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

AI in my plasma physics research didn’t go the way I expected

understandingai.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 307 posts

Re: AI in my plasma physics research didn’t go the way I expected

#101

Post by ktallett »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #82
ktallett wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of these issues you have had are simply user error or not using the right tool for the job.

Well, LLMs are the right tool for the job. They just work. I mean if you are going to deny their usefulness in the face of plenty of people telling you they actually help, it’s going to be impossible to have a discussion.

They can be useful, however for admin tasks, there are plenty of valid alternatives that really take no longer time wise so why bother using all that computing power.

They don't just work though, they are not fool proof and definitely require double checking.

Re: AI in my plasma physics research didn’t go the way I expected

#102

Post by rsynnott »

plasticeagle wrote: post #25

Does anybody else find it peculiar that the majority of these articles about AI say things like "of course I don't doubt that AI will lead to major discoveries", and then go on to explain how they aren't useful in any field whatsoever? Where are the AI-driven breakthroughs? Or even the AI-driven incremental improvements? Do they exist anywhere? Or are we just using AI to remix existing general knowledge, while making…

They do mention that it has been somewhat useful in protein folding.

> Or are we just using AI to remix existing general knowledge, while making no progress of any sort in any field using it?

AIUI they are generally not talking about LLMs here.

Re: AI in my plasma physics research didn’t go the way I expected

#103

Post by ktallett »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #79
ktallett wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hype surrounding them is not as a pa and tbh a lot of these use cases already have existing methods that work just fine. There are ways to find key information in files already, and speedy meeting minutes is really just a template away.

Microsoft is absolutely selling them as pa and already selling a lot. I think HNers being mostly software developers live in a bubble when it comes to the reality of what LLMs are actually used for. Speedy minutes are absolutely not a template away. Anyone who ever had to write minutes for a complicated meetings knows it’s hard and requires a lot of back and forth for everyone to agree about what was said and decided…

This is a business practice issue and staff issue, not a meeting minutes issue. I have meetings daily, and have never had this issue. You make it clear what is decided during the meeting, give anyone a chance to query or question, then no one can argue.

Re: AI in my plasma physics research didn’t go the way I expected

#104

Post by apwell23 »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #39
simianparrot wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s why it keeps looking exactly like NFT’s and crypto hype cycles to me: Yes the technology has legitimate uses, but the promises of groundbreaking use cases that will change the world are obviously not materialising and to anyone that understands the tech it can’t. It’s people making money off hype until it dies and move on to the next scam-with-some-use.

I don’t remember when NFTs and cryptos helped me draft an email, wrote my meetings minutes for me or allowed me to easily search information previously locked in various documents. I think there is this weird take amongst some on HN where LLMs are either completely revolutionary and making break through or utterly useless. The truth is that they are useful already as a productivity tool.

> wrote my meetings minutes

why is this such a posterchild for llms. everyone always leads with this.

how boring are these meetings and do ppl actually review these notes? i never ever saw anyone reading meeting minutes or even mention them.

Why is this usecase even mentioned in LLM ads.

Re: AI in my plasma physics research didn’t go the way I expected

#105

Post by mnky9800n »

strogonoff wrote: post #48
plasticeagle wrote: post #25

Does anybody else find it peculiar that the majority of these articles about AI say things like "of course I don't doubt that AI will lead to major discoveries", and then go on to explain how they aren't useful in any field whatsoever? Where are the AI-driven breakthroughs? Or even the AI-driven incremental improvements? Do they exist anywhere? Or are we just using AI to remix existing general knowledge, while making…

There is rarely a constructive discussion around the term “AI”. You can’t say anything useful about what it might lead to or how useful it might be, because it is purely a marketing term that does not have a specific meaning (neither do both of the words in its abbreviation). Interesting discussions tend to avoid “AI” in favour of specific terms such as “ML”, “LLM”, “GAN”, “stable diffusion”, “chatbot”, “image genera…

This article is all about PINNs being overblown. I think it’s a reasonable take. I’ve seen way too many people dump all their eggs in the PINNs basket when there are plenty of options out there. Those options just don’t include a ticket to the hype train.

