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What it feels like to work in AI right now

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Re: What it feels like to work in AI right now

#32

I work on a research team in FAANG. What it really feels like is one company made everyone else obsolete. And we are going to work working on NLP models that underperform ChatGPT by a huge margin. Twiddling my thumbs and keeping quiet while no one wants to recognize the elephant in the room. Also, there is no "working in AI", a few thousand people are doing real AI at most. The rest of us are calling an API.

Why do you think OpenAPI is so far out in front? It's not like there's a lot of secret sauce here - most of this stuff (transformers,etc.) is all out there in papers. And places like Google & Meta must have a lot more computing resources to train on that OpenAI does thus they should be able to train faster. Do you think OpenAI has discovered something they haven't been open about?

Until we see otherwise, don't we have to assume there's some secret sauce? Bard doesn't match GPT4 and it isn't for a lack of trying. (though perhaps that will change, so far that's the case)

Re: What it feels like to work in AI right now

#33

I work on a research team in FAANG. What it really feels like is one company made everyone else obsolete. And we are going to work working on NLP models that underperform ChatGPT by a huge margin. Twiddling my thumbs and keeping quiet while no one wants to recognize the elephant in the room. Also, there is no "working in AI", a few thousand people are doing real AI at most. The rest of us are calling an API.

Not sure why LLM would make Facebook (ads), Apple (hardware), Amazon (hosting, retail), Netflix (tv) obsolete. It's definitely something Google needs to think about, but there's no reason to think they won't again be the leader soon.

Re: What it feels like to work in AI right now

#34
post #4

Huge crypto vibes Every single person I know working in AI these days ... has been sparked by the ChatGPT moment.

I'm curious why you draw the parallel - did crypto ever have a ChatGPT/iPhone moment? As an observant outsider, my impression is that every "moment" of note in crypto has been about some price going way up or way down - there has never been a "this is the use case" moment.

Theoretically ethereum is that for crypto, if you believe the crypto bros.

Re: What it feels like to work in AI right now

#35

Huge crypto vibes Every single person I know working in AI these days ... has been sparked by the ChatGPT moment.

I see what you mean; but as external observer to both, I see crypto as having failed to provide or prove any particularly productive use; and chatGPT, for all its flaws, has been useful to me daily for last 2 months - and not in some crazy make-money-in-suspicious-ways sense, but like learning french and python and figuring out new concepts and stuff. But that's sample n=1 I suppose, there are both people that believ…

I think it's less about the usefulness and more about the fact that everyone is racing to add ChatGPT to their products (or start a new product off the back of it), whether or not it's useful or adds value. That feels a lot like everyone tacking on blockchain or launching an ICO.

But with you - I've found ChatGPT very useful!

Re: What it feels like to work in AI right now

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think OpenAPI is so far out in front? It's not like there's a lot of secret sauce here - most of this stuff (transformers,etc.) is all out there in papers. And places like Google & Meta must have a lot more computing resources to train on that OpenAI does thus they should be able to train faster. Do you think OpenAI has discovered something they haven't been open about?

Until we see otherwise, don't we have to assume there's some secret sauce? Bard doesn't match GPT4 and it isn't for a lack of trying. (though perhaps that will change, so far that's the case)

Google is going slow. They might be behind, but we haven't seen their best effort yet. Google has a 540 billion parameter model.

Re: What it feels like to work in AI right now

#37

Huge crypto vibes Every single person I know working in AI these days ... has been sparked by the ChatGPT moment.

It's the inverse of crypto.

Many of us have already learned stuff / achieved stuff / built stuff with the help of ChatGPT and the OpenAI API that would have taken us MONTHs to achieve.

It's the inverse because crypto was tools and business models in search of a problem, while LLMs are problem solvers in search of a business model.

Building LLM products is fun but... any day you could be wrecked by an OpenAI update.

Re: What it feels like to work in AI right now

#38
post #26
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how much of usefulness of ChatGPT that some report is caused by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novelty_effect Because it is new, and cool, and fascinating people are spending a bit more time with a bit more focus on the task with it compared to the old ways, hence the productivity increase. Once the novelty wears off…

It has helped me learn things more interactively because I can ask questions and get answers without having to read 10 blog posts or a book before understanding things. For my personality, it would be hard to recreate without having a living mentor available 24/7 that had knowledge of everything I wanted to ask of it. Does it get things wrong? Sure. But generally the subtle ways it might get stuff wrong would be the…

It's shocking to me how many people are treating chatGPT as a reliable source given how much we know it hallucinates.

Re: What it feels like to work in AI right now

#39

I work on a research team in FAANG. What it really feels like is one company made everyone else obsolete. And we are going to work working on NLP models that underperform ChatGPT by a huge margin. Twiddling my thumbs and keeping quiet while no one wants to recognize the elephant in the room. Also, there is no "working in AI", a few thousand people are doing real AI at most. The rest of us are calling an API.

Why do you think OpenAPI is so far out in front? It's not like there's a lot of secret sauce here - most of this stuff (transformers,etc.) is all out there in papers. And places like Google & Meta must have a lot more computing resources to train on that OpenAI does thus they should be able to train faster. Do you think OpenAI has discovered something they haven't been open about?

I dont work at Google, I think other FAANGS underinvested in this area as they didnt think it was promising. But I will admit, I am suspicious that Google is incompetent. Probably they can come back given how much money they will be forced to throw at it. But Bard is clearly behind and I dont believe their "abundance of caution" arguments for why Bard cant even code.

Re: What it feels like to work in AI right now

#40
post #15
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much, you can take any article hyping up AI/ChatGPT/etc and replace those words with crypto stuff and it's virtually indistinguishable from the crypto spam of yesteryear. I wonder what the next "get rich quick" techbro fad will be.

Replace crypto with cloud replace cloud with big data replace big data with web scale It's all just a hype and crash cycle

I'd say more like plateau?

Cloud is still around and going strong, just not sexy anymore. I use Vercel and Cloudflare and other stuff every day.

No idea about big data or web scale though, was never successful enough to achieve "big data" or "web scale" haha.

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