[HN Gopher] Tech Predictions for 2024 and Beyond Dr. Werner Voge...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Tech Predictions for 2024 and Beyond Dr. Werner Vogels, CTO,
       Amazon.com
        
       Author : sharjeelsayed
       Score  : 74 points
       Date   : 2023-12-13 21:09 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.allthingsdistributed.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.allthingsdistributed.com)
        
       | f6v wrote:
       | It's one year only, I know we can't expect a breakthrough. But
       | this is very boring.
        
       | timeagain wrote:
       | this all sounds great for rich people and like hell for everyone
       | else. AI learns that brown people exist, women become data farms,
       | clippy is your new boss, children are our future profits.
       | 
       | There is some kind of satire in here about how tech leaders and
       | QAnon folks want the same things but take opposing routes to get
       | there. Tech wants to say the N-word, get inside women's private
       | parts, devalue knowledge work, and indoctrinate children. But for
       | liberalism...
        
         | dontupvoteme wrote:
         | >women become data farms
         | 
         | I don't follow this one..
        
       | andsoitis wrote:
       | > Culture influences everything
       | 
       | While culture definitely touches everything and is a lens through
       | which we look at the world and each other, there are some things
       | that culture cannot bend to its will. I'm not arguing that there
       | is an objective reality that we can access, but there are things
       | in the universe that culture cannot make a dent in.
       | 
       | I had a conversation just this morning with Bard where it
       | provided me with a culture slant that is also, shall we say,
       | politically influenced, but in this particular instance I just
       | wanted the raw facts without taking people feelings into account.
       | It felt like it was lecturing me, which is very very off-putting.
        
         | timeagain wrote:
         | So what was the conversation?
        
         | nyc_data_geek1 wrote:
         | >>I'm not arguing that there is an objective reality that we
         | can access,
         | 
         | Isn't there? What would the light coming through James Webb be,
         | then? Acceleration due to gravity? The non-repeating nature of
         | Pi? Seems to me the universe is filled with objective
         | realities, and it's our deteriorating social fabric that makes
         | people cast doubt on that fact.
        
       | kd913 wrote:
       | I remember some visions of the future from Microsoft from the
       | early 2000s. They even demoed some cool gear with the Kinect and
       | I even managed to try out the table at their campus.
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VfpVYYQzHs
       | 
       | That and this vision too.
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wraF2DjALls
       | 
       | Now I speak to others SWEs in tech from semis to hyperscalers and
       | it feels so bleak. All ethereal bollocks with crypto and AI. All
       | designed to make someone else money. Where is the cool wearable,
       | IoT, actual human interaction tech.
       | 
       | We should be having magic mirrors, that style of coffee table...
       | Heck I would settle on smarter green tech.
       | 
       | Everything honestly seemed more fun back then from the state of
       | the web, gaming.
       | 
       | I have never been so bored with the state of tech.
        
         | aprilthird2021 wrote:
         | Meta is working on some of that stuff. But in the current
         | economic era of profit over innovation / growth, those
         | sentiments you miss are going to be dormant for a while.
        
           | ohthatsnotright wrote:
           | And who can trust Meta anyway? No thanks.
        
         | nine_zeros wrote:
         | > Where is the cool wearable, IoT, actual human interaction
         | tech
         | 
         | You should look into wearable devices like whoop which are
         | steadily carving out the future of useful health-related
         | wearable tech.
        
           | kd913 wrote:
           | I already use an apple watch ultra, and it has improved my
           | life in many ways. Again though, everything feels so limited
           | to the possibilities?
           | 
           | I have some ideas for social interaction apps that I am
           | hoping to build, just the current choices of focusing on
           | health tracking right now seems limiting to me.
           | 
           | At a gig, why can't I use my watch to find my mate? Why can't
           | I play corporate wide pandemic zombie survival with my watch?
           | Why can't my house auto-detect where I am and adjust
           | thermostats accordingly? Why can't I unlock and open my house
           | with my watch? Why can't I use my watch NFC to bump myself in
           | at work?
           | 
           | List goes on.
        
             | nine_zeros wrote:
             | > just the current choices of focusing on health tracking
             | right now seems limiting to me.
             | 
             | Anecdotally, my peer group uses it everyday to check how
             | their last day was and use that info to regulate their
             | activities today. Then discuss it with their peers
             | everyday.
        
