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Do AI companies work?

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Re: Do AI companies work?

#331

Post by danielbarla »

hakfoo wrote: post #315
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…

The "it's making mistakes" phase might be based on the testing strategy. Remember the old bit about the media-- the stories are always 100% infalliable except strangely in YOUR personal field of expertise. I suspect it's something similar with AI products. People test them with toy problems -- "Hey ChatGPT, what's the square root of 36", and then with something close to their core knowledge. It might learn to solve a…

I think a crucial aspect is to only apply chatbots' answers to a domain where you can rapidly validate their correctness (or alternatively, to take their answers with a huge pinch of salt, or simply as creative search space exploration).

For me, the number of times where it's led me down a hallucinated, impossible, or thoroughly invalid rabbit hole have been relatively minimal when compared against the number of times when it has significantly helped. I really do think the key is in how you use them, for what types of problems/domains, and having an approach that maximizes your ability to catch issues early.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#332

Post by obirunda »

KronisLV wrote: post #314
SrslyJosh wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I lead an applied AI research team where I work Your paycheck depends on people believing the hype. Therefore, anything you say about "superintelligence" (LOL) is pretty suspect. > Getting AI to do work involves getting AI to understand what needs to be done from highly bandwidth constrained humans using mouse / keyboard / voice to communicate. So, what, you're going to build a model to instruct the model? And how…

Snarky tone aside, there are different audiences. For example, I primarily work with web dev and some DevOps and I can tell you that the state of both can be pretty dire. Maybe not as much in my particular case, as in general. Some examples to illustrate the point: supply chain risks and an ever increasing amount of dependencies (look at your average React project, though this applies to most stacks), overly abstract…

I think at its core it's not that there isn't value or future value, but currently there is an assertion, maybe some blind faith, that it's inevitable that a future version will deliver a free lunch for society.

I think the testimonies often repeated by coders that use these code completion tools is that "it saved me X amount of time on this one problem I had, therefore it's great value". The issue is that these all fall into a research of n=1 test subjects. It's only useful information for the subject. It appears we don't realize in these moments that when we use those examples, even to ourselves, we are users reviewing a product, as opposed to validating if our workflow is not just different but objectively better.

The truth lies in the aggregate data of the quality and crucially the speed by which fixes and requirements are being implemented at scale across code bases.

Admittedly, a lot of code is being generated, so I don't think I can say everyone hates it, but until someone can do some real research on this, all we have are product reviews.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#333

Post by VirusNewbie »

torginus wrote: post #325
VirusNewbie wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is it not a tech company? They're literally trying to approximate TSP in the way that makes them money. In addition, they're constantly optimizing for surge pricing to maximize ROI. What kind of problems do you think those are?

If someone would be able to solve TSP and surge pricing better than Uber, do you think they'd be able to dethrone them? The reason surge pricing exists and works the way it is isn't some capitalist efficiency mechanism - in fact it's quite the opposite - it's algorithmic price fixing enabled by Uber's quasi-monopoly, and it is the very thing that enables Uber to exist in the first place as a very profitable company.…

> it's algorithmic price fixing enabled by Uber's quasi-monopoly, and it is the very thing that enables Uber to exist in the first place as a very profitable company.

If this was true, they'd have the surge pricing set for always.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#334

Post by indigoabstract »

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…

I will be glad to see the day when LLMs will be able to play Minecraft, so I won't have to. Then I can just relax and watch someone else do everything for me without lifting a single finger.

Won't that be fun.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#335

Post by isoprophlex »

phreeza wrote: post #321

One thing I have found myself wondering is why this didn't play out similarly with Google in the early days. I guess their secret sauce was just so good and so secret that neither established players nor copycat startups were able to replicate it, the way it happened with ChatGPT? Why is the same not the case here, is it just because the whole LLM thing grew out of a relatively open research culture where the fundame…

Being "data driven" wasn't much of a thing yet back then. I mean, of course, there was massive energy around the web... but your average non-web corpo still had no idea. Of course there was pets.com or whatever dumb dotcom bubble shit, but I think noone saw data and digitalization as an absolutely essential part of making profits, or at least grabbing money, like we do now.

Conversely, the 2020s has execs and other rich individuals doomscrolling LinkedIn and thinking that if they don't invest in the latest crypto/quantum/genai crap, they're missing out on a vital element of retaining competitive edge.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#336

Post by janalsncm »

beryilma wrote: post #120
fsndz wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly what I wrote recently: "The "AI effect" is behind some of the current confusion. As John McCarthy, AI pioneer who coined the term "artificial intelligence," once said: "As soon as it works, no one calls it AI anymore." This is why we often hear that AI is "far from existing." This led to the formulation of the Tesler's Theorem: "AI is whatever hasn't been done yet."" https://www.lycee.ai/blog/there-are-indeed…

> As soon as it works, no one calls it AI anymore. So, what are good examples of some things that we used to call AI, which we don't call AI anymore because they work? All the examples that come to my mind (recommendation engines, etc.) do not have any real societal benefits.

Chess engines. People once believed that in order for a computer to play chess we would first have to create an intelligence comparable to humans. Turns out you can win by evaluating millions of positions per turn instead. It would be somewhat disappointing for someone who was looking for a human-like opponent, that it can simply be brute forced. But it may be that a lot of “intelligence” is like that.

It’s the cognitive equivalent of the Indiana Jones sword vs gun scene.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#337

Post by echoangle »

akomtu wrote: post #165
mdavidn wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that not the human experience? I have no “agency” over the next thought to pop into my head. I “feel” like I can choose where to focus attention, but that too is a predictable outcome arising from the integration of my embryology, memories, and recently reinforced behaviors. “I” am merely an observer of my own mental state. But that is an uncomfortable idea for most people.

If this was true, you could lay back relaxed and watch where your brain takes you. But we experience life as a never ending stream of choices, usually between what's easy and what's right, and pursuing the right choice takes a constant effort. We are presented with problems and have to figure out solutions on our own, with no guarantees of success. This "I'm just an observer" idea may be true at some higher level, if…

The „making choices“ could just be an illusion where it’s already clear from the inputs what you’re going to do. You rejecting determinism could already be determined and you couldn’t even choose to believe it. That’s not falsifiable of course, but your point doesn’t really contradict the idea of determinism due to the possibility.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#339

Post by YetAnotherNick »

adamc wrote: post #158
YetAnotherNick wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cop…

You saw "Her" or Iron man? That's how it could replace windows. Basically entire OS working in natural language. Imagine a great human personal assistant who operates computer for you.

And searchGPT could replace Google. Also, wasn't the point of genAI is that it is cheaper than the entire stack of search? At least I know for some recommendation GPT-4 is literally cheaper than many companies in house models and I know companies who saved money using GenAI.

Not saying any of these would likely happen, but still it is not in the fantasy realm.

> people are going to be annoyed by things like hallucinations

That's like saying people are going to be annoyed by no delivery in online shopping. Yes it happened more often earlier, but we are arguing more on the ideal case if it could get solved. That's why I said if AI progress is good in my message, which means we solve hallucination etc.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#340

Post by scotty79 »

> you probably don’t want to stake your business on always being the first company to find the next breakthrough

that's like a better half of the entire Apple business model that brought them success, find the next hot thing (like a capacitive touchscreen or high density displays), make exclusive deals with hardware providers so you can release a device using that new tech and feed on it for some time till the the upstream starts leaking tech left and right and you competition can finally catch up

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