6 ms·

Tool use typically follows this curve. If you want to preserve a skill you have to actually preserve it. This isn't inherently bad by itself, tools enable us to

Tool use typically follows this curve. If you want to preserve a skill you have to actually preserve it. This isn't inherently bad by itself, tools enable us to do much more than we can without them and its a point of contention whether or not any skill is inherently important when a tool comes along that does it for us.

contingencies 3mo ago
Sure. But if you don't own the tool and it is held by a cabal of centralist (even political state-adjacent) parties, you're having a bad day when computer says no.
- ianbutler 3mo ago
  We love our open source models. GLM 5.2 came out recently and the timeline for closing the gap to closed source shrank to something like 2 weeks by popular measurements. Edit: Mis remembered the timeline I saw not 2 weeks, 3 months, but still I think my point stands.
  - aix1 3mo ago
    Just to make sure I understand your argument. Are you saying that today's open source models are on par with frontier closed models of two weeks ago? By what criteria?
    - ianbutler 3mo ago
      Sorry definitely mis-remembered on my part, its about 3 months https://x.com/yaroslavvb/status/2067367657272422584 https://x.com/yaroslavvb/status/2067367657272422584 https://x.com/voratiq/status/2067667800643268928 https://x.com/voratiq/status/2067667800643268928 https://arena.ai/leaderboard/agent https://arena.ai/leaderboard/agent
    - nostrademons 3mo ago
      HN thread from 2 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48567759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48567759 Commenters there were saying GLM 5.2 was roughly equivalent to Opus 4.8 in coding prowess, based on personal experience of the people commenting. Opus 4.8 came out on May 28 this year (so more like 3 weeks ago), GLM 5.2 came out 2 days ago.
      - Capricorn2481 3mo ago
        I haven't tried this specific model, but you can understand that a lot of HN testimonials are bound to swing extremely pro open source. I certainly hope they are as good. But I have personally tried a lot of models that are supposedly as good as the frontier ones and have found them lacking. After a while, you do start to start to skip a couple rounds of open source models until there's a notable release. That, and the resources needed to run them are increasingly bought up by the owners of frontier models
- mediaman 3mo ago
  The tools aren't owned by a cabal of state-adjacent parties. Specific implementations are. But open-source models have saved the day here.
  - contingencies 3mo ago
    If they can keep up. Unfortunately, we learn from previous technology shifts that the masses will always favor ease of use (to the point of infinite scroll 5 second videos dopamine puddle, or echo chamber social networking in lieu of critical media consumption), which does not bode well for the market for alternative hardware: one which is already expensive. I fear on-prem AI is likely to become as popular as on-prem servers without Cloudflare using self-hosted email are today: that is to say, people have heard of it but the skillset is almost popularly eviscerated, external policies make it progressively impractical, and anyone who does it is 'niche'. While basic guides will exist, obtaining top-level output will probably require many moons of concerted effort. Basically: AI is SaaS for thinking.
    - analognoise 3mo ago
      Eh, this is our species first contact with that type of technology. A good number of voices see how deleterious these things are, and it’s all still very new. Future humans will tell parables about the evil tech bros and their silly obsessions, and the unequal accumulation of capital. This will be seen as a dark and stupid time, but I think we’ll persevere - the tech bro set is much weaker than they imagine, and certainly than they project.
      - crabsand 3mo ago
        Agreed. History shows concentration in the hands of a few usually doesn't go well, not because the masses are powerful or smarter than the few but there is a limit you can manage power from the top. AI will be another step in the popularization of information and we'll get both Wikipedia and TikTok of AI in coming years.
    - jstummbillig 3mo ago
- moffkalast 3mo ago
  That's when you load up qwen3.7_67b_21a_heretic_ablated_ablitereted_uncensored_agi_sparse_attention_MTP_SuperHOT_q6_AGI_FINAL.gguf
tripleee 3mo ago
The huge problem in this specific case is that to use this tool well you also need the underlying skill to be developed and preserved. It's very different from a power drill.
- Mezzie 3mo ago
  This is true of most tools, it's just that we generally consider the skills simple. I'm very bad at using power drills.
alpinisme 3mo ago
One of the challenges here is that the skillset we are in danger of letting atrophy is essentially unbounded. It’s not a specialized tool like a calculator, where you have a well scoped domain of problems you are offloading. granted, in practice many people are using ai for specialized domains (like coding or producing visual designs). But whatever level of abstraction they are currently working at is not, in principle, something that they couldn’t also offload to ai.
- FeteCommuniste 3mo ago
  The instinct of many people (myself included, a lot of the time) is "feed the AI the problems from the domains I'm least good at / familiar with" because those ones are the most frustrating and where I'm the most likely to spin my wheels. It's easy to imagine how this feeds into a cycle of "only put forth effort at things I'm already good at" and a consequent narrowing of professional / intellectual development.
luke5441 3mo ago
The difference if this is okay is how reliable the tool is. If it is a calculator or compiler it is okay. The example in the article also sounds okay (machine learning image classification), though I am not sure. LLM output is unreliable, so we still need to judge it. If I want to be able to judge code, I must have worked with it to a certain extent. So the unreliable tool does not help me much if I don't want to accept the unreliability.

