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AI is about to change how you use computers

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Re: AI is about to change how you use computers

#51

Post by gumballindie »

famouswaffles wrote: post #36
gumballindie wrote: post #7

> The real shift will come when agents can help patients do basic triage, get advice about how to deal with health problems Yeah could you f**ng not? I pay taxes and insurance to get proper medical guidance, not answers from a bot. Public healthcare in the uk is nearly dead anyway and their patch fixes are to use “virtual” nonsense, while private healthcare is riddled by “ai” that does nothing but annoy customers. Ba…

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10425828/ Use of GPT-4 to Analyze Medical Records of Patients With Extensive Investigations and Delayed Diagnosis "Six patients 65 years or older (2 women and 4 men) were included in the analysis. The accuracy of the primary diagnoses made by GPT-4, clinicians, and Isabel DDx Companion was 4 of 6 patients (66.7%), 2 of 6 patients (33.3%), and 0 patients, respectively. If i…

Ah yes, a study made on six patients. Very science, fits the pattern.

But this alone invalidates the paper:

“AI relies on clinical imaging.1 In low-income countries, where specialist care may be lacking”

Have they been to a british hospital recently? Specialist care scarcity is fast approaching that of low income countries. The only option left is the poor man’s choice - chatbots.

Re: AI is about to change how you use computers

#52

Post by mempko »

Google Deep Mind just demonstrated that transformers don't generalize well outside their training set.

https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.00871

The question I have is, what if these agents are really good at doing things they learned about, but not in new things? How will that impact people's actions?

Will we end up with a static world of people doing only things the AI can do? A kind of 1999 Matrix stasis world of 'the best we can do now'?

What will happen to what Arthur Kessler called 'blue' thoughts in such an AI world?

Because IMO, the purpose of computers is to make models and see what happens. Test ideas in a powerful way via computation. If the AI can ONLY select existing models and not make news ones, or even prevent you from making new ones, then I don't see how these AI agents are anything but a step backwards.

Alan Kay gave a great talk called The Best Way to Predict the Future is to Invent it taht touches on some of these ideas.

https://youtu.be/Odmx-ScL-8o?si=PMhZyxTtNdwBumKj

Re: AI is about to change how you use computers

#53

Post by dclowd9901 »

> In the next five years, this will change completely. You won’t have to use different apps for different tasks. You’ll simply tell your device, in everyday language, what you want to do.

This kind of thinking, to me, smacks of the kind of ignorant projections people used to make in the early 20th century about technology in the 21st century.

“Robotics will advance, so everyone will have their own personal robot assistant!” Nope, though we do have robots doing things that are commensurate with their cost and the value they provide.

“Advances in aviation mean everyone will have a flying car.” Nope again. Turns out the added utility of being able to fly directly to places vs the cost doesn’t trump a car in most cases, and when those cases don’t apply, airplanes are plenty economical.

“You’ll just tell your device what you want to do.” No again. In some cases this is useful (I already tell my device to remind me about something or to schedule some sort of event on my calendar, where the time to input far exceeds speaking it), but in most cases, I can do it faster myself with a good UI, or maybe I don’t want everyone around me hearing me blather into my phone.

It’s like, just imagine for a second what it would be like to have to dictate everything you do on your phone. It would be utterly exhausting.

Re: AI is about to change how you use computers

#54

Post by kaibee »

IntelMiner wrote: post #24
TekMol wrote: post #14

This is the Bill Gates who in May 2018 proclaimed that he would short Bitcoin if he could: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/05/07/bill-gates-i-would-short-bit... Bitcoin has quadrupled since then. One might want to take this into account when evaluating his ability to predict the future.

If you read beyond the headline (shocking, I know) “As an asset class, you’re not producing anything and so you shouldn’t expect it to go up. It’s kind of a pure ‘greater fool theory’ type of investment,” Gates said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “I agree I would short it if there was an easy way to do it,” he said. Anyone who thinks the entire "value" of crypto isn't a giant pyramid scheme (or pump and dump) is deluding th…

Anyone who thinks it's a wise financial decision to bet against fools is gonna lose a lot of money.

Re: AI is about to change how you use computers

#55

Post by compacct27 »

nameless912 wrote: post #39
compacct27 wrote: post #4

The writing is on the wall. It's not right now, but it will be in my lifetime. What are some AI-proof(ish) industries we can jump into after software engineering is drastically reduced?

AI will never write software for the same reason professional chefs will never be replaced by robots. Sure, certain parts of our jobs (the fast food equivalent work) will be assisted, and then replaced, with AI help. Ops is already benefitting from AI assistance with things like log correlation and managing incidents, and all of that is great! But the fact is that AI will still require the input of humans to solve pr…

I’m hopeful this is the right answer, but I’m not optimistic it is. AI seems more like the introduction of the assembly line for software workers, minus huge blockers for physical labor. It’s not there now, but at this rate? Not infeasible either

Re: AI is about to change how you use computers

#56

Post by sontendo »

The free cognitive evolution of your kids and grandkids is at stake here, but you are probably looking the wrong way.

