Live data from Hacker News

Slack AI

slack.com

41–50 of 54 posts

Re: Slack AI

#41

Hmm. None of these features seem to be particularly useful. If a channel has so many unread messages that you need a summary of it, maybe try just not. I don't want a daily round-up from multiple channels - I want Slack to just show me messages from multiple low-volume channels in a single view.

> If a channel has so many unread messages that you need a summary of it, maybe try just not.

"Try just not" what? I can't tell my colleagues to stop communicating.

Re: Slack AI

#42
post #27

I’ve been using this for a couple months now. Honestly it’s the kind of thing that’s cool the first time you use it, then I forgot it existed and now it’s nothing more than 1 more notification to clear out every day. The “Recap” feature has potential but I honestly feel like it creates more noise. In most cases (for me) it’s easier to just skim the channel than to read a summary. The “ask questions in search” sounded…

I'd suggest a slight change in strategy. After 12 months, don't ask people. Just start gradually taking things away. Those that contact you to ask why it's missing are the ones who probably find it useful.

The scream test works everytime, in 80% of scenarios...

Re: Slack AI

#43
post #7

I wonder how long it will be until we hear about a company accidentally doing something because the Slack AI summary / AI search incorrectly paraphrased a request. I really wish AI companies would call hallucinations what they really are - Mistakes. Using wishy-washy words like that make non-techy people trust outputs of LLMs much much more than they should. "Oh it just hallucinated - how silly!" instead of "It got i…

What is it with this constant boogeyman of hallucinations, Its like people cannot understand that this is a new technology that is rapidly improving

Because majority of people don't understand how LLMs work, what hallucinations are, or the capabilities of AI tech. Like lawyers https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-24/us-lawyer-uses-chatgp... airline website devs https://bc.ctvnews.ca/air-canada-s-chatbot-gave-a-b-c-man-th... law enforcement https://gizmodo.com/deepfake-cheer-mom-sues-for-defamation-1...

No, people in general cannot understand changes in technology.

Re: Slack AI

#44
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expect much more of it from who? What are you suggesting changed? Among all the spying enterprise apps, why slack? Afaik, engineers brought slack into many companies and pushed back on alternatives like teams.

Engineers brought slack into companies because it was like IRC but non-tech folk could use it. Teams didn't exist when slack became "cool". It was Lync or Skype for Business, or something along those lines. The timeline and the rebranding is a bit blurry, but they were truly awful compared to Slack. Slack stopped being cool (for me) when they killed the IRC bridge. After that it became just another enterprise tool th…

There should be Hipchat in the timeline and many xmpp deployments.

Re: Slack AI

#45

Man, it has got to suck being a fresh out of school CS grad. Not only is the industry fucked, if you get a job, you may well be fully remote and WFH which already kills social connections in the crib. Now add slack AI to the mix and you've got the Black Mirror-esque nightmare of: Has your manager really read your message? Have they ever read any? Or is everything you say just being shouted into an abyss, with only an…

Isn't it responsibility of a manager to treat employees well? Careless manager wouldn't read their messages regardless LLM or not.

Umm… “well” is kind of subjective. A manager’s responsibility is to make his employees productive for the organization.

Re: Slack AI

#46
post #6

Even if AI tools (e.g. search or summarization) aren't perfect, neither are our current manual methods. Right now I feel there's a strong negative sentiment towards mistakes made by LLMs vs humans - when/if that sentiment fades, it'll be interesting to see how much work can be delegated to LLMs.

Human mistakes are learning opportunities. An LLM doesn't learn from its mistakes.

Re: Slack AI

#48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's only going to get worse as the LLMs get just that much better that people stop thinking more critically about what they generate. Right now I think many people still verify or read through the results to make sure they sound right. What happens when people get lulled into complacency and then it really goes off on a bender.

Nothing will have changed. How many times have you seen HN comments from people that never read the article? How many times have you read flat out lies on Reddit? The last 40 years of of cable news have banked on this theory. At least the last 80 years of American politics as well. There’s no degradation of critical thinking, either. It’s just a cohort that does it and a cohort that doesn’t. For all of time.

IMO future is government neutering of anything related to safety, physical world or food...

Re: Slack AI

#49
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually think "hallucination" sounds worse than "mistake." A hallucination is a fundamental break from the shared reality.

The problem is that everything from an LLM is a hallucination, because LLMs don't have a reality. LLM's inventing new text is the whole point of them. It's just that sometimes they invent text that's also wrong.

This is simply false. LLMs have a world model. Is it perfect? Obviously not. But neither is yours. Saying that "everything" from an LLM is a hallucination, to whatever extent it can be said to be true is overly broad to the point of being useless.

It is very possible to learn which kinds of things LLMs are likely to be correct at and which kinds of things they are likely to be wrong about. Neither of those categories is going to be perfect, but, again, neither will it be for any particular human.

I mostly agree that current LLMs should not be used in any kind of a critical role that does not have a human constantly checking it. And even with a human, probably not, because humans are lazy, and are likely to stop checking.

But they can be very useful if one takes the time to learn what kinds of outputs they usually give.

The problem with the vast majority of articles on them is that they usually go in one of two directions: Look at this amazing task that an LLM did really well

or

Look at this incredibly basic task that an LLM did very poorly.

Both of those ignore the totality that LLMs are shockingly, amazingly, good at certain kinds of tasks and also shockingly, embarrassingly bad at other kinds of tasks.

If one can learn to recognize which is which, one can get a lot of value and, if one is careful, avoid the pitfalls.

Re: Slack AI

#50

Man, it has got to suck being a fresh out of school CS grad. Not only is the industry fucked, if you get a job, you may well be fully remote and WFH which already kills social connections in the crib. Now add slack AI to the mix and you've got the Black Mirror-esque nightmare of: Has your manager really read your message? Have they ever read any? Or is everything you say just being shouted into an abyss, with only an…

> if you get a job, you may well be fully remote and WFH

I envy the fresh graduates of today, not having to put up to office bullshit for almost 2 decades like I did.

Post reply on HN