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

My small, no name company has lost its mind with AI

teamblind.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 101 posts

Re: My small, no name company has lost its mind with AI

#51

Post by jnsaff2 »

janalsncm wrote: post #15
Fatboyrunning wrote: post #3

The absence of real applications incorporating this stuff is damning. Where are the killer apps?

ChatGPT is the killer app . It’s a Google killer. It is better than the SEO listicle garbage filling the internet. Even if it’s not always accurate it’s still better in a lot of circumstances. There’s a reason Sundar rushed Bard out of the gate even though it is clearly inferior.

Step 1. Humans write copy for humans to buy their garbage, humans counter by tuning out and switching channels

Step 2. Humans write SEO copy for machines to rank them higher.

Step 3. LLM writes copy for machines to rank them higher.

Step 4. Human uses LLM to try to distill the LLM generated SEO spam for any remaining signal.

Also to your point:

> SEO listicle garbage filling the internet.

the feeling that the LLM is better than what you described is going to be very temporary, then the mountains of LLM generated bullshit is going to overwhelm even LLM to make meaningful sense of.

Re: My small, no name company has lost its mind with AI

#52

Post by 1123581321 »

lelanthran wrote: post #37
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a good article in the Washington Post, discussed on HN a week or two ago (would have to do some searching), about people who have already lost their jobs due to ChatGPT. Copywriting is definitely going to get decimated. Other jobs, like medical transcription, were already on the way out due to speech recognition tech even before generative AI blew up. And before people make "buggy whip manufacturer" argumen…

> And before people make "buggy whip manufacturer" arguments, I've always wondered about that argument. Weren't buggy whip manufacturers making lots of other things at the same time? After all, a buggy whip is almost certainly used much longer by the new owner than a cars is, so I wouldn't expect a large amount of the economy to be comprised of buggy whip sales, because a) Not many people had their own buggy (down ne…

It was really was a disaster for whip companies, carriage companies and saddle makers, though, disruption didn’t proliferate as quickly then as it does today.

You can read some of the history of buggy whip makers. They were specialized manufacturers with established brands built around quality, special materials and style. Some were able to convert to new products but not all. They did survive a couple decades past the invention of the car, to your point, but once cars proliferated their sales cratered.

Whip manufacturers shouldn’t be shamed for hubris (what happened did not seem as guaranteed then as it now seems with hindsight) but they all would’ve done well to have converted into automobile manufacturing supply by the teens and many did not.

A link to get you started: https://civilwartalk.com/threads/what-company-made-the-last-...

Re: My small, no name company has lost its mind with AI

#53

Post by gcanyon »

> They really think AI is this magic thing that will fix over a decade of no documentation, spaghetti code, and unclear requirements.

One of my favorite bosses loved to say, "You can't software your way out of a process problem." Several times I've had other bosses try to prove that wrong. None so far have succeeded.

Re: My small, no name company has lost its mind with AI

#54

Post by blackoil »

brtkdotse wrote: post #27
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a good article in the Washington Post, discussed on HN a week or two ago (would have to do some searching), about people who have already lost their jobs due to ChatGPT. Copywriting is definitely going to get decimated. Other jobs, like medical transcription, were already on the way out due to speech recognition tech even before generative AI blew up. And before people make "buggy whip manufacturer" argumen…

> like medical transcription There’s no way this is remotely legal, right? Unless it’s some sort of on-prem product? > making wider sections of the populace unemployable faster than new job areas open up This is a real threat to the fabric of society and will require us to rethink things like UBI and taxing the means of production rather labor.

AWS is HIPAA compliant. Same can be done for ChatGPT.

Re: My small, no name company has lost its mind with AI

#55

Post by justrealist »

necovek wrote: post #44
justrealist wrote: post #4

> - got the OK to feed entire repos and proprietary information into ChatGPT without a care because “we got the pro version” > Our main product is CRUD app that is designed like something straight out of 2010, complete with outdated frameworks If it's a small startup with a simple CRUD app, why this a problem? 99% startups die from lack of execution, not because someone stole their proprietary secrets or source code.

I don't think it's a knock on the approach, but rather highlighting an opposition between outdated tech on one side and ultra-modern, unproven tech on the other. IOW, hinting that using proven, modern tech would have solved the issues company was having more readily than jumping straight to AI.

I'm not sure there's a conflict here. A lot of my GPT4 usage is pasting in old crap and saying for example,

"please rewrite this in modern React".

it generally works.

Re: My small, no name company has lost its mind with AI

#56

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

brtkdotse wrote: post #27
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a good article in the Washington Post, discussed on HN a week or two ago (would have to do some searching), about people who have already lost their jobs due to ChatGPT. Copywriting is definitely going to get decimated. Other jobs, like medical transcription, were already on the way out due to speech recognition tech even before generative AI blew up. And before people make "buggy whip manufacturer" argumen…

> like medical transcription There’s no way this is remotely legal, right? Unless it’s some sort of on-prem product? > making wider sections of the populace unemployable faster than new job areas open up This is a real threat to the fabric of society and will require us to rethink things like UBI and taxing the means of production rather labor.