Kansas City Shuffles inside Kansas City Shuffles. We refuse to deal with the truth.

We need to trust our kind or we will have to take down our past, the ways we lived and worked.

It's a generational conflict inside each and every one of us.

You know how to code. Decode.

Re: AI is about to change how you use computers

#57

Post by nameless912 »

compacct27 wrote: post #55
nameless912 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI will never write software for the same reason professional chefs will never be replaced by robots. Sure, certain parts of our jobs (the fast food equivalent work) will be assisted, and then replaced, with AI help. Ops is already benefitting from AI assistance with things like log correlation and managing incidents, and all of that is great! But the fact is that AI will still require the input of humans to solve pr…

I’m hopeful this is the right answer, but I’m not optimistic it is. AI seems more like the introduction of the assembly line for software workers, minus huge blockers for physical labor. It’s not there now, but at this rate? Not infeasible either

How will you tell AI what you want to build? I'll take an example from my current work: I'm currently working on adding producing data to a kafka feed from an API server that will be aggregated downstream into a big huge in-memory datastore for fast access. That's a moderately sized problem, one that a reasonably competent engineer can solve in a week or two, but how much work will you have to do to tell the AI that this is what you want? And if you tell it at a higher level than this, how will it know what tools it has available? How will it deploy stuff?

There are some fairly intractable problems in the "AI writes software" space. I don't think they're getting solved any time soon.

Re: AI is about to change how you use computers

#58

Post by Night_Thastus »

throwitaway222 wrote: post #49
Night_Thastus wrote: post #34

An agent is an amazing idea, and it would add enormous convenience - if implemented well. But we're a long, long, long, long, long way away from agents. What we have now aren't even precursors to agents, more like very distant cousins to an ancestor. In order to make what he's talking about, you'd need true general artificial intelligence operating at a human's level or above. And if we have that, the entire world is…

Work may change significantly soon. Slack lets your conversation kinda go. What happens when slack starts remembering tasks someone asked you to do... follows up with you to make sure you did it? And the person that originally asked you? Right now you arrive at work and you have a few things to do, but your brain only remembers 1 of them, and barely at that. With AI it will have a few iterations on emails ready for y…

What he's talking about is absolutely not possible with an LLM. An LLM is just for language and has no deeper understanding, reasoning, logic, learning and growth, etc.

See here:

"Agents are smarter. They’re proactive—capable of making suggestions before you ask for them. They accomplish tasks across applications. They improve over time because they remember your activities and recognize intent and patterns in your behavior."

None of that is possible with today's LLMs - not in the way he's describing it.

Re: AI is about to change how you use computers

#59

Post by mjr00 »

manicennui wrote: post #32
compacct27 wrote: post #4

The writing is on the wall. It's not right now, but it will be in my lifetime. What are some AI-proof(ish) industries we can jump into after software engineering is drastically reduced?

Is it though? It is not having a significant impact in most fields, despite all the hype. Companies will use it to continue to make customer services worse so they can spend less money on it. People writing marketing copy that no one wants to read anyways will lose their jobs. Semi-competent software engineers will use it instead of searching Stack Overflow five times per day and still write questionable code. To be…

> It is not having a significant impact in most fields, despite all the hype. Companies will use it to continue to make customer services worse so they can spend less money on it.

There's some delicious irony in this: tech-savvy HN posters are so bullish on AI replacing everyone's jobs, yet there's been so many posts here about how people have lost their Google/Apple/bank/whatever accounts due to AI accidentally flagging, then being unable to recover because they can't get in touch with an actual human, with begging for help on social media as their last resort.

It seems like a variant of Gell-Mann amnesia[0]: people believe AI is capable of replacing humans in so many aspects of daily life, except for the aspects of daily life which they personally experience.

[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_Amnesia_effect

Re: AI is about to change how you use computers

#60

Post by JohnFen »

sontendo wrote: post #41
JohnFen wrote: post #23

If that's the future of using computers, he can keep it. I want none of that, personally. Most of what he lists is stuff that comes with such serious downsides as to be actively objectionable.

There's no choice. They collect and serve whether you want it or not. Whether it's regulated or not. Whether it's banned or not. You can use alternatives but you have to maintain them meticulously. If any of their websites or services can get a bit in, you're fucked. Welcome to the world of quantum computers, pseudo-AGI and corporate interests.

I disagree. I totally have a choice. I can avoid it all by avoiding using the technology.

Maintaining my own alternatives isn't a big deal. I'm largely doing that anyway.

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