This is a big part of the reason. But it behooves us to ask why a key innovation in a field (and I trust Jeff Dean that this is one, I’ve never seen any reason to doubt either his integrity or ability) should produce such a reaction. What could make people act not just chagrined that their approach wasn’t the end state, but as though it was existential to discredit such an innovation?

Surely all of the people who did the work that the innovation rests on should be confident they will be relevant, involved, comfortable, and safe in the post-innovation world?

And yet it’s not clear they should feel this way. Luddism seems an unfounded ideology over the scope of history since the origin of the term. But over the period since “AI” entered the public discussion at the current level? Almost two years exactly? Making the Luddite agenda credible has seemed a ubiquitous talking point.

Over that time frame technical people have been laid off in staggering numbers, a steadily-shrinking number of employers have been slashing headcount and posting EPS beats, and “AI” has been mentioned in every breath. It’s so extreme that even sophisticated knowledge of the kinds of subject matter that goes into AlphaChip is (allegedly) useless without access to the Hopper FLOPs.

If the AI Cartel was a little less rapacious, people might be a little more open to embracing the AI revolution.

Bitter Lesson: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~eunsol/courses/data/bitter_lesson...