This comment is much more tempered and I do not think would generate a strong response. But I would suggest to take care when acting as an evangelical of a product. There's a big difference between "this technology shows great promise and warrants more funding as it won't be surprising if the benefits more than a decade's worth of losses at DeepMind" vs "this is a product right now generating billions of dollars a year".
The big problem with the latter statement isn't so much exaggeration, but something a bit more subtle. It is that people start to believe you. But then they sit waiting, and in that waiting eventually get disappointed. When that happens the usual response often feeds into conspiracies (perpetuating the overall distrust in science) or generates an overall bad sentiment against the whole domain.
The problem is that companies are bootstrapping with hype. The problem is that this leads to bubbles and makes it a ripe space for conmen, who just accelerate the bubble. There's no problem with Google/Microsoft/OpenAI/Etc talking to researchers/developers in the language of researchers/developers, but there is a problem of them talking to the average person in the language of the future. It's what enables the space for snakeoil like Rabbit or Devin. Those steal money from normal people and takes money from investors that could be better spent on actually pushing the research of the tech forward so that we can eventually have those products.
I understand some bootstrapping may be necessary due to needing money to even develop things, but certainly the big companies are not lacking in funding and we can still achieve the same goals while being more honest. The excitement and hope isn't the problem, it is the lying. "Is/Can" vs "will/we hope to"
Just be aware, the person you're arguing with has several decades experience working on the problem that AlphaFold just solved, and worked for Google on protein folding/design/drug discovery and machine learning for years. When I speak casually on Hacker News, I think people know enough from my writing style to not get triggered and write long analytic responses (but clearly, that's not always true). Think of me as a lawful neutral edge lord.
Either way, AlphaFold is one of the greatest achievements in science so far, and the funding agencies definitely are paying lots of attention to funding additional work in machine learning/biology, so in some sense, my statement is effectively true, even if not pedantically, literally correct.
> When I speak casually on Hacker News, I think people know enough from my writing style to not get triggered and write long analytic responses (but clearly, that's not always true).
If your "causal speech" is lying, then I don't think the problem is someone getting "triggered", I think it is because you lied.
> write long analytic responses
I'll concede that I'm verbose, but this isn't Twitter. I'd rather have real conversations.
Why would randoms on the internet be aware of your writing style in massive online forum. You aren't speaking from authority in this case, you can't compare it speaking at a conference for example.
The big problem with the latter statement isn't so much exaggeration, but something a bit more subtle. It is that people start to believe you. But then they sit waiting, and in that waiting eventually get disappointed. When that happens the usual response often feeds into conspiracies (perpetuating the overall distrust in science) or generates an overall bad sentiment against the whole domain.
The problem is that companies are bootstrapping with hype. The problem is that this leads to bubbles and makes it a ripe space for conmen, who just accelerate the bubble. There's no problem with Google/Microsoft/OpenAI/Etc talking to researchers/developers in the language of researchers/developers, but there is a problem of them talking to the average person in the language of the future. It's what enables the space for snakeoil like Rabbit or Devin. Those steal money from normal people and takes money from investors that could be better spent on actually pushing the research of the tech forward so that we can eventually have those products.
I understand some bootstrapping may be necessary due to needing money to even develop things, but certainly the big companies are not lacking in funding and we can still achieve the same goals while being more honest. The excitement and hope isn't the problem, it is the lying. "Is/Can" vs "will/we hope to"