We desperately need to get away from this "well they called ______ an idiot" trope (fill in with Ford, Tesla, Edison, whoever successful person you want to reference. First of all, most of those people were regarded by commentators as innovators very early on. Second of all, vastly more people have been called idiots by experts, and it turns out they were idiots, you just never hear about them anymore because they faded into obscurity as history passed them by. Being ridiculed by subject matter experts isn't a badge of honor. We all love "Dewey beats Truman" moments. They are fun. They are exciting. They tell us that sometimes the experts just get it wrong and laymen get it right. But don't take it as a license for pushing the Dunning-Kreuker pedal to the metal.AI "experts" said this for literally years about open AI. Open AI was ridiculed by these "experts" and thought to be laughable. Sam Altman has talked about this many times. Now they are widely regarded as the technical leader in gen AI.
I am in this field. There is not a single person in the industry who thinks xAI is doing anything remotely interesting.
In 1952 a man named Bayard Peakes murdered the secretary of the editor of a prominent physics journal because the journal rejected his crackpot essay about how electrons weren't actually real. It is not healthy for a society to drum up the idea that the less education someone has on a subject, the more likely they are to "pull one over" on the experts. By all means, look at cutting edge technology through your own lens and try to develop an opinion on it. But when you find that opinion starkly in contrast with the people who are actually in the field, don't take it as a badge of honor, and don't let it brew resentment.
Statistics: Posted by HappyDogHappyLife — Sat Nov 16, 2024 12:49 am — Replies 75 — Views 3283