RetroFed
AI Mania Is Eviscerating Global Decisionmaking
https://hermit-tech.com/blog/ai-mania-is-eviscerating-global-decisionmaking
The reality of how much damage AI mania is doing to our ability to run institutions effectively.
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On several occasions, we’ve been exposed to folks that have been sort of lukewarm on our main offerings, but they really, really wanted to use AI to perform a natural language query on their data. And we thought “Okay, if you really want to see it, maybe we can caveat this appropriately and show you what it might look like.”
This was a terrible mistake. It backfired in the most predictable way imaginable – every lukewarm client that saw the chatbot in action, even with us telling them that it was not going to accomplish what they wanted, wanted to buy it immediately. Every other consideration, including millions of dollars that we could plausibly help them achieve by non-AI means, was swept aside. It was like a dark and terrible force seized control of their limbs, plunged their hands into their own chests, and presented their still-beating credit cards to us in grim supplication.
The writing here (and everywhere) is phenomenal, and this section echoes something I’ve seen Cal Newport say before, something along the lines that somebody with no technical knowledge sees one neat trick and suddenly assumes AI will turn into a superintelligence deity.
This matches all too well with what Baldur Bjarnason writes in "The Intelligence Illusion".
Warnings about it being “early days” and “hallucinations” both anthropomorphise the bot and provide ready-made excuses for when one of its constant failures are noticed.
Three years later and the “early days” routine is still going strong. Who would have thought?
What AI “decision making” does in our processes is: write the reports exactly like the procedure says they should be written, and fills them with whatever you want to hear - looking up convenient references to back up your opinions. You probably should double check the references yourself to be sure they actually exist (though I think AI is getting better at checking its own work for things like this lately) - but… yeah. Ask it once and it will give you “an opinion” that doesn’t take into account all of the factors that matter to you. So, as you explain all the factors, it also becomes obvious what you want to hear, so after several rounds the obliging AI eventually not only “sees things your way” but can pile on the BS as deep as you ask it to to back up those opinions. What would have taken days to research and write can be done in an hour or so.
It is the ultimate corporate yes-man that they could never quite get in a human. They have built it for C-suites who have control of the money but not their own faculties.
AndyI wish there were more concrete facts, but a good article nonetheless.
ripcordOK
- More than 10 billion tons of concrete are manufactured annually
- The 185 meter high and 2310 meter long Three Gorges Dam is made from concrete
- Thomas Edison had 49 concrete-related patents
- The Romans built the Pantheon using concrete
Woah woah woah. Writers are supposed to support their assertions now? But what about the vibes?!
Give it a vibe to document the support, it can do that - it can even do it in non-hallucinatory fashion, if you tell it to.
Exactly!
Anyone who has spent any time on social media could tell you that this is more of a ‘feelings’ topic than a ‘facts’ topic.
Yes, because AI boosters don’t themselves deal in facts. It’s a religiosity.
If you want statistics about how AI only is losing companies money, or how the finances don’t add up, there are articles for that too.
Avid AmoebaThis is to say that we’re facing a coordination problem around executives being honest around the AI gains they’ve witnessed – if they co-operate, they keep their jobs. If they defect, they will possibly be fired by their embarrassed peers (who have now been implicitly called liars, cowards, or incompetents) and then replaced with someone that will toe the line anyway. If they could all admit the truth at once there might be some hope, but there is no way to coordinate that event.
I think it’s interesting to notice that this is not AI-specific. He kinda alludes to that in a different context but I think it’s important for people in the industry (and any industry really) to understand. This is driven by the incentives built into the system. Specifically the competition for profit. Whenever there’s a thing (technology, process, method) that promises significant profit, everyone and their mother jumps on it. For the simple reason that if they don’t, they’re getting replaced by someone who would. For the simple reason that if they don’t jump in, capital is going to leave their company and enter another one that promises to jump in, and therefore has higher expected profit. This can look as simple as large investors dumping your shares for the shares of a different company, sending your stock price in steep decline. Everyone competes for capital which requires competition for growing profits. Capital goes where the expected profits are higher. Without capital, firms can’t hire people and buy what they need to conduct business and create new products. This incentive makes it very difficult to avoid a situation like the one above. We’ve seen this in corporations with the move to the cloud, with outsourcing development to CHWTIA and so on.
Whenever there’s a thing (technology, process, method) that promises significant profit, everyone and their mother jumps on it.
Chaos is a ladder lol. I suspect AI struck at an especially bad time. With smartphones, cloud, blockchain and other hype bullshit it didn’t matter that much. But currently economy is illusionary, supported by printing money, overheating, and massive amounts of money seek ROI. All this since 2008. The billions of economic power slammed into AI is being spend on people going around preaching the gospel of AI to businesses. And this was before the technbros backing Trump have moved to trying to purposefully wreck and scam the US and global economy to usher in a new world order from the ashes.
So in some ways technology hype is normal, but the current environment might influence the mental state of people drastically.
