Do AI companies work? • Hacker News Board

Re: Do AI companies work?

#151

Post by datavirtue » Mon, Sep 30, 2024, 6:47 PM UTC

LASR wrote: post #147

I lead an applied AI research team where I work - which is a mid-sized public enterprise products company. I've been saying this in my professional circles quite often. We talk about scaling laws, superintelligence, AGI etc. But there is another threshold - the ability for humans to leverage super-intelligence. It's just incredibly hard to innovate on products that fully leverage superintelligence. At some point, AI…

"In my mind, already with GPT-4, we're not generating ideas fast enough on how best to leverage it."

This is the main bottle neck, in my kind. A lot of people are missing from the conversation because they don't understand AI fully. I keep getting glimpses of ideas and possibilities and chatting through a browser ain't one of them. On e we have more young people trained on this and comfortable with the tech and understanding it, and existing professionals have light bulbs go off in their heads as they try to integrate local LLMs, then real changes are going to hit hard and fast. This is just a lot to digest right now and the tech is truly exponential which makes it difficult to ideate right now. We are still enveloping the productivity boost from chatting.

I tried explaining how this stuff works to product owners and architects and that we can integrate local LLMs into existing products. Everyone shook their head and agreed. When I posted a demo in chat a few weeks later you would have thought the CEO called them on their personal phone and told them to get on this shit. My boss spent the next two weeks day and night working up a demo and presentation for his bosses. It went from zero to 100kph instantly.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#152

Post by asterix_pano » Mon, Sep 30, 2024, 6:47 PM UTC

thfuran wrote: post #135

ninetyninenine wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Likely we are because the actualized end result already exists: the human brain. The fact that human intelligence exists means that the idea of human level intelligence is not a pipe dream. The question is whether or not the basic underlying technology of the LLM can achieve that level of intelligence.

And brains do it on about 20 watts.

Training takes many years though.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#153

Post by shahzaibmushtaq » Mon, Sep 30, 2024, 6:48 PM UTC

Yes, AI companies can only work if they all somehow agree to slow things down a little bit instead of competing to release a better model like every month.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#154

Post by darajava » Mon, Sep 30, 2024, 6:51 PM UTC

shahzaibmushtaq wrote: post #153

Yes, AI companies can only work if they all somehow agree to slow things down a little bit instead of competing to release a better model like every month.

Why would this make them work?

Re: Do AI companies work?

#155

Post by snapcaster » Mon, Sep 30, 2024, 6:51 PM UTC

jfengel wrote: post #142

snapcaster wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you criticize the turing test as being meaningless before it was easily passed by LLMs? if not i don't see how you can avoid updating on "this is getting more human" or at least "this is getting closer to intelligence" to avoid the human-bias

I never gave much thought to the Turing test one way or the other. It never struck me as especially informative. I've always been more interested in the non-verbal aspects of human intelligence. I believe that "true AGI", whatever that is, is likely to be able to mimic sentient but non-verbal species. I'd like to see an AGI do what a dog or cat does. LLMs are quite astonishing at mimicking something humans specifical…

What do you think a dog or cat does that can't be replicated by LLMs?

Re: Do AI companies work?

#156

Post by datavirtue » Mon, Sep 30, 2024, 6:58 PM UTC

alexashka wrote: post #118

bhouston wrote: post #90

I think we are in the middle of a steep S-curve of technology innovation. It is far from plateauing and there are still a bunch of major innovations that are likely to shift things even further. Interesting time and these companies are riding a wild wave. It is likely some will actually win big, but most will die - similar to previous technology revolutions. The ones that win will win not just on technology, but on t…

> I think we are in the middle of a steep S-curve of technology innovation We are? What innovation? What do we need innovation for ? What present societal problems can tech innovation possibly address? Surely none of the big ones, right? So then is it fit to call technological change - 'innovation'? I'd agree that LLMs improve upon having to read Wikipedia for topics I'm interested in but would investing billions in…

