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Between the Booms: AI in Winter – Communications of the ACM

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Re: Between the Booms: AI in Winter – Communications of the ACM

#31

Post by exe34 »

goatlover wrote: post #27
SubiculumCode wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about the professional professionals, but as a science professor, I have to wear a lot of hats, which has required me to gain skills in a multitude of areas outside my area of deep expertise. I use Claude and Chatgpt EVERY DAY. Those services help me run out scripts for data munging, etc etc very quickly. I don't use it for high expertise writing, as I find it takes more than I get back, but I do use it…

Personal anecdotes on the benefits of using LLMs don't address complaints about tedious articles over-marketing AI tech. That LLMs provide benefits is well known at this point, it doesn't mean we can't recognize the latest hype cycle for what it is. There's a long list of previous technologies that were going to "change everything".

surely it's not hype if it works?

Re: Between the Booms: AI in Winter – Communications of the ACM

#32

Post by [deleted] »

dgfitz wrote: post #24
svara wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t understand how a business model that makes money pops out on the other end. What issues do you see? I pay for ChatGPT and for cursor and to me that's money very well spent. I imagine tools like cursor will become common for other text intensive industries, like law, soon. Agreed that the hype can be over the top, but these are valuable productivity tools, so I have some trouble understanding where you're co…

I feel like the raw numbers kind of indicate that the amount of money spent on training, salary, and overhead doesn't add up. "We'll beat them in volume" keeps jumping out at me.

[deleted]

Re: Between the Booms: AI in Winter – Communications of the ACM

#33

Post by outworlder »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #20
gorjusborg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's you. Not just him. > But it's a major focus of the industry right now, involving a genuinely novel and promising new class of tools, so the posts belong here and the high engagement that props them up seems expected. In your opinion (and admittedly others), but that doesn't make the overhype any less tiresome. Yes it is novel technology, but there's alway novel technology, and it isn't all in one area, but you…

I don't know about the professional professionals, but as a science professor, I have to wear a lot of hats, which has required me to gain skills in a multitude of areas outside my area of deep expertise. I use Claude and Chatgpt EVERY DAY. Those services help me run out scripts for data munging, etc etc very quickly. I don't use it for high expertise writing, as I find it takes more than I get back, but I do use it…

> I use Claude and Chatgpt EVERY DAY.

We use several tools derived from "AI research" every single day in our lives.

They are tools and, at every cycle, we gain new tools. They hype is the issue.

Re: Between the Booms: AI in Winter – Communications of the ACM

#34

Post by SubiculumCode »

goatlover wrote: post #27
SubiculumCode wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about the professional professionals, but as a science professor, I have to wear a lot of hats, which has required me to gain skills in a multitude of areas outside my area of deep expertise. I use Claude and Chatgpt EVERY DAY. Those services help me run out scripts for data munging, etc etc very quickly. I don't use it for high expertise writing, as I find it takes more than I get back, but I do use it…

Personal anecdotes on the benefits of using LLMs don't address complaints about tedious articles over-marketing AI tech. That LLMs provide benefits is well known at this point, it doesn't mean we can't recognize the latest hype cycle for what it is. There's a long list of previous technologies that were going to "change everything".

Yes, of course, but they almost always did too. Internet. Mobile Phones.

I think the issue is whether you think that HN posts on AI are basically marketing, or about sharing new advances with a community that needs to be kept on top of new advances. Some posts are from a small startup trying something, or from a person sharing a tool. I think these are generally valuable. I might benefit from a RAG, but won't build one from scratch. In terms of this crowd, I can't think of advances that in other areas that are as impactful as machine learning lately. Its not like crypto. Crypto was an interesting innovation, but one in which mostly sought a market instead of the a market seeking an innovation. There is no solid "just use a database" analogical response here like was the well used refrain to attempt at practical uses of cryptocurrency tech. Sure, AI companies built on selling something silly like "the perfect algorithm to find you a perfect date!" is pure hackery, but even at the current level of llm, I don't think we are any where near understanding its full potential/application. So even if we are on the brink of an AI winter, its in the Bahamas.

Also, looking at the most popular stories with AI in the title over the last month show quite a varied array of topics. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastMonth&page=0&prefix=fa...

If HN readers feel that AI-related articles are showing up too much, then I'd say it would be on them to find articles on topics that interest them and post them to HN.

