The use case for AI is spam
Satya Nadella: "We need to find something useful for AI"
21–30 of 228 posts
Re: Satya Nadella: "We need to find something useful for AI"
#22“Buy our stuff, or we’re seen as wasting energy and helping to destroy the world”?
That’s courageous from a CEO of an US company, where the current government doesn’t see burning more oil as being bad for the planet, and is willing to punish everyone who thinks otherwise.
Re: Satya Nadella: "We need to find something useful for AI"
#23LLMs and their capabilities are very impressive and definitely useful. The productivity gains often seem to be smaller than intuitively expected though. For example, using ChatGPT to get a response to a random question like "How do I do XYZ" is much more convenient than googling it, but the time savings are often not that relevant for your overall productivity. Before LLMs you were usually already able to find the in…
This is partly because Google is past the enshittification hump and ChatGPT is just starting to climb up it - they just announced ads.
Re: Satya Nadella: "We need to find something useful for AI"
#24The use case for AI is spam
Don't forget porn.
Though it's a use case people like Satya will want to avoid for reasons.
Re: Satya Nadella: "We need to find something useful for AI"
#25Re: Satya Nadella: "We need to find something useful for AI"
#26> We will quickly lose even the social permission to take something like energy [...] A way to drum up sense of urgency without mentioning that it's the patience of the investors (and _not_ the public) that will be the limiting factor here?
Similar to my thoughts. If we are still scrambling to find stuff the average Joe finds useful, the 100s of Billions poured into this gold rush are wasted (IMHO).
People said the same thing 30 years ago about the internet.
I’m spending $400/mo on AI subscriptions at this point. Probably the best money I spend.
Re: Satya Nadella: "We need to find something useful for AI"
#27I get it. A stunning indictment of our times… but there is something useful AI could be doing that MS has dropped the ball on: personal finance management. I should be able to have copilot grab all my transactions, build me budgets, show me what if scenarios, raise concerns, and help me meet my goals. It should be able to work in Excel where I can see and steer it. The math should be validated with several checks and the output needs to be trustworthy. Ship a free personal finance agent harness and you have your killer app.
I think there are business reasons why they wouldn’t do that, and that makes me sad.
Re: Satya Nadella: "We need to find something useful for AI"
#28LLMs and their capabilities are very impressive and definitely useful. The productivity gains often seem to be smaller than intuitively expected though. For example, using ChatGPT to get a response to a random question like "How do I do XYZ" is much more convenient than googling it, but the time savings are often not that relevant for your overall productivity. Before LLMs you were usually already able to find the in…
You're overestimating the mean person's ability to search the web effectively.
Re: Satya Nadella: "We need to find something useful for AI"
#29For 96% of the population, AI will not boost production. Generally speaking people are too stupid to use AI properly at least for awhile.
I really hate condascending and arrogant stuff like "Generally speaking people are too stupid to use AI properly at least for awhile". There are plenty of tech illiterate people that are far from being "stupid" and they might not care about or like AI. They just need to send emails to family, share photos and videos and have a video call from time to time. For them, AI is worthless. But they aren't stupid. You sound…
I am not being condescending. I am part of that 96%. I am admitting I am too stupid to use AI as it is set up right now.
Re: Satya Nadella: "We need to find something useful for AI"
#30Energy doesn’t take “social permission,” but it costs money. Translation for this is: we need to make AI make money or the bubble will collapse.
I’ve been predicting for a while: free or cheap AI will enshittify and become an addictive ad medium with nerfed capabilities. If you want actually good AI you will have to pay for it, either a much heftier fee or buying or renting compute to run your own. In other words you’ll be paying what it actually costs, so this is really just the disappearance of the bubble subsidy.