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Ask HN: Are people in tech inside an AI echo chamber?

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Re: Ask HN: Are people in tech inside an AI echo chamber?

#11

Post by flangola7 »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #8

This isn't just a tech echo chamber, it's the YC/SV echo chamber. Nobody is seriously looking at AI for normal products, because it's not trustworthy. Never really will be. Why do you think subways still have human operators? The combined investment & risk of full automation aren't worth it. It'll be useful for customer support bots, and backend things like spam filtering and other statistical analysis. But otherwise…

That's been said about countless tasks that are now done by machines. Computer was a job title. Printer was a job title. Very important jobs that didn't have room to risk errors.

Re: Ask HN: Are people in tech inside an AI echo chamber?

#12

Post by samuellevy »

Andrex wrote: post #6
coldtea wrote: post #3

Very much so. But also a hype wave. It's the successor the the big data wave, the ML wave, and countless others

Seems like the successor the crypto craze after that crashed. I'm expecting a wave of grifters fairly soon.

You haven't seen them already? The "AI Lawyer", all of the people trying to sell LLMs as search engines, and just generally hundreds of projects that are outright dangerous uses of LLMs but seem like they might be feasible.

Re: Ask HN: Are people in tech inside an AI echo chamber?

#13

Post by porkbeer »

throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #8

This isn't just a tech echo chamber, it's the YC/SV echo chamber. Nobody is seriously looking at AI for normal products, because it's not trustworthy. Never really will be. Why do you think subways still have human operators? The combined investment & risk of full automation aren't worth it. It'll be useful for customer support bots, and backend things like spam filtering and other statistical analysis. But otherwise…

Not sure why this is downvoted but I feel the SV bubble is its own bubble within the tech bubble without a doubt. And the biggest issue is that most of my friends in it seem to think everyone lives like them.

Re: Ask HN: Are people in tech inside an AI echo chamber?

#15

Post by ern »

I know a lot of people who are using ChatGPT who aren't in tech.

My spouse works in early childhood education and they use ChatpGPT routinely for low-value boilerplate stuff (social media posts that no one reads, etc).

A relative is in commercial real-estate management, and they also use ChatGPT routinely (in fact they started using it before I did).

So I don't think it's an echo chamber.

Re: Ask HN: Are people in tech inside an AI echo chamber?

#16

Post by steve_adams_86 »

My kids and all their friends are crazy about AI. They’re bent on making it do as much of their work as possible.

It’s fascinating. Though it probably isn’t intentional, AI service providers are already hooking kids early to have customers later.

Re: Ask HN: Are people in tech inside an AI echo chamber?

#18

Post by Ameo »

Young people all know about AI. There are 24/7 live AI generated SpongeBob shows on TikTok, character.ai is immensely popular, ChatGPT is used by students for homework and stuff, Snapchat AI was all posted all over (mostly memes about how bad and out of touch it is), I get ads for AI anime girl generators, etc.

I think there is certainly more talk about it inside tech circles, but I feel like it's more of a generational divide than anything else.

Re: Ask HN: Are people in tech inside an AI echo chamber?

#19

Post by bigmattystyles »

flangola7 wrote: post #11
throwawaaarrgh wrote: post #8

This isn't just a tech echo chamber, it's the YC/SV echo chamber. Nobody is seriously looking at AI for normal products, because it's not trustworthy. Never really will be. Why do you think subways still have human operators? The combined investment & risk of full automation aren't worth it. It'll be useful for customer support bots, and backend things like spam filtering and other statistical analysis. But otherwise…

That's been said about countless tasks that are now done by machines. Computer was a job title. Printer was a job title. Very important jobs that didn't have room to risk errors.

Even computer used to be a job.

Re: Ask HN: Are people in tech inside an AI echo chamber?

#20

Post by threeseed »

ern wrote: post #15

I know a lot of people who are using ChatGPT who aren't in tech. My spouse works in early childhood education and they use ChatpGPT routinely for low-value boilerplate stuff (social media posts that no one reads, etc). A relative is in commercial real-estate management, and they also use ChatGPT routinely (in fact they started using it before I did). So I don't think it's an echo chamber.

My partner runs an ecommerce business and her team uses ChatGPT dozens of time a day.

Everything from writing emails to suppliers, correcting grammar, responding to customers, brainstorming new product ideas, explaining contracts etc.

Where as for me I can't find a use for it. Even as a coding assistant I find that I spent more time trying to understand/correct what it did than if I just wrote it myself.

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