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AI is a horse (2024)

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Re: AI is a horse (2024)

#32

Post by TacticalCoder »

BoredomIsFun wrote: post #26
oliwary wrote: post #8

"Computers aren't the thing. They're the thing that gets you to the thing." My favorite quote from the excellent show halt and catch fire. Maybe applicable to AI too?

> excellent show "halt and catch fire". I found it very caricature, too saturated with romance - which is untypical for tech environment, much like "big bang theory".

It's still very good I'd say. It shows the relation between big oil and tech: it began in Texas (with companies like Texas Instruments) then shifted to SV (btw first 3D demo I saw on a SGI, running in real time, was a 3D model of... An oil rig). As it spans many years, it shows the Commodore 64, the BBSes, time-sharing, the PC clone wars, the discovery of the Internet, the nascent VC industry etc.

Everything is period correct and then the clothes and cars too: it's all very well done.

Is there a bit too much romance? Maybe. But it's still worth a watch.

Re: AI is a horse (2024)

#33

Post by taneq »

I've always said that driving a car with modern driver assist features (lane centering / adaptive cruise / 'autopilot' style self-ish driving-ish) is like riding a horse. The early ones were like riding a short sighted, narcoleptic horse. Newer ones are improving but it's still like riding a horse, in that you give it high level instructions about where to go, rather than directly energising its muscles.

Re: AI is a horse (2024)

#36

Post by latexr »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #28
latexr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like that used to be Apple’s driving force under Steve Jobs (definitely no longer under Tim Cook). https://youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o&t=1m54s > You’ve go to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try to sell it.

> You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try to sell it. The Internet begs to differ. AI is more akin to the Internet than to any Mac product. We're now in the stage of having a bunch of solutions looking for problems to solve. And this stage of AI is also very very close to the consumer. What took dedicated teams of specialised ML engineers to trial ~5-10 years ago, can be ac…

I think you’re missing the point. Of course you can make such a product. As Steve says right after, he himself made that mistake a lot. The point is that to make something great (at several levels of great, not just “makes money”) you have to start with the need and build a solution, not have a solution and shoehorn it to a need.

The internet is an entirely different beast and does not at all support your point. What we have on the web is hacks on top of hacks. It was not built to do all the things we push it to do, and if you understand where to look, it shows.

Re: AI is a horse (2024)

#40

Post by Sharlin »

Xunjin wrote: post #23
direwolf20 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Horses poop a lot. A lot.

I had to search about and it's indeed a lot: "it is quite normal for a horse to poo (defecate) 8-12 times a day and produce anywhere from 13 to 23 kilograms of poo a day." Source: https://www.ranvet.com.au/horse-poo/

That's what you get when your primary source of nutrition is very calorie-poor and largely indigestible.
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