Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

ChatGPT Is a Gimmick

hedgehogreview.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 166 posts

Re: ChatGPT Is a Gimmick

#11

Post by wilg »

frereubu wrote: post #8
eru wrote: post #2

Seems to be a very wordy article that complains that only a proper education teaches you to think? In any case, even contemporary LLM---as primitive as they will look like in even a few months time---are already pretty useful as assistants when eg writing software programmes. They ain't gimmicks. They are also useful as a more interactive addition to an encyclopedia. Amongst other uses. The article also conflates AI…

I think you missed the entire point of the article. They're not saying that AI cannot be useful in the way you describe. They're saying that too many people are using it as a shortcut to producing verbiage that mimics the outcomes of learning, missing out the valuable things that come from the process of learning.

Is there any evidence to suggest more people are cheating now that there is AI than before, or is everybody just flipping out because the cheaters have changed tactics?

Re: ChatGPT Is a Gimmick

#12

Post by admissionsguy »

danlitt wrote: post #6

It is refreshing to see I am not the only person who cannot get LLMs to say anything valuable. I have tried several times, but the cycle "You're right to question this. I actually didn't do anything you asked for. Here is some more garbage!" gets really old really fast. It makes me wonder whether everyone else is kidding themselves, or if I'm just holding it wrong.

> It makes me wonder whether everyone else is kidding themselves, or if I'm just holding it wrong.

Have been wondering this ever since 1 week after the initial ChatGPT release.

My cynical take is that most people don't do real work (i.e. one that is objectively evaluated against reality), so are not able to see the difference between a gimmick and the real thing. Most people are in the business of making impressions, and LLMs are pretty good at that.

It's good that we have markets that will eventually sort it out.

Re: ChatGPT Is a Gimmick

#13

Post by max_ »

notepad0x90 wrote: post #4

Is it that ChatGPT is a gimmick or is it that people are using it as such? A lot of the author's arguments could have been said about the internet in the 90's. This is a baby 4 year old leap in technology, why are people expecting it to be mature? It is human nature to try and find silver bullets, to take solutions and find problems. The way I would look at the LLM-centered future is to consider LLM agents assistants…

The millenial tech bros have mostly made thier money off gimmicks like Instagram, TikTok et al

I was very disgusted when I saw VC firms with billions in AUM put money into things like FartCoin, Digital Twins

The Boomer VCs financed stuff that is genuinely useful, MRI Scanners, Google, Apple Computers, Genetech (brought insulin to the masses).

The milenial VCs fund stuff that is at best convenient to have (Airbnb, Uber) but usually gimmicks, Instagram, Tiktok.

Sam Altman is the master of gimmicks.

He took the GPT model that already existed and wrapped it into chat format similar to Elizer[0]

Got Neural style that existed for a long time and paired it with Studio Ghibli fanatics. [1]

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA_effect

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_style_transfer

Re: ChatGPT Is a Gimmick

#14

Post by th0ma5 »

danlitt wrote: post #6

It is refreshing to see I am not the only person who cannot get LLMs to say anything valuable. I have tried several times, but the cycle "You're right to question this. I actually didn't do anything you asked for. Here is some more garbage!" gets really old really fast. It makes me wonder whether everyone else is kidding themselves, or if I'm just holding it wrong.

Some opinions out there that people are using them as slot machines, are using them in place of project templates and aren't really working on things of substance, or they are in the business of producing artifacts that look like work but the fitness is determined elsewhere. If they are producing working code beyond autocomplete style capabilities they either are disinterested in the long term supportability, ignoring all of the handholding they have to do to get things to work, or don't understand that experienced programmers ultimately get to a point where they are not writing that much code to begin with which isn't something these tools can help much with other than rubber duck style bouncing off of ideas... but even then on the bleeding edge of capabilities you get exponentially more and more bits from unrelated patterns that make the internal weights work the closer you get away from well worn development paths.