contingencies 3mo ago

Sure. But if you don't own the tool and it is held by a cabal of centralist (even political state-adjacent) parties, you're having a bad day when computer says no.

ianbutler 3mo ago
We love our open source models. GLM 5.2 came out recently and the timeline for closing the gap to closed source shrank to something like 2 weeks by popular measurements. Edit: Mis remembered the timeline I saw not 2 weeks, 3 months, but still I think my point stands.
- aix1 3mo ago
  Just to make sure I understand your argument. Are you saying that today's open source models are on par with frontier closed models of two weeks ago? By what criteria?
  - ianbutler 3mo ago
    Sorry definitely mis-remembered on my part, its about 3 months https://x.com/yaroslavvb/status/2067367657272422584 https://x.com/yaroslavvb/status/2067367657272422584 https://x.com/voratiq/status/2067667800643268928 https://x.com/voratiq/status/2067667800643268928 https://arena.ai/leaderboard/agent https://arena.ai/leaderboard/agent
  - nostrademons 3mo ago
    HN thread from 2 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48567759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48567759 Commenters there were saying GLM 5.2 was roughly equivalent to Opus 4.8 in coding prowess, based on personal experience of the people commenting. Opus 4.8 came out on May 28 this year (so more like 3 weeks ago), GLM 5.2 came out 2 days ago.
    - Capricorn2481 3mo ago
      I haven't tried this specific model, but you can understand that a lot of HN testimonials are bound to swing extremely pro open source. I certainly hope they are as good. But I have personally tried a lot of models that are supposedly as good as the frontier ones and have found them lacking. After a while, you do start to start to skip a couple rounds of open source models until there's a notable release. That, and the resources needed to run them are increasingly bought up by the owners of frontier models
mediaman 3mo ago
The tools aren't owned by a cabal of state-adjacent parties. Specific implementations are. But open-source models have saved the day here.
- contingencies 3mo ago
  If they can keep up. Unfortunately, we learn from previous technology shifts that the masses will always favor ease of use (to the point of infinite scroll 5 second videos dopamine puddle, or echo chamber social networking in lieu of critical media consumption), which does not bode well for the market for alternative hardware: one which is already expensive. I fear on-prem AI is likely to become as popular as on-prem servers without Cloudflare using self-hosted email are today: that is to say, people have heard of it but the skillset is almost popularly eviscerated, external policies make it progressively impractical, and anyone who does it is 'niche'. While basic guides will exist, obtaining top-level output will probably require many moons of concerted effort. Basically: AI is SaaS for thinking.
  - analognoise 3mo ago
    Eh, this is our species first contact with that type of technology. A good number of voices see how deleterious these things are, and it’s all still very new. Future humans will tell parables about the evil tech bros and their silly obsessions, and the unequal accumulation of capital. This will be seen as a dark and stupid time, but I think we’ll persevere - the tech bro set is much weaker than they imagine, and certainly than they project.
    - crabsand 3mo ago
      Agreed. History shows concentration in the hands of a few usually doesn't go well, not because the masses are powerful or smarter than the few but there is a limit you can manage power from the top. AI will be another step in the popularization of information and we'll get both Wikipedia and TikTok of AI in coming years.
  - jstummbillig 3mo ago
moffkalast 3mo ago
That's when you load up qwen3.7_67b_21a_heretic_ablated_ablitereted_uncensored_agi_sparse_attention_MTP_SuperHOT_q6_AGI_FINAL.gguf

tripleee 3mo ago

The huge problem in this specific case is that to use this tool well you also need the underlying skill to be developed and preserved. It's very different from a power drill.

Mezzie 3mo ago
This is true of most tools, it's just that we generally consider the skills simple. I'm very bad at using power drills.

alpinisme 3mo ago

One of the challenges here is that the skillset we are in danger of letting atrophy is essentially unbounded. It’s not a specialized tool like a calculator, where you have a well scoped domain of problems you are offloading. granted, in practice many people are using ai for specialized domains (like coding or producing visual designs). But whatever level of abstraction they are currently working at is not, in principle, something that they couldn’t also offload to ai.

FeteCommuniste 3mo ago
The instinct of many people (myself included, a lot of the time) is "feed the AI the problems from the domains I'm least good at / familiar with" because those ones are the most frustrating and where I'm the most likely to spin my wheels. It's easy to imagine how this feeds into a cycle of "only put forth effort at things I'm already good at" and a consequent narrowing of professional / intellectual development.

luke5441 3mo ago

The difference if this is okay is how reliable the tool is. If it is a calculator or compiler it is okay. The example in the article also sounds okay (machine learning image classification), though I am not sure. LLM output is unreliable, so we still need to judge it. If I want to be able to judge code, I must have worked with it to a certain extent. So the unreliable tool does not help me much if I don't want to accept the unreliability.