> > like medical transcription

> There’s no way this is remotely legal, right? Unless it’s some sort of on-prem product?

It's definitely legal, not sure why one would think it wouldn't be. There are dedicated, HIPAA-compliant medical transcription services that use voice-to-text tech that have been around for decades. I would say in the past 10 years or so the tech has gotten to the point where it's very good, and I know companies that have laid off transcriptionists because the tech is considerably cheaper.

Re: My small, no name company has lost its mind with AI

#57

Post by lelanthran »

1123581321 wrote: post #52
lelanthran wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And before people make "buggy whip manufacturer" arguments, I've always wondered about that argument. Weren't buggy whip manufacturers making lots of other things at the same time? After all, a buggy whip is almost certainly used much longer by the new owner than a cars is, so I wouldn't expect a large amount of the economy to be comprised of buggy whip sales, because a) Not many people had their own buggy (down ne…

It was really was a disaster for whip companies, carriage companies and saddle makers, though, disruption didn’t proliferate as quickly then as it does today. You can read some of the history of buggy whip makers. They were specialized manufacturers with established brands built around quality, special materials and style. Some were able to convert to new products but not all. They did survive a couple decades past t…

> It was really was a disaster for whip companies, carriage companies and saddle makers, though, disruption didn’t proliferate as quickly then as it does today.

I'm not contending that.

I'm saying (as far as I can determine) that cars sales alone in the US today is around 4% of the GDP. That doesn't count all the businesses employed in car manufacturing, all the businesses employed by the distribution network, by auto maintenance, ancilliary auto services (insurance, car washes, cosmetic finishing, upgrades, motorsport, etc).

My argument is that the demise of buggy whip manufacturers was accompanied by a significant expansion of employment. The replacement required much more labour than the thing it replaced.

If, at the time, buggy whip/saddlery/etc sales, distribution and manufacture collectively were the largest employers of labour, then the buggy whip argument makes sense.

I don't think it was.

Re: My small, no name company has lost its mind with AI

#58

Post by janalsncm »

distortedsignal wrote: post #32
janalsncm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT is the killer app . It’s a Google killer. It is better than the SEO listicle garbage filling the internet. Even if it’s not always accurate it’s still better in a lot of circumstances. There’s a reason Sundar rushed Bard out of the gate even though it is clearly inferior.

I’ll push back on this, at least in its current iteration. I just asked it to list some restaurants near my apartment (major intersection in San Jose) and it wasn’t particularly close. While there are several restaurants less than half a mile from the intersection, ChatGPT listed restaurants from several miles away. Given the “weights in a matrix” architecture of ChatGPT, I’m not sure it’s possible to store enough da…

Well you’re right since ChatGPT isn’t hooked up to the internet, so certain queries aren’t good use cases. Adding maps info to a language model would be a pretty bad idea (even if it didn’t hallucinate) since it can change at any time, which would require more (expensive) training.

What Bing does is to use your query to search the web and use the top N search results in the context window for the chat.

However I’ll push back on your pushback. ChatGPT doesn’t need to be perfect to be a killer app. It is highly flawed. Maybe it was a bit to strident to say ChatGPT will kill Google search, but it’s strictly better for a lot of squishy queries that don’t have a factual basis.

How can I convince my boss to give me a raise? gets you a listicle on Google and a highly specific response on ChatGPT. And if some of the advice doesn’t apply, you can continue directing the conversation. It’s an idea generator, even if some of them are bad or don’t make sense.

Re: My small, no name company has lost its mind with AI

#59

Post by fileeditview »

spaceman_2020 wrote: post #25

I don’t know what to make of stuff like this. On the one hand, AI in its present form is a great learning tool, and little else. So you’d call the CEO a fool. On the other hand, you have the leading AI firm publicly devoting 1/5th of its resources on controlling AI and declaring that we will likely have Superintelligence within this decade. If the latter is right, this CEO might be a genius who was early on a trend,…

I guess you can be a kook and make a stupid move but with enough luck you will be regarded as a genius and your move will be seen as a bold one.

Re: My small, no name company has lost its mind with AI

#60

Post by janalsncm »

jnsaff2 wrote: post #51
janalsncm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT is the killer app . It’s a Google killer. It is better than the SEO listicle garbage filling the internet. Even if it’s not always accurate it’s still better in a lot of circumstances. There’s a reason Sundar rushed Bard out of the gate even though it is clearly inferior.

Step 1. Humans write copy for humans to buy their garbage, humans counter by tuning out and switching channels Step 2. Humans write SEO copy for machines to rank them higher. Step 3. LLM writes copy for machines to rank them higher. Step 4. Human uses LLM to try to distill the LLM generated SEO spam for any remaining signal. Also to your point: > SEO listicle garbage filling the internet. the feeling that the LLM is…

I’m not following. If ChatGPT gets worse, OpenAI can simply not update it. Or revert to a previous version.

For Google, they’re at the mercy of whatever the internet has.

Post reply on HN