         | f6v wrote:
         | I kind of want tech to become invisible and just do things
         | without my explicit order. So, AI progress would be exciting.
         | But it feels like 95% is gimmicky. Which is fair, people trying
         | to find a way to extract real value from tech advancements.
        
           | endgame wrote:
           | Funny. I want less invisible tech doing strange things in
           | subtle ways, and I want things to do what I tell them, on my
           | orders, and do so rapidly. I'm sick of invisible updates,
           | invisible data collection, etc.
        
             | bluGill wrote:
             | I want tech to figure out what I want and do that
             | invisibly. I don't want all the data collection. I also
             | don't want to have to tell the clothes washer to do
             | laundry, I want it to detect clothes on my floor and return
             | them to the correct place clean. Note that this needs to be
             | correct, it needs to understand the difference between
             | clothes I'm going to wear again and cloths that I want
             | washed.
             | 
             | Similarly, the kitchen robot should figure out a healthy
             | meal we will enjoy, get it on the table for our dinner and
             | then clear the table when we are done eating: putting the
             | leftovers away and clean up everything else.
             | 
             | The above is what slaves could do 150 years ago. We have
             | lost much - it is worth not having slaves in society, but
             | if you would have had a slave (or servant) 150 years ago
             | your life is worse in some ways for that progress and I
             | want it back. I also want this affordable for everyone.
        
           | tw04 wrote:
           | Have you ever had _ANYTHING_ break with google? Have you ever
           | tried to get it fixed? Imagine your car just stops going into
           | drive  "because AI" with absolutely no way to fix it
           | yourself.
           | 
           | That's my dystopia...
        
         | tsunamifury wrote:
         | The answer to that is right in your own comment. No one wanted
         | that cumbersome demo ware crap. It had no utility and no value
         | other than visual bling.
         | 
         | The reality is people want to live their lives freely, not tied
         | to technology. This is something Apple understood under Ive so
         | very well until Cook drove him out. Now I expect we will see
         | Apple's first failure with Vision as HCI will demand a less
         | constricting interface.
         | 
         | AI is likely that freeing engagement paradigm, and Ive is
         | jumping onboard there.
        
           | kmlx wrote:
           | > The reality is people want to live their lives freely, not
           | tied to technology.
           | 
           | considering every one and their dog has a phone, the
           | incredible rise of digital payments, more and more time being
           | spent online, more people globally getting online, more
           | expansive internet ever year, cars and their media systems,
           | electric cars, all devices connected to the internet and so
           | many other things i'm missing, i would qualify this statement
           | as false.
        
           | ecshafer wrote:
           | When I was younger I would have agreed with you negatively,
           | that apple hides the technology too much. But now I agree
           | with you and think Ive and Jobs did get it on a product
           | level. Tech should do something for you, and ideally you
           | should not realize you are using technology.
           | 
           | Imagine you are a carpenter, and you build houses. You only
           | have ever used a hammer and nails for nailing. One day you
           | get a super fancy nail gun that you adjust pressure and tweak
           | 1 million settings and it has a lazer sight and cloud
           | connectivity etc you would probably hate it. But if you get a
           | nail gun that is idiot proof and works well with no tweaks
           | you would love it.
           | 
           | Technology exists to solve prolbems not for its own sake.
        
           | fidotron wrote:
           | Yes, I think the difference is something like classic Apple
           | viewed computers as things within a lived in external
           | environment, classic Microsoft (Gates, at least) views the
           | physical world as merely an inconvenience getting in the way
           | of your connection with the metaverse, for want of a better
           | term.
           | 
           | The big balance to make with ambient computing is to ensure
           | the humans using it are the entities that have agency, and
           | they don't merely give it up to the system. Arguably things
           | like Tiktok, Facebook etc. demonstrate people already have.
           | 
           | There was a project in Japan called TRON, at least
           | superficially a sort of academic/industrial operating system
           | research effort, however, the leader used to write
           | introductions to their annual conferences, and one of these
           | contains a rant about why virtual reality is misguided and
           | the internet of things is the way to go, and this is from
           | like 1995.
        
         | tomrod wrote:
         | Humane looks promising.
        
