this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2024
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I really don't understand the hype about AI in it's current state.
That's because we're using it wrong. It's not a genie you go to for answers to your problems, it's mighty putty. You could build a house out of it, but it's wildly expensive and not at all worth it. But if you want to stick a glass bottle to a tree, or fix a broken plastic shell back together, it's great
For example, you can have it do a web search, read through the results to see if it actually contains what you're looking for, then summarize what it found and let you jump right there to evaluate yourself. You could have it listen to your podcasts and tag them by topic. You could write a normal program to generate a name and traits of a game character, then have the AI write flavor text and dialog trees for quest chains
Those are some projects I've used AI for - specifically, local AI running on my old computer. I'm looking to build a new one
I also use chat gpt to write simple but tedious code on a weekly basis for my normal job - things like "build a class to represent this db object". I don't trust it to do anything that's not straightforward - I don't trust myself to do anything tedious
The AI is not an expert, I am. The AI is happy to do busy work, every second of it increases my stress level. AI is tireless, it can work while I sleep. AI is not efficient, but it's flexible. My code is efficient, but it is not flexible
As a part of a system, AI is the link between unstructured data and code, which needs structure. It let's you do things that would have required a 24/7 team of dozens of employees. It also is unable to replace a single human - just like a computer
That's my philosophy at least, after approaching LLMs as a new type of tool and studying them as a developer. Like anything else, I ran it on my own computer and poked and prodded it until I saw the patterns. I learned what it could do, and what it struggled to do. I learned how to use it, I developed methodologies. I learned how to detect and undo "rampancy", a number of different failure states where it degrades into nonsense. And I learned how to use it as another tool in my toolbox, and I pride myself on using the right tool for the job
This is a useful tool - I repeatedly have used it to do things I couldn't have done without it. This is a new tool - artisans don't know how to use it yet. I can build incredible things with this tool with what I know now, and other people are developing their own techniques to great effect. We will learn how to use this tool, even in its current state. It will take time, its use may not be obvious, but this is a very useful tool
That's all it is, is hype. It's another bubble. A pump and dump scheme for hedgies.
It's not for you. Its for corporations who want to fire half their staff and replace them with an algorithm. That's why it has such a high valuation.
They could fire 3 layers of management without spending a dime while increasing productivity.
Honestly the easiest people to replace with a bot.
Those corporations are about to find out the fun way that these algorithms, in their current and near-future states, cannot replace human beings.
Well, except for maybe lazy copywriters who pump out pointless listicles and executives who do - whatever it is they do - but any non-trivial task requiring creativity and understanding is beyond these tools.
You’re assuming that they care about running a viable service or product.
The “corporation” might care. The Senior Vice Director of Data Intelligence who made the decision and got $50k bonus for it does not
The hope is that their customers care. Or their customer’s customers.
The future portion of this list reads like something produced from ChatGPT.
"When I was young, they told me that one day, AI would do the menial labor so that we would have more time to do what we love - like art, music, and poetry. Today, the AI does art, music, and poetry so that I can work longer hours at my menial labor job for lower wages."
Also, on point one, I still see a lot of job hirings for personal secretaries and people for data entry and to take minutes at meetings, and plenty of people complaining about not being able to actually talk to somebody on the phone to get their problem solved.
Your grandmother (or great grandmother depending how old you are) had to spend hours of hard labour every day to wash clothes dishes and rooms with just a tub of water a broom and a mop. Now all that takes maybe 20 minutes of light labour with a vacuum, dishwasher and washing machine. Technology absolutely has reduced drudgery
Fun fact: After the adoption of electric lighting in homes became common, there was a massive increase in the demand for maids and cleaning services because people simply couldn't see just how dirty their houses were when everybody was using candles.
Another fun fact: With the introduction of the computer and similar technology into many jobs, productivity skyrocketed, but wages didn't rise to match the increase in company profits. However, it was still viable for the average American household to live off of the wages of one 40 hour per week job. Today, the average American household requires at least 2 full-time salaries in order to survive, despite technology continuing to push productivity even higher and companies continuously reporting their most profitable year ever, year over year. Despite technology, the amount of work per household has effectively doubled or more over the past 60 years.
Mate, the horse whip and the wheel were Technology back when they got invented.
It's a massivelly generic word.
Absolutelly some Technology has reduced drudgery. Meanwhile some Technology has managed to increase it (for example: one can make the case that the mobile phone, by making people be always accessible, has often increased pressure on people, though it depends on the job), some Technology has caused immense Environmental destruction, some Technology has even caused epidemics of psychological problems and so on.
Not only is there a lot of stuff in the big umbrella called Technology, but the total effect of one of those things is often dependent on how its its used and Capitalism seems especially prone to inventing and using Technology that's very good for a handful of people whilst being bad for everybody else.
One can't presume that just because something can be classified as Technology it will reduce drudgery or in even that it will be overall a good thing, even if some past Technologies did.
Good one. Did you use an LLM to generate it?
I would argue that there’s neither understanding nor creativity happening. It’s guessing, aping, remixing, which is impressive enough.
It’s a machine that knows everything, but understands nothing.
The point isn’t that we’ll never get there. The point is we sure as shit aren’t there yet.
An AI chatbot for a cloud service I use helped me find the right documentation for setting up SSO. It's not all bad. But the way it's pushed is bad.
It doesn't matter. Just understand that there are people who get paid way more than the average joe to hype the shit out these companies to attract investor value. Then get mad at capitalism like the rest of us.
It’s all leading to one final product: VR sex robots
It better.
I saw a documentary about that.
It's not related to the technology, is the venture industry trying tp figure out the next unicorn, which they have been trying to find for the last ten years.
Honestly, I can say I don't really get it either. I would only use the open source models anyway, but it just seems rather silly from what I can tell.
I feel like the last few months have been an inflection point, at least for me. Qwen 2.5, and the new Command-R, really make a 24GB GPU feel "dumb, but smart," useful enough so I pretty much always keep Qwen 32B loaded on the desktop for its sheer utility.
It's still in the realm of enthusiast hardware (aka a used 3090), but hopefully that's about to be shaken up with bitnet and some stuff from AMD/Intel.
Altman is literally a vampire though, and thankfully I think he's going to burn OpenAI to the ground.