Re: Between the Booms: AI in Winter – Communications of the ACM

#35

Post by Grimblewald »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #2

every other article these days on this site is about AI. And it's incredibly tedious and annoying. Isn't it enough that clueless marketers who get their Tech knowledge from businessinsider and bloomberg are constantly harping on about AI. Seems we as a community have resigned or given up in this battle against common sense. Maybe long ago. Still there should be some form of moderation penalizing these shill posts tha…

My problem is the abuse of the term AI to a point where it has lost all meaning. I'd be all for a ban on the term in favour of the specific method driving the 'intelligence' as I would rule out some of qualifying simple because they are not capable of making intelligent decisions, even if they can make complex ones (looking at you random forest).

Re: Between the Booms: AI in Winter – Communications of the ACM

#36

Post by contextfree »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #2

every other article these days on this site is about AI. And it's incredibly tedious and annoying. Isn't it enough that clueless marketers who get their Tech knowledge from businessinsider and bloomberg are constantly harping on about AI. Seems we as a community have resigned or given up in this battle against common sense. Maybe long ago. Still there should be some form of moderation penalizing these shill posts tha…

How does any of that apply to this particular article? Isn't a broader historical perspective exactly what's needed if you want to be free from the immediate hype cycle?

One of my biggest irritations with HN comment sections is how frequently people seem to want to ignore the specific interesting thing an article is about and just express uninteresting and repetitive generic opinions about the general topic area instead.

Re: Between the Booms: AI in Winter – Communications of the ACM

#37

Post by mangamadaiyan »

dragontamer wrote: post #10
gopalv wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t understand how a business model that makes money pops out on the other end Tractors and farming. By turning what is traditionally a labour intensive product into a capital intensive one. For now, the farmers who own tractors will beat the farmers who need to hire, house and retain workers (or half a dozen children). This goes well for quite some time, where you can have 3 people handle acres & acres. I'll b…

And I'll be around explaining why it's a bad idea to stockpile $X00,000,000 worth of Equipment in Columbia, where coffee grows readily. Capital intensive industries require low crime and geopolitical stability. Strongman politics means that investors who buy such equipment will simply be robbed at literal gunpoint by local gangs.

Nitpick: s/Columbia/Colombia/

Re: Between the Booms: AI in Winter – Communications of the ACM

#38

Post by xarope »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #8
dgfitz wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah, it’s not just you. AI is really neat. I don’t understand how a business model that makes money pops out on the other end. At least crypto cashed out on NFTs for a while.

good point about the business model. probably AI has more even the ones reaping the rewards are only 4 or 5 big corps. It seems with crypto the business "benefits" were mostly adversarial (winners were those doing crimes on the darknet, or to allow ransomware operators to get paid). The underlying blockchain Tech itself though failed to replace transactions in a database. The main value for AI today seems to be gener…

+1. The other concern is that AI is potentially removing junior level jobs that are often a way for people to gain experience before stepping up into positions with more agency and autonomy. Which means in future we will be dealing with the next generation of "AI told me to do this", but "I have no experience to know whether this is good or not", so "let's do it".

Re: Between the Booms: AI in Winter – Communications of the ACM

#39

Post by ssl-3 »

tdeck wrote: post #26
svara wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t understand how a business model that makes money pops out on the other end. What issues do you see? I pay for ChatGPT and for cursor and to me that's money very well spent. I imagine tools like cursor will become common for other text intensive industries, like law, soon. Agreed that the hype can be over the top, but these are valuable productivity tools, so I have some trouble understanding where you're co…

What you're paying for ChatGPT is not likely covering their expenses, let alone making up their massive R&D investment. People paid for Sprig and Munchery too, but those companies went out of business. Obviously what they developed wasn't nearly as significant as what OpenAI has developed, but the question is: where will their pricing land once they need to turn a profit? It may well end up in a place where it's not…

I paid money to Amazon for most of a decade before they had a profitable year.

Re: Between the Booms: AI in Winter – Communications of the ACM

#40

Post by dismalaf »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #2

every other article these days on this site is about AI. And it's incredibly tedious and annoying. Isn't it enough that clueless marketers who get their Tech knowledge from businessinsider and bloomberg are constantly harping on about AI. Seems we as a community have resigned or given up in this battle against common sense. Maybe long ago. Still there should be some form of moderation penalizing these shill posts tha…

Well AI probably is the future. Might not necessarily be LLMs (I personally don't rate LLMs) but enough people are interested in it nowadays that it's almost certain AGI will happen in our lifetimes.
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