We seem to have a weird drive towards testing one sci-fi dystopia after another as a potential way to go. This is Max Headroom.
The AI reporter that took my old job just got fired
231–240 of 402 posts
Re: The AI reporter that took my old job just got fired
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
As someone who's struggled to really get into podcasts, I'm convinced that most people who enjoy podcasts don't really actively listen to them, they just like that extra bit of noise in the background while they do something else, with the added bonus that they might just listen at just the right time to pick up some interesting factoid. Don't get me wrong, I like podcasts, Fall of Civilizations being a personal favo…
I don't get them either since the hosts are typically "regular people" talking about often complicated subjects that they are by no means domain experts in. I find the format of "Dumdum Host A read some articles about something last night and Dumdum Host B asks questions about it" especially grating, unless it's purely opinion-driven and then I still probably won't care unless I read about the hosts and find out they…
Oh yeah, i definitely hate it when uninformed people try to make podcasts on specialized topics they obviously know nothing about. I went searching for niche physics podcasts (anything besides space stuff please!) And the amount of literal high schoolers and undergraduates attempting to explain things they're years away from even seeing in class is painful, most admit that they know nothing and are literally free-associating over a Wikipedia article. I give them a pass though since they have no listeners and are usually young but...
I exclusively listen to domain expert podcasts. History experts, policy/economics experts, aforementioned physics experts. Literally event i listen to is hosted by at least one person who is a domain expert. They can branch out and interview experts in other domains but there's always an expert. I honestly can't say (besides the high schoolers which i searched out) the last time i've even test listened to a podcast hosted by semi-charismatic article readers.
I'd recommend you search reddit for lists of podcasts in your desired area. App recommendations are all shit and there's many posts out there
Re: The AI reporter that took my old job just got fired
#233Slightly tangential, but this is the reason I'm baffled why people think that AI-driven podcasts would ever be worth listening to. If you can find an LLM+TTS generated podcast with even a FRACTION of the infectious energy as something like Good Job Brain, Radio Lab, or Ask Me Another, then I'll eat my hat. I don't even own one. I'll drive to the nearest hat store, purchase the tallest stovetop hat that I can afford a…
Agreed. I finally got around to listening to a NotebookLM generated podcast this weekend, and found it absolutely unlistenable. For some reason the LLM seemed to latch on to the idea that one host should say something, and the other host should just repeat a key phrase in the sentence for emphasis -- and say nothing else, and they'd do it like multiple times in a sentence, over and over again throughout the entire th…
I find it as listenable as the podcasts the people I'm around play in their cars during roadtrips
To me that's absolutely unlistenable, but to them its interesting and engaging. I find NotebookLM replicates that perfectly. Its not at all the issue that the OP encountered with the Hawaii news service, as those lacked tone and pronounciation, which NotebookLM would not.
Regarding the outcome being a long winded summary, yeah thats what I see about the aforementioned 2 hour podcasts as well. They take the intro paragraph of a wikipedia article, pretend that the topic is a novel mystery they just discovered through hours of scouring microfilm at a municipal library, and then interject each other every other word with nonsense, before getting back to the point for just one sentence.
Re: The AI reporter that took my old job just got fired
#234Give it time y'all. This is the first inning, and I'm already terrified. I encourage you to have a conversation with ChatGPT's advanced audio for a taste of what's to come. If you can, have someone talk to it in a relatively unpopular language like Afrikaans or even Icelandic--they will shit their pants.
Is there an open source GPT? I have LM studio and Qwen 2.5 which is basically as good as leading models in Nov 2024, but haven't found the software to run audio or video generation.
Re: The AI reporter that took my old job just got fired
#235Earlier quoted context omitted.
I totally agree, but I also think it's just not geared towards us because of our age and preexisting beliefs of "what podcasts/news/videos are supposed to be". Think of kids around age It's the same as short-video format for me. Sure, I can watch some TikToks from time to time, but making them, or continuously getting my news from them? Yeah, that's not gonna fly for me. However, for my niblings (age 8-17) that's bas…
Fortnite and roblox are f2p though.
