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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

#101

Post by skydhash »

Nition wrote: post #96
mjr00 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one longed for a level of AI where you have to double check everything. This has basically been why it's a non-starter in a lot of (most?) business applications. If your dishwasher failed to clean anything 20% of the time, would you rely on it? No, you'd just wash the dishes by hand, because you'd at least have a consistent result. That's been the result of AI experimentation I've seen: it works ~80% of the time…

One type of question that a 20%-failure-rate AI can still be very useful for is ones that are hard to answer but easy to verify. For example say you have a complex medical problem. It can be difficult to do a direct Internet search that covers the history and symptoms. If you ask AI though, it'll be able to give you some ideas for specific things to search. They might be wrong answers, but now you can easily search s…

> For example say you have a complex medical problem.

Or you go to a doctor instead of imagining answers.

Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#102

Post by roenxi »

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…

> Who, in databases, has claimed that "in the next 10, 15 years we can actually have a real crack at solving all disease"?

I doubt anyone claimed 10-15 years specifically, but it does actually seem like a pretty reasonable claim that without databases progress will be a snails pace and with databases it will be more of a horses trot. I imagine the human body requires a fair amount of data to be organised to analyse and simulate all the parts and I'd recommend storing all that in some sort of database.

This might count as unsatisfying semantics, but there is a huge leap going from physical ledgers and ad-hoc formats to organised and standardised data storage (ie, a database - even if it is just excel sheets that counts to me). Suddenly scientists can record and theorise on order(s) of magnitude more raw material and the results are interchangeable! That is a big deal and a necessary step to make the sort of progress we can make in modern times.

Regardless, it does seem fair to compare the AI boom to the renaissance or industrial revolution. We appear to be poking at the biggest thing to ever be poked in history.

Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#103

Post by dclowd9901 »

mjr00 wrote: post #54
latexr wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> No one longed for a level of AI where you have to double check everything. This has basically been why it's a non-starter in a lot of (most?) business applications. If your dishwasher failed to clean anything 20% of the time, would you rely on it? No, you'd just wash the dishes by hand, because you'd at least have a consistent result. That's been the result of AI experimentation I've seen: it works ~80% of the time…

It feels a bit like LLMs rely a lot on _us_ to be useful. Which is a big point to the author's article about how companies are trimming off staff for AI.

Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#105

Post by bestvibecoder »

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…

[flagged]

Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#106

Post by YetAnotherNick »

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…

They did not say database was hyped. Although I think computers(both enterprise and personal) were hyped and so was internet and smartphone, long before they began to deliver value. It takes a decade to say which hype lives up to expectation and which doesn't.

Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#107

Post by tsecurity »

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…

Agreed. “Hype is always bad” was where I had to stop.

It could lead to good things. Most startups have hype.

Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#108

Post by alganet »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #99
alganet wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inclu…

You're taking a sliver of truth as though it dismantles their entire argument. The point was, nobody was _claiming_ databases would cure all diseases. That's the argument around the hype of AI here.

Maybe it will cure all diseases, I don't know. Hard to put an honest "I don't know" in a box, isn't it?

I am actually having a blast seeing the hooks for many kinds of arguments and counter-arguments.

Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#109

Post by roywiggins »

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…

it doesn't really compare, but the "paperless office" was hyped for decades

Re: I passionately hate hype, especially the AI hype

#110

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #44

A winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Paul Krugman wrote in 1998, “The growth of the Internet will slow drastically, as the flaw in ‘Metcalfe’s law’—which states that the number of potential connections in a network is proportional to the square of the number of participants—becomes apparent: most people have nothing to say to each other! By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet’s impact on the econo…

> most people have nothing to say to each other!

Now to be fair. He wasn't wrong in all his claims.

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