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

Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

techdirt.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 309 posts

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#101

Post by keiferski »

palata wrote: post #88
keiferski wrote: post #38

For this particular example, the tool doesn't seem like it's a big deal. It just analyzes works for data. I'm not sure how this would be any different from a literary critic doing the same thing manually. In general, though, I think artists would be less hostile to technological innovations if the people imploring them to "figure out how to embrace the technology rather than fear it" weren't actively trying to destro…

I think it applies to many technologies other than generative AI. How many devs actually think about ethics nowadays? I think it's all lost in the big companies they work for, behind the excuse that "it is not their job to figure out how their work is being used". Interestingly, I think most devs would think twice before being paid for designing a missile. But somehow they don't really seem to think about the impact…

Absolutely, and I think the recent Oppenheimer movie was an excellent take on this exact subject. At some point, you don't get to throw up your hands and say, "technology is just neutral” and absolve yourself of any responsibility for what you’ve put into the world.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#102

Post by moomin »

Going all the way back to the Luddites, there will be those who seek to misrepresent their opposition as being “afraid of progress”.

Much easier to find a friendly podcaster than engage with the actual difficulties with what you’re doing.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#103

Post by davorak »

Nullabillity wrote: post #48
runj__ wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Certainly something interesting is bound to come out of quantifying things? "Hm, this three act structure thing seems to work, I wonder why." "Children doesn't seem to understand texts which include these words, I wonder why." Patterns rarely show themselves before we investigate.

> Certainly something interesting is bound to come out of quantifying things? In science they call this trap P-hacking. Even data "scientists" know to be wary of overfitting. We're really good at finding patterns, but few of them actually mean anything.

>> Certainly something interesting is bound to come out of quantifying things?

> In science they call this trap P-hacking. Even data "scientists" know to be wary of overfitting. We're really good at finding patterns, but few of them actually mean anything.

Quantifying things is not always p-hacking. When people do experiments on novel materials or structures they quantify the data, make readings and record them, and then look for patterns. For example measuring the electronic properties of a new novel nano structure or molecule.

When I think of p-hacking[1] I think of using the same static data and doing various data analysis over and over again until something potentially interesting is found and ignoring the risks of false positives as you do so.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_dredging

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#104

Post by Robotbeat »

soco wrote: post #32
LikelyABurner wrote: post #3

I’m with the artists on this one. Our obsession with converting everything into input for an algorithm that spits out an ill-defined number (what the hell is “vividness”?) needs to stop. We already tried this with human communication and gave birth to the dystopian nightmare that is social media, why keep repeating our mistakes?

For this very particular project I agree the reaction seems exaggerated, even though it does walk the thin line of copyright infringement. But as it happens, it rides the wave of all other AI project which started small then headed we know where. Because once your book is in the database of company X you can bet safe money they will take it and continue their "analysis" as much further as they like because hey you di…

The response to this undermines my ability to take the “backlash” against AI as anything other than innumerate, mob idiocy. It’s hard to prevent myself from being negatively polarized against the backlash when people in the backlash defend outrage against obviously innocuous things like this.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#105

Post by Riverheart »

pikahumu wrote: post #87
LikelyABurner wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are exactly modeling the chauvinistic Silicon Valley attitude that is causing the outrage in the general population to begin with. “Our algorithms are pretty much the same as human art criticism, so put down the pitchforks you unenlightened scum” is up there with telling them to eat (a Stable Diffusion generated picture of) cake.

> You are exactly modeling the chauvinistic Silicon Valley attitude that is causing the outrage in the general population to begin with. Just like the writers he talked to and got positive feedback? Everybody not agreeing with you represents "chauvinistic SV attitude"?

(Edited)

No, he didn’t say anything about them. People side against their interests all the time, finding a few writers that like this is trivial. Are those people the majority opinion on this or are we just trying to prove how wonderful this technology is?

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#106

Post by subroutine »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #97
kiwih wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without trying to sound flippant - what do you define AI as? Things like autofocus in your video cameras or automatic gain control or noise cancellation in your audio pipeline could also be considered AI. Do you remove those too? What about the AI recommendation algorithm built into YouTube - how do you reconcile being AI free while still using that platform?

Yes, you are right, and I advocate the following: a detailed look at each of these technologies. However, for practical purposes, a direct definition that encompasses every situation is not necessary, but can evolve. For now, I think we do not need a precise definition and we can start with the following: AI such as ChatGPT, LLMs, image generation tools like DALL-E and ohters, should be restricted. As for YouTube's a…

What about the youtube speech to text AI that creates automatic CC transcripts for the hearing impaired? What about the AI that translates transcripts and comments into other languages? (translation certainly makes use of creativity since not every word maps 1:1)

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#108

Post by assbuttbuttass »

palata wrote: post #79
harshreality wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Fair use" only applies to instances of copying / redistributing . The hint is in the name: copy -right. There's a notion, which seems to have taken off among creators who are paranoid about AI eating their livelihoods (which it might eat a chunk of) that copyright prevents people from doing anything with works they [legally] acquired other than personally read, listen, or watch it. That's not how copyright, as it ha…

Say I make a tool where you can enter the title of a book, and get the full text of the book without paying for it. I assume we all agree that would be illegal, right? Now say that instead of distributing that tool as an executable , I distributed it as a library . It would contain all the same books as the illegal executable above, but some developers would need to write an actual executable that would use the libra…

Great example! I think your library wouldn't be illegal itself, but distributing it would be illegal.

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#109

Post by robertlagrant »

palata wrote: post #69
robertlagrant wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this different to the current process, other than feedback is slower (if forthcoming at all) and less specific?

> How is this different to the current process, other than feedback is slower (if forthcoming at all) and less specific? Let me rephrase your question: "how is it different to the current process, other than ?" :-). I would say that the answer lies in the question.

Sounds as though your view of the AI is purely positive, in that case. That's fair enough. The answer for other people may well not lie in the question (e.g. for all the people who don't like this development), but it did for you!

Re: Fear of AI just killed a useful tool

#110

Post by croes »

subroutine wrote: post #89
croes wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a difference between a statistical analysis of a text to categorize by certain words or word groups and training an AI model to generate texts on the data used for training. The later creates massive competition to human writers, the former is just an information for potential readers.

Both the former and latter are information for writers. Neither create massive competition for writers (not that there is any law against creating competition), just FUD and better tools for writers.

Things like GPT already create competition for authors even using their names.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37042561

Pure text statistics won't do the same.

Post reply on HN