         | CalChris wrote:
         | > I have never been so bored with the state of tech.
         | 
         | First, I agree that crypto and AI are much VC nonsense. Not so
         | much make someone else money as consume it while dominating the
         | conversation. Maybe AI will put customer support people out of
         | a job. Congratulations VCs, that's what you were put on the
         | planet for. Bravo, well done.
         | 
         | Otherwise, maybe tech is too good.
         | 
         | Wearables? Apple Watch and iPhone. I'm very happy with the
         | MacBook Air that I'm typing this on. I'm quite happy with my
         | EVs. When I need to see a doc, I send a message on MyChart.
         | Chat with a friend, WhatsApp. When I need to look something up
         | chances are pretty high that there's something on Wikipedia.
         | When I want a book, I check it out online and pick it up at the
         | library. Or I'll buy it on Alibris or Amazon. A nice late
         | edition copy of my college calculus book cost $5 + shipping. I
         | can travel anywhere and have a map and be able to pay for
         | something with my credit card. When I want a quick tutorial and
         | drills on Kyrie Irving's moves, it's on YouTube. Chess? I can
         | play programs that would destroy Bobby Fischer.
         | 
         | As for systems and infra, I'm very happy with LLVM, Linux,
         | FreeBSD, homebrew, .... Readily available consumer systems are
         | infinitely fast compared to what we grew up with. No Apple IIgs
         | for me, thank you Boomer.
         | 
         | My complaint? No late night haunts because everyone is online.
         | 
         | I'll grant that what isn't there is the sense of the new. But
         | what is there is really, really good.
        
         | 999900000999 wrote:
         | I'm actually really happy with the progress made with
         | wearables.
         | 
         | Smart watches are great, the Humane pin is cool ( massively
         | overpriced considering you could probably give these out to
         | anyone who prepays for a year of service).
         | 
         | I imagine the next great step will be AI powered pseudo code.
        
         | fidotron wrote:
         | I think what's funny about these videos is they aren't exactly
         | dependent on advances in computing, but in display technology
         | and network bandwidth. I've been annoying people for years by
         | pointing out software is often the easiest part of all of this,
         | and anyone doubting that should attempt to build a physical
         | device, let alone a state of the art one.
         | 
         | Really the canary in this particular coal mine was when Silicon
         | Graphics hit the wall in the late 90s. They were the epitome of
         | pushing this dream that with visual computing everyone will be
         | able to leverage their own intelligence that much more, leading
         | to a better world, and it just doesn't seem to happen - we all
         | just use it to distract each other instead. In the world today
         | you have SGI level graphics in everything, and yet the
         | applications of it are so mundane. For example, you don't see
         | people doing finance visualizations in immersive 3D, we don't
         | see people using VR for Minority Report style interfaces even
         | though they are now viable, and even the Mac Finder is no
         | longer spatial. Ultimately I think our culture has lost hope in
         | the whole idea of visual intelligence.
        
           | kd913 wrote:
           | May be true, but that coffee table is still something I want.
           | 
           | Given it existed 16 years ago why did the concept just get
           | culled? We are now just left with boring coffee tables, photo
           | sharing, music selection, movie picking, event planning, all
           | stuck in the same model for the last 15 years.
           | 
           | Where are my smart glasses and HUDs?
           | 
           | We all have gone back to being excited over talking with a
           | chatbot via text. Personally I would rather have some mates
           | over having fun with the above table.
        
         | zeusk wrote:
         | These videos and the VR demos have an eering similarity
         | (especially ones from Microsoft and Apple).
        
       | kqr wrote:
       | Is even a single one of these concrete enough to be verifiable?
       | Is this what passes for hypotheses in our business?
       | 
       | If you make predictions, _please_ make them concrete enough
       | (actual numbers!) that we can tell in hindsight whether you were
       | right or wrong. Without being able to judge someone 's prediction
       | track record, it's all useless for informing any real decision.
        
         | sapiogram wrote:
         | I do appreciate that he linked previous years' prediction at
         | the bottom. Predictions are still too vague to be falsifiable
         | even with hindsight, but it's a start.
        
           | Slartie wrote:
           | Well, he promoted remote learning in 2021 to "earn its place"
           | in schools.
           | 
           | Reality: absolutely everywhere, remote learning has been a
           | shit-show which no one, not the parents, nor the kids, nor
           | the teachers, wants to ever repeat.
           | 
           | All other predictions in 2021 were lame and obvious
           | continuations of already-old trends. Easy to get those at
           | least not totally wrong. The "remote learning" one was new,
           | clearly influenced by the pandemic, and thus a risky one. And
           | he pulled an epic fail on that one.
        
