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Why friction is necessary for growth

jameelur.com

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Re: Why friction is necessary for growth

#11

Post by luxuryballs »

in my limited experience using LLMs for side projects it has been a massive creativity cultivator rather than a creativity killer, to such an extent that I don’t understand this take, but perhaps my use case is more nuanced/limited than most?

I see it like this: if you weren’t going to be creative in the first place and you’re just grasping for slop to check a box then there’s no loss, perhaps even a slight gain of creativity, if you are fully engaged in being creative you can now prototype things and preview them and spin off ideas that compound and refine and inspire new ones so much faster so the overall creative output is accelerated both “horizontally and vertically” to borrow from compute scaling imagery

Re: Why friction is necessary for growth

#12

Post by ip26 »

rossdavidh wrote: post #8

"ChatGPT is here to stay..." Well, LLM's are probably here to stay. I'm not sure that OpenAI has found a viable business model, and as Matt Levine of Bloomberg put it recently, OpenAI is a "money furnace", that takes stupifying amounts of VC money (and, more importantly, cloud compute capacity) and burns it for purposes that do not remotely pay for the cost. The biggest reason not to rely on ChatGPT specifically, is…

Its "product recommendation" capabilities are growing quickly, which is directly convertible to ad revenue, and we know ad revenue sustained Google for two decades.

Re: Why friction is necessary for growth

#14

Post by malfist »

ip26 wrote: post #12
rossdavidh wrote: post #8

"ChatGPT is here to stay..." Well, LLM's are probably here to stay. I'm not sure that OpenAI has found a viable business model, and as Matt Levine of Bloomberg put it recently, OpenAI is a "money furnace", that takes stupifying amounts of VC money (and, more importantly, cloud compute capacity) and burns it for purposes that do not remotely pay for the cost. The biggest reason not to rely on ChatGPT specifically, is…

Its "product recommendation" capabilities are growing quickly, which is directly convertible to ad revenue, and we know ad revenue sustained Google for two decades.

ML can do just as good if not better job of product recommendations without the risk of hallucinations and is cheaper to boot.

Re: Why friction is necessary for growth

#15

Post by bayindirh »

ip26 wrote: post #12
rossdavidh wrote: post #8

"ChatGPT is here to stay..." Well, LLM's are probably here to stay. I'm not sure that OpenAI has found a viable business model, and as Matt Levine of Bloomberg put it recently, OpenAI is a "money furnace", that takes stupifying amounts of VC money (and, more importantly, cloud compute capacity) and burns it for purposes that do not remotely pay for the cost. The biggest reason not to rely on ChatGPT specifically, is…

Its "product recommendation" capabilities are growing quickly, which is directly convertible to ad revenue, and we know ad revenue sustained Google for two decades.

It'd be very fun and ironic if all this research, turmoil and energy waste just boiled down to a "better ad machine".

I'm aware of other applications of AI and LLMs, but what most of the people see are the consumer facing ones like ChatGPT/Gemini/etc.

Re: Why friction is necessary for growth

#16

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

I’ve always said that we need to get out of our comfort zone, to grow. I’ve never thought it necessary to expound; it’s such a “no-brainer.”

Right now, LLMs are selling a vision of “friction-free” productivity, but we haven’t yet gotten to the part, where humans start mastering LLMs as tools. That’s still quite nascent.

Once that happens, a lot of people that have been firing all their employees, and getting fat on the profits, are going be finding themselves on fire.

Re: Why friction is necessary for growth

#17

Post by deanputney »

rictus wrote: post #6

I'm not coonvinced by the conclusion. The contacts example doesn't show friction leads to growth, it shows absence of friction leads to degrowth. The other way around isn't necessarily true.

I'd argue it doesn't show growth or shrinking. What capacity does remembering strings of numbers "grow"? There's no clear connection to remembering other things, or math skills, or anything but how many numbers you remember.

The author says they still remember these numbers. Maybe they remember fewer and this is shrinking? Seems like a poor example at any rate.

Re: Why friction is necessary for growth

#18

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

bayindirh wrote: post #15
ip26 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its "product recommendation" capabilities are growing quickly, which is directly convertible to ad revenue, and we know ad revenue sustained Google for two decades.

It'd be very fun and ironic if all this research, turmoil and energy waste just boiled down to a "better ad machine". I'm aware of other applications of AI and LLMs, but what most of the people see are the consumer facing ones like ChatGPT/Gemini/etc.

Well, what I don’t mind, are truly relevant ads. This is different from showing me (a man in my 60s) ED medicine ads, unsolicited, whenever I visit a news site.

The behavior I need is typical “honest broker” behavior. These folks have been around for centuries. It’s a totally valid (and valuable) service.

If I can present a specific workflow and requirements description to ChatGPT, and it responds with paid recommendations that actually match my needs, I don’t really mind. I would still like to know about alternatives, but I will still have something that will fit the bill.

Re: Why friction is necessary for growth

#19

Post by luc_ »

I think that there's something to be said about brain cycles being freed up for different things. We were relieved of some manual tasks during the industrial revolution. Now what else are our brains free to do?

That's not to say that this notion I raise should not be also considered with others. We are indeed offloading some brain processing to a machine... what have we lost?

What will we gain?

Re: Why friction is necessary for growth

#20

Post by jwpapi »

I think it comes down to reasonable friction to overcome or pointless friction

I feel very annoyed by pointless friction (inefficient systems) but motivated by friction that improves myself (going to the gym)

If you solve for what’s best for you this trumps seeking friction

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