Re: ChatGPT Is a Gimmick

#15

Post by otabdeveloper4 »

danlitt wrote: post #6

It is refreshing to see I am not the only person who cannot get LLMs to say anything valuable. I have tried several times, but the cycle "You're right to question this. I actually didn't do anything you asked for. Here is some more garbage!" gets really old really fast. It makes me wonder whether everyone else is kidding themselves, or if I'm just holding it wrong.

It works better if you treat it like a compressed database of Google queries. (Which is kind of actually is.)

Ask it something where the Google SERP is full of trash and you might have a more sane result from the LLM.

Re: ChatGPT Is a Gimmick

#16

Post by isaacfrond »

> The claim of inevitability is crucial to technology hype cycles, from the railroad to television to AI.

Well. You know. We still have plenty of railroad, and television has had a pretty good run too. So if that are the models to compare AI to, then I have bad news for how 'hype cycle' AI is going to be.

Re: ChatGPT Is a Gimmick

#17

Post by bigstrat2003 »

notepad0x90 wrote: post #4

Is it that ChatGPT is a gimmick or is it that people are using it as such? A lot of the author's arguments could have been said about the internet in the 90's. This is a baby 4 year old leap in technology, why are people expecting it to be mature? It is human nature to try and find silver bullets, to take solutions and find problems. The way I would look at the LLM-centered future is to consider LLM agents assistants…

> This is a baby 4 year old leap in technology, why are people expecting it to be mature?

Because its fans act as though it is, and this article is a response to that overly-enthusiastic outlook on what the tool can do.

Re: ChatGPT Is a Gimmick

#18

Post by tsurba »

danlitt wrote: post #6

It is refreshing to see I am not the only person who cannot get LLMs to say anything valuable. I have tried several times, but the cycle "You're right to question this. I actually didn't do anything you asked for. Here is some more garbage!" gets really old really fast. It makes me wonder whether everyone else is kidding themselves, or if I'm just holding it wrong.

I do machine learning research and it is very useful for working out equations and checking for ”does this concept already have an established name” etc.

It is also excellent for writing one-off code experiments and plots, saving some time from having to write them from scratch.

I’m sorry but you are just using it wrong.

Re: ChatGPT Is a Gimmick

#19

Post by liamwire »

I read the entire essay. It comes across wholly uninspired. Some thoughts:

> But do the apologists even believe it themselves? Latham, the professor of strategy, gives away the game at the end of his reverie. “None of this can happen, though,” he writes, “if professors and administrators continue to have their heads in the sand.” So it’s not inevitable after all? Whoops.

This self-assured ‘gotcha’ attitude is pungent throughout the whole piece, but this may be as good an example as any. It’s ridden with cherry-picked choices and quotes from singular actors as if they’re representative of every educator, every decision maker, and it’s such a bad look from someone that clearly knows better. I don’t expect the author to take the most charitable position, but one of intellectual honesty would be nice. To pretend there isn’t, or perhaps ignore, those out there applying technological advancement, including current AI, in education in thoughtful, meaningful, and beneficial even if challenging to quantify ways, is obtuse. To decide there isn’t the possibility of those things being true, given their exclusion, is to do the same head-burying he ridicules others for.

…

> After I got her feedback, I finally asked ChatGPT if generative AI could be considered a gimmick in Ngai’s sense. I did not read its answer carefully. Whenever I see the words cascade down my computer screen, I get a sinking feeling. Do I really have to read this? I know I am unlikely to find anything truly interesting or surprising, and the ease with which the words appear really does cheapen them.

It may have well been the author’s point, but the disdain for the technology that drips from sentences like these, which are rife throughout, taints any appreciation for the argument they’re trying to make — and I’m really trying to take it in good faith. Knowing they come in with such strongly held preconceived notions makes me reflexively question their own introspection before putting pen to paper.

Ultimately, are you writing to convince me, or yourself, of your point?

Post reply on HN