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I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

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Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#81

Post by ninetyninenine »

latexr wrote: post #45
ninetyninenine wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one of the stupidest concepts on the face of the earth and tons of people ascribe to it unknowingly: hype = bad. AI is one of the most revolutionary things to ever happen in the last couple of years. But with enough hype tons of people now think it's complete garbage. I'm literally shocked how we can spend a couple decades fantasizing and writing stories about this level of AI, only to be bored of it in two year…

> I'm literally shocked how we can spend a couple decades fantasizing and writing stories about this level of AI It was never this level of AI. The stories we wrote and fantasised were about AI you could blindly rely on, trust, and reason about. No one ever fantasised about AI which couldn’t accurately count the number of letters in a common word or that would give you provably wrong information in an assertive autho…

>It was never this level of AI.

You're completely out of it. We couldn't even get AI to hold a freaking conversation. It was so bad we came up with this thing called the turing test and that was the benchmark.

Now people like you are all, like "well it's obvious the turing test was garbage".

No. It's not obvious. It's the hype got to your head. If we found a way to travel at light speed for 3 dollars the hype would be insane and in about a year we get people like you writing blog posts about how light speed travel is the dumbest thing ever. Oh man too much hype.

You think LLMs are stupid? Sometimes we all just need to look in the mirror and realize that humans have their own brand of stupidity.

Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#82

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

nl wrote: post #74
YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Would not the author have claimed at the time that those technologies were also "hype"? What consistent principle does the author use (a priori) to separate "useful facts" from "hype"? Are you saying someone hyped ... databases? In the same way as AI is hyped today? This is a tweet from Sam Altman, dated April 18 2025: https://x.com/sama/status/1913320105804730518 Whence I quote: i think this is gonna be more like…

Sure, databases didn't get as much hype but that's partly because they are old. Look at something more recent: "cloud", "social networking", "blockchain", "mobile". Plenty of hype! Some delivered, some didn't.

Which of those things claimed it would be "like the renaissance" or that we'd cure all diseases?

In the clip I link above Hassabis says he hopes that in 10-15 years' time we'll be looking back on the way we do medicine today like the way they did it in the middle ages. In 10-15 years time. Modern medicine - you know, antibiotics, vaccines, transplants, radiotherapy, anti-retrovirals, the whole shebang, like medieval times.

Are you saying - what are you saying? Who has said things like that ever before in the tech industry? Azure? Facebook? Ethereum? Who?

Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#83

Post by spoaceman7777 »

chubot wrote: post #15
wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #7

Sure there's plenty of hype. But its justified to some extent at least. LLMs are one of the biggest advances in technology in human history. In computing the big ones are: * creation of computers * personal computers * the Internet and world wide web * LLMs So the hype is at some level entirely warranted - its a revolutionary technology with real impact. As opposed to for example the hype around crypto or NFTs or blo…

If the personal computer counts, do mobile phones count? I would certainly think so, except all those high quality sensors have been hindered by app stores and subpar apps, imo :-( I would like to hear some uplifting stories about creative things people do with their phones, rather than consume media

the majority of global internet users access the internet via a phone.

Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#84

Post by lgrapenthin »

dlivingston wrote: post #22

This strikes me as curmudgeonly and unnecessarily contrarian. While it's true that investors, entrepreneurs, corporations, etc. have a vested interest in AI to the tune of trillions of dollars, the impulse to dismiss this as 90% hype (as the author does) is insane. We're only three years into this, and we have: - LLMs with grad student-level competency in everything - Multimodality with complex understanding of photo…

Sorry, these claims are just not true. AI generations in these categories are impressive on release, but blatantly generic, recognizable, predictable and boring after I have seen about 100 or so. Also, if you want to put them to use to replace "real work" outside of the ordinary/pretrained, you hit limitations quickly.

The scaling laws of the Internet were clear from the start.

Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#85

Post by alganet »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #67
sqs wrote: post #17

What a shallow, negative post. "Hype" is tautologically bad. Being negative and "above the hype" makes you sound smart, but this post adds nothing to the discussion and is just as fuzzy as the hype it criticizes. > It is a real shame that some of the most beneficial tools ever invented, such as computers, modern databases, data centers, etc. exist in an industry that has become so obsessed with hype and trends that i…

>> Would not the author have claimed at the time that those technologies were also "hype"? What consistent principle does the author use (a priori) to separate "useful facts" from "hype"? Are you saying someone hyped ... databases? In the same way as AI is hyped today? This is a tweet from Sam Altman, dated April 18 2025: https://x.com/sama/status/1913320105804730518 Whence I quote: i think this is gonna be more like…

The use of semantic web and linked data (a type of distributed database and ontology map) for protein folding (therefore, medical research too) was predicted by many and even used by some.

Databases were of key interest. Namely, the problem of relating different schemas.

So, yes. _It was claimed_ that database tech could help. And it probably did so already. To what extent I really don't know. Those consortiums included many big players.

It never hyped, of course. It did not stood the test of time either (as far as I know).

Claims, as you can see, don't always fully develop into reality.

LLMs now need to stand a similar test of time. Will they become niche and forgotten like semweb? We will know. Have patience.

Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#87

Post by ClumsyPilot »

romanhn wrote: post #12
egypturnash wrote: post #2

> In technology, AI is currently the new big hype. Before AI, it was "The Cloud", which unfortunately has still not settled, but are now also being interwoven with AI. I envy being able to write a statement like this without mentioning The Blockchain.

The Cloud has joined The Information Superhighway as boring, foundational technology. Blockchain started out as hype and is still hype. AI/LLMs already provide infinitely more value than blockchain (which, to be fair, remains close to zero).

Blockchain provides more utility to people living in sanctioned countries, countries with unstable currencies and to criminals than AI ever could.

Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#89

Post by ninetyninenine »

calmbell wrote: post #59
ninetyninenine wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's one of the stupidest concepts on the face of the earth and tons of people ascribe to it unknowingly: hype = bad. AI is one of the most revolutionary things to ever happen in the last couple of years. But with enough hype tons of people now think it's complete garbage. I'm literally shocked how we can spend a couple decades fantasizing and writing stories about this level of AI, only to be bored of it in two year…

Please find me someone with any background in technology who thinks AI is complete garbage (zero value or close to it). The author doesn't think so, they assert that "perhaps 10% of the AI hype is based upon useful facts" and "AI functions greatly as a "search engine" replacement". There is a big difference between thinking something is garbage and thinking something is a massive bubble (in the case of AI, this could…

Nobody is talking about a financial bubble. That's orthoganol.

Something can be worth zero and still be fucking amazing.

The blog post is talking about the hype in general and about AI in general. It is not just referring to the financial opportunity.

You can use chatGPT for free. Does that mean it's total shit because openAI allowed you to use it for free? No. It's still freaking revolutionary.

Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#90

Post by eschaton »

ninetyninenine wrote: post #27
sqs wrote: post #17

What a shallow, negative post. "Hype" is tautologically bad. Being negative and "above the hype" makes you sound smart, but this post adds nothing to the discussion and is just as fuzzy as the hype it criticizes. > It is a real shame that some of the most beneficial tools ever invented, such as computers, modern databases, data centers, etc. exist in an industry that has become so obsessed with hype and trends that i…

It's one of the stupidest concepts on the face of the earth and tons of people ascribe to it unknowingly: hype = bad. AI is one of the most revolutionary things to ever happen in the last couple of years. But with enough hype tons of people now think it's complete garbage. I'm literally shocked how we can spend a couple decades fantasizing and writing stories about this level of AI, only to be bored of it in two year…

Sounds like you bought the hype about LLMs without any understanding anything about LLMs and are now upset that the hype train is crashing because it was based on promises that not only wouldn’t but couldn’t be kept.
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