Honestly sometimes i doubt there's a more damagingly, intentionally overloaded term in modern lexicon than "free to play". Many, many things claim that title while placing if not game play, then socially necessary events, items, costumes, locations, quests, game modes, etc behind a paywall. We need a different term to describe the incredibly predatory behavior and psychology behind most of the current space of "free to play" games. (I'm not saying your favorite game is a lie, just that many games claiming this title effectively are)
Re: The AI reporter that took my old job just got fired
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
Two things can both be true. I keep arguing both sides because: 1 Unless you’re aware of near term limits you think AI is going to the stars next year. 2 Architectures change. The only thing that doesn’t change is that we generally push on, temporarily limits are usually overcome and there’s a lot riding on this. It’s not a smart move to bet against progress over the medium term. This is also where the real benefits…
point 2 is the thing that i think is most important to point out: "architectures change" sure, that's a fact. let me apply this to other fields: "there could be a battery breakthrough that gives electric cars a 2,000 mile range." "researchers could discover a new way to build nanorobots that attacks cancer directly and effectively cures all versions of it." "we could invent a new sort of aviation engine that is 1,000…
> but most of the current generation of AI hype are a limited number of algorithms and approaches, mixed and matched in different ways, with other features bolted on to try and corral them into behaving as we hope. it is much more realistic to expect that we are in the period of diminishing returns as far as investing in these approaches than it is to believe we'll continue to see earth-shattering growth.
100% agree, but I think those who disagree with that are failing on point 1. I absolutely think we'll need something different, but I'm also sure that there's a solid chance we get there, with a lot of bracketing around "eventually".
When something has been done once before, we have a directional map and we can often copy fairly quickly. See OpenAI to Claude.
We know animals are smarter than LLM’s in the important, learning day-to-day ways, so we have a directional compass. We know the fundamentals are relatively simple, because randomness found them before we did. We know it’s possible, just figuring out if it’s possible with anything like the hardware we have now.
We don’t know if a battery like that is possible - there are no comparisons to make, no steer that says “it’s there, keep looking”.
This is also the time in history with the most compute capacity coming online and the most people trying to solve it. Superpowers, superscalers, all universities, many people over areas as diverse as neuro, psych who wouldn’t have looked at the domain 5 years ago are now very motivated to be relevant, to study or build in related areas. We’ve tasted success. So my opinion is based on us having made progress, the emerging understanding of what it means for individuals and countries in terms of competitive landscape, and the desire to be a part of shaping that future rather than having it happen to us. ~Everyone is very motivated.
Betting against that just seems like a risky choice. Honestly, what would you bet, over what timeframe? How strongly would you say you’re certain of your position? I’m not challenging you, I just think it’s a good frame for grounding opinions. In the end, we really are making those bets.
My bands are pretty wide. I can make a case for 5 years to AGI, or 100 years. Top of my head without thinking, I’d put a small amount on 5 years, all my money on within 100, 50% or more within 20/30.
Re: The AI reporter that took my old job just got fired
#237the CocaCola commercial that everyone "hated" that "destroyed the brand equity" according to numerous news outlets solidified to me that we are passing a mark and this is the last desperate gasp of multiple industries coping with the rapid advancements AI is bringing. Sure the Coke ad was a bit cringe. But the reality is in 5 years most ads you see will be AI and nobody will care. That along with the Ben Affleck Rant…
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When you put in significantly less effort into the conversation and refuse to acknowledge the points being made by others in the conversation, it appears to be trolling, whether it is meant to be or not. Repeating your prompt in three successive comments without modification isn't productive.
The other commenter's point isn't about them individually - it is about industry trends and what will make money.
People hate ads, but Youtube just keeps pushing more and more and people watch Youtube. People dislike being tracked (so they say) but they keep Tiktok and Instagram on their phones. People claim to care about worker wages but don't blink at buying cheap Chinese merch or watching their favorite cartoons with outsourced, overworked, non-union foreign animators.
