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

Please don't say mean things about the AI I just invested a billion dollars in

mcsweeneys.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 331 posts

Re: Please don't say mean things about the AI I just invested a billion dollars in

#51

Post by JumpCrisscross »

criley2 wrote: post #50
ryan_lane wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scammers are using AI to copy the voice of children and grandchildren, and make calls urgently asking to send money. It's also being used to scam businesses out of money in similar ways (copying the voice of the CEO or CFO, urgently asking for money to be sent). Sure, the AI isn't directly doing the scamming, but it's supercharging the ability to do so. You're making a "guns don't kill people, people do" argument her…

Sure, phones aren't directly doing the scamming, but they're supercharging the ability to do so. Phones are also a very popular mechanism for scamming businesses. It's tough to pull off CEO scams without text and calls. Therefore, phones are bad? This is of course before we talk about what criminals do with money, making money truly evil.

> Therefore, phones are bad?

Phones are utilities. AI companies are not.

Re: Please don't say mean things about the AI I just invested a billion dollars in

#52

Post by JumpCrisscross »

gosub100 wrote: post #36
seizethecheese wrote: post #5

> There’s an extremely hurtful narrative going around that my product, a revolutionary new technology that exists to scam the elderly and make you distrust anything you see online, is harmful to society The article is certainly interesting as yet another indicator of the backlash against AI, but I must say, “exists to scam the elderly” is totally absurd. I get that this is satire, but satire has to have some basis in…

It doesn't exist for that express purpose, but the voice and video impersonation is definitely being used to scam elderly people. Instead of being used to protect us or make our lives easier, it is being used by evildoers to scam the weak and vulnerable. None of the AI believers will do anything about it because it kills their vibe.

> the voice and video impersonation is definitely being used to scam elderly people

And like with the child pornography, the AI companies are engaging in high-octane buck passing more than actually trying to tamp down the problem.

Re: Please don't say mean things about the AI I just invested a billion dollars in

#53

Post by echelon »

solid_fuel wrote: post #37
seizethecheese wrote: post #5

> There’s an extremely hurtful narrative going around that my product, a revolutionary new technology that exists to scam the elderly and make you distrust anything you see online, is harmful to society The article is certainly interesting as yet another indicator of the backlash against AI, but I must say, “exists to scam the elderly” is totally absurd. I get that this is satire, but satire has to have some basis in…

LLMs are fiction machines. All they can do is hallucinate, and sometimes the hallucinations are useful. That alone rules them out, categorically, from any critical control loop. After you eliminate anything that requires accountability and trustworthiness from the tasks which LLMs may be responsibly used for, the most obvious remaining use-cases are those built around lying: - advertising - astroturfing - other forms…

[flagged]

Re: Please don't say mean things about the AI I just invested a billion dollars in

#54

Post by only-one1701 »

seizethecheese wrote: post #44
ryan_lane wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scammers are using AI to copy the voice of children and grandchildren, and make calls urgently asking to send money. It's also being used to scam businesses out of money in similar ways (copying the voice of the CEO or CFO, urgently asking for money to be sent). Sure, the AI isn't directly doing the scamming, but it's supercharging the ability to do so. You're making a "guns don't kill people, people do" argument her…

Not at all. I’m saying AI doesn’t exist to scam elderly , which is saying nothing about whether it’s dangerous in that respect.

Perhaps you’ve heard that the purpose of a system is what it does?

Re: Please don't say mean things about the AI I just invested a billion dollars in

#55

Post by only-one1701 »

criley2 wrote: post #50
ryan_lane wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scammers are using AI to copy the voice of children and grandchildren, and make calls urgently asking to send money. It's also being used to scam businesses out of money in similar ways (copying the voice of the CEO or CFO, urgently asking for money to be sent). Sure, the AI isn't directly doing the scamming, but it's supercharging the ability to do so. You're making a "guns don't kill people, people do" argument her…

Sure, phones aren't directly doing the scamming, but they're supercharging the ability to do so. Phones are also a very popular mechanism for scamming businesses. It's tough to pull off CEO scams without text and calls. Therefore, phones are bad? This is of course before we talk about what criminals do with money, making money truly evil.

