Digital neural networks and "neurons" were already vastly simpler than biological neural networks and neurons... and getting to transformers involved optimisations that took us even further away from biomimicry.
This is a very optimistic, pro-technology-cleverness point of view.
I recommend reading the linked persona selection model document. It's Anthropic through and through - enthusiastic while embracing uncertainty - but ultimately lots of rationalisation for (what others believe is) dangerous obfuscation.
But there's a spectrum of responses to these technologies, from knee-jerk cynicism to genuine moral disgust. "Useful" and "good for people/society/humanity" don't always go hand-in-hand, particularly if you take origins and power into account.
Did you see the network security stock sell-off after Anthropic announced a code security analysis feature? There's a sliver of nothing between mob mentality and wisdom of the crowd.
It's too soon to bother making predictions. Shits gonna be wild for the next few years, then some type of market correction will happen, and we'll start to get an idea of how things will actually look.
Can we please have some calm, stable, boring years please, before I'm dead? The last 5 years have already been "wild" enough. The world is unrecognizable. I'm unprepared for further wildness.
Excluding the batshit insane political side, I don't actually think it's been as nuts as people think, or at least not uniformly so.
I have a lot of friends in the tech sector, but outside the FANNG/silicone valley/startup bubbles. It's been largely business as normal across the board. Twitter and social media warps our perspective I think.
It depends where you lived. In my city (harshest/longest restrictions in the world), we were not allowed to leave the house for more than 30 minutes a day for 2.5 years unless we were out buying groceries. No large gatherings allowed at our homes. Mask usage enforced everywhere in public.
In the city in my country reknowned for having a much higher level of hypochrondria before the pandemic, imagine the mental health issues my city is going through now.
Stow the propaganda. 1) it's not over, the pandemic continues and will likely continue for a long time 2) it's already the fifth deadliest pandemic in known history. "Quarter pandemic" is an insane thing to think let alone say out loud.
1. It is pretty much over. Covid has become (for me at least) indistinguishable from a common cold.
2. Gemini says covid-19 killed 0.086% of world population (over several years). That's about as mild as it gets. More than sharks, but less than anything that usually kills people, like air polution (estimated about 0.095% yearly), cancer (est 0.12% every damn year) or cardiovascular disease (est 0.25% a year). Peak covid was still killing less than business-as-usual cancer or cardiovascular disease.
As far as pandemics go, the deadliest ones kill double digit percentage of people who contract them. That's two orders of magnitude more than covid. Even the single-digit percentage pandemics must be extremely rough. We were lucky[0].
[0]: Not the ones who died or have lasting consequences, but "we" as humanity, were rather lucky with covid. It could've been something much worse.
The market is losing its shit over this because people are operating on the thesis that "AI will be able to ..." rather than "AI can demonstrably do ...". At some point they're all gonna get margin called on their futurisms. It would be a lot better if, before getting excited, we ask to see experimental results. So you say you have a world-beating security tool? Show me something it can do that all the other ones can't. That would be worth getting excited about, not a vague blog post about vibes and dreams.
IANAL, I can only cite court decision: "And, the digitization of the books purchased in print form by Anthropic was also a fair use but not for the same reason as applies to the training copies. Instead, it was a fair use because all Anthropic did was replace the print copies it had purchased for its central library with more convenient space-saving and searchable digital copies for its central library — without adding new copies, creating new works, or redistributing existing copies."
You don't have to burn the book, but then you can't scan it, either.
In some places there's an exception to copyright law for format shifting if you destroy the original. If you don't destroy the original, then you made a copy and that's not allowed.
Well, I made my predictions. Let's come back in a few years.
Netscape didn't attack Microsoft's business software, operating systems or other pieces of their offerings.
Google also didn't seriously attack Microsoft's business.
And neither had the capability to build large software very fast.
Google is both a software company and an infrastructure company as is Microsoft today. Their software is going to become more of a commodity but their data centers still have value (even perhaps more value since all this new software needs a place to run). It's true that if you're in the business of hosting software and selling SaaS you have an advantage over a competitor who does not host their own software.
> Netscape didn't attack Microsoft's business software, operating systems or other pieces of their offerings.
That's not how it was interpreted at the time: Netscape threatened to route around the desktop operating system (Win32) to deliver applications via the browser. "Over the top" as they say in television land.
Netscape didn't succeed, but that's precisely what happened (along with the separate incursion of mobile platforms, spearheaded by Apple... followed quickly by Google, who realised they had to follow suit very quickly).
> And neither had the capability to build large software very fast.
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