             | BarryMilo wrote:
             | Internet comments are always so polarized... Some people
             | liked remote learning, some didn't. I know some college
             | profs who were glad to stay home in -20C weather. Others
             | hated it even then.
             | 
             | It's true that remote teaching didn't take over the world,
             | but I doubt people's appreciation of it had anything to do
             | with it. It just wasn't a long enough event to change
             | anything permanently.
        
         | vl wrote:
         | But he is the CTO at Amazon. All he can do is to signal about
         | Amazon positioning and to influence to advance Amazon agenda.
         | He can't publish any real predictions. For all we know he can
         | actually think completely opposite things from what is
         | published, for example.
        
           | bjt12345 wrote:
           | Should we short Amazon then?
        
         | ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
         | No. They are all pseudo garbage Edgar Cayce style nonsense.
         | Just look at his previous year predictions.
         | 
         | This is the problem with this generation of leet coders. They
         | have become too soft and put people like this dude and trends
         | on a pedestal.
        
       | vl wrote:
       | This is interesting honorific, many tech sector workers have
       | doctor degrees, but nobody ever calls them doctors.
       | 
       | But curiously it is used in the title, which doesn't follow HN
       | title guidelines (i.e. editiorized from original article title).
        
         | senderista wrote:
         | IME nobody in US STEM academia uses it either, at least among
         | themselves.
         | 
         | AWS uses it in external comms because "Dr." impresses suits.
        
       | tarofchaos wrote:
       | lol his 2023 predictions were way off..just saying
        
         | vl wrote:
         | Yes, earlier years were a bit better, but still. As CTO of
         | Amazon he also needs to push the party line. These
         | "predictions" are signaling, not actual predictions, privately
         | he can think completely different things.
        
       | nbzso wrote:
       | I'm expecting a sobering year for AI in 2024, a result fueled by
       | marketing gimmicks, closed training data and weights, false
       | promises, chaos in recruiting, more tech layoffs due to economy
       | (and false hopes for AI-powered workforce replacement),
       | demotivation in the young workforce, etc.
       | 
       | Another reality hit for AI implementation will be the cost of
       | generative AI API services and environmental impact of the
       | process of training the models.
       | 
       | But I am not a Doctor, and CTO of big monopolist and I don't have
       | a stake to sell you AI cloud services. So who knows..
        
         | bluGill wrote:
         | I think it will be a few more years before the hype dies down
         | enough for sane heads to realize that. Change the year though
         | and you are correct.
        
         | reqo wrote:
         | Another probable bad side effect of AI will be that a
         | generation of developers will become dependent on
         | copilot/chatgpt to be able to write code! They will definitely
         | perform worse than before llm era without the help of a llm!
        
           | mewpmewp2 wrote:
           | Same could be said about developing with Notepad as opposed
           | to modern IDEs though.
        
             | thinkingtoilet wrote:
             | Did modern IDEs start writing code for you when you made
             | the jump from Notepad?
        
               | mjr00 wrote:
               | In a lot of ways, yeah. Autocomplete is an absolute game
               | changer and one of the biggest reasons that static typing
               | came back in vogue and crushed dynamic languages. Massive
               | productivity gains when you can ctrl+space and see all of
               | the methods available on a variable, or use a hotkey to
               | figure out if the method you want to call is `do_foo_bar`
               | or `do_foo_and_bar`.
        
               | pipes wrote:
               | I'm not sure I buy that argument about dynamic languages.
               | You are probably right in that auto complete played a
               | role, but for me working on a pure node js app back in
               | 2014ish, it was a nightmare of runtime issues that type
               | checking would have eliminated. The productivity gain in
               | a typed language was not having to write unit tests for
               | things that static typing does for free.
        
               | mjr00 wrote:
               | I agree with you, autocomplete definitely isn't the only
               | reason for static typing making a comeback and dynamic
               | language popularity dying off (and the big legacy names
               | like Javascript and Python have Typescript and
               | mypy/pyright to transform them into a facsimile of one).
               | I think a lot of it has to do with maturity, where a lot
               | of "move fast and break things" devs who loved untyped
               | Node/PHP/Python got burned by bugs and impossible to
               | comprehend legacy codebases and slowly realized the value
               | of static typing. But that type of understanding takes
               | years. A novice programmer can see the value of
               | autocomplete and not having to check the docs or
               | stackoverflow for the name of a method pretty much
               | instantly.
        
