Hacker News: Alchemista

New comment by Alchemista in "Anthropic Cracking Down on Video Game Rewrites"

Alchemista — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 18:02:48 +0000

Have you ever heard of antitrust... I know the US just threw out all attempts at curbing anti-competitive practices, so I can perhaps forgive you if you don't even understand the concept. I think your definition of free market is extremely distorted. Maybe you should check your history books and the field of economics.

New comment by Alchemista in "Anthropic Cracking Down on Video Game Rewrites"

Alchemista — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 16:13:02 +0000

So frontier AI can monopolize all the silicon in the world, demand they be the only place to run inference, and then strictly control what people do with it. I'm sorry the way you pose it makes it seem like it is some free market.

What we are seeing starting to evolve is a deeply distorted market.

New comment by Alchemista in "Steam Machine launches today"

Alchemista — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 00:58:20 +0000

How many people who are that invested in their Steam library don't already have a mid to upper range PC?

New comment by Alchemista in "AI employees don't pay taxes"

Alchemista — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 23:49:26 +0000

So you are really going with the unreasonably optimistic take that wealth will actually be redistributed to those that don't have it? Take a look at the slums in India and other periods of history where the lower classes lived in squalor and let me know how confident you are.

That said, I do not think gen AI in its current incarnation is actually going to destroy everyone's jobs.

New comment by Alchemista in "Claude Opus 4 and 4.1 can now end a rare subset of conversations"

Alchemista — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 21:14:09 +0000

I firmly believe that we are not even close and that it is pretty presumptuous to start "preparing" when such metal energy could be much better spent on the welfare of our fellow humans.

New comment by Alchemista in "Claude Opus 4 and 4.1 can now end a rare subset of conversations"

Alchemista — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 20:53:52 +0000

Honestly, I think some of these tech bro types are seriously drinking way too much of their own koolaid if they actually think these word calculators are conscious/need welfare.

New comment by Alchemista in "Why Are LLMs So Gullible?"

Alchemista — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 23:36:31 +0000

Efficiency has everything to do with it. To run your original thought experiment would likely take more computing capacity than humanity will ever produce with current silicon based processors.

It could be that we can "get there" with much rougher approximation, but that is by no means a given. If "getting there" does require a much more complex model that actually involves simulating human neurons with much more accuracy and precision, the computing power and energy needed, again based on semiconductor computers, might simply be intractable.

New comment by Alchemista in "Why Are LLMs So Gullible?"

Alchemista — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 22:44:47 +0000

Why not respond to the comments you feel are poorly constructed directly rather than posting what looks like a copy pasta. Some of the items in your list seem like strawmen, because I cannot even find these arguments in this thread as you state them in your list.

For example let's take 4

> 4. "People are just anthropomorphizing computer programs." No, critics are anthropomorphizing intelligence.

There literally was someone comparing the problems with current ML models to childhood development in this thread. How is this not anthropomorphizing LLMs? It is true human cognition is poorly defined, so the comparison is not very useful to begin with. Which is why anthropomorphizing ML models is problematic. If someone makes a fantastical claim they need to provide strong proof to support it.

New comment by Alchemista in "Why Are LLMs So Gullible?"

Alchemista — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 22:02:45 +0000

I feel like you are being deliberately obtuse here. They said "Give it a few years" and linked https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_development_stages. How is this not strongly implying that in a "few years" LLMs will be at a later "level of development" as described in the article they linked.

New comment by Alchemista in "Why Are LLMs So Gullible?"

Alchemista — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 21:39:31 +0000

> You are the first to suggest any such thing, in this comment chain.

I'm sorry, did you miss the original post: "Because they are at a child level of development. Give it a few years."

I extrapolated a little bit, but not much. They were clearly implying that it is on a similar developmental path as a child.

New comment by Alchemista in "Why Are LLMs So Gullible?"

Alchemista — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 21:05:19 +0000

Don't you think the onus should be on the people making the fantastical claims to prove it? If human cognition is ill-defined, then define it before making grand claims like ML models being on some path of childhood development and is a few steps from being an adult.

New comment by Alchemista in "Why Are LLMs So Gullible?"

Alchemista — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 20:53:30 +0000

LLMs aren't designed to emulate human cognition, they are a statistical model designed to predict the next word in a sentence. It happens that they seem to exhibit some similarities to human cognition as a side effect, but that does not mean they are on some developmental path to a "full human" like a child. Again it is silly to try and compare the two.

New comment by Alchemista in "Why Are LLMs So Gullible?"

Alchemista — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 20:47:55 +0000

This is silly, that's like talking about building a fusion reactor modeled after the sun. It is easy to propose something like that, but we always seem to be 10 years away from realizing it. In fact it could be easier to solve the fusion problem than trying to build a machine/software that closely approximates a human brain as you suggest.

Yes it would be wonderful if sci-fi was real, but we need to deal in what is possible in reality.

New comment by Alchemista in "Why Are LLMs So Gullible?"

Alchemista — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 20:33:07 +0000

I don't think anthropomorphizing ML models is very useful

New comment by Alchemista in "AI-generated image selected for a Sony World Photography Award"

Alchemista — Fri, 14 Apr 2023 13:32:48 +0000

Yeah, I don't get it. It doesn't look very good to me. It is also obviously AI generated, with the telltale signs of deformed limbs and hands.

New comment by Alchemista in "Adobe Firefly: AI Art Generator"

Alchemista — Tue, 21 Mar 2023 16:41:56 +0000

This is a pretty extreme stance. There is a fine line between "learning from" proprietary code and outright stealing some of the key insights and IP. Sometimes it takes a very difficult conceptual leap to solve some of the more difficult computer science and math problems. "Learning" (aka stealing) someone's solution is very problematic and will get you sued if you are not careful.

New comment by Alchemista in "Poor Sleep Gives You the Munchies, Study Says"

Alchemista — Fri, 04 Mar 2016 15:54:58 +0000

Thanks for your personal anecdote. Unfortunately, it is fallacious to try and generalize it to the entire population.

New comment by Alchemista in "The brain functional connectome is robustly altered by lack of sleep"

Alchemista — Sun, 03 Jan 2016 07:55:55 +0000

I understand how any trip to the hospital might lead to a reflection on your health. However, I fail to see how appendicitis is related to a lack of sleep.