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Vote on which of Hacker News' challenges for AI have been met

202 points · 271 comments · stabbles

  1. ben_w · · focus · HN ↗
    Very pleased one of my predictions was totally wrong: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23252711">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23252711

    Sure, sure, what LLMs make still isn&#x27;t &quot;efficient bug-free code&quot;: my prediction is falsified because while LLMs can write and train new models with machine learning, ML is fundamentally not advanced enough to throw arbitraty new tasks at like this.

    1. FabCH · · focus · HN ↗
      Somewhat appropriate the site the OP links to is called „goalposts“ because as far as I can see, people keep shifting theirs.

      In your case, the comment you link to says „business tasks“ and you expanded it now to „arbitrary new tasks“. Those are not the same. An LLM today sure can do many many many business-speak conversion tasks.

      1. ben_w · · focus · HN ↗
        I&#x27;m not always precise with my language, but business tasks can be pretty broad, I think &quot;arbitrary new tasks&quot; is not an unreasonable rephrasing on my part?

        Consider I was replying to this:

        &gt; So are we all going to be out of a job?

        While your boss now has the capacity to ask Claude to train a new AI model to auto-balance a tower defence game&#x27;s mob, cost, and tower parameters (I know because I&#x27;ve done it), this only matters if you and your boss are working in a video games company.

        If you and your boss are actually florists, you care if your boss can get Claude to automate a rose pruning, dead-heading, and fertilising robot.

        People are trying, but I don&#x27;t think they&#x27;d be happy with 91.5% success rate: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.emerald.com&#x2F;ir&#x2F;article-abstract&#x2F;doi&#x2F;10.1108&#x2F;IR-04-2026-0198&#x2F;1398287&#x2F;Design-and-experimental-evaluation-of-an?redirectedFrom=fulltext" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.emerald.com&#x2F;ir&#x2F;article-abstract&#x2F;doi&#x2F;10.1108&#x2F;IR-0...

        1. FabCH · · focus · HN ↗
          Don&#x27;t get me wrong, we are all guilty of this.

          It&#x27;s just amazing how quickly we accept that models are good at something.

          My florist boss can&#x27;t get Claude to automate rose pruning. But she sure as hell doesn&#x27;t need to wait until Jacques is back in the shop to respond to that French supplier anymore. There is a lot of &quot;business tasks&quot; that are just paper being shuffled around no matter if you are a florist, baker, workshop owner, custom CNC shop, student offering lessons in extra time or whatever. And LLMs are already scary good at those.

          1. ben_w · · focus · HN ↗
            &gt; There is a lot of &quot;business tasks&quot; that are just paper being shuffled around no matter if you are a florist, baker, workshop owner, custom CNC shop, student offering lessons in extra time or whatever. And LLMs are already scary good at those.

            Yes indeed, but I was responding to &quot;So are we all going to be out of a job?&quot;, not &quot;Will AI radically change the jobs market?&quot;

            We got the thing I thought would make everyone unemployed (AI which can make AI), but it turned out the AI good enough to make AI, happened before we figured out the general problem of few-shot learning that would mean the AI made by AI puts us all out of jobs.

        2. [deleted] · · focus · HN ↗

          [deleted]

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