               | wintogreen74 wrote:
               | autocomplete accurately took care of _a lot_ of the
               | boilerplate; that low-hanging fruit has been picked. AI
               | is not doing the same IME, the pay-off has been a lot
               | slower coming, and sometimes it 's making the work more
               | painful.
        
               | mjr00 wrote:
               | I do agree. It's hard to get an unbiased assessment of
               | how many developers are _actually_ using generative AI
               | (copilot /chatgpt) for work, and in what capacity they do
               | use them. Anecdotally, at my org of ~40 devs, we
               | encouraged everyone to try out Copilot and let us know if
               | they wanted a full license; only 2 people took up the
               | offer, and they use it either for generating unit tests
               | or translating English data logic to pandas syntax (which
               | it does seem quite good at!)
        
           | blastro wrote:
           | All skills that the AI facilitates will be like this until
           | all we can do is operate the AI
        
             | willsmith72 wrote:
             | Exactly. We don't need an abacus. We need a human able to
             | input the right variables into a computer and get the
             | result.
        
           | digging wrote:
           | But when would they not have the help of an LLM? We are all
           | dependent on the tools we use. That's not a bad thing.
           | 
           | The biggest risk is that it perhaps becomes more difficult to
           | sift out bad developers from good ones, because LLMs let bad
           | developers "cheat" more easily. But that's not a new problem,
           | just a new era of the same problem.
        
           | dewey wrote:
           | That's probably what everyone said when auto-complete was
           | invented and IDEs were used. The actual code written in most
           | cases isn't so important, the architecture, experience in
           | building systems and debugging skills across a whole stack
           | are what counts.
        
           | runako wrote:
           | This argument rears its head every time the state of the art
           | in developer tools makes a credible threat to improve.
           | 
           | And yet relatively few developers use C, assembly, or machine
           | language as their daily drivers. I've even met accomplished
           | developers who don't know how to write a compiler!
           | 
           | It's fine for developers to become dependent on tooling that
           | makes them more efficient. This is a good thing, and we want
           | more of this!
        
           | dvngnt_ wrote:
           | I said the same thing when they made compilers and cobol
        
         | la64710 wrote:
         | I don't think one have to be either to see that the future will
         | mean increased choices and speed because of AI. Codegen AI
         | tools may not do everything a developer do but I see it
         | certainly evolving to a point where it can "understand" the
         | context of a large code base and generate useful snippets of
         | code as per the desires of the product owner. Yeah
         | "development" as we know it may become obsolete but it would
         | probably be two decades from now.
        
         | echelon wrote:
         | > I'm expecting a sobering year for AI in 2024
         | 
         | I expect a sobering year for illustrators [1], animators [2],
         | musicians [3], game designers, publishers, and news outlets [4]
         | as GenAI starts to make their fields accessible to everyone.
         | 
         | The prevailing opinion on HN is to sleep on this like crypto,
         | which is baffling to me. The outputs are so good and are
         | leading to entirely new classes of products, not to mention
         | orders of magnitude reduction in time and cost structures.
         | 
         | This is the most exciting moment in tech of the last 30 years,
         | yet there's so much "nobody would use Dropbox" and "old man
         | yells at cloud" negative forecasting.
         | 
         | Entire industries are going to be disrupted by this. Y'all are
         | sleeping on it.
         | 
         | [1] https://playgroundai.com/ [2]
         | https://pikalabs.org/showcase/ [3] https://www.suno.ai/ [4]
         | https://www.channel1.ai/
        
           | mjr00 wrote:
           | Comparing generative AI favorably to crypto is an odd choice,
           | given that crypto and blockchain are the poster children for
           | "massively overhyped tech that led to absolutely nothing."
        
             | echelon wrote:
             | I'm comparing HN attitudes. People dismiss AI as if it were
             | crypto.
             | 
             | > that led to absolutely nothing.
             | 
             | This is the part most of you are completely blind to. It's
             | astonishing to me that you don't see the step function
             | changes happening. I guess that means less competition,
             | though.
             | 
             | By the end of the year, anyone will be able to make brand
             | new Taylor Swift music that sounds good. The average child
             | will be able to animate short films.
             | 
             | This is insane. Both the fact that sci-fi possibilities are
             | tangibly right ahead of us, and the fact that so many
             | people are dismissing it outright.
        
