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Linus Torvalds reckons AI is ‘90% marketing and 10% reality’

⁨1519⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨vegeta@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/linus-torvalds-reckons-ai-is-90-percent-marketing-and-10-percent-reality

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  • brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    As a fervent AI enthusiast, I disagree.

    …I’d say it’s 97% hype and marketing.

    It’s crazy how much fud is flying around, and legitimately buries good open research. It’s also crazy what these giant corporations are saying what they’re going to. TSMC’s allegedly calling Sam Altman a podcast bro is spot on, and I’d add “manipulative vampire” to that.

    Talk to any long-time resident of localllama and similar “local” AI communities who actually dig into this stuff, and you’ll find lots of healthy skepticism, not the crypto-like AI bros like you find on linkedin, twitter and such and blot everything out.

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    • falkerie71@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      For real. Being a software engineer with basic knowledge in ML, I’m just sick of companies from every industry being so desperate to cling onto the hype train they’re willing to label anything with AI, even if it has little or nothing to do with it, just to boost their stock value. I would be so uncomfortable being an employee having to do this.

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      • Mikelius@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        For sure, it seems like 90% of ai startups are nothing more than front end wrappers for a gpt instance.

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      • Badland9085@lemm.ee [bot] ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        As someone who was working really hard trying to get my company to be able use some classical ML (with very limited amounts of data), with some knowledge on how AI works, and just generally want to do some cool math stuff at work, being asked incessantly to shove AI into any problem that our execs think are “good sells” and be pressured to think about how we can “use AI” was a terrible feel. They now think my work is insufficient and has been tightening the noose on my team.

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    • Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      TSMC are probably making more money than anyone in this goldrush by selling the shovels and picks, so if that’s their opinion, I feel people should listen…

      There’s little in the AI business plan other than hurling money at it and hoping job losses ensue.

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      • brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        TSMC doesn’t really have official opinions, they take silicon orders for money and shrug happily. Being neutral is good for business.

        Altman’s scheme is just a whole other level of crazy though.

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    • conciselyverbose@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Seriously, I’d love to be enthusiastic about it because it’s genuinely cool what you can do with math.

      But the lies that are shoved in our faces are just so fucking much and so fucking egregious that it’s pretty much impossible.

      And on top of that LLMs are hugely overshadowing actual interesting approaches for funding.

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    • WoodScientist@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I think we should indict Sam Altman on two sets of charges:

      1. A set of securities fraud charges.

      2. 8 billion counts of criminal reckless endangerment.

      He’s out on podcasts constantly saying the OpenAI is near superintelligent AGI and that there’s a good chance that they won’t be able to control it, and that human survival is at risk. How is gambling with human extinction not a massive act of planetary-scale criminal reckless endangerment?

      So either he is putting the entire planet at risk, or he is lying through his teeth about how far along OpenAI is. If he’s telling the truth, he’s endangering us all. If he’s lying, then he’s committing securities fraud in an attempt to defraud shareholders. Either way, he should be in prison. I say we indict him for both simultaneously and let the courts sort it out.

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      • FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        “When you’re rich, they let you do it.”

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    • paddirn@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I really want to like AI, I’d love to have an intelligent AI assistant or something, but I just struggle to find any uses for it outside of some really niche cases or for basic brainstorming tasks. Otherwise, it just feels like alot of work for very little benefit or results that I can’t even trust or use.

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      • brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I dunno about that.

        I keep Qwen 32B loaded on my desktop pretty much whenever its on, as an (unreliable) assistant to analyze or parse big texts, to do quick chores, to bounce ideas off of or even as a offline replacement for google translate (though I specifically use aya 32B for that)

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      • dan@upvote.au ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I receive alerts when people are outside my house, using security cameras, Blue Iris, CodeProject AI, Node-RED and Home Assistant, using a Google Coral for local AI. That’s a good use case for AI.

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    • just_an_average_joe@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      The saddest part is, this is going to cause yet another AI winter. The first few ones were caused by genuine over-enthusiasm but this one is purely fuelled by greed.

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      • sploosh@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        The AI ecosystem is flooded, we need a good bubble pop to slow down the massive waste of resources that our current info-remix-based-on-what-you-will-likely-react-positively-to shit-tier AI represents.

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    • tacosanonymous@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Agreed that’s why it’s so dangerous. These tech bros are going to do damage with their shitty products. It seems like it’s Altman’s goal, honestly.

