I actually never liked this field, I’m just into coding, but somehow I ended up here. I know people hate on AI, and justifiably so. Just wanted to clear some things out for those interested in whats, hows and whys of it, as best as I can.
This would have been funnier if all your replies were unrelated responses from chatgbt.
"Why did you start in the field?
Wow, what a great question, let me find that recipe for pickle pancakes."
I started in the field cuz it’s easier to gather veggies there… Like, pickles, right? Aight, bad joke. You actually reminded me that I don’t even remember why I started doing AI. I do remember tho, that when the uni offered some extra lessons on AI I was like “why would I do that, I hate this AI trend, gimme cybersecurity”
That’s a good dad joke, don’t apologise. Although, it does bring up questions about your understanding of the pickleling process.
Thanks for answering the question inside my joke, as much as my original comment was shitposting, you seem to be actually answering people.
It seems you’re not an ai advocate, why not pivot into a different direction in the same/similar field?
Nope, I definitely don’t want to pressure any one to use AI. I genuinely don’t understand the point of it.
As for a possible pivot. As the saying goes “if it works, don’t break it”. So I work. The job itself is definitely not the worst, actually the best in terms of conditions and benefits I’ve ever had. I actually enjoy the process of coding itself, doesn’t really matter whether I do backend or machine learning or devops. I have background in data science, and AI is basically a glorified data science, so I guess it kinda fits my initial skill set
Nope, it’s actually quite hard to ignore the topic of AI. As it happens, I work on it. So why not share the insider’s perspective, so to speak? Haha
First off, thank you for taking your time. Secondly, I don’t hate you.
To my initial question: the AI bubble bursting will most certainly plunge the US into major turmoil as inflated AI stocks have been the only thing that kept domestic growth above going negative. Are you worried that American expansionism will, as a method of securing resources to stabilize the economy and therefore also the state, become drastically more aggressive?
Second question: What is your take on Joscha Bach who’s recently been discovered to have had ties to J. Epstein? I’ve known people who have worked with him and revered him like a god, though personally I have always been critical about what he says as I think that he makes a lot of statements (about things) that can’t be falsified, for example the nature of consciousness and specifically people simulating being conscious (which explains nothing as the experience of consciousness still exists as a concrete experience, etc.).
Forgive this question being too big potentially.
- Eh, not that I’m worried or not worried, kinda indifferent by now. A lot of stuff happened in the last couple of years, I think I won’t be surprised by any kind of outcome.
- I don’t even know who the guy is, haha. Tho I did my fair share of research into cognitive studies, I’m way better at applicational side of things rather than theoretical. And as far as I understand, the guy is some sort of theoretical researcher?
Eh, not that I’m worried or not worried, kinda indifferent by now. A lot of stuff happened in the last couple of years, I think won’t be surprised by any kind of outcome.
I get it man. Everything past COVID has felt like a fever dream.
the guy is some sort of theoretical researcher?
Let’s say he is someone who has musings on the world. I would be careful with the term “researcher” haha. Reflects well on you however that you don’t know him.
Could you end AI so I can get some RAM and an SSD without having to take out a second mortgage?
I’d fucking love to :( Had to postpone expanding my home lab cuz of the rising prices
It’s hard to take a nuanced position on AI due to the justifiable anger about it and how it’s being forced, oversold, and abused. But there is legitimate use and technology there. And it’s not just about medical usage, it’s got genuine uses and is genuinely interesting. It’s not “intelligence”. It’s barely even “knowledge” but it’s really quite powerful and useful if you understand what it actually is and how to use it effectively.
I describe it as a bunch of statistical models, collected in various similar but slightly different ways, representing the vast majority of human knowledge ever posted on the internet that is capable of simulating all that knowledge into a surprisingly convincing reproduction of the original information in a wide variety of ways and leveraging a lot of very interesting connections between all that data. Is it perfect? No. Is it accurate? Not in a way that can be relied on. Can it make decisions? No. Is it your friend? No. Is it thinking? No. It’s just pretending, it’s all a simulation, it’s all fake. But the underlying statistical model itself is really interesting and does contain real, valid, useful information.
Having a static, permanent statistical model of the entire internet as it exists at certain points in time, that fits on my phone is wild and if you can’t imagine ways that could potentially be useful not just right now but also in the future you’re not very imaginative.
It’s useful in the same way that demographic data is useful. Demographic data doesn’t let you look into your neighbor’s house and tell you exactly how much money they make, but it can certainly make an educated guess. It might be close, or it might be wildly wrong. That inaccuracy doesn’t make it useless, it’s just useful in a different way because it does contain important, aggregated data that is useful for other things. Just because some people, many people use it wrong doesn’t make it not useful.
The three kinds of lies are: lies, damned lies and statistics. But statistics are still important. You can use them to make wrong decisions and support misleading concepts very easily, but if you’re careful with them and understand their limitations, they can also be very, very powerful. Sometimes too powerful.
What is your opinion on the scaling problem and what do you see are the prospects of this field in general and your current career path specific? How is the general dislike of AI perceived by your peers and management?
Most likely the whole AI stuff will reach some critical mass, when all the promises of the big corpos can’t be fulfilled, the bubble will burst. But I think after some initial chaos the field will stabilize. AI is and will be a part of our lifes for better or for worse, it just won’t be this overhyped.
As for dislike, no one really cares actually, as weird as it is. The management wants AI integration, we give them the best we can do. For my peers a job is a job.
How many "r"s are there in the word “strawberry”?
Uhh… three
Can you be specific about what you mean by “AI engineer”?
For example: Do you engineer the frameworks that run large language models? Train the models that someone else engineered? Use the models to assist in engineering work? Let the models do their own engineering?
I actually make my own models for one job and integrate other models into our services for the other job. We also train some opensource models on our data sometimes.
How do you consider your job security? Are you planning to stay in the field for a while?
Those I know working on AI have either been fired already (Google) or are looking for openings. Hopefully it’s looking better for you. :)
I don’t work for a big tech company, so I’m kinda not thaaaat woried. But definitely worried a bit.
I also work on backend stuff in general, so if worst comes to worst I guess I’ll just be transfered to another department
What kind of AI?
When integrating: LLMs and speech recognition models (like whisper)
When developing: some deeplearning stuff, what it is exactly depends on the use case. Tho, again, mostly related to text and audio data
Got any still-working used video cards you want to sell?
The only time I’ve broken a GPU was when I’ve tried to launch first Kingdom Come: Deliverance on an old gtx720. It literally caught flame, albeit small. I train all my models either on dedicated test servers or, if the model is small enough, on my rtx4060 that I also use for gaming. All’s been good for a couple of years
1070 here. Trade? I’ll throw in a half eaten jar of spicy pickled beans! Steve and Matt’s! Matt and Steve’s? I forget. But yummy! I am in a much more general IT field. Any good pointers for convincing my boss that I need a 5070 for my, err, ‘work from home’ PC?
Haha, thanks, I’ll pass. Too much trauma from early days of training on 1060.
Funnily enough, even tho we didn’t ask the boss to buy us all 5070, we did ask him to set us up with a new GPU for the production server. And yep, we’ve got one, and took the old GPU for our testing server :)