I quite like LLMs for what they are. I wish we could see this amount of investment in technological development and hardware breakthroughs without the AI psychosis and insane race to adopt it immediately.
I can’t name any specific people because they include personal friends
From the quote at the top. I keep seeing permutations of this and all I can say is these people are cowards
I have an ex lover that I am still very fond of who is experiencing AI mania as part of their job.
How would it help anyone for me to call them out by name publicly?
The quote is from the founder of hashicorp and is fairly influential. Choosing to let his also influential friends ruin people’s lives instead of publicly speaking the truth makes him an asshole. Chances are you and your ex-lover are not influential so I don’t give a fuck what you do.
Because fucked them
What is puzzling to me is there seem to be no companies which take a deliberate, measured, experimental approach.
No “You can use that but you have to report on difficulties or disadvantages”.
No “you can use it but not when correctness is critical, errors could harm people, or it can directly affect things critical for our business”.
No “Give us first an estimate in how long it will take, and then we will roll a dice, decide if it will be done using AI, and after 50 tries we will compare whether it makes a difference”.
No “You can use AI, but you are responsible that the result works and is correct, no slack on this, and failure to do so gives you minus points”.
No “You can use it, your max token budget is 100 USD per month”.
No “You can use it, but do not input any company secrets, confidential data, medical records, or things like passwords and security-relevant data”.
There seems to be zero risk management.
Imagine pesticides, radioactive substances, or highly toxic chemicals would have been introduced in such a manner.
See also this book chapter by Baldur Bjarnason.
Companies doing that aren’t making headline worthy mistakes
I Cast FistOur company develops software for medical devices. Risk assessment is everything, and we currently do “You can use AI, but you are responsible that the result works and is correct” and “You can use it, but do not input any company secrets, confidential data, medical records, or things like passwords and security-relevant data”.
I guess the difference is we’re too busy making things and we don’t have the time to brag about AI on social media? Also we’re small and don’t have the reach anyway.
Dario@cschreib @HaraldvonBlauzahn It almost always comes down to the same thing: attribution and responsibility.
The problem isn't that the models can fail; it's the human tendency to implement tools where they simply aren't needed.
I could be wrong, but why would I want a toothbrush with an internet connection?
And it’s not “news” in the same way that “I drove to work today without incident” doesn’t make headlines.
Imagine pesticides, radioactive substances, or highly toxic chemicals would have been introduced in such a manner.
Sadly, there is no need to imagine. There is no limit to people’s greed. And guardrails are only installed after there is no way to hide damage done.
My employer does the first, second, fourth, and sixth of those. (And I’m in the uncomfortable position of simultaneously building internal tools to make our AI use more effective, and telling everyone who will listen that we’re just walking blindly into yet another Oracle or Broadcom situation.)
jsnfwlrNo “You can use that but you have to report on difficulties or disadvantages”.
No “You can use AI, but you are responsible that the result works and is correct, no slack on this, and failure to do so gives you minus points”.
No “You can use it, your max token budget is 100 USD per month”.
No “You can use it, but do not input any company secrets, confidential data, medical records, or things like passwords and security-relevant data”.
These are all policies at the company I work for. Only its $100 AUD, not USD.
Why don’t you think it’s not happening? Do you think headlines are the best way to determine what’s happening in the world?
Well, show me any job ads that tell this.
Or is this somehow hidden in some kind of cat whistle?
This is about AI mania in coporate environments.
I posted this because it describes some unfortunate dynamics and also has, in the last section, suggestions to programmers which are affected by AI mandates, or tasked with fixing huge amounts of slop code.
A_norny_mousse"there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and it’s impossible to have rational conversations with them"
I have read enough posts & comments on the fediverse to know the author’s not exaggerating.
I claim that this extends to politics/politicians as well.
Are companies actually seeing massive productivity gains from their AI adoption? Does any of this sordid affair make sense?
This should be an easy question, but it is surprisingly hard to get a straight answer to it. Executives that tell the press that their company has gone insane will quickly find themselves removed from their positions. Employees who are honest will find themselves fired in short-order, or “randomly” selected for a round of layoffs. In fact, it is in the interests of almost every actor in the space – boards, executives, employees, vendors, consultants – to obfuscate and misrepresent the success rate of AI projects. Many publicly traded companies are putting out announcements about their AI productivity gains when I know for a fact that the businesses have done nothing other than purchase Copilot licenses and declare victory.
Nobody dares to point out that the Emperor really has no clothes. Eerily similar to Trump’s or Putin’s regime, or any number of dicktaters.
For goodness sake, let those poor letters breathe! My brain felt squished trying to read that.
mynameisbobI strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and it’s impossible to have rational conversations with them about it. I can’t name any specific people because they include personal friends I deeply respect, but I worry about how this plays out. -Mitchell Hashimoto, of HashiCorp and Ghostty fame
Spoken like a been to the island rapist pdfile. Like no guys we lied to you the first time it will be different the second go around. FUCK AI PERIOD…
This is one of the best articles I’ve read in the “agentic” era of technology. Thanks for sharing!