Nonetheless, Microsoft is firing up a nuclear reactor to power a new data center. My money is in the energy sector right now. Obvious boom coming with solar, nuclear and AI.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#157

Post by christianqchung » Mon, Sep 30, 2024, 6:59 PM UTC

alexashka wrote: post #150

mellosouls wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure the Wikipedia example is a strong one as that site has it's own serious problems with "abusive monopolies" in its moderator cliques and biases (as with any social platform). At least with the current big AI players there is the potential for differentiation through competition. Unless there is some similar initiative with the Wikipedias, the problem of single supplier dominance is a difficult one to see…

I can solve Wikipedia's woes quite easily - Wikipedia should limit itself to math, science, engineering, medicine, physics, chemistry, geography and other disciplines that are not at all in dispute. Politics, history, religion and other topics of conversation that are matters of opinion, taste and state sponsored propaganda need to be off limits. Its mission ought to be to provide a PhD level education in all technic…

Is this satire? All of those industries listed significant disputes. If this is serious it's a concerning view of how science actually works.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#158

Post by adamc » Mon, Sep 30, 2024, 7:00 PM UTC

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #143

martin_drapeau wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 years ago people asked that exact question. E-Commerce emerged. People knew the physical process of buying things would move online. Took some time. Sure, more things emerged but monetizing the Internet still remains about selling you something. What similar parallel can we think of for AI?

Assuming AI progress continues, AI could replace both Microsoft's biggest product, OS, and Google's biggest product, search and ads. And there is a huge tail end of things autonomous driving/flying, drug discovery, robotics, programming, healthcare etc.

Too vague. How would it replace Windows? How would it replace search?

The latter is more believable to me, but how would the AI-enhanced version generate the additional revenue that its costs require? And I think a lot of improvement would be required... people are going to be annoyed by things like hallucinations while trying to buy products.

In reality, as soon as a competitor shows up, Google will add whatever copycat features it needs to search. So it isn't clear to me that search is a market that can be won, short of antitrust making changes.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#159

Post by felideon » Mon, Sep 30, 2024, 7:06 PM UTC

adamc wrote: post #148

pavlov wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feels like someone might have said this in 1981 about personal computers. "We've pretty much seen their shape. The IBM PC isn't fundamentally very different from the Apple II. Probably it's just all incremental improvements from here on out."

What do you think hasn't been? I think the big game changer in the PC space was graphics cards, but since their introduction, it has all been incremental improvement -- at first, pretty fast, then... slower. Much like CPU improvements, although those started earlier. I can't think of a point where the next generation of PCs was astoundingly different from the prior one... just better. It used to be that they were rel…

Arguably form factor, i.e. smartphones and tablets. Whether you think that's incremental or not is subjective, I guess.

I would say incremental, but it does solve a different set of problems (connectedness, mobility) than the PC.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#160

Post by bhouston » Mon, Sep 30, 2024, 7:07 PM UTC

foobiekr wrote: post #104

bhouston wrote: post #90

I think we are in the middle of a steep S-curve of technology innovation. It is far from plateauing and there are still a bunch of major innovations that are likely to shift things even further. Interesting time and these companies are riding a wild wave. It is likely some will actually win big, but most will die - similar to previous technology revolutions. The ones that win will win not just on technology, but on t…

In particular: "There is, however, one enormous difference that I didn’t think about: You can’t build a cloud vendor overnight. Azure doesn’t have to worry about a few executives leaving and building a worldwide network of data centers in 18 months." This isn't true at all. There are like 8 of these companies stood up in the last three or four years fueled by massive investment of sovereign funds - mostly the saudi,…

> The real problem is the ROI on AI spending is.. pretty much zero.

Companies in user acquisition/growth mode tend to have low internal ROI, but remember both Facebook and Google has the same issue -- then they introduced ads and all was well with their finances. Similar things will happen here.