I believe AI will be especially used as an excuse to tell people why they lost there job. I think the real reason will be economic and it already happening for a while, but then there is someone to blame and people might get really angry
When I was at US security at Philly airport, it dawned on me that we should not overestimate the role of software. Software may be easier to write, but no way those people will start working harder and it all looked so 80ies to me. They had physical whiteboards with notes and it all seemed very inefficient.
AI-first does seem like it's gonna be a weakness long-term, especially if it's playing out as AI-only for most activities. Using AI a ton at work, I certainly miss the flow states and the feeling of coding manually, but I also love being interruptible by coworkers without losing my pace. I think there is a certain amount of toil in the code (manually) that keeps us from engaging with our coworkers and their ideas fully. But it also takes a huge amount of discipline to keep thinking and thinking deeply when using AI
When I had my first experiences with LLMS earlier this year, I started to think a lot of what jobs would be replaced. I figured the work that my accountant did could be easily replaced. Still I'm paying him since he manages something that doesn't cost me any time and I like talking to a human.
like, asking a human to interact with a bot to get some tedious job done can save you time compared to doing it yourself
I think I did see some productions like http://vmpal.com compete with Parallels and I think they LLM-ed it... but if they will out-compete: it takes years to build a customer base I guess
Reputation has always been harder to build than software 🙃