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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?

#391

Post by jjgreen »

bigger_inside wrote: post #300
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…

I teach college, and in the beginning days, everyone was screaming about "the students will have chatGPT write papers now". Well, apart from the fact that chatGPT is really incapable of developing a thought, and also apart from the fact that half will fail to delete sentences like "I'm a language model, so I can't..." (insert gist of question here), it's painfully obvious if something is LLM generated. The moment a s…

A case in point https://twitter.com/venturetwins/status/1648410430338129920 (if you have any views left).

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

#392

Post by scarface_74 »

codegeek wrote: post #362
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…

My worry with AI is that even though it is very impressive and useful in many ways for real world applications, the Hype may end up making it another crypto. Crypto was a great promise when it was invented and one can make the argument that it could have so many real world uses but it failed to live upto that expectation and one of the reasons is that it was over hyped way too quickly and ultimately became a tool for…

I use ChatGPT to help me quickly write simple AWS SDK based helper scripts.

I’ve also recently been involved in designing a DevOps /Docker deployment pipeline for a customer. They use Java and I haven’t used Java in decades.

Before I would have just done my POC using a Python or Node container and rely on the fact that they knew Java well enough to get the concepts. But I used Java and started the chain of questions “answer all question based on talking to someone who doesn’t know Java. Explain everything step by step.”

In both cases, ChatGPT will usually get me 99% there. But I have to keep trying things and giving it the error messages and iterating.

Of course there is the hallucination issue.

On the other hand, I’ve done a lot of work professionally with old school chatbots integrated with web pages and call centers where the only intelligent component is that we could parse out parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc) and only search on those.

I would never recommend putting an LLM style chatbot in front of a customer. When I work with customers - especially in the government - the questions and answers are heavily vetted before being put in production.

They would never take a chance that either the customer could jailbreak the chatbot and have it say something and trigger a political argument about “bias” or that it would give incorrect information about a government benefit.

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

#393

Post by hotshiitake »

I think so. I suspect part of the reason for this is that, for many people, "AI" has become a meaningless marketing buzzword. And companies have been overpromising on the capabilities of their "AI" technology ever since home computers were a thing. So now we actually have something really cool and possibly revolutionary, but no one cares because they are tired of being scammed.

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

#394

Post by BowBun »

zirgs wrote: post #307
BowBun wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not necessarily arguing that they're the same, but let's be honest with ourselves - crypto said the _same_ things as it was ramping up. Just replace all the applications of AI you listed with the many hypothetical use-cases crypto-pushers were listing out. As always, sounds cool. Actually do some of it and then let's talk more.

Crypto pushers pushed two contradictory messages: 1. hodl, don't sell, don't spend! 2. Try to replace fiat with crypto in your life! No wonder that its adoption for legal purposes didn't go anywhere.

You're conflating the wallstreetbets crowd with the crypto crowd who are kinda polar opposites.

Some of the applications crypto folks were going on about: decentralization (of course) until the IRS started taxing your crypto transactions; helping 3rd world countries with weak currencies (partially happened); international trade (quickly became untrue and monitored by government agencies), ledgers for tech companies (they can all already build audit trails. i've yet to see many applications where companies are willing to give up control over their trust to a 3rd party system with no scrubbing functionality. looking at you, AWS status page).

Like I said, same vibe, different applications. Until some are built it's all just hype and conjecture. The applications we've seen work well are already well-accepted for their faults (content generation, summarization, etc)

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

#395

Post by byteware »

voidfunc wrote: post #312
perrygeo wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. My friends in other white-collar-ish jobs, which require lots of writing, are smitten with ChatGPT and think it's amazing. Friends in tech are largely dismissive/critical of it's abilities while being skeptical/fearful of its impact. My take is that, for most non-tech people, this is their first experience directing a computer to perform a precise task - ie programming. They're accustomed to using applications,…

This reason makes sense, but that's insanely powerful (and valuable) if it ends up working out. It basically democratizes programming.

how is programming "democratized"?

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

#396

Post by rvz »

blitz_skull wrote: post #217
DebtDeflation wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

This—100%. The AI revolution with LLMs is creating a new type of interface with computers—the AI interface. Will it kill us all? Eh, probably not. Will it completely change human civilization forever? Eh... maybe not? (But also maybe). But what it already has begun to do, and will continue to do is change the way we interact with computers. The era of having a personal voice assistant that is capable, adaptable, and…

> Crypto still hasn't proven itself to be useful in any way shape or form that isn't immediately over-shadowed by a different medium.