               | mjr00 wrote:
               | > By the end of the year, anyone will be able to make
               | brand new Taylor Swift music that sounds good. The
               | average child will be able to animate short films.
               | 
               | But will I be able to listen to that music and watch
               | those films in my fully autonomous vehicle which will be
               | available in 2016... I mean 2020... I mean 2025... I mean
               | 2040?
        
               | RandomLensman wrote:
               | The problem is that while those things might be true,
               | their impact might be quite limited. Will all the kids do
               | their own short films? Will people stop listening to
               | Taylor Swift?
               | 
               | More "trinkets and gadgets" is a continuation of the last
               | decade, the real question is if things remain incremental
               | (maybe up to a percent more GDP growth) or become truly
               | transformational. Claims to the later do invite scrutiny.
        
               | riversflow wrote:
               | > anyone will be able to make a brand new Taylor Swift
               | 
               | I was with you until this. I think music is actually
               | informative for what we can expect in visual arts and
               | generative models generally; synths, drum machines, and
               | music production equipment and software share very
               | similar qualities with this new stuff, yet we still have
               | rockstars like Swift.
        
           | tlivolsi wrote:
           | I've been shamed for using LLM's heavily despite my
           | productivity being through the roof.
        
             | mjr00 wrote:
             | Shamed by whom? And how can those people tell you're using
             | LLMs? Is it possible that whatever output you're producing
             | with LLMs isn't very good?
        
           | daemonologist wrote:
           | I don't think HN is sleeping on generative AI - it's been
           | fairly prevalent near the top of the front page.
           | 
           | I agree that some creative fields are going to start feeling
           | real impacts, not necessarily because models have gotten
           | super creative, but they're becoming more practical for rote
           | tasks which otherwise might "pay the bills." For example,
           | Google's recent work on style alignment: https://style-
           | aligned-gen.github.io/ .
        
         | johnxie wrote:
         | On the topic of AI, you've brought up some valid points, and I
         | understand the skepticism, especially given the AI hype cycle.
         | However, there's also plenty to get excited about beyond the
         | marketing gimmicks.
         | 
         | Consider the recent Google demo. It was recreated and, while
         | still fun and impressive, it's definitely not ready for
         | commercial use. You can see it at
         | https://sagittarius.greg.technology. This demo is a preview of
         | what's to come, and I think it's important for us to stay open-
         | minded.
         | 
         | I believe that in 2024, we're going to witness a significant
         | expansion in what's possible with AI, while costs decrease.
         | Increased contributions in the open-source community will
         | likely fuel another wave of startups and new applications.
        
           | sien wrote:
           | Check out this on AWS's Q from Corey Quinn .
           | 
           | https://www.lastweekinaws.com/blog/aws-degenerative-ai-
           | blund...
           | 
           | Generative AI is awesome but also crazily overhyped.
           | 
           | Remember when Siri / Alexa / Cortana / the Google thing were
           | the big thing?
           | 
           | Now presumably there are more Alexas in cupboards than
           | anywhere else.
        
         | rqtwteye wrote:
         | I expect this to go down the same way as with the internet in
         | 1990s and 2000s. Lots of potential followed by hype, big bubble
         | with lots of bad ideas, crash, good ideas survive, wide
         | adoption and then AI will be part of everybody's life.
        
           | FredPret wrote:
           | ... or death! Let's hope not though.
        
         | WheatMillington wrote:
         | >more tech layoffs due to economy
         | 
         | Why do you think the economy will worsen next year?
        
       | willsmith72 wrote:
       | > Unburdened by the undifferentiated heavy lifting of tasks like
       | upgrading Java versions, developers can focus on the creative
       | work that drives innovation.
       | 
       | I totally agree that AI is going to make it easier and easier for
       | engineers to get closer to the customer and work on real
       | problems. The number of specialist "IT" people, or separate
       | backend and frontend classifications, will decrease and the
       | startup and product world will greatly benefit.
        
       | Slartie wrote:
       | Here's my prediction: 2025 predictions by the Amazon CTO will not
       | be written by the Amazon CTO, but by an LLM.
        
       | ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
       | Ok literally none of his predictions have any merit. They are
       | absolutely bullshit. My bullshit detector has not gone higher
       | this month. No wonder he is the CTO of Amazon. All of these
       | companies are on their downhill dump.
        
