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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

#81

Post by ben_w »

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?

Stuff where the point is to be a human.

This in turn may or may not be sufficient for work once the issues with bioprinting and/or tissue/organ culture get solved and someone prints/grows a brainless body, connects its organic lower nervous system to a silicon chip, and has the higher functions all performed by an AI on that chip.

And by "someone" I mainly mean The Thought Emporium given they're already trying to do exactly that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_ZGq8Tah0k&t=28s

Re: AI is about to change how you use computers

#82

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

"640K ought to be enough for anybody" (1981) https://www.wired.com/1997/01/did-gates-really-say-640k-is-e...

"The next generation of interesting software will be done on the Macintosh, not the IBM PC" (1984)

"I see little commercial potential for the internet for the next 10 years" (1994)

"Today's Internet is not the information highway I imagine, although you can think of it as the beginning of the highway" (1995)

"There are no significant bugs in our released software that any significant number of users want fixed" (1995)

"One thing we have got to change in our strategy - allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company. We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities" (1998)

Under oath: "I don't recall" 6x, "I don't remember" 14x, "I don't know" 22x (1998)

"[E-mail] spam will be a thing of the past in two years' time" (2004)

Re: AI is about to change how you use computers

#83

Post by famouswaffles »

nameless912 wrote: post #77
famouswaffles wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds more like hope to me. There's nothing special about creativity. The real reason chefs won't be released by robots sooner than AI and software devs is a lot more boring. Sensorimotor and physical perception is harder than reasoning and "creativity". It doesn't help that we don't know how to digitize taste so any model with a good sense of taste will have to develop it indirectly incentivized by something else (…

I see GPT and similar LLMs as basically like managing an over-eager intern. Have you ever tried to do that? They're overflowing with ideas and knowledge and passion, and "all" you have to do is point them in the right direction. Except that when you review their code, you find that they didn't consider about a thousand different edge cases. Oh, and they didn't follow the style guide. Oh, and they are way over-focused…

>I see GPT and similar LLMs as basically like managing an over-eager intern. Have you ever tried to do that?

So? Assuming you're right, GPT-3 was not at the level of intern. GPT-2 could not even write coherent text.

I bet you didn't expect any of those developments either.

It's interesting how much people struggle to look forward. I guess we never needed to for nearly all of our evolutionary history. Like very few people genuinely think they'll be replaced right before they are.

Your argument basically boils down to "I have a hunch language models will stop improving".

Your hunch is unfounded, backed by nothing except vague assertions that "surely this time" these goals won't be reached.

Assertions that many people parroted just a few years ago and have continued to be proven wrong.

The text is data. Gradient descent and prediction will strive the model the data. The data will be modelled. That's really all there is to it.

Re: AI is about to change how you use computers

#84

Post by yoyohello13 »

ben_w wrote: post #48
yoyohello13 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditch digging should be safe for quite some time.

I'm frequently surprised by what people think can't be mechanised and by extension automated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excavator

I've watched enough episodes of Dirty Jobs to know there are still many people out there digging ditches in weird places.

Re: AI is about to change how you use computers

#85

Post by ben_w »

nameless912 wrote: post #57
compacct27 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> How will you tell AI what you want to build?

If software engineers have been replaced, it won't be any of us telling the AI anything, it would be a manager. Ask a manager about Kafka, I recon more would respond with something about Franz than anything about Apache.

> 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?

Step 1. Ask it to come up with a plan, after giving it read access to your corporate documents.

Step 2. Ask it to execute the plan it came up with in step 1, after giving it write access.

Of course right now there's a step 3: "Get real engineer to read and then perform business continuity/disaster recovery plan because current AI is about as good at this as someone fresh out of university, what on earth were you thinking, …" etc.

I don't know how long we've got in these jobs, but based on the rate of change (and the training cost for the larger models and supply shortage for the chips used to train the better models) I'm thinking at least 2 and no more than 15 years — though I'm hoping more towards the latter.

Re: AI is about to change how you use computers

#87

Post by stvltvs »

throwitaway222 wrote: post #75
Night_Thastus wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 application s. They improve over time because they remember your activities and recognize intent and patterns in your…

All of that is possible with LLMs: > They’re proactive—capable of making suggestions before you ask for them. An LLM can capture things that are "todos" very easily now. If someone messages you and says "can you collect data on the Brenda client" it can know that this is a request. Further, if you give it access to notion or company wiki, it could be tuned to understand your clients, work and much much more.. The LLM…

Isn't it fairer to say that LLMs in the context of a lot of other systems can do these things?

Re: AI is about to change how you use computers

#88

Post by JohnFen »

_fs wrote: post #78
JohnFen wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

How do plan to avoid the AI overlord camera system that is already in many grocery stores? Instant facial recognition when you walk into the store. Directly tied to your credit card you used on the way out last time. They mapped out your route you are most likely to take. How long until your phone is buzzing to alert you of a hot deal on aisle 12, when you are in aisle 12, for that sugar free soda you drink? Oh yeah,…

I was talking about my use of my machines (the topic of TFA), not how others use their computers against me.

On your topic, I'm not totally helpless, though. I can't do anything about store surveillance except go to stores that don't do that (while they still exist).

That said... I can and so put my phone into airplane mode before I enter stores, and I avoid using credit cards in them, specifically to help protect against those kinds of spying.

Re: AI is about to change how you use computers

#89

Post by kikimora »

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…

Just thinking about bitcoin utility. Could it be wise for a country to hold it reserves in Bitcoin. Just in case other country tries to freeze its holding.

Re: AI is about to change how you use computers

#90

Post by kulahan »

itishappy wrote: post #42
kulahan wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how I would like it to be only because I can't trust it to treat my information well. If it was a trustworthy system, this would be an incredible capability.

Worth noting that that's probably how most people will look at things, and I'm not sure if most people have the background to be able to understand the privacy issues. I guess I'm suggesting that Mr. Gates is probably right, even if it makes us here on HN uncomfortable.

Yeah, I think you're probably spot-on here.
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