Your point isn't countering theirs. They didn't say "No one will ever want human entertainment in 10 years". They suggest that companies will push it to lower costs, and many will go along with it because there will be fewer options.
Re: The AI reporter that took my old job just got fired
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
The younger generation loves short-form, to-the-point stuff. Which is the exact opposite of what the current crop of GenAI makes. In a tiktok video, every sentence, every word counts because there's a time limit. If people don't engage with your content in the first 3 seconds, it's worthless. The video linked in another post starts off with 15 seconds of complete fluff. You'd have better engagement if you have a guy…
What's funny is every GenAI "incredible email/essay" would be better communicated with the prompt used to generate it.
There's something painfully ironic and disturbing that the pseudo-Kolmogorov complexity of clickbait content, as judged "identical in quality" by an average human viewer, is arguably less than the length of the clickbait headline itself, and perhaps even less than the embedding vector of said headline!
Re: The AI reporter that took my old job just got fired
#239Slightly tangential, but this is the reason I'm baffled why people think that AI-driven podcasts would ever be worth listening to. If you can find an LLM+TTS generated podcast with even a FRACTION of the infectious energy as something like Good Job Brain, Radio Lab, or Ask Me Another, then I'll eat my hat. I don't even own one. I'll drive to the nearest hat store, purchase the tallest stovetop hat that I can afford a…
I don't really think that its for the same use case. I recently wanted to learn more about Jane of Arc after listening to a Rest is History episode about the hundred years war.
I took the wikipedia article and had NotebookLM generate a podcast from it so I can listen to it on a commute.
The other thing I could've done is search for an existing podcast on Joan of Arc, but I challenge anyone here to search existing podcasts and listen to the first, best reviewed one -- I think you'd find more often than not that the average podcast host is _significantly_ more dry than what the generated hosts present. The podcasts that are incredible are few and far between, and I have no influence over the topics they discuss.
Tldr: I'd prefer my top podcasts more than NotebookLM, but prefer NotebookLM to the average podcast host.
Re: The AI reporter that took my old job just got fired
#240Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you know it is decades away? A few years ago did you think LLMs would be where they are today? Is it possible you’re wrong?
Of course it’s possible I’m wrong. But if we make any sort of projection based on current developments, it would certainly seem that live-streaming AI indistinguishable from a human being is vastly beyond the capabilities of anything out today, and given current expenses and development times, seems to be at least a few decades in the future. To me that is an optimistic assumption, especially assuming that live prese…
You imply that the technological development will stop, but that's not what happened to flying cars - they do and could exist. Since the 1930s the technology didn't stop developing - aircraft went jet powered, supersonic, to the edge of space, huge, light, heavy, more efficient, more affordable, safer; cars went faster, more reliable, safer, more efficient, bigger, smaller, more capable, self driving; fuel got more pure, engines got more power per kilogram, computer aided design and modelling of airflow and stress patterns was developed, stronger lighter materials were developed; flying cars have been built:
Klein Vision AirCar, 2022: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hbFl3nhAD0
Predecesor, the AeroMobil from 2014, from prototypes starting 1990: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AeroMobil_s.r.o._AeroMobil
The Terrafugia Transition 'roadable aircraft' from 2009: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrafugia_Transition
Moller SkyCar, of course, which never got to free flight, but was built and could fly.
The problems are regulatory, cost, safety, massive amounts of human skill needed, the infrastructure needed, the lack of demand, etc. A Cessna 182 weighs 1400 Kg and has no wings, no tail. But if we collectively wanted VTOL flying cars enough to put a SpaceX level of talent and money at them, and were willing to pay more, work harder, for less comfort and more maintenance, we could have them. Bit like Hyperloop; a low-pressure tunnel with carriages rushing through it is not impossible, but it's got more failure modes, more cost, more design difficulties and almost no benefits over high speed train and maglev.