Seems like it has proven very useful for Stripe [0], Moneygram [1], TicketMaster [2], etc.

Unlike AI which continues to consume tons of resources to burn the entire world down to the ground without any viable efficient methods of training, inference or fine-tuning their AI models in the past decade with its chatbot hype and gimmickry [3], crypto does not need to consume tons of CO2 to operate, thanks to alternative and greener consensus algorithms available in production today. [4]

Being 'useful' is not an excuse to destroy the planet around untrustworthy AI models getting themselves confused over a single pixel or hallucinating in the middle of the road.

[0] https://stripe.com/gb/use-cases/crypto

[1] https://stellar.org/moneygram

[2] https://business.ticketmaster.com/business-solutions/nft-tok...

[3] https://gizmodo.com/chatgpt-ai-water-185000-gallons-training...

[4] https://consensys.net/blog/press-release/ethereum-blockchain...

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

#397

Post by wruza »

ignoramous wrote: post #283
JW_00000 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I think LLMs are revolutionary, but the (r)evolution will take decades to materialize. 1980s was a different world. Today, the distribution that BigTech has, enabled by this thing called the Internet, changes the dynamic completely. Given the investment, I believe LLMs will change some of the industries within 5 years, simply because it is a new but natural way to interact with Computers; and Google/Apple already p…

When low/no-code started its hype? 5-10 years ago? Or something like that. First release dates:

Mendix 2005 Outsystems 2001 Appian 2004 (no info before) Quickbase 2000 Zoho Creator 2006

~20 years ago. I agree with the idea that it’s a new cool way of interaction with systems, but I also think you trust too much in our development cycles. Five years is nothing. Companies will try and fail, try and pivot, try and barely swim for years. Few of them will arrive alive at stage 2 where the real deal starts.

If it were easy, it would hit frontpages last week, because small companies and single developers can prototype things 10-100x faster than any bigcorp.

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

#398

Post by aenis »

rvz wrote: post #361
MatthiasPortzel wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a perfect example of an AI-hype comment. You’re treating it as a fact that LLM are going to replace existing products, at some unknown future date. “In 5 years, all code will be written by AI” “In 5 years, LLM will replace Siri and Alexa” “In 5 years, AI will replace [sector of jobs]” The thing that frustrates me about these statements is that you don’t know what AI technology is going to look like in 5 years…

Exactly. The AI bros here are doing the same thing as the crypto bros and almost all of them don't even know it. Pontificating their nonsense around the hype about LLMs to the point where they don't even trust it. The same thing they did with ConvNets and they still don't trust that either since they both hallucinate, frequently. I can guarantee you that people will not trust an AI to fly a plane without any human pi…

I'd like to point out that humans, too, are not trustworthy in high risk situations. For this we have procedures, deterministic automation and so on.

I like to think of capable LLMs as pf gifted interns. I can expect decent results if I explain well enough, but I need processes around them to make sure they are doing what they are told. In my industry thats enough to produce a noticeable productivity gain, and likely some reduction of employment as its a low margin cut throat business relying on low grade knowledge workers. I see the hype and honestly cant stand it, but its measureably impacting my industry and the world around me.

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

#400

Post by BirAdam »

ignoramous wrote: post #283
JW_00000 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I think LLMs are revolutionary, but the (r)evolution will take decades to materialize. 1980s was a different world. Today, the distribution that BigTech has, enabled by this thing called the Internet, changes the dynamic completely. Given the investment, I believe LLMs will change some of the industries within 5 years, simply because it is a new but natural way to interact with Computers; and Google/Apple already p…

The primary issue that I see here is that as a natural language interface to a computer, I don’t know that there’s enough profit to support the hardware and training costs. Also, there are copyright questions involved. There also issues of hallucination, and limiting these neuters the creative aspect of the LLMs.

Personally, I truly hope that this technology gets cheaper and cheaper, and that it can be run on a device the size of a pager in pocket with a pair of AirPods on. If that were my computing environment 90% of the time, I’d be thrilled.

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