Without phones, we couldn’t talk to people across great distances (oversimplification but you get it).

Without Generative AI, we couldn’t…?

Re: Please don't say mean things about the AI I just invested a billion dollars in

#56

Post by fao_ »

ajross wrote: post #43
solid_fuel wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are fiction machines. All they can do is hallucinate, and sometimes the hallucinations are useful. That alone rules them out, categorically, from any critical control loop. After you eliminate anything that requires accountability and trustworthiness from the tasks which LLMs may be responsibly used for, the most obvious remaining use-cases are those built around lying: - advertising - astroturfing - other forms…

> [...] are fiction machines. All they can do is hallucinate, and sometimes the hallucinations are useful. That alone rules them out, categorically, from any critical control loop. True, but no more true than it is if you replace the antecedent with "people". Saying that the tools make mistakes is correct. Saying that (like people) they can never be trained and deployed such that the mistakes are tolerable is an awfu…

> Saying that (like people) they can never be trained and deployed such that the mistakes are tolerable is an awfully tall order.

It is, though. We have numerous studies on why hallucinations are central to the architecture, and numerous case studies by companies who have tried putting them in control loops! We have about 4 years of examples of bad things happening because the trigger was given to an LLM.

Re: Please don't say mean things about the AI I just invested a billion dollars in

#57

Post by shepherdjerred »

only-one1701 wrote: post #55
criley2 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, phones aren't directly doing the scamming, but they're supercharging the ability to do so. Phones are also a very popular mechanism for scamming businesses. It's tough to pull off CEO scams without text and calls. Therefore, phones are bad? This is of course before we talk about what criminals do with money, making money truly evil.

Without phones, we couldn’t talk to people across great distances (oversimplification but you get it). Without Generative AI, we couldn’t…?

Are you really implying that generative AI doesn't enable things that were not previously possible?

Re: Please don't say mean things about the AI I just invested a billion dollars in

#58

Post by burnto »

seizethecheese wrote: post #44
ryan_lane wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scammers are using AI to copy the voice of children and grandchildren, and make calls urgently asking to send money. It's also being used to scam businesses out of money in similar ways (copying the voice of the CEO or CFO, urgently asking for money to be sent). Sure, the AI isn't directly doing the scamming, but it's supercharging the ability to do so. You're making a "guns don't kill people, people do" argument her…

Not at all. I’m saying AI doesn’t exist to scam elderly , which is saying nothing about whether it’s dangerous in that respect.

Fair, but it’s an exaggerated statement that’s supposed to clue us into the tone of the piece with a chuckle. Maybe even a snicker or giggle! It’s not worth dissecting for accuracy.

Re: Please don't say mean things about the AI I just invested a billion dollars in

#59

Post by Barrin92 »

seizethecheese wrote: post #33
thegrim000 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the guy that has in his bio "YC and VC backed founder" and has made multiple posts in the last couple months dismissing different negative thoughts about AI? Yeah that guy probably doesn't have significant funds tied up in the success of AI.

I don’t, actually, unless you call index funds “tied up”. To be honest, it’s really distasteful to make a high level comment about this article then have people rush to attack me personally. This is the mentality of a mob.

in this case a more appropriate term for the mob is "the people" because one defining dynamic of the rollout of this technology is that a minority of people seem to be extremely invested to shove it into the faces of a majority of people who don't want it, and then claim that they are visionaries and everyone else is 'the mob'.

Just like with Mark Zuckerberg's "Metaverse" we're now in a post-market vanity economy where not consumer demand but increasingly desperate founders, investors and gurus are trying to justify their valuations by doling out products for free and shoving their AI services into everything to justify the tens of billions they dumped into it

I'm sorry that some people's pension funds, startup funding and increasingly the entire American economy rests on this collective delusion but it's not really most people's problem

Re: Please don't say mean things about the AI I just invested a billion dollars in

#60

Post by rednafi »

"Oh, it's another tool in your repertoire like Bash" doesn't garner billions of dollars in investment. So they have to address it as the next electricity or the internet, when in its current form, it's much closer to a crypto grift than it is to electricity.
Post reply on HN