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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?

#271

Post by JW_00000 »

rvense wrote: post #68

On October 17th, 1979, VisiCalc was released. I'm sure pretty much every accountant in the world got up and went to work that day exactly like they'd been doing all of their career. It probably didn't feel different for that many of them. Most of them had probably never used a computer then, and a lot of them probably didn't feel any particular need to, at least until they tried it. There were probably more than a fe…

Agreed. On my Twitter timeline lots of people are saying "the world will be completely different in 6-12 months' time". On October 17th, 1980, most accountants' work day still looked the same as a year before. It took decades for spreadsheets to get widespread adoption. I think LLMs are revolutionary, but the (r)evolution will take decades to materialize. Our work days will look completely different... in 2043.

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

#272

Post by veidr »

narag wrote: post #111
samuellevy wrote: post #31

There's definitely a few echo chambers around AI, but it's definitely not something that "just techies" are onto. ChatGPT made some waves at the end of last year. My in-laws were wanting to talk to (at) me about it at Christmas. There's plenty of awareness outside of the tech circles, but most of the discussion (both out and in of the tech world) seems to miss what LLMs actually _are_. The reason why ChatGPT was impr…

It's not AI. As accurate as it may ever seem, it's simply not actually aware of what it's saying. Conflating intelligence and awareness seems to me the biggest confusion around this topic. When non-technical people ask me about it, I ask them to consider three questions: - is alive? - thinks? - can speak (and understand)? A plant, microbe, primitive animals... are alive, don't think, can't speak. A dog, a monkey... a…

You might be onto something (or not, I'm not sure), but its extremely well-documented that both dogs and monkeys can speak.

They can't speak English like a human, but they both can understand a good deal of English, and they both can speak in their own ways (and understand the speaking of others).

I think the key thing about these LLMs is that they upend the notion that speaking requires thinking/understanding/intelligence.

They can "speak", if you mean emit coherent sentences and paragraphs, really well. But there is no understanding of anything, nor thinking, nor what most people would understand as intelligence behind that speaking.

I think that is probably new. I can't think of anything that could speak on this level, and yet be completely and obviously (if you give it like, an hour of back and forth conversation) devoid of intelligence or thinking.

I think that's what makes people have fantastical notions about how intelligent or useful LLMs are. We're conditioned by the entirety of human history to equate such high-quality "speech" with intelligence.

Now we've developed a slime mold that can write novels. But I think human society will adapt quickly, and recalibrate that association.

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

#273

Post by HPsquared »

rchaud wrote: post #203
monero-xmr wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is crypto a passing fad? ETH is $2k and BTC $30k. Shouldn’t this be 0 by now?

It would be, but crypto sits outside the real economy, and can only be traded by passing around stablecoins, which can be printed out of thin air. It won't reach zero if there are always enough stablecoin-denominated purchases to prop it up.

"Outside the real economy" reminds me of that Australian comedy sketch about the oil tanker ("the front fell off"), where the company representative said there would be no environmental impact because the ship was towed "outside the environment".

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

#274

Post by hagbarth »

DebtDeflation wrote: post #206
sensanaty wrote: post #138

Definitely. The tech is impressive but anyone I've spoken to thinks of it as Cleverbot 2.0, and among the more technically minded I've found that people mostly are indifferent. Hell, IRL most people I know don't think much of it, though on HN and elsewhere online I see a lot of people praising it as the next coming of Christ (this thread included) which puts it in a similar tier as crypto and other Web3 hypetrains as…

>puts it in a similar tier as crypto Comparisons between AI and crypto are horribly misguided IMO. Is AI overhyped? Sure. However - AI/ML is creating utility everywhere in our lives - speech to text, language translation, recommendation engines, relevancy ranking in search, computer vision, etc. and seems to be getting embedded in more and more processes by the day. Crypto never amounted to anything beyond a currency…

I mean. We can compare the hype pattern between the two and still acknowledge that one has utility while the other doesn't.

Both have resulted in a bunch of hopefuls starting companies, in order to attract mountains of venture capital. Companies that will only have a loose connection to the tech that drives the hype.

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

#275

Post by 23B1 »

I'd argue that AI insiders are also out of touch with the wider world and are missing opportunities to develop tools that'd be useful for everyone.

For instance, hallucinations. They're a function of LLMs. But they're also something that everyday people have to deal with from each other in the miasma of the post-truth world.

What an opportunity, within the artificial intelligence field, to think of these tools not just as automation and fact-finding, but teaching how to avoid hallucinations in your own life?

Personal finance Grammar, rhetoric, logic, reason Information literacy Media literacy

The list goes on...

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

#276

Post by smt88 »

23B1 wrote: post #275

I'd argue that AI insiders are also out of touch with the wider world and are missing opportunities to develop tools that'd be useful for everyone. For instance, hallucinations. They're a function of LLMs. But they're also something that everyday people have to deal with from each other in the miasma of the post-truth world. What an opportunity, within the artificial intelligence field, to think of these tools not ju…

LLMs are not an opportunity to teach humans how to avoid hallucinations because they don't work even the slightest bit like human brains and we don't even know how to make them stop hallucinating in the first place.

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

#277

Post by Capricorn2481 »

threeseed wrote: post #20
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.

As a supplier, I would be furious if one of my partners was sending AI emails to me.

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

#278

Post by Marrand »

moneywoes wrote: post #230
mensetmanusman wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are ways to get way faster at completing tasks without increasing the expectations with no change in pay.

Could you elaborate

I think he means that you just don't tell anyone that you now only work 6 hours a day instead of the 7.5 hours you used to. If your productivity is approximately the same no one will be able to tell. Requires you to be in a position where you are not strictly supervised of course.

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

#279

Post by eterevsky »

> maybe AI mainstream adoption will take longer than we anticipate

I would say it will mostly depend not on the public hype around it but on the pace at which it will acquire capabilities. If it stays at GPT 4 level, it will be gradually used to automate various tasks over the years.

If on the other hand it keeps the progression GPT 2 -> 3 -> 4, then by the time we are at GPT 6, it will be able to easily replace a wide range of jobs.

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

#280

Post by rideontime »

NikolaNovak wrote: post #236

All you can get in a survey like this is anecdotes and opinions. This may be sufficient for your purposes - here's my story:-) My sister is not technically minded. She has used chatgpt to create a request for permit for a backyard deck to city Hall, a letter to her boss requesting attendance to a conference, and her performance reviews. Another non techie and I use chatgpt to help us learn French and music theory. My…

How do you know that the French and music theory it’s teaching you is correct?
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