       | pipes wrote:
       | I struggled to get through the culturally aware section.
       | Apparently the technology should define its responses in terms of
       | what ever identity group the user has been lumped into. For some
       | reason if it doesn't do this, it won't have the same reach.
        
       | jschveibinz wrote:
       | Here are some additional tech predictions relevant to the HN
       | community to compare and contrast:
       | 
       | Gartner tech trends: https://www.gartner.com/en/articles/gartner-
       | top-10-strategic...
       | 
       | Gartner AI predictions: https://www.cio.inc/future-ai-gartners-
       | predictions-for-2024-...
       | 
       | Dell predictions: https://www.dell.com/en-us/perspectives/top-
       | tech-predictions...
       | 
       | Deloitte predictions:
       | https://www.deloitte.com/global/en/about/press-room/deloitte...
       | 
       | BDO predictions:
       | https://www.bdo.com/insights/industries/technology/bdo-tech-...
       | 
       | NTT predictions: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ntt-announces-
       | key-technology-...
       | 
       | Techopedia: https://www.techopedia.com/tech-layoffs-predictions
       | 
       | MIT Tech Review:
       | https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/02/23/1045416/10-break...
        
       | gregw2 wrote:
       | Yeah, there is always the high-level view of these things and the
       | low-level.
       | 
       | The way LLMs make stuff up is oft-remarked upon and is unclear
       | whether it's a dealbreaker or not but it might be.
       | 
       | Here's an Werner/AWS-specific LLM anecdote along those lines:
       | 
       | I went onto AWS's LLM Q for the first time today, a little chat
       | icon nicely/helpfully linked from their documentation pages (when
       | logged into my AWS account) and asked it a question which I was
       | unable to find an answer in their docs or via
       | Google/Bing/StackOverflow after 5-10 minutes of searching.
       | What Redshift SQL query can I write to tell whether the instance
       | I am connected to is a Redshift Serverless or a Redshift
       | Provisioned cluster?
       | 
       | (I have migrated Redshift clusters in Dev/Nonprod to Serverless
       | to reduce cost, but featureset is not identical so some of our
       | app code is sensitive to the differences and needs to detect
       | which type of environment is present before executing. The
       | release number, but not the instance type, can be found in
       | Redshift SELECT VERSION();.)
       | 
       | AWS Q LLM replies:                 To check if an Amazon Redshift
       | cluster is provisioned or serverless, you can run the following
       | SQL query:            SELECT cluster_type FROM svv_cluster_info;
       | The cluster_type will return either "provisioned" or
       | "serverless".            You can only connect to and query
       | Serverless clusters using the Amazon Redshift Query Editor v2.
       | Provisioned clusters can be queried using either Query Editor v1
       | or v2.            [...+more text on the differences and a
       | bulleted list of 3 weblinks/sources provided...]
       | 
       | Wow! Awesome! This answered my question perfectly! The response
       | and code is formatted beautifully just like real documentation.
       | There are a lot of SVV_ system views and I guess I just missed
       | this one. I am at this point very impressed.
       | 
       | I go to actually try the above query on my serverless and
       | provisioned clusters...                 Serverless: SQL Error
       | [42P01]: ERROR: relation "svv_cluster_info" does not exist
       | Provisioned: SQL Error [42P01]: ERROR: relation
       | "svv_cluster_info" does not exist
       | 
       | Another attempt answered similarly affirmatively, this time
       | mentioning an imaginary "SVV_CLUSTER" view (which also didn't
       | work.)
       | 
       | Even as a chatbot, the most obvious use case, this is is not
       | really meeting the mark.
       | 
       | I know it's brand new and rushed out of the door for re:Invent
       | two weeks ago and I know it'll get better... but it was a bit
       | hard to read Werner's article a few hours later and take it
       | seriously. My first Bayesian prior is now a "err, no".
        
       | carlosjobim wrote:
       | As long as AI is controlled by Silicon Valley, it will never
       | become culturally aware, because the people controlling it are
       | not the slightest culturally aware. They think diversity sits in
       | the skin colour, and that's about as far as they are willing to
       | think about it, because they are intellectually lazy and have
       | dead souls, without any curiosity for the world.
       | 
       | They train their AI on some false assumptions that fits their
       | political faith, and foreigners who need to use their AIs will
       | have to learn about the biases and work around them. Just like it
       | is today.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2023-12-13 23:00 UTC)