Think about it from a resource (calorie) expenditure stand point.
Are you expending more resources on writing the prompts vs just doing without it? Thats the real question.
If you are expending more, which is what Simon is indicating at - are you really better off? Id argue not, given that this cant be sustained for hours on end. Yet the expectation from management might be that you should be able to sustain this for 8 hours.
So again, are you better off? Not in the slightest.
Many things in life are counter-intuitive and not so simple.
P.s. youre not getting paid more for increasing productivity if you are still expected to work 8 hrs a day... lmao. Thankfully im not a SWE.
I think something a lot of people miss out on is that we're not all the same. We all have different internal thought models, whether it is a biological difference (ADHD brain?), educational differences, and overall abilities. And it seems a lot of people have this idea everyone uses "AI" the same way. That's a lack of lateral thinking. Making assumptions we're all burning "calories" in the same way implies we all think, and work, alike.
Simon: "I'm frequently finding myself with work on two or three projects running parallel. I can get so much done, but after just an hour or two my mental energy for the day feels almost entirely depleted."
Youre a time waster, stop posting and creating noise.
Much of the new datacenter capacity is for GPU-based training or inference, which are highly optimized already. But there's plenty of scope for optimizing other, more general workloads with some help from AI. DRAM has become far more expensive and a lot of DRAM use on the server is just plain waste that can be optimized away. Same for high-performance SSDs.
What youre pointing at is the trade off between concentration of understanding vs fragmented understanding across more people.
The former is always preferred in the context of product development but poses a key person risk. Apple in its current form is a representation of this - Steve did enough work to keep the company going for a decade after his death. Now its sort-of lost on where to go next. But on the flip side look at its market cap today vs 2000.
Im gonna go against the grain and say he is an elite expert on some dimensions, but when you take all the characteristics into account (including an understanding of people etc) I conclude that on the whole he is not as intelligent as you think.
Its the same reason why a pure technologist can fail spectacularly at developing products that deliver experiences that people want.
More like people know where to hype, whom to avoid criticising unless measured etc. I have rarely seen him criticising Elon's vision only approach and that made me skeptical.
Unfortunately my understanding is that he originated the vision-only approach while at Tesla. As in, he's the one who sold Musk on the idea in the first place.
I don't have time to dig up the citation that someone pointed me towards, but it's out there and can be found. Which is a bummer, because I've learned a lot from his videos and writing and have a lot of respect for his work.
I personally dont believe he is trying to profit off the hype. I believe he is an individual who wants to believe he is a genius and his word is gospel.
>
Im gonna go against the grain and say he is an elite expert on some dimensions, but when you take all the characteristics into account (including an understanding of people etc) I conclude that on the whole he is not as intelligent as you think.
Intelligence (which psychologists define as the g factor [1]; this concept is very well-researched) does not make you an expert on any given topic. It just, for example, typically enables you to learn new topics faster, and lets you see connections between topics.
If Karpathy did not spend a serious effort of learning to get a good understanding of people, it's likely that he is not an expert on this topic (which I guess basically nobody would expect).
Also, while being a rationalist very likely requires you to be rather intelligent, only a (I guess rather small) fraction of highly intelligent people are rationalists.
I know it was just an example, but there's research suggesting otherwise. There are things you can do to increase/decrease empathy in yourself and others. If you're curious, it might be worth looking into the subject.
There is the autistic spectrum, and there is understanding of people and psychology. Autistic people might have a hard time understanding people, but it's not like everyone else is magically super knowledgable about human psychology and other people's thought patterns. If that were the case, then any non-autistic person could be a psychologist, no fancy study or degrees required!
Unless your point is to claim that Karpathy is autistic. I don't know whether that's really relevant though, the original issue was whether/how he failed to recognize the alleged hype.
You are what you do. If you want to develop your empathy, spend time/energy consciously trying to put yourself in the shoes of others. Eventually, you will not have to apply so much deliberate effort. Same way most things work.
I would tend to disagree. The tech types have a strong intellectual center, but weaker emotional and movement centers. I think a realignment is possible with practice. It takes time, and as one grows older, the centers begin to integrate better.
Being empathic is different from "understanding people".
Psychopaths and narcissists often have a good understanding of many people, which they use to manipulate them, but psychopaths and narcissists are not what most people would call "empathic".
They dont understand people. They understand how to control people, which is completely different from the context of building products that people want - which requires an understanding of peoples tastes and preferences.
> which is completely different from the context of building products that people want - which requires an understanding of peoples tastes and preferences.
Rather: it requires an understanding how to manipulate people into loving/wanting your product.
Legit. I think people spend too much on planning instead of focusing on getting to work and closer to the finished output. If you are fixated on a plan... good luck dealing with situations that throw you off piste.
Yeah the hardest thing is to focus intensely and have a strong vision for what exactly the output should be directionally. The second hardest is actually getting the project finished - that requires sustained intense focus.
Theres nothing more to it than that. Frameworks etc blah blah blah. Who cares. Get the work done.
Think about it from a resource (calorie) expenditure stand point.
Are you expending more resources on writing the prompts vs just doing without it? Thats the real question.
If you are expending more, which is what Simon is indicating at - are you really better off? Id argue not, given that this cant be sustained for hours on end. Yet the expectation from management might be that you should be able to sustain this for 8 hours.
So again, are you better off? Not in the slightest.
Many things in life are counter-intuitive and not so simple.
P.s. youre not getting paid more for increasing productivity if you are still expected to work 8 hrs a day... lmao. Thankfully im not a SWE.