Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What it feels like to work in AI right now

robotic.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 768 posts

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

#111

Post by sberens »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #54
UncleOxidant wrote: post #25

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?

> Why do you think OpenAPI is so far out in front? There is a network effect forming around its models. The strengths of its kit speak for themselves. (It also cannot be understated how making ChatGPT public, something its competitors were too feeble, incompetent and behind the curve to do, dealt OpenAI a massive first-mover advantage.) But as others note, other models are in the ballpark. Where OpenAI is different i…

> other models are in the ballpark

How true is this? From playing around with Bard and Claude, GPT-4 seems to be significantly better, especially around code generation / understanding.

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

#112

Post by lexandstuff »

sigmonsays wrote: post #56

can someone show some actual product features where AI is being used productively? I dont wanna say it but I think this is a hype train headed for failure

I use GPT4 many times a day. Instead of Googling for an answer, I will ask GPT4. Often, I will describe a function I want and have GPT4 write it. I use it to reformat strings, summarise text, and perform many other functions.

It is the most useful tool I have ever used as a programmer. It's absolutely not a "hype train".

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

#113

Post by 627467 »

> so for people focused on learning and doing good, some simple logic implies that there shouldn’t be an AI race.

I think the author got the order wrong: acknowledging the race is what reinforces "safety". If there was no race whats the incentive to talk so much about safety?

On the other hand I have a sense (although I won't bet on it) that just like Siri hype died out after a few months, so will chatGPT. the author (and the doom seekers who sign open letters) can rest assured for calmer days. After all, one still need to know what/how to talk to chatGPT. So much so that now there's are jobs for "prompt "engineering"" - it's so funny, because on one hand we are surprised by how smart(?) the responses are and yet we need to engineer the right questions to get the "best" answers.

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

#114

Post by Animats »

Dwedit wrote: post #73

If there's anything I learned from reading articles from the Xiph.org people, it's that neural networks work a lot better when you pre-process their inputs with an algorithm. They need far less information, and can run in realtime when most of the work is being done by traditional computation instead of doing it in the neural network.

As this gets figured out, we'll see large language models integrated with other systems. There are already "plug-ins", but as this gets better understood, tighter integration may follow.

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

#115

Post by ChatGTP »

lacker wrote: post #17

I think this depends a lot on where you are working. I've talked to academics who are getting discouraged that they don't see how their approach to AI is going to be possible any more, with so much funding going toward the largest models from industry. On the other hand I've talked to startup founders building AI products whose business is booming because ChatGPT brought so much attention to the entire space. We are…

I've talked to academics who are getting discouraged that they don't see how their approach to AI is going to be possible any more

Welcome to how the entire world probably feels, but way worse because they haven't been getting 6-7 figure salaries for the last ten years to insulate themselves for what big tech wants to see happen.

I think it's a positive thing that AI researchers are feeling this way because it might be the only thing that slows things down or at least shows us a little more empathy.

I'm not counting on it, but yeah, all I can say is, get used to it. I'm basically just leaning on trying to enjoy things that aren't in front of me, kind of like being more mindful while we're in free fall, while simultaneous fretting and praying for future generations and hoping they have a future.

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

#116

Post by WanderPanda »

davesque wrote: post #28

I feel like the whole ChatGPT bubble has really highlighted what feel like some fundamental shortcomings in the worldview that is represented in tech. That is, there seems to be a winner take all dynamic baked into the tech world. Maybe this arises from the simple fact that tech places a lot of power in the hands of individuals. But there's an emergent downside to this which is that it makes those who were already mu…

This is literally threatening the winner (Google) taking it all forever. Some of these innovations are winner take all until they aren't anymore. The cycle seems to be 1 to 2 decades. The profits during that cycle are probably fair on average given the risk necessary to make the tech ready for wide-spread usage

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

#117

Post by sj8822 »

davesque wrote: post #28

I feel like the whole ChatGPT bubble has really highlighted what feel like some fundamental shortcomings in the worldview that is represented in tech. That is, there seems to be a winner take all dynamic baked into the tech world. Maybe this arises from the simple fact that tech places a lot of power in the hands of individuals. But there's an emergent downside to this which is that it makes those who were already mu…

At some point, I became disenchanted with tech and working as a software engineer when I realized that tech doesn't ethically fit into our primitive economic organization right now. It's made me feel bad about myself and the career path I've chosen.

Basically, with tech, you can build a product with a very limited amount of people and resources with a potentially infinite customer base. And this means that this product can suck up money from the whole world and redirect it into the hands of very few. At its essence, this is the case. With tech, this phenomena is exacerbated to the extreme compared to other industries where more physical resources and labor are required to scale production and distribution of the product, which means more wealth getting spread.

At its core, tech has the potential to exacerbate wealth inequality in mind-boggling proportions.

Our current economic system is not made for tech.

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

#118

Post by sangnoir »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #25
fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #12

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?

> Do you think OpenAI has discovered something they haven't been open about?

They have not, which makes me curious about which company gp works for because the "F" and "G" in FAANG are publicly known to already have LLMs. Not sure about Amazon, but I'm guessing they do too.

As an outsider, the amazing thing about ML/AI research is that you get a revolutionary discovery of a technique or refinement that changes everything, and a few months later another seminal paper is published[0]. My bet is ChatGPT is not the last word in AI, and OpenAI will not have a monopoly on upcoming discoveries that will improve the state of the art. They will have to contend with the fact that Google, Meta & Amazon own their datacenters and can likely train models for cheaper[1] than what Microsoft is paying itself via their investment in OpenAI.

0. In no particular order: Deep learning, GANs, Transformers, transfer learning, Style Transfer, auto-encoders, BERT, LLMs. Betting the farm on LLMs doesn't sound like a reasonable thing to do - not saying that's what OpenAI is doing, but there are a lot of folk on HN who are treating LLMs as the holy grail.

1. OpenAI may get a discount, but my prediction when they burn through Microsoft, they'll end up being "owned" by Microsoft for all intents and purposes.

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

#119

Post by andsoitis »

UncleOxidant wrote: post #25
fdgsdfogijq wrote: post #12

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?

Having a model does not a platform or a product make. You also need users and mindshare.

OpenAI is enjoying first mover advantage around the platformication and product-ification of LLMs.

For instance, why has G not yet exposed some next-level capabilities in mail, in docs, and many of their other properties?

Why do Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa and Apple Siri still suck?

Post reply on HN