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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

#201

Post by cgearhart »

brookst wrote: post #180
cgearhart wrote: post #152

From my perspective it’s just _confusing_ to work in AI right now. We have some massive models that are doing some really neat stuff, and apparently hundreds of millions of people are using them—but I keep wondering: to do _what_, exactly? I’m not asking what the models can do, I’m asking what people want the models to do every day, all the time. I’ve been shown some neat pictures people made that they thought were c…

You’re asking “what’s so big about GUIs? Literally nobody has asked to move a pointer around a screen”. It’s the use cases these thing enable that are important. Today, I wrote a draft product announcement. Only after I was done did I realize I had written it in a really impersonal third person (“users will be able to”). No big deal, but maybe 10-20 minutes of work to make it energetic and second person (“now you can…

Hmm…no, I’m not doubting the value of the interface. I’m asking what’s the “killer app”.

Maybe I should just ask ChatGPT to explain it to me…

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

#202

Post by [deleted] »

HyperSane wrote: post #182
alain94040 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see ads as a big problem with ChatGPT. You could put a side-bar on the right and on the fly recommend products relevant to the on-going conversation. The cost of computing these ads would be a lot more than today's keyword-based approach, that's certainly a problem. But think of hyper-relevant ads, based on the chat itself. There's a lot of information there, that beats tracking people's behavior online all d…

And you could even program the LLM to try to subtly manipulate people into using the advertised product.

[deleted]

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

#203

Post by mmcwilliams »

nr2x wrote: post #178
mmcwilliams wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem is that people working in the field have a much different definition of what "fully-functional" means than users who believe that they're communicating with an intelligent, all-knowing or otherwise infallible being.

For my use case I use it for input processing, it’s just amazing that way. Hallucination is a huge problem, but you can avoid it.

I believe it. For text->text workflows it's a game changer. For anything touching a physical systems, even the highest-level path planning for robotics, there's a long way to go.

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

#204

Post by nwienert »

brookst wrote: post #180
cgearhart wrote: post #152

From my perspective it’s just _confusing_ to work in AI right now. We have some massive models that are doing some really neat stuff, and apparently hundreds of millions of people are using them—but I keep wondering: to do _what_, exactly? I’m not asking what the models can do, I’m asking what people want the models to do every day, all the time. I’ve been shown some neat pictures people made that they thought were c…

You’re asking “what’s so big about GUIs? Literally nobody has asked to move a pointer around a screen”. It’s the use cases these thing enable that are important. Today, I wrote a draft product announcement. Only after I was done did I realize I had written it in a really impersonal third person (“users will be able to”). No big deal, but maybe 10-20 minutes of work to make it energetic and second person (“now you can…

I mean Google revolutionized search. Apple revolutionized personal computing.

OpenAI revolutionized… rewriting things with slightly different wording?

I’ve seen so many breathless people posting “this would have taken me so long to search” and then I type 3 keywords from their massive prompt they crafted and find it instantly on Google. We’re talking 1000x or more faster. I feel like the same is happening in your comment. How often have I thought “damn I wish I wrote this blog post ever so slightly differently” in my life? Maybe a handful of times? And yes I’m including all generalizations of that question.

But certainly fake girlfriends and summarization will be mid size fields. Image generation has some mid size potential. But these will be spread between many companies.

I really think it has uses no doubt, but is it a revolution? Where? It’s not creative in the valuable sense - media, art, fashion, etc all will adopt it marginally but ultimately it will actually only serve to further the desire for genuine human experience, and cohesive creativity that we see it really falls flat at. It saves some marginal time perhaps if you’re ok sounding like a robot.

Taking into account the downsides it looks like a hype bubble right now to me, and a draw in the long run. There’s just a whole lot of tech people trying to cash in on the hype.

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

#205

Post by csomar »

cgearhart wrote: post #152

From my perspective it’s just _confusing_ to work in AI right now. We have some massive models that are doing some really neat stuff, and apparently hundreds of millions of people are using them—but I keep wondering: to do _what_, exactly? I’m not asking what the models can do, I’m asking what people want the models to do every day, all the time. I’ve been shown some neat pictures people made that they thought were c…

You are not missing anything. It's a bubble. This is tech 101 and all over again. You gotta hype some new thing whether it's Web 2.0, Crypto or AI.