Re: AI in my plasma physics research didn’t go the way I expected

#106

Post by jstummbillig »

simianparrot wrote: post #28
plasticeagle wrote: post #25

Does anybody else find it peculiar that the majority of these articles about AI say things like "of course I don't doubt that AI will lead to major discoveries", and then go on to explain how they aren't useful in any field whatsoever? Where are the AI-driven breakthroughs? Or even the AI-driven incremental improvements? Do they exist anywhere? Or are we just using AI to remix existing general knowledge, while making…

It’s why it keeps looking exactly like NFT’s and crypto hype cycles to me: Yes the technology has legitimate uses, but the promises of groundbreaking use cases that will change the world are obviously not materialising and to anyone that understands the tech it can’t. It’s people making money off hype until it dies and move on to the next scam-with-some-use.

I think people are mostly bad at value judgements, and AI is no exception.

What they naively wished the future was like: Flying cars. What they actually got (and is way more useful but a lot less flashy): Cheap solar energy.

Re: AI in my plasma physics research didn’t go the way I expected

#107

Post by ktallett »

IanCal wrote: post #99
StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is absolutely selling them as pa and already selling a lot. I think HNers being mostly software developers live in a bubble when it comes to the reality of what LLMs are actually used for. Speedy minutes are absolutely not a template away. Anyone who ever had to write minutes for a complicated meetings knows it’s hard and requires a lot of back and forth for everyone to agree about what was said and decided…

There are so many tasks in the world that 1. Involve a computer 2. Do not require incredible intelligence 3. Involve the messiness of the real world enough that you can't write exact code to do it without it being insanely fragile LLMs suddenly start to tackle these, and tackle them kind of all at once. Additionally they are "programmed" in just English and so you don't need a specialist to do something like change t…

Do you really believe the outlay in terms of computer power is worth it to change the tone of an email? If it never gets better, this is a vast waste of an enormous amount of resources.

Re: AI in my plasma physics research didn’t go the way I expected

#108

Post by Yoric »

Flamentono2 wrote: post #58
simianparrot wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s why it keeps looking exactly like NFT’s and crypto hype cycles to me: Yes the technology has legitimate uses, but the promises of groundbreaking use cases that will change the world are obviously not materialising and to anyone that understands the tech it can’t. It’s people making money off hype until it dies and move on to the next scam-with-some-use.

We already have breakthroughs. Benchmark results which have been unheard of before ML. Alone language translation got so much better, voice syntesis, voice transcription. All my meetings now are searchable and i can ask 'ai' to summarize my meetings in a relative accurate way impossible before that. Alphafold made a breakthrough in protein folding. Image and Video generation can now do unbelievable things. Realtime v…

That is absolutely correct.

The problem is that the hype assumes that all of this is a baseline (or even below the baseline), while there are no signs that it can go much further in the near future – and in some cases, it's actually cutting-edge research. This leads to a pushback that may be disproportionate.

Re: AI in my plasma physics research didn’t go the way I expected

#109

Post by wrren »

AI companies are hugely motivated to show beyond-human levels of intelligence in their models, even if it means flubbing the numbers. If they manage to capture the news cycle for a bit, it's a boost to confidence in their products and maybe their share price if they're public. The articles showing that these advances are largely junk aren't backed by corporate marketing budgets or the desires of the investor class like the original announcements were.

Re: AI in my plasma physics research didn’t go the way I expected

#110

Post by aleph_minus_one »

jstummbillig wrote: post #106
simianparrot wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s why it keeps looking exactly like NFT’s and crypto hype cycles to me: Yes the technology has legitimate uses, but the promises of groundbreaking use cases that will change the world are obviously not materialising and to anyone that understands the tech it can’t. It’s people making money off hype until it dies and move on to the next scam-with-some-use.

I think people are mostly bad at value judgements, and AI is no exception. What they naively wished the future was like: Flying cars. What they actually got (and is way more useful but a lot less flashy): Cheap solar energy.

> What they naively wished the future was like: Flying cars.

This future is already there:

We have flying cars: they are called "helicopters" (see also https://xkcd.com/1623/).

Post reply on HN