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I Received an AI Email

timharek.no

431–440 of 597 posts

Re: I Received an AI Email

#431
post #316
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's quite right. That's why I created EtherGPT, an LLM Chat agent that runs decentralized in the Ether blockchain, on smart contracts only, to make sure that value is created and rewards directly the people and not big companies. By providing it just a fraction of just a bit north of 10% of the current fusion reactions occuring in our sun, and giving it a decade or two on processing time and sync, you can ask…

Another AI response, or humor from an actual person?

are LLMs even capable of humor? The attempts I've seen are not very funny

Re: I Received an AI Email

#432
post #358
post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep seeing these posts on HN and thinking, man, these are some smart people. Training LLMs, doing all this amazing AI stuff like this guy with the email agents and the other guy with the dropping of hats, and then I open the posts and it's just some guy making API requests to OpenAI or some similar disappointment.

Nowadays, an "AI Expert" is someone who knows how to download an AI client lib and prompt the AI to perform tasks. These are people who are not even technical and have no idea how all this works, but they can at least follow a Youtube Tutorial to get a basic website working.

Business as usual iow. Used to be scrum masters, then javascript "experts", then crypto bros.

Snake oil salesmen we called em back in my day ;-)

Re: I Received an AI Email

#433

The author links to the somewhat dystopian blog where the email sender is quite proud of their work. Their words (or perhaps that of an LLM): > Could an AI agent craft compelling emails that would capture people's attention and drive engagement, all while maintaining a level of personalization that feels human? I decided to find out. > The real hurdle was ensuring the emails seemed genuinely personalized and not spam…

I remember seeing a talk from Jonathan Blow where he made a comparison: in the 1960s top engineers worked for NASA and put a man on the moon in a decade, basically doing computations by hand. Today, we have super advanced computers and tech companies enjoy 100× times more of the top engineers than NASA ever had, and they are all working toward making you click on ads more.

And yet someone is building all those super advanced computers and AI models. Someone is launching reusable rockets into space. Someone is building mRNA vaccines and F1 cars and humanoid robots and more efficient solar panels.

The "smart people are all working in advertising" trope is idiotic. Just an excuse for people to justify their own laziness. There is an infinite number of opportunities out there to make the world better. If you are ignoring them, that's on you.

Re: I Received an AI Email

#435
post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI solves gigantic issues and helps us with cancer, protein folding, potentially math and other studies, material science etc. Bitcoin consumes as much energy as a country and has basically done nothing besides moving money from one group of people to a random other group of people. And bitcoin is also motivated to find the cheapest energy independent of any ethical reasoning (taking energy from cheap chinese hydro a…

None of your problems in the first sentence are solved by LLMs. I do not dispute AI research and applications and their benefits, but the current LLM and GenerativeAI hype is of no value to hard scientific problems. Otherwise I agree with you.

I think the coolest counterpoint to this I have seen so far is people using generative AI to design materials with desired properties. For example, discovering new super conductors[0].

[0] https://www.jhuapl.edu/news/news-releases/230503-ai-discover...

Re: I Received an AI Email

#436
the blog he links to is clearly AI slop too. Even the LLM he used to write it agrees that what he's doing is unethical.

> At the same time, we need to establish guidelines around transparency and consent for AI-driven communications at scale. Deception through omission is still deception – people should be aware when they're interacting with an AI agent versus a human.

This is clearly pissing in the pool. I've gotten so much value from people who have made their emails public with a 'if you're curious or learning feel free to email me' (e.g. patio11) and I've long had the invitation in my HN profile too.

Nasty for people to abuse this to extract value for the few weeks/months it takes people to realise what's happening and make themselves harder to contact.

Re: I Received an AI Email

#437
"Personalized" spam generated from templates has been a thing forever. I've received plenty of such emails from recruiters highlighting my past experience, projects and what I'd be a good fit for. LLMs make them a bit more real, but overall the game hasn't really changed.

Re: I Received an AI Email

#438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I much prefer admission to hiding it. It lets you easily see who doesn’t deserve your time

While that might work great on the individual level for a little while, it's unfortunately not how normalized taboos seem to work long-term. You're just going to see more and more people who don't deserve your time until you're wanting for anyone who actually does.

This has been mentioned before, but I can see the benefit in having curated webrings and similar listings. Where people can verify the content is not LLM generated.

Re: I Received an AI Email

#439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I much prefer admission to hiding it. It lets you easily see who doesn’t deserve your time

While that might work great on the individual level for a little while, it's unfortunately not how normalized taboos seem to work long-term. You're just going to see more and more people who don't deserve your time until you're wanting for anyone who actually does.

> You're just going to see more and more people who don't deserve your time until you're wanting for anyone who actually does.

I can see it, perhaps positively, investing far less importance and effort into online things. With admittedly a lot of optimism, I could see it leading to a resurgent arts and crafts movement, or a renewed importance put on hand-made things. People say "touch grass"; maybe AI will make people "touch crafts" (bad joke, I know).

Re: I Received an AI Email

#440
post #431
post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another AI response, or humor from an actual person?

are LLMs even capable of humor? The attempts I've seen are not very funny

Something must be very wrong with someone who continuously laughs at computer jokes so I don't think it will ever reach the level you are expecting (hopefully).
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