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      • just_an_average_joe@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        He wants money/power, and he is getting it. The rest of the AI field will forever be haunted by his greed.

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    • Valmond@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Ya, it’s like machine learning but better. That’s about it IMO.

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      • brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I mean… it is machine learning.

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      • asexualchangeling@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        That’s like saying breathing is like turning oxygen into carbon dioxide but better…

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    • KSPAtlas@sopuli.xyz ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      After getting my head around the basics of the way LLMs work I thought “people rely on this for information?”, the model seems ok for tasks like summarisation though

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      • brbposting@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I don’t love it for summarization. If I read a summary, my takeaway may be inaccurate.

        Brainstorming is incredible. And revision suggestions. And drafting tedious responses, reformatting, parsing.

        In all cases, nothing gets attributed to me unless I read every word and am in a position to verify the output. And I internalize nothing directly, besides philosophy or something. Sure can be an amazing starting point especially compared to a blank page.

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      • dan@upvote.au ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        It’s good for coding if you train it on your own code base. Not for very complex code, but it’s great for common patterns and straightforward questions specific to your code base (eg “how do I load a user’s most recent order given their email address?”)

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      • brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        the model seems ok for tasks like summarisation though

        That and retrieval and the business use cases so far, but even then only if the results can be wrong somewhat frequently.

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    • Evotech@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      It’s selling the future, but nobody knows if we can actually get there

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      • brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        It’s selling an anticompetitive dystopia. It’s selling a Facebook monopoly vs selling the Fediverse.

        We dont need 7 trillion dollars of datacenters burning the Earth, we need collaborative, open source innovation.

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      • ininewcrow@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        The first part is true … no one cares about the second part of your statement.

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    • Damage@feddit.it ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      TSMC’s allegedly calling Sam Altman a ‘podcast bro’ is spot on, and I’d add “manipulative vampire” to that.

      What’s the source for that? It sounds hilarious

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      • brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        web.archive.org/…/openai-plan-electricity.html

        When Mr. Altman visited TSMC’s headquarters in Taiwan shortly after he started his fund-raising effort, he told its executives that it would take $7 trillion and many years to build 36 semiconductor plants and additional data centers to fulfill his vision, two people briefed on the conversation said. It was his first visit to one of the multibillion-dollar plants.

        TSMC’s executives found the idea so absurd that they took to calling Mr. Altman a “podcasting bro,” one of these people said. Adding just a few more chip-making plants, much less 36, was incredibly risky because of the money involved.

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    • billwashere@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Yep the current iteration is. But should we cross the threshold to full AGI… that’s either gonna be awesome or world ending. Not sure which.

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      • brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Current LLMs cannot be AGI, no matter how big they are. The architecture just isn’t right.

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      • Naz@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Based on what I’ve witnessed so far, people will play with their AGI units for a bit and then put them down to continue scrolling memes.

        Which means it is neither awesome, nor world-ending, but just boring/business as usual.

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      • Damage@feddit.it ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I know nothing about anything, but I unfoundedly believe we’re still very far away from the computing power required for that. I think we still underestimate the power of biological brains.

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      • merc@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        What makes you think there’s a threshold?

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  • NABDad@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I had a professor in college that said when an AI problem is solved, it is no longer AI.

    Computers do all sorts of things today that 30 years ago were the stuff of science fiction. Back then many of those things were considered to be in the realm of AI. Now they’re just tools we use without thinking about them.

    I’m sitting here using gesture typing on my phone to enter these words. The computer is analyzing my motions and predicting what words I want to type based on a statistical likelihood of what comes next from the group of possible words that my gesture could be. This would have been the realm of AI once, but now it’s just the keyboard app on my phone.

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    • designatedhacker@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      The approach of LLMs without some sort of symbolic reasoning layer aren’t actually able to hold a model of what their context is and their relationships. They predict the next token, but fall apart when you change the numbers in a problem or add some negation to the prompt.

      Awesome for protein research, summarization, speech recognition, speech generation, deep fakes, spam creation, RAG document summary, brainstorming, content classification, etc. I don’t even think we’ve found all the patterns they’d be great at predicting.

      There are tons of great uses, but just throwing more data, memory, compute, and power at transformers is likely to hit a wall without new models. All the AGI hype is a bit overblown. That’s not from me that’s Noam Chomsky youtu.be/axuGfh4UR9Q?t=9271.