LLM have proven to be great as a gimmick or making rather okay localized approximations. You can create a good enough image without any designing skills, or have auto-completion on steroids. However, there is no proof that this same tech can extrapolate to the next level.

Most startups are putting their eggs on this single basket. I have the feeling that this will be what triggers another AI winter and some VCs will holding the bags... but why do I care?

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

#206

Post by visarga »

alain94040 wrote: post #109
xyzzy123 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's not just run cost - there's also a risk of ad revenue destruction, that has to be worrying.

I don't see ads as a big problem with ChatGPT. You could put a side-bar on the right and on the fly recommend products relevant to the on-going conversation. The cost of computing these ads would be a lot more than today's keyword-based approach, that's certainly a problem. But think of hyper-relevant ads, based on the chat itself. There's a lot of information there, that beats tracking people's behavior online all d…

> But think of hyper relevant ads

That depends on ad publishers, right? If they want to sell A, B and C and I am interested in D, then Google's still showing one of A, B or C to me. D doesn't make profit if there is nobody paying for ads.

Google is advertising things we don't need, that's why ad clicks are so abysmal. LLMs won't change that.

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

#207

Post by bmitc »

nr2x wrote: post #158
cgearhart wrote: post #152

From my perspective it’s just _confusing_ to work in AI right now. We have some massive models that are doing some really neat stuff, and apparently hundreds of millions of people are using them—but I keep wondering: to do _what_, exactly? I’m not asking what the models can do, I’m asking what people want the models to do every day, all the time. I’ve been shown some neat pictures people made that they thought were c…

Natural language is now a fully functional user interface out of the box. This is bigger than the mouse.

Fully functional in what way? As far as I can tell, ChatGPT is a box that I put sentences into, and I get grammatically correct sentences that contains topics or words loosely statistically correlated to what were in my sentences, that may or may not be correct and often are not. The box has little to no memory. I honestly don't see what's so useful about this box.

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

#208

Post by istillwritecode »

I continue to be underwhelmed by the impact of machine learning (which some people refer to as AI). It certainly has interesting applications, and I expect it be important as a generator of entertainment. I'm just tired of the repeated waves of hype the surround the field.

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

#209

Post by visarga »

HyperSane wrote: post #182
alain94040 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see ads as a big problem with ChatGPT. You could put a side-bar on the right and on the fly recommend products relevant to the on-going conversation. The cost of computing these ads would be a lot more than today's keyword-based approach, that's certainly a problem. But think of hyper-relevant ads, based on the chat itself. There's a lot of information there, that beats tracking people's behavior online all d…

And you could even program the LLM to try to subtly manipulate people into using the advertised product.

A LLM trying to trick and manipulate? That's how your multi-million dollar model quickly becomes worthless in the eyes of the public.

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

#210

Post by ruskyhacker »

arthurcolle wrote: post #190
ruskyhacker wrote: post #188

I'm probably way too late for this thought to get any traction / discussion - but I have this weird feeling that openai screwed up and showed it's "cool new thing" too early, and publicly. As much as it pains me to say this, I don't think the real money is in making this a service, or "the product." I think the real money is in using AI internally as a puzzle piece of your backend - ie. the secret sauce behind xyz pr…

> I have zero proof, but I suspect Google for instance has models that would literally obliterate what openai has shown capability wise. They're probably not necessarily language models though. Again, nothing to stand on here but I doubt their search and analytics for example are driven by hard coded algorithms these days. Then why is Bard so bad? Bard feels like GPT-2 or LLaMA 7B with no finetuning most of the time…

well my thought is that they 'whipped it up' real quick to attempt to downplay it a bit. Did that backfire? Yeah, I think so. But personally, I think people are missing where the real money is. OpenAI will do great for awhile until every damn product and service is using it, and then it's a race to the bottom. But that's just like my opinion...
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