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Do AI companies work?

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Re: Do AI companies work?

#451
post #272

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So I go to ask an LLM to answer to a question and it starts trying to sell me products I don't want or need? I'll need to filter it's output through a locally run adblock LLM which detects/flags/strips out advertising text before delivering the output. Hmmm.

I still have this pipe-dream of an augmented reality system where you can walk through the grocery store and it will superimpose a warning label over any brand connected to a company on the individual user's shit-list. For many decades consumers have been told that the magnanimous "Free Market" (multiple definitions) is empowering them to vote with their wallets, however some of those same groups start acting rather…

> I still have this pipe-dream of an augmented reality system where you can walk through the grocery store and it will superimpose a warning label over any brand connected to a company on the individual user's shit-list.

There are boycott apps that let you scan barcodes, e.g.:

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.boycat.app

But there are a ton of others.

It is a natural extension to add this to AR/MR when the time is opportune.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#452

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continually learn with a fixed computational budget over massively extended task horizons.

No, but it could help me make such a thing.

Possibly, but as of now it's a completely unsolved problem and to my knowledge nobody has shown even a tiny model being able to perform it.

Based on the top page today I may even be able to make the argument we can't even simulate the abilities of a fruit fly.

The absolute frontier models can perform only a fraction of a fraction of what a typical work day looks like for a human. I calculated the chance that a frontier model today has about a 1^-29 chance of performing a single day of connected tasks based on GAIA benchmarks.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#453

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Voice recognition is still very poor and barely used.

Interestingly, a big barrier to voice recognition is the same as with AI assistants - they don't understand context, and so they have a difficult time navigating messy inputs that you need assumed knowledge and contextual understanding for. Which is kinda the baseline for how humans communicate things to eachother with words in the first place.

Totally agree.

There are really very few situations where people really want voice recognition. The main one is hands free controls when driving or for as a remote control for TV or music.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly, a big barrier to voice recognition is the same as with AI assistants - they don't understand context, and so they have a difficult time navigating messy inputs that you need assumed knowledge and contextual understanding for. Which is kinda the baseline for how humans communicate things to eachother with words in the first place.

Totally agree. There are really very few situations where people really want voice recognition. The main one is hands free controls when driving or for as a remote control for TV or music.

Exactly, yeah. The high frequency of mistakes from voice commands is a specific point of friction that makes me still prefer tactile buttons for cars - ideally somewhere you don't have to take your hands off the wheel or your eyes off the road. If voice command got really good, that would probably change for me.

Touchscreens are great for phones, but I'm really not a fan of them in cars where I prefer the tactile feedback of knowing what button is under my finger.

A lot of it just comes down to having the right tool for the right usecase, really.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#455

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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.

Yeah, I moved into a vanguard energy ETF. Some of this is already priced in (which makes me whince a little when buying) but the actual upside hasn't even hit yet, which will bring in a rush of activity on energy stocks. I have noticed over the decades that energy companies always do very well, especially in the long run.

I was looking for renewables investments (particularly solar) but there is just too much uncertainty and the companies are so small.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#456
post #168

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"walk out to the taxi rank" I assume you are talking about airports. Guess what, they still exist in many places. And on the other hand, for US, other than a few big cities, the "normal" taxi experience is that you call a number and maybe a taxi shows up in half an hour. With Uber, that becomes 10 minutes or less, with live map updates. Give me that and I'll be happy to forget about Uber.

No, I mean when out for dinner or drinks. There used to be several taxi ranks on the streets with restaurants/bars/nightclubs, now there are none. The airport is the only place left that still has a taxi rank, and it doesn't even have taxies all the time anymore.

If drivers are actually driving people around and earning money, potentially getting more income in the end, with a trade-off of inconvenience for riders to wait a few minutes for the next ride to arrive, do you consider that positive or negative? Sounds like a much more efficient model to me.

Re: Do AI companies work?

#457

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"Computer" in (simplified) Chinese is still "电脑" -- literally "electric/electronic brain".

In Icelandic, computer is "tölva" which is a combination of "tala" meaning "number" and "völva" meaning "oracle".

In Turkish, computer is "bilgisayar" which is a combination of "bilgi" meaning "knowledge" and "sayar" which is an intentional double-entendre of "counter"/"respects".
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