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This time, it feels different

nadh.in

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Re: This time, it feels different

#101

Post by penneallagricia »

HFguy wrote: post #48
analognoise wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also the wealth of the average worker has been stagnant since the 70's - computers, the internet, etc came and brought tons of wealth, and didn't raise the standard of living. I've never thought about computers that way - they got here, and didn't make everyone's lives better - they just accelerated wealth concentration in the top 1%.

This is true only if you look narrowly at developed countries. If you look more broadly, a tremendous number of people have had huge increases in income in places like China. That might even be related (i.e., wages for workers are being depressed in developing world as workers see competition from other workers in developing nations). And capital owners benefiting from increased availability of labor. TBC, agree that…

China is the one country that doesn't allow a concentration of the wealth in the top 1%.

Look at India, they don't come close to China if you compare how the standard of life improved for the masses.

Re: This time, it feels different

#102

Post by nly »

cubefox wrote: post #74

He (and most people on HN) are still underestimating the impact of this. Everything points at AI soon becoming far more intelligent than any human. That's not science fiction about the remote future in a hundred years. We are talking about something in the order of ten years. We are actually at the brink of the "technological singularity". It's happening. It's happening.

I would wager in 10 years time we're all looking back in dismay about how AI has just been used to produce an endless stream of fake news, empty-feeling generated content, spam, ads and other forms of monetisation that make our lives miserable.

Some menial administrative jobs that have virtually no value but aren't yet fully automated will be wiped out by conglomerates who offer their white label AI solutions at scale...but that's it.

Think about Google search. Has it really improved much in the last 20 years? Some HN frequents will swear it has gotten worse.

What about your desktop computer? Sure it's about 10x more powerful than 2005, but has having one really changed your life much since then?

Diminishing marginal returns.

Re: This time, it feels different

#103

Post by fauigerzigerk »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #26
fauigerzigerk wrote: post #15

>LangChain[13] enters the chat! Imagine the horror stories of automated online account blocks and Kafkaesque customer support mazes that are all too common, manifesting at a societal level. I can imagine this to be a problem. But I can also imagine it to solve a problem. Right now, customer support is often "dehumanised" and Kafkaesque because no single human has the full picture and all the permissions required to r…

You assume the fragmentation is unintentional- it’s not. Making Organizational intelligence and knowledge management convoluted and compartmented is one of if not the core way that managers keep power over employees. So that’s not a problem that a company wants solved. However it might get solved via this process IF managers start extracting the information from ICs that is then absorbed by a large corporate model -…

>Making Organizational intelligence and knowledge management convoluted and compartmented is one of if not the core way that managers keep power over employees. So that’s not a problem that a company wants solved.

Of course they want it solved. They just don't want to pay for it (and neither do customers).

Larger business customers are not exposed to this madness that consumers and small businesses are having to deal with. Large customers get their own account manager who has all the information and all the permissions to fix things. If necessary, they get their technical issues escalated to real specialists.

With these advances in AI, perhaps more of this will become available to everyone. Keeping power over staff (hopefully) won't be a huge problem if "staff" is some AI.

Re: This time, it feels different

#104

Post by datathrow0007 »

cubefox wrote: post #74

He (and most people on HN) are still underestimating the impact of this. Everything points at AI soon becoming far more intelligent than any human. That's not science fiction about the remote future in a hundred years. We are talking about something in the order of ten years. We are actually at the brink of the "technological singularity". It's happening. It's happening.

Yes, but that would require academics to grow a practical bone in their body and realize "understanding" language is just one piece of the "intelligence puzzle."

The hype will die down on LLMs (slowly... all those ML researchers need to justify the sunk-cost of specializing into a very niche, albeit sales-friendly, field).

If it's any consolation, I doubt we'll see progress towards a "technological singularity" until the current crop of career scientists retire into the dirt -- or there is a fundamental change in resource allocation allowing other, more creative types to start experimenting with building out a probabilistic model for:

Human language in -> determination of "what to do"/workflow to run -> run

We're seeing a few startups in this area, but I haven't seen anyone create any useful agent.

Re: This time, it feels different

#105

Post by hugh-avherald »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #54
rolisz wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use ChatGPT without feeding a clients personal data to it. You can ask hypothetical questions about a certain situation. Like in coding, you don't have to copy paste in source code be able to get some useful feedback on how to proceed.

This requires care as it may only require a few details or other metadata like when/where one asked to narrow down who they're talking about. Considering ChatGPT leaks and hallucinations I would hope folks in law and medicine are being very careful.

That seems overly risk-averse. Legal privilege does not require such extreme vigilance in op sec. One does not breach privilege by googling keywords relevant to a case then the client's address for example.

Re: This time, it feels different

#106

Post by Mezzie »

grugagag wrote: post #100
Mezzie wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that would depend on one's point of view in a couple of key respects: - Are we just discussing the first-world middle class? Obviously if we extend our scope to all of humanity there have been remarkable jumps in standards of living. - Does the idea of 'standard of living' include only access to goods, services, and information or also intangibles like access to safety and (more pertinently to this particular…

> my sense of security in said standard of living has taken a nosedive. Doesn’t that imply a decrease in standard of living? Not easy to quantify one. I personally see not living in fear as a staple of standard of living.

I agree with you, but a reasonable case could be made for viewing standard of living as material access so I think that's where a lot of us talk past one another.

Also American society is pretty disdainful of security, historically.

Re: This time, it feels different

#107

Post by TeMPOraL »

mhb wrote: post #13
thunderbong wrote: post #7

From the article - > If a single dumb, stochastic, probabilistic, hallucinating, snake oil LLM with a chat UI offered by one organisation can have such a viral, organic, and widespread adoption ... imagine what better, faster, more “intelligent” systems to follow in the wake of what exists today would be capable of doing.

But, the box. Don't let it out of the box. Oh, wait.

Right now all the big players in AI are busy building a box around their models, but it's not to keep the AI in - it's to keep humans out.

Re: This time, it feels different

#108

Post by mlboss »

nly wrote: post #92

Yeah, it's different because it's behind a HTTP API and in a year or two, once OpenAI is skint and your entire product is built around their chat API, you'll be paying 50 cents per request ...at which point your product will no longer be profitable.

The competition is only increasing which will drive down the price. Right now users have 3 main providers: OpenAI, Anthromorpic and Google along with dozen open source models.

Re: This time, it feels different

#109

Post by 876978095789789 »

jprete wrote: post #28
swores wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you call Apple "industry leaders" pre-2000s, though? But anyway, they didn't specify all industry leaders, and it's pretty solid that many leaders were knocked off their perches.

Apple was absolutely an industry leader before the 2000s. Which leaders exactly have been knocked off their perches?

IBM, DEC, Sun MicroSystems, SGI.

Re: This time, it feels different

#110

Post by latchkey »

terminalcommand wrote: post #70
blibble wrote: post #39

> I have come across people who do programming, legal work, business, accountancy and finance, fashion design, architecture, graphic design, research, teaching, cooking, travel planning, event management etc., all of whom have started using the same tool, ChatGPT if I found out my lawyer/account/tax advisor/broker had fed my privileged information into ChatGPT I'd be reporting them to their regulator and they'd be st…

I work at big law. Law firms plan to purchase specialized closed LLMs. OpenAI's Harvey exactly aims this.

Do you see the writing on the wall?
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