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Do AI companies work?

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Re: Do AI companies work?

#401

Post by achenet »

SoftTalker wrote: post #121
alexashka wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

One of Google's founding goals was "organizing human knowledge" IIRC. They ended up being an ad company.

In a way, that is in alignment with their founding goal of organizing human knowledge.

An ad is just a piece of data (eg Bob is selling shovels for $10 + shipping), with the additional metadata that someone really wants you to see it (eg Bob paid Google $100 to tell every person who searched for "shovels" that he's selling shovels for $10 + shipping).

Selling ads is organizing human knowledge.

Yes, you could argue using a market system is not the best way to do this, but it is a way to do it.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#402

Post by achenet »

datavirtue wrote: post #156
alexashka wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This is very clever.

In gold rush, shell shovels.

In computing power rush, sell energy.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#403

Post by achenet »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #372

Apple might emerge as one of the winners here, despite being one of the last to come out with an LLM, because it already has the infrastructure, or delivery system, for hundreds of millions of users to interact with an LLM. Google has a similar foothold worldwide, but its major weakness that it's cannibilizing its Search cash cow (how do you make $ from ads with LLMs?), whereas in Apple's case it enhances its product…

> (how do you make $ from ads with LLMs?)

I asked Google Gemini:

Tailored Ads: Create highly personalized ads based on this data, increasing the likelihood of clicks and conversions.

Could probably also have a version that goes something like

> you asked about $SUBJECT. Here is some advice on the subject, and a few links to helpful products and services.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#404

Post by adamc »

YetAnotherNick wrote: post #339
adamc wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 kno…

OK, then I'm pretty sure it won't happen. I don't want to have a personal assistant replace an OS. I don't even want to talk to Alexa. And I'm not alone...

Re: Do AI companies work?

#405

Post by indigoabstract »

mavhc wrote: post #390
indigoabstract wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Watching people play Minecraft is the main hobby of children these days

Well, I guess you've caught me then. Naturally, adults would be more preoccupied with how they can use AI to improve their lives and get ahead, instead of playing Minecraft.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#406

Post by roenxi »

achenet wrote: post #396
roenxi wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the huge array of things humans can do that computers are no where close to. For example?

anything involving an interface with the physical world. For example, running a lemonade stand. You'd need thousands, if not millions of dollars to build a robot machine with a computerized brain capable of doing what a 6 year old child can do - produce lemonade from simple ingredients (lemon, sugar, water) and sell it to consumers. Same with basically all cooking/food-service and hospitality tasks, an physical thera…

You seem to have shifted the conversation's goalposts there - those are things that computers can do, it just costs a lot.

And, more to the point, they aren't indicative of intelligence. Computers have cleared the intelligence requirements to run a lemonade stand by a large margin - and the other tasks too for that matter.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#407

Post by PodgieTar »

mumblemumble wrote: post #388
insane_dreamer wrote: post #372

Apple might emerge as one of the winners here, despite being one of the last to come out with an LLM, because it already has the infrastructure, or delivery system, for hundreds of millions of users to interact with an LLM. Google has a similar foothold worldwide, but its major weakness that it's cannibilizing its Search cash cow (how do you make $ from ads with LLMs?), whereas in Apple's case it enhances its product…

But do I even want an actually smart Siri? Microsoft's been trying to ram essentially that down my throat for the better part of a year now, and it's mostly convinced me that the answer is "no". I don't want to have arbitrary conversations with my computer. I still just want the same thing I've been wanting from my digital assistant for 30 years now: fewer "eat up Martha" moments, and handling more intents so that I…

I would like to maybe be able to say:

Set two timers, one for 20 minutes, and another for 50 minutes.

or

Turn off the lights in my living room, and my office.

That's about as advanced as I want my home assistants to be though.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#408

Post by butterfly42069 »

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…

Yes, this is in my mind where people will find the fabled moat they search for too.

SOTA models are impressive, as is the idea of building AGIs that do everything for us, but in the meantime there are a lot of practical applications of the open source and smaller models that are being missed out on in my opinion.

I also think business is going to struggle to adapt and existing business is at a disadvantage for deploying AI tools, after all, who wants to replace themselves and lose their salary? Its a personal incentive not to leverage AI at the corporate level.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#409

Post by Retric »

KronisLV wrote: post #349
obirunda wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. To me it seems very much like we're somewhere near the peak of the hype cycle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gartner_hype_cycle Except in the case of "AI" we get new releases that seem somewhat impressive a…

The top comment of your HN link is exactly the issue at hand

> don't know what I would use a podcast like this for, but the fact that something like this can be created without human intervention in just a few minutes is jaw dropping

AI has recently gotten good at doing stuff that seems like it should be useful, but the limitations aren’t obvious. Self driving cars, LLM’s, Stable Diffusion etc are awesome tech demos as long as you pick the best output.

The issue is the real world cares a lot more about the worst outcomes. Driving better than 99% of people 24/7 for 6 months and then really fucking up is indistinguishable from being a bad driver. Code generation happens to fit really well because of how people test and debug code not because it’s useful unsupervised.

Currently balancing supervision effort vs time saved depends a great deal on the specific domain and very little about how well the AI has been trained, that’s what is going to kill this hype cycle. Investing an extra 100 Billion training the next generation of LLM isn’t going to move the needles that matter.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#410

Post by trash_cat »

Did Apple work when they launched the iPhone without the App store? It's a very similar question. There is this obsession to talk about tangible business value (and that its nowehere to be seen) despite OpenAI setting record for daily users. Right now it is a consumer product and will take time before we understand how to organize business around them. It took us about 20 years to get from the hype of .com bubble to tech giants.
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