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

AI is a technology not a product

daringfireball.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 224 posts

Re: AI is a technology not a product

#201

Post by lxgr »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #174
signatoremo wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you ever take Uber in a unfamiliar place? When you're supposed to be at a particular spot but you don't know where that is? When the driver doesn't speak English very well? When both your hands is busy with luggages? When you need glasses to read signs? That's very common when you travel. Agent would be godsend, and once you're used to it, you don't want to go back to the phone. Anywhere. What if the agent can al…

> Did you ever take Uber in a unfamiliar place? When you're supposed to be at a particular spot but you don't know where that is? When the driver doesn't speak English very well? When both your hands is busy with luggages? When you need glasses to read signs? This feels a lot like all those "where did the soda go" commercials (i.e. https://www.reddit.com/r/wheredidthesodago/ ), where some mundane task is imagined to…

> no, I never found it difficult or had a problem with it.

If you don't even notice the dark patterns, they're working exactly as intended.

Re: AI is a technology not a product

#202

Post by lxgr »

oulipo2 wrote: post #191
lxgr wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear bombs yes, but what about nuclear physics?

If you don't understand that in a capitalistic society like ours, the tech and the power dynamics of the society in which they interact are indissociable, you don't understand how our world works

No, I just don't think that "technology x sometime/often/exclusively gets used/co-opted/... for evil" and "technology x is evil" are equivalent, and I think that the distinction matters.

Re: AI is a technology not a product

#203

Post by lxgr »

yladiz wrote: post #158
signatoremo wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you ever take Uber in a unfamiliar place? When you're supposed to be at a particular spot but you don't know where that is? When the driver doesn't speak English very well? When both your hands is busy with luggages? When you need glasses to read signs? That's very common when you travel. Agent would be godsend, and once you're used to it, you don't want to go back to the phone. Anywhere. What if the agent can al…

Yes I have traveled to places where I don’t speak the language, need to get an Uber at a specific place, and need to read the signs. You can get surprisingly far if you know a few words in the local language, and in your hypothetical future, even if you and the driver have an agent, what are you going to do if you need to communicate with someone in person that’s not that driver? Ask your agent to? I don’t see how th…

Why not? People are already holding their phone running Google Translate up to strangers to communicate with them.

Re: AI is a technology not a product

#204

Post by otterley »

nh2 wrote: post #163
kj4211cash wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have a bunch of Amazon transplants who newly arrived at my company and have started doing this. I thought I would love it, because I'm a good writer, a great reader, not great at PowerPoint or meeting gamesmanship, etc. Turns out I kind of hate it. The silent reading time is annoying, especially when you've already read the doc or when most people are on zoom, etc. The intellectual bloodbath doesn't happen at my c…

Asking the grandparent: The what is the idea behind the "ideally have already read the paper, but given 10-20 minutes in silence" part? The fact that people that have already read it have nothing to do and waste time sitting around bored sounds like an obvious flaw, are we missing something?

I take issue with the “ideally have already read the paper” part. That’s actually not true for most of the attendees. There will be some who have, though, and those will be your co-authors or others who have helped you prepare it before the meeting. And they don’t mind waiting in silence during the reading period, because they have a stake in the outcome.

Also, 20 minutes of respite isn’t necessarily “waste.” Having 20 minutes of time to think deeply on something is often a gift!

Re: AI is a technology not a product

#205

Post by otterley »

baxtr wrote: post #167
justonceokay wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standard procedure at the time for a meeting was: - no PowerPoint - 1-6 page write up of the problem, proposed solution and timeline, and alternate methods that were not chosen - meeting participants ideally have already read the paper, but given 10-20 minutes in silence to read and mark up their thoughts. - presenter says their piece, mostly just summarizing the paper and clarifying tricky sections - intellectual bl…

I wonder if the 1-6 pages are all AI written nowadays and if people are allowed to use AI to summarize the pages. Anyone know?