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      • NABDad@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I’ve often thought LLMs could replace all of the C-suites and upper and middle management.

        Funny how no companies push that as a possibility.

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    • marzhall@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      There’s a name for it the phenomenon: the AI effect.

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  • NeilBru@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I make DNNs (deep neural networks), the current trend in artificial intelligence modeling, for a living.

    Much of my ancillary work consists of deflating tempering the C-suite’s hype and expectations of what “AI” solutions can solve or completely automate.

    DNN algorithms can be powerful tools and muses in scientific, engineering, creativity and innovation. They aren’t full replacements for the power of the human mind.

    I can safely say that many, if not most, of my peers in DNN programming and data science are humble in our approach to developing these systems for deployment.

    If anything, studying this field has given me an even more profound respect for the billions of years of evolution required to display the power and subtleties of intelligence as we narrowly understand it in an anthropological, neuro-scientific, and/or historical framework(s).

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  • peopleproblems@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Yup.

    I don’t know why. The people marketing it have absolutely no understanding of what they’re selling.

    Best part is that I get paid if it works as they expect it to and I get paid if I have to decommission or replace it. I’m not the one developing the AI that they’re wasting money on, they just demanded I use it.

    That’s true software engineering folks. Decoupling doesn’t just make it easier to program and reuse, it saves your job when you need to retire something later too.

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    • jagged_circle@feddit.nl ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Their goal isn’t to make AI.

      The goal of both the VCs and the startups is to make money. That’s why.

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      • Kronusdark@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        It’s not even to make money, they already do that. They need GROWTH. More money this quarter than last or the stockholders don’t get paid.

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    • Revan343@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      The people marketing it have absolutely no understanding of what they’re selling.

      Has it ever been any different? Like, I’m not in tech, I build signs for a living, and the people selling our signs have no idea what they’re selling.

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    • Ultraviolet@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      The worrying part is the implications of what they’re claiming to sell. They’re selling an imagined future in which there exists a class of sapient beings with no legal rights that corporations can freely enslave. How far that is from reality doesn’t matter, it’s absolutely horrifying that this is something the ruling class wants.

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  • narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Sounds about right. There are some valid and good use cases for “AI”, but the majority is just buzzword marketing.

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    • billwashere@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      I have lots of uses for Attack Insects….

      Image

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      • umbrella@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        im down for arm improvements

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  • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    That’s about right. I’ve been using LLMs to automate a lot of cruft work from my dev job daily, it’s like having a knowledgeable intern who sometimes impresses you with their knowledge but need a lot of guidance.

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    • eldavi@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      watch out; i learned the hard way in an interview that i do this so much that i can no longer create terraform & ansible playbooks from scratch.

      even a basic api call from scratch was difficult to remember and i’m sure i looked like a hack to them because of it.

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      • orgrinrt@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        In addition, there have been these studies released (not so sure how well established, so take this with a grain of salt) lately, indicating a correlation with increased perceived efficiency/productivity, but also a strongly linked decrease in actual efficiency/productivity, when using LLMs for dev work.

        After some initial excitement, I’ve dialed back using them to zero, and my contributions have been on the increase. I think it just feels good to spitball, which translates to heightened sense of excitement while working. But it’s really just much faster and convenient to do the boring stuff with snippets and templates etc, if not as exciting. We’ve been doing pair programming lately with humans, and while that’s slower and less efficient too, seems to contribute towards rise in quality and less problems in code review later, while also providing the spitballing side. In a much better format, I think, too, though I guess that’s subjective.

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      • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I mean, interviews have always been hell for me (often with multiple rounds of leetcode) so there’s nothing new there for me lol

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  • TheImpressiveX@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    What happened to Linus? He looks so old now…

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    • Bassman1805@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      He got old.

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      • Telorand@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Not especially old, though; he looks like a 54yo dev. Reminds me of my uncles when they were 54yo devs.

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      • TheImpressiveX@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I guess having 3 kids will do that to you.

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      • rickyrigatoni@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        I told him not to go to that beach.

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      • frezik@midwest.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        [citation needed]

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      • IsThisAnAI@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        That’s an excessive amount of aging is what folks are seeing. Not that he’s just old.