P03 LockeI strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and it’s impossible to have rational conversations with them about it.
Then those companies will die, as they should. There are also companies who will fail to adapt, either because they are so anti-AI that they actively refuse to do so, or because they are luddites that weren’t well-tuned to technological changes in the first place. Those companies will also die, as they should.
What’s left are companies having measured conversations about how to make use of this new technology without ignoring the problem areas, figuring out ways to work around them, being careful of security implications, and acknowledging the importance of human review and architectural design.
This is how all bubbles and trendchasing works. Investors in the 2000s learned pretty quickly that dumping billions of dollars into every company that was even vaguely connected to the Internet is not a long-term business strategy. All topics have nuance, and everything must be consumed in moderation.
Unfortunately, we live in a dark timeline. All of the AI projects we have observed as a team are failing. Every single one – we have seen 0% success in a year and a half, not only amongst projects we have been asked to participate in, but even within projects that we have observed in passing while doing totally unrelated work. Even if you grant that AI tooling accelerates specific workloads, the method and scale of the current investments is senseless. Frequently the failure is not related to AI itself, but rather that companies are terminally bad at running software projects effectively, and as I have remarked previously, AI projects are subject to all the failure modes of normal projects plus you can get everything right and then still fail because of the method’s novelty.
“companies are terminally bad at running software projects effectively”… that sounds like a “you” problem, not a “me” problem. Git gud at running software projects, and don’t sign contracts with ones who are bad at it.
Very few companies are so good at shipping software that they can afford the extra risk profile.
Fine, then those companies die. Fuck em.
If they’re so terrible at shipping software that they can’t even adapt to change, then they weren’t a good company to begin with, or they were so close to the edge of failure that they never had a backup plan, which is also poor planning. Nobody mourns Knights Capital.
We have rejected all AI implementation work. It is absolutely a gigantic bubble and we have minimized our exposure to it – every single one of our current contracts would be totally unaffected by OpenAI collapsing, save for perhaps some second-order effects such a recession causing a client to become unable to pay us. And there’s nothing we can do to insulate ourselves from that anyway.
Then you will probably fail, as smarter competition that understands how to use AI will drink your milkshake. And if you don’t trust your vendors to implement these projects, which given the amount of boneheaded idiots under said “heavy AI psychosis”, might be a good stance, then do it in-house. Learn how it works, sidestep the contract costs, save money.
The entire rest of the article is “shitty companies do nonsensical business decisions around technology that they don’t understand”. Man, where have I heard that before? MongoDB, NoSQL, “web scale”, blockchain, NFTs, Bitcoin, Metaverse, 3D tech for movies, every single trend chased by Hollywood, and of course, the Internet. As always, it’s okay to explore new technology, as long as it’s designed around understanding how it works. LEARN SHIT before you DO SHIT! Is that really that fucking hard to understand?
This is for people that are just waiting for the bubble to burst and trying not to go nuts.
I’ve said this a thousand times and I will say this once more: The Internet bubble bursting did not cause the Internet to disappear. You cannot just stuff your head into the sand, cry yourself to sleep, and pretend that the big bad AI era will just disappear once this all blows over. This is not blockchain bullshit. This is real actual usable tech.
But, there’s too many dysfunctional idiots that don’t want to learn how it works and think they can just give some random LLM a massive task, push “Go!”, and it magically replace human workloads. If you give a caveman a computer, he will beat on the monitor with his club, dig out all of the electronics, and use it as a firepit. This is how 95% of companies are using LLMs. Except I don’t even think they figured out how to make a firepit out of it yet.
☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆The article doesn’t really talk about this directly, but when you read it critically it becomes clear that capitalist corporate structures are ill equipped to deal with the negative effects of LLMs.
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What is puzzling to me is there seem to be no companies which take a deliberate, measured, experimental approach.
No “You can use that but you have to report on difficulties or disadvantages”.
No “you can use it but not when correctness is critical, errors could harm people, or it can directly affect things critical for our business”.
No “Give us first an estimate in how long it will take, we write it down, and then we will roll a dice, decide if it will be done using AI, and after 50 tries we will compare whether it makes a difference”.
No “You can use AI, but you are responsible that the result works, and failure to do so gives you minus points”.
No “You can use it, your max token budget is 100 USD per month”.
No “You can use it, but do not input any company secrets, confidential data, medical records, or things like passwords and security-relevant data”.
There seems to be zero risk management.
Fantastic essay.
I feel I’m going sane in a crazy world.
One small solace is that I’ve seen more than one person fall for the hype, but eventually work their way back to reality.
It does sound just like a cult.
Has also some good practical suggestions for programmers that are affected by this, in the last sections.
Thanks for sharing. I think this one is even safe to share with some work colleagues.
Hype can crowd out careful thinking.
That and utterly destroying original thinking.