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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?

#661

Post by golergka »

xyzelement wrote: post #520
kmarc wrote: post #92

FWIW I have the exact opposite experience: people around me, who are _NOT_ in tech, keep talking about AI and lately especially ChatGPT, whereas serious (not only senior) IT professionals don't really. Besides the science behind it, currently it feels like the same hype as crypto a couple years before.

// currently it feels like the same hype as crypto I keep seeing this take and it doesn't make any sense to me. Some tech has obvious utility and some doesn't. For example, I knew internet (web, email) were valuable when I discovered them because accessing information and communicating with people were already things I did - the internet unequivocally made them faster and easier and often cheaper. chatGPT / bard gave…

> I don't personally know anyone whose payment/banking experience is improved by it. As an American

That's exactly because you live in a first world country with a reliable banking system.

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

#662

Post by scarface_74 »

oblio wrote: post #444
evrydayhustling wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The missing productivity paradox is something that should interest everyone in tech! Like any macroeconomic observation, there is plenty of uncertainty in both the measurements (GDP ain't perfect) and the context (2 financial crises and a pandemic). But even pro-status-quo institutions like Brookings agree that Something Is Up. Their 2021 review on the topic is both a decent summary and a good source of further refs…

How do those distinct lifestyles" match with rising inequality and people having a hard time buying a house or paying rent?

As far as I know, neither the rate of homelessness has gone up nor homeownership has gone down over the past decade.

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

#663

Post by scarface_74 »

earthling8118 wrote: post #632
parineum wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inequality is a red herring. Poverty is down. Have you looked for housing in Columbus, Ohio?

Nope. How am I supposed to get a job there? How about getting the money together to afford to move? I already live in a "low cost of living" area with less than half the population of Columbus, Ohio. It's still expensive as hell and there isn't a great housing situation.

Well, people are working everyday in Columbus OH.

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

#664

Post by notahacker »

eric_cc wrote: post #637
packetlost wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it really doesn't.

It absolutely does. What leads you to believe that it doesn’t?

Comically low transaction rate, obscenely high power consumption, extreme concentration of BTC holdings in the hands of a small number of people (and companies who have very little influence of global politics), arbitrary growth rate and cap with no correspondence to economic growth, extreme volatility , inconsequentially small use for legal trade, but above all the complete and utter disinterest in it as a reserve currency outside a small echo chamber that has far more BTC to sell than involvement in international trade.

Fortnite Bucks, Mt Gox trading cards, skulls of adult humans and guano also "have the potential to become the world's reserve currency", but it seems unreasonable to put the burden on proof on the people arguing that they won't be.

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

#665

Post by bondarchuk »

parineum wrote: post #560
bondarchuk wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot depends on the definition of "understand" you want to use. According to some definitions there is already some kind of understanding going on in the current generation of LLMs, according to others true understanding requires a soul in the Christian sense and thus it is unattainable an LLM, and of course there is a spectrum of opinions in-between.

If you want to limit your range of opinions to credible domain experts speaking scientifically, the range goes from "definitely not" to "maybe a little if you have a very loose definition".

Which is not that far from what I was saying. And if you take the domain to be philosophy or psychology rather than deep learning or CS, I'm sure the range will be much wider.

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

#666

Post by stareatgoats »

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…

Exactly this. I've been scratching my head about the belittlement in tech circles of the phenomenal breakthrough that chatGPT and other LLMs represents. I think it boils down to a conflation of a few different factors:

1. Our jobs are obviously (soon) replaceable or at least massively impacted - just like all the jobs we ourselves have replaced previously. We don't like that and throw stones at it to make it go away.

2. We used to be the goto-source for all things technical, now (soon) people can just ask chatGPT and get a better answer. We don't like that and throw stones at it to make it go away.

3. We are (most of us) schooled to think that a script, a program (made by us) produces a predictable result: every letter has to be carefully placed or the whole thing comes crashing down. This AI thing doesn't work like that at all, which we don't like and etc.

4. The answers given to us by the chat bots are sometimes just "hallucinations", because the tech isn't fully mature yet. We don't like that.

More?

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

#668

Post by wak90 »

adriand wrote: post #431
evrydayhustling wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The missing productivity paradox is something that should interest everyone in tech! Like any macroeconomic observation, there is plenty of uncertainty in both the measurements (GDP ain't perfect) and the context (2 financial crises and a pandemic). But even pro-status-quo institutions like Brookings agree that Something Is Up. Their 2021 review on the topic is both a decent summary and a good source of further refs…

Another explanation that I find persuasive, put forward by Ezra Klein, is that productivity-sapping uses of technology grew along with the productivity-boosting ones: social media, for example, is a powerful mechanism for distracting people and destroying their attention spans. If this is a good explanation, it begs the question of what AI might do to destroy productivity as well. If you’re constantly sexting with yo…

[flagged]

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

#670

Post by enigmurl »

ben_w wrote: post #640
enigmurl wrote: post #575

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could argue that for any service provider then. Why is Intel selling CPUs when it could be making profit from the cloud data centers themselves?

It seems like you think I'm accusing OpenAI of being the grifters — I'm not; OpenAI are very open and clear about the limitations of their models. The grifters say things like "buy my guide to learn how to use ChatGPT to write a book for you", overselling the capabilities of ChatGPT by a large margin. Anytime someone says "buy my guide to becoming rich", that should set off warning signs. I've only heard it being tru…

Ah I see, fair point then I would agree.
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