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    • will_a113@lemmy.ml ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      he aged

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      • Hubi@feddit.org ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

        Source?

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    • henfredemars@infosec.pub ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      What happened to he is happening now to you.

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    • NABDad@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      If you find out what happened, let me know, because I think it’s happening to me too.

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    • schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      People age. You don’t look the same as in 2010 either, I know that without having any idea what you look like.

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    • SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      He’s 54 years old

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    • Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Oxidative stress is a bitch

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    • breakfastmtn@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      He has a real Michael McKean vibe

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    • EleventhHour@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Time

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    • pfannkuchen_gesicht@lemmy.one ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      It’s like he aged 10 years in the past 2 years… damn

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    • qaz@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

      Wow, yeah that’s a big difference

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  • Rolder@reddthat.com ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    AI as we know it does have its uses, but I would definitely agree that 90% of it is just marketing hype

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  • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I think when the hype dies down in a few years, we’ll settle into a couple of useful applications for ML/AI, and a lot will be just thrown out.

    I have no idea what will be kept and what will be tossed but I’m betting there will be more tossed than kept.

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  • HawlSera@lemm.ee ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    The only time I’ve seen AI work well are for things like game development, mainly the upscaling of textures and filling in missing frames of older games so they can run at higher frames without being choppy

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  • cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    he isn’t wrong

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  • atk007@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I am thinking of deploying a RAG system to ingest all of Linus’s emails, commit messages and pull requests , and we will have a Linus chatbot.

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  • zxqwas@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Like with any new technology. Remember the blockchain hype a few years back? Give it a few years and we will have a handful of areas where it makes sense and the rest of the hype will die off.

    Everyone sane probably realizes this. No one knows for sure exactly where it will succeed so a lot of money and time is being spent on a 10% chance for a huge payout in case they guessed right.

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  • Chessmasterrex@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I play around with the paid version of chatgpt and I still don’t have any practical use for it. it’s just a toy at this point.

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  • Zip2@feddit.uk ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Oh please. Wait until they release 128bit AI quantum blockchain.

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  • pHr34kY@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I’m waiting for the part that it gets used for things that are not lazy, manipulative and dishonest. Until then, I’m sitting it out like Linus.

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  • rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Decided to say something popular after his snafu, I see.

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  • Siegfried@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    No AI is a very real thing… just not LLMs, those are pure marketing

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  • Buttflapper@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Copilot by Microsoft is completely and utterly shit but they’re already putting it into new PCs. Why?

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  • explodicle@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Just chiming in as another guy who works in AI who agrees with this assessment.

    But it’s a little bit worrisome that we all seem to think we’re in the 10%.

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  • FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Linus is known for his generosity.

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  • houstoneulers@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    100% hyped by the people who’ve watched a few youtube videos and now claim they’re an expert

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  • kitnaht@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Honestly, he’s wrong though.

    I know tons of full stack developers who use AI to GREATLY speed up their workflow. I’ve used AI image generators to put something I wanted into the concept stage before I paid an artist to do the work with the revisions I wanted that I couldn’t get AI to produce properly.

    And first and foremost, they’re a great use in surfacing information that is discussed and available, but might be buried with no SEO behind it to surface it. They are terrible at deducing things themselves, because they can’t ‘think’, or coming up with solutions that others haven’t already - but so long as people are aware of those limitations, then they’re a pretty good tool to have.

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  • Doug7070@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Mr. Torvalds is truly a generous man, giving the current AI market an analysis of 10% usefulness is probably a decimal or two more than will end up panning out once the hype bubble pops.

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  • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    And then people will complain about that saying it’s almost all hype and no substance.

    Then that one tech bro will keep insisting that lemmy is being unfair to AI and there are so many good use cases.

    No one is denying the 10% use cases, we just don’t think it’s special or needs extra attention since those use cases already had other possible algorithmic solutions.

    Tech bros need to realize, even if there are some use cases for AI, there has not been any revolution, stop trying to make it happen and enjoy your new slightly better tool in silence.

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  • BenchpressMuyDebil@szmer.info ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Nice replacement topic after the maintainer drama last week

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  • Toneswirly@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    I agree with Mr. Torvalds

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  • FartsWithAnAccent@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Seems generous

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  • jagged_circle@feddit.nl ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    That’s probably true about all new technology that VCs throw billions at.

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  • DrSleepless@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

    Just like Furbys

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