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Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

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Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#151

Post by Acutulus »

bemmu wrote: post #137
yreg wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To piggyback, it's been almost a year and I still haven't gotten over the first time I saw DALL-E 2. Or the first time I've used GPT-2 (via AI Dungeon Google Collab sheet). Not sure when was the previous last time I've felt that sense of wonder. Perhaps the first time I've interacted with the original iPhone? Edit: I remembered some more from the past: - First Boston Dynamics Atlas videos.[0] - First successful Falco…

First time I got the "there's something special happening here" vibe was seeing the early "hallucination" images some years ago. Some examples here: https://www.businessinsider.com/these-trippy-images-show-how... My wild guess for the next 5 years is that we'll have Stable Diffusion with the ability to create NeRF scenes.

I'm right there with you. Google's DeepDream I think?

That first week of DeepDream images flooding the web showed me that someone had snuck a can of worms onto the table, and while they had graciously not opened it immediately, they had maybe cracked the lid just a bit

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#152

Post by gpanders »

Havoc wrote: post #9

The motions on the recent Boston dynamics demo video were eerily realistic and humanlike. Sure preprogrammed but still that smoothness stood out to me as something new

It's interesting to see both the advances in humanoid robotics and language models like ChatGPT. The obvious next step will be to combine these two to achieve a truly human-like android, just like in old school science fiction.

Of course, bridging the uncanny valley to make it even look passably human is another milestone entirely.

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#153

Post by dennis_jeeves1 »

jvanderbot wrote: post #48
lqet wrote: post #42

ChatGPT. This is the only technology that truly freaked me out in my lifetime (I am 35). It competently explained to me the difference between Dijkstra's algorithm and A* in a psalm-like poem [0]. It was able to find misspelled words in a long text I just made up, list them in alphabetical order, and explain to me why I misspelled them. It correctly simulated a ChatGPT instance which was accessible via a HTTP API, an…

That's wrong. It's poetic, but incorrect. These tools are about as good as a non specialist with time to undertake some bullshitting.

'poetic': you have described it accurately. I fail to see what the hullabaloo is all about. Call me jaded.

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#154

Post by endorphinbomber »

jvanderbot wrote: post #122
lqet wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your definition of "general" here? The classic shortest path problem (which the psalm addresses) is described as finding the shortest path between two nodes, and given non-negative edge weights, Dijkstra's algorithm is perfectly general here. It will find such a shortest path in any graph, no further restrictions. For A*, everything depends on the heuristic, as you said. If h(v) = 0, A* is equivalent to Dijks…

> Dijkstra's algorithm is a general one, That can be used in any case, I take issue with this statement. "any case" implies it's more general than A star, which is not true, it's a specialization of A star with (ok you win) h(v) set to nothing. It necessarily cannot solve as many problems as a star. And Dijkstra's won't work in "any case" at all, esp graphs with negative edge weights. The explanation struck me as glo…

You realize it had the constraints of a poem, and needed to take some liberty with description there?

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#156

Post by dennis_jeeves1 »

vijayr02 wrote: post #97
jvanderbot wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's wrong. It's poetic, but incorrect. These tools are about as good as a non specialist with time to undertake some bullshitting.

So perfectly suited for a management role? :)

Well suited for more most walks of life actually where BS reigns supreme :)

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#157

Post by agalunar »

lqet wrote: post #42

ChatGPT. This is the only technology that truly freaked me out in my lifetime (I am 35). It competently explained to me the difference between Dijkstra's algorithm and A* in a psalm-like poem [0]. It was able to find misspelled words in a long text I just made up, list them in alphabetical order, and explain to me why I misspelled them. It correctly simulated a ChatGPT instance which was accessible via a HTTP API, an…

Ought to be "to guide you on your way", "helps you reach the other side", "for they will lead you", "and help you", since "ye" is the plural nominative (not accusative).

I grew up using archaic, Jamesian English regularly (in a religious community), so it always sounds wrong when people use them incorrectly while attempting to be old-timey, which is a bit distracting and ruins the effect.

Apparently ChatGPT suffers from hypercorrection as much as any modern speaker.

(The meter is also dreadful, which is another thing that I think many modern English speakers don't often do precisely.)

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#158

Post by LeonM »

FeistySkink wrote: post #130
jeffwask wrote: post #106

The Mobility Scooter craze. South Park nailed it. One day there were a couple scooters and you went oh interesting. A moth later there were thousands clogging every sidewalk with no discernible method of managing these devices. Then just like they came they were gone. How many billions spent? How much e-waste was generated?

Unfortunately it's still a thing almost everywhere in EU.

Unfortunately, the EU country I live in does not allow them.

And that is unfortunate, because whenever I visit another EU country I find them very useful.

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#159

Post by dennis_jeeves1 »

pxue wrote: post #56
jvanderbot wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's wrong. It's poetic, but incorrect. These tools are about as good as a non specialist with time to undertake some bullshitting.

"confidently wrong" That's chatgpt right now. To get it to confidently right will take years and years more

>"confidently wrong"

Very human I must say.

Re: Ask HN: What is the weirdest or most surreal recent technology you have seen?

#160

Post by luisapic »

adrianmonk wrote: post #140
aj_icracked wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ha! I actually run a company that does Coop cleaning, babysitting, coop set up, day old chick delivery, etc. We're launching the world's best Coop in 45 days, stay tuned :)

Although it sounds funny, this is actually kind of a serious question: are you concerned about an egg bubble?

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