You can use AI to help, but a badly-written narrative isn’t going to do the author any favors. You want to maximize the probability that your narrative will be accepted.

Summarizing with AI isn’t usually a problem, but the objective of the narrative is to gain a deep and detailed understanding of the proposal or problem described within it. The reader or decision maker often can’t do their job well unless they read the whole thing. These narratives are often thoroughly marked up with commentary during the review, sometimes every paragraph.

Re: AI is a technology not a product

#206

Post by Rover222 »

coffeefirst wrote: post #11

Agreed. The ideal implementation of AI for Apple is probably to finally make Siri work. This isn’t necessary fancy, just let me set some calendar events without knowing the magic words or tell it to open Overcast and play the new Gastropod episode. Better yet, for power users, let me set up reusable shortcuts using natural language. The most important part of this is it doesn’t necessarily feel like AI. The user does…

I JUST got a notification from Google Home that Gemini is now available for Hey Google stuff. Finally.

Re: AI is a technology not a product

#207

Post by wolvoleo »

coffeefirst wrote: post #11

Agreed. The ideal implementation of AI for Apple is probably to finally make Siri work. This isn’t necessary fancy, just let me set some calendar events without knowing the magic words or tell it to open Overcast and play the new Gastropod episode. Better yet, for power users, let me set up reusable shortcuts using natural language. The most important part of this is it doesn’t necessarily feel like AI. The user does…

Or at least let me give multiple commands.

"Hey Siri turn on the livingroom lights" "Hey Siri set the thermostat to 19'

Being able to go "Hey Siri turn on the livingroom lights and set the temperature to 19" would be so much easier.

For a real AI this would be no issue. But Siri is completely hand scripted.

Re: AI is a technology not a product

#208

Post by yladiz »

lxgr wrote: post #203
yladiz wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I have traveled to places where I don’t speak the language, need to get an Uber at a specific place, and need to read the signs. You can get surprisingly far if you know a few words in the local language, and in your hypothetical future, even if you and the driver have an agent, what are you going to do if you need to communicate with someone in person that’s not that driver? Ask your agent to? I don’t see how th…

Why not? People are already holding their phone running Google Translate up to strangers to communicate with them.

In part because communication is not just language.

Re: AI is a technology not a product

#209

Post by xerox13ster »

matty22 wrote: post #198
coffeefirst wrote: post #11

Agreed. The ideal implementation of AI for Apple is probably to finally make Siri work. This isn’t necessary fancy, just let me set some calendar events without knowing the magic words or tell it to open Overcast and play the new Gastropod episode. Better yet, for power users, let me set up reusable shortcuts using natural language. The most important part of this is it doesn’t necessarily feel like AI. The user does…

If they could get "Hey Siri, play 'Song Title' by 'Band Name'" to open the Music app and play the song I ask for, that's the extent that I give a damn about AI being introduced to iOS.

The only thing I have ever wanted from a voice assistant or AI assistant or anything like that on the phone is the ability to be listening to music, interrupt the music and tell it “add ‘X by Z’ song next in now playing” and then have it add it and continue playing the same playlist, but it’s never done that. It always replaces the entire now playing list.

Re: AI is a technology not a product

#210

Post by [deleted] »

tobr wrote: post #48
coffeefirst wrote: post #11

Agreed. The ideal implementation of AI for Apple is probably to finally make Siri work. This isn’t necessary fancy, just let me set some calendar events without knowing the magic words or tell it to open Overcast and play the new Gastropod episode. Better yet, for power users, let me set up reusable shortcuts using natural language. The most important part of this is it doesn’t necessarily feel like AI. The user does…

> This isn’t necessary fancy, just let me set some calendar events without knowing the magic words or tell it to open Overcast and play the new Gastropod episode. Better yet, for power users, let me set up reusable shortcuts using natural language. Isn’t this the proverbial ”faster horse”? Ie let me do exactly what I can do now, in a very slightly different, possibly very slightly more convenient way?

[deleted]
Post reply on HN