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Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

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Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#21
post #11

When none of the models, STOA or not, could answer any genuinely interesting question. All models could regurgitate was has been expressed before but nothing actually new was there, until explicitly asked for, and even then it required filtering through potentially so much noise it was practically not interesting anymore as it required all the knowledge to validate or invalidate the claims. That's when, few years ago…

Related but distinct, few years later I asked an acquaintance to ask a question to a model. I didn't want to bias the test so I ask them to ask whatever they wanted. They asked "What time is it in Sri Lanka?" which I thought was a funny question. I predicted it wouldn't work because it was asked to an offline model so I thought it wouldn't manage to get current data. Still, I didn't interfere and we watch the answer being provided. It was roughly factually correct information about Sri Lanka... but it did not give the correct time. Again that's a rather basic question a young child would easily get right. You need the current time with a known timezone, the time difference, basic arithmetic and voila, you have the correct answer with an explanation to verify. Here it didn't work and I was there trying to explain how to STOA open-source model which required thousands if not millions in resources, training time, researcher salaries, etc could not even handle that random basic question. Another "oh shit" moment, again, not the one I expected which is precisely why to me it was, and still is, interesting.

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#23
post #11

When none of the models, STOA or not, could answer any genuinely interesting question. All models could regurgitate was has been expressed before but nothing actually new was there, until explicitly asked for, and even then it required filtering through potentially so much noise it was practically not interesting anymore as it required all the knowledge to validate or invalidate the claims. That's when, few years ago…

A few years ago, as you say, this was true. Nowadays I guess you just have to bite the bullet that Erdős problems aren’t interesting.

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#24
post #11

When none of the models, STOA or not, could answer any genuinely interesting question. All models could regurgitate was has been expressed before but nothing actually new was there, until explicitly asked for, and even then it required filtering through potentially so much noise it was practically not interesting anymore as it required all the knowledge to validate or invalidate the claims. That's when, few years ago…

Curious what your interesting questions were, you should be able to find them in your chat history.

That was more than a decade ago so unfortunately not. I should have kept those questions though. I even mention in a comment on HN a while ago that unanswered or wrongly answered questions should precisely be a batch test when new models are released.

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#25
post #19

I use claude code on a daily basis, but honestly it becomes more annoying the more I use it. Why? I think because I ask it to do something and unless I'm extremely specific, either the code is verbose or the feature I'm designing is done in a poor way. For me, the productivity gains aren't that great and I'm even considering whether to go back to doing things by hand to save myself the frustration. Sure, if you don't…

It has seemed to me that with each step from Opus 4.6, to 4.7 to 4.8 Claude has gotten worse at building good solutions. Like perhaps it is more "capable" in the small scale than 4.5 was but it's much worse at knowing what to do.

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#26
post #11

When none of the models, STOA or not, could answer any genuinely interesting question. All models could regurgitate was has been expressed before but nothing actually new was there, until explicitly asked for, and even then it required filtering through potentially so much noise it was practically not interesting anymore as it required all the knowledge to validate or invalidate the claims. That's when, few years ago…

A few years ago, as you say, this was true. Nowadays I guess you just have to bite the bullet that Erdős problems aren’t interesting.

I already commented on Erdos problem, that is also a jagged frontier.

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#27
post #11

When none of the models, STOA or not, could answer any genuinely interesting question. All models could regurgitate was has been expressed before but nothing actually new was there, until explicitly asked for, and even then it required filtering through potentially so much noise it was practically not interesting anymore as it required all the knowledge to validate or invalidate the claims. That's when, few years ago…

What question?

I can't recall but basic stuff like P = NP. /s

My point was preciously to challenge STOA in domains, not questions with well known answers.

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#28
post #11

When none of the models, STOA or not, could answer any genuinely interesting question. All models could regurgitate was has been expressed before but nothing actually new was there, until explicitly asked for, and even then it required filtering through potentially so much noise it was practically not interesting anymore as it required all the knowledge to validate or invalidate the claims. That's when, few years ago…

Are you sure you're asking the right questions?

To me they were important questions. Maybe totally interesting to you.

Re: Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

#29
Literally the very first time I used ChatGPT. I had already been experimenting with GPT3 for various jokes and games via the API but the naturalness of it as a chat interface that understood you changed everything.

The first time I used a terminal agent was another one.

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