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Ask HN: I don't use AI. What exactly am I missing out on?

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Re: Ask HN: I don't use AI. What exactly am I missing out on?

#21

Post by lk23nlk23 »

shubhamjain wrote: post #15

I am a bit of a greybeard around new tools, and even today my usage of ChatGPT is limited, so I will give my 2c. You're right, in most cases, Google + Github search is faster to achieve a certain task vs typing out your problem and waiting for ChatGPT to generate results (personal opinion). Nonetheless, here are a few things where ChatGPT saves a lot of time: 1. Generating config files: Eg, Webpack, Docker-compose. D…

This is why powershell is so much better than bash or alternatives. Just convert any data type to object and work with it using common syntax. No need to learn 300 different syntaxes/parameters for different parsers like jq/xmlstarlets/etc.

Re: Ask HN: I don't use AI. What exactly am I missing out on?

#22

Post by polotics »

I had a go at porting an A*-algo implementation from pure python to a RAM & CPU -optimized Numba version. For this I used the help of Gemini-Advanced (if that's what Google names their paid-for offering today)

It's been a mixed experience, it got me started but did not help much with understanding the error messages, retreading a lot. Still basically from its dawdling I gathered knowledge I did not have before, and gave me a sense of how to progress. To get me over the bump to a functioning solution I had to do my own thinking, the back and forth with Gemini stopped. At the end I used it again to fix some edge cases, there it helped. Without it I would maybe not have attempted the task, or I would have started with a focussed study of numba, and with this old-style approach I do not think would have gotten to a functioning solution faster, not sure though, too late to try that now.

Re: Ask HN: I don't use AI. What exactly am I missing out on?

#24

Post by rickcarlino »

For ambiguous searches, ChatGPT is a good supplement to traditional search engines. GPT-4 is very good at finding words from ambiguous descriptions or inquiries into whether something exists or not. Real example I needed recently: “thing that maintains a seal even though one side is spinning” => “rotary joint”.

Re: Ask HN: I don't use AI. What exactly am I missing out on?

#25

Post by nunez »

shubhamjain wrote: post #15

I am a bit of a greybeard around new tools, and even today my usage of ChatGPT is limited, so I will give my 2c. You're right, in most cases, Google + Github search is faster to achieve a certain task vs typing out your problem and waiting for ChatGPT to generate results (personal opinion). Nonetheless, here are a few things where ChatGPT saves a lot of time: 1. Generating config files: Eg, Webpack, Docker-compose. D…

idk I feel like [3] aside, doing all of those things doesn't take me very much time? Also, I think that turning to ChatGPT to compose a shell pipeline is a smell

Re: Ask HN: I don't use AI. What exactly am I missing out on?

#28

Post by AnimalMuppet »

pizza234 wrote: post #8

It helps for a lot of things that would otherwise require searching the web and/or scrolling long pages: pronounces, grammar, general (and even somewhat specific) history/science/arts concepts, draft formal text, improving phrasing, simple/direct technical questions. However: - it requires some level of fact checking - it subtly reduces my personal retaining of information for technical concepts - (in my personal exp…

About your first "however": Let's say I didn't use AI. Let's say I just used Google search, and it turned up a web page. That also requires some level of fact checking. We're just more aware of it with AI (at least at the moment) because of lots of publicity about AI making stuff up.

Does AI require more fact checking? My impression is "yes", but I have no data. Does anyone?

Re: Ask HN: I don't use AI. What exactly am I missing out on?

#29

Post by Natfan »

cykros wrote: post #16
soneca wrote: post #14

You don’t have to commit to Google OR ChatGPT. I use ChatGPT for questions with some relatively long wording and also for queries that I know will have tons of ads and SEO-spam. An example: yesterday I tried searching for board games that are cooperative and best played by two people. Google showed a lot of ads, very old outdated blog and forum posts. I had to navigate for some time to gather a list of games. A lot o…

You may want to look at using the Brave search engine -- it automatically has the "Brave Summarizer" result at the top of searches, which is powered by its LLM, so you don't necessarily have to decide on one or the other, but get both all in one streamline process. I don't make much explicit use of AI either, but I have found that it does help being built right into my searches, as when it's just basic information I'…

Kagi has a similar "quick answer"[0]

[0]: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/ai/quick-answer.html

Re: Ask HN: I don't use AI. What exactly am I missing out on?

#30

Post by vonBitDiddle »

Completely useless for me unless I need to find something historical/obscure like an old reading group website for a theory book who's page is now only available on the way back machine. I could only remember half of their official name and chatGPT was able to find it.
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