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The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

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Re: The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

#101

Post by jjmarr »

petralithic wrote: post #90
jjmarr wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every fast food place I've been to, a "plain cheeseburger" includes cheese. However, at every high-end burger place I've been to, "plain" does NOT include cheese. So there is a somewhat standard meaning. I have this conversation enough that I now call out "plain no cheese" and ensure "no cheese" is written on the ticket.

You're conflating two different things. A plain cheese burger obviously will include cheese by definition. A "plain" at a "burger place" would mean a plain hamburger. Both are correct usages of the adjective "plain" because the nouns they're describing are inherently different.

The challenge is that there's an indeterminable point at which the "cheese" stops being an integral part of the burger.

For a "cheeseburger" cheese is obviously integral. For a Big Mac, it's less clear but a "plain" Big Mac usually includes cheese.

For a fancy place's "deluxe Wagyu beef burger" that has cheese/truffles/a bunch of other stuff, a "plain" version will likely not have cheese.

Re: The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

#102

Post by milesvp »

ecshafer wrote: post #44
diggan wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A big part of the reason I don't go to McDonald's any more is that the experience of using the ordering kiosks is so awful compared to just telling a human what I want. Huh, for me is the polar opposite. Maybe it's because I mumble, is unclear or don't speak the native language as well as the natives where I live, but I always preferred the kiosks. I seem to always get what I order then, and it's a lot easier to cu…

When I worked at McDonalds, a major thing I learned is that when 95% of people say they got an order wrong, the customer ordered it wrong without realizing it. Customer says "I want a cheeseburger, plain", Mcdonalds puts that in as "Cheesebuger, no ketchup, mustard, onion or pickle". Customers will take plain to mean a dozen different things.

Even better when the customer just plain orders the wrong thing. I have a vivid memory of my pregnant wife and I at breakfast one morning, and she ordered apple juice. When the waiter brought apple juice she said she’d ordered orange, and when the waitress looked confused, I had to remind my wife she’d ordered apple. Total brain fart on her part (pregnancy brain seems to be a very real thing). Waitress didn’t care, especially after we laughed it off, and brought orange. But I know I’ve undoubtedly done the same thing, so I’m patient with mixups.

Re: The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

#103

Post by jacinabox »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #2

One of the lowest level jobs in the market is taking orders at a fast food drive thru. If AI can't do this job, it probably can't do yours either. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c722gne7qngo Bottom line: AI has very poor grasp of reality --- because (surprise, surprise) it has zero real world experience.

I just did a captcha the other day that asked the user to select which items can fit inside the sample item (which was a handbag). You'd think that a multimodal deep learning model could figure out what objects fit inside other objects if it's going to cure cancer or whatever, but no I'm assuming that it needs to be taught explicitly.

Re: The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

#104

Post by ElectronCharge »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #56
jqpabc123 wrote: post #2

One of the lowest level jobs in the market is taking orders at a fast food drive thru. If AI can't do this job, it probably can't do yours either. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c722gne7qngo Bottom line: AI has very poor grasp of reality --- because (surprise, surprise) it has zero real world experience.

As someone who worked in fast food in high school, I completely disagree with this. Order taking via drive through can be surprisingly hard. * Often lots of background noise * Sometimes multiple people try to order (often with one of those being way away from the mic) * People don't always know exactly what they want or what it's called. Sometimes things have a regional or local name that's not on the board. Right no…

Actually one of the fast food restaurants here takes automated spoken orders at the drive through. I've only used it once, but I was surprised that it worked flawlessly for me...

Re: The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

#105

Post by SkyPuncher »

jjmarr wrote: post #72
SkyPuncher wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also worked at McDonalds. You example is interesting because this specific issue came up often. Different people interpreted it to mean different things. The cashiers who'd been around the longest had learned to clarify exactly what the customer wants. Also, this is absolutely NOT a customer issue. It's a restaurant issue to clarify. Plain means different things at different restaurants, so the solution is to _alwa…

Every fast food place I've been to, a "plain cheeseburger" includes cheese. However, at every high-end burger place I've been to, "plain" does NOT include cheese. So there is a somewhat standard meaning. I have this conversation enough that I now call out "plain no cheese" and ensure "no cheese" is written on the ticket.

McDonald's main menu items aren't actually called "cheeseburgers"; they're called "burgers with cheese". To me, this reads that "cheese" is a "topping" on the burger.

Further, they _only_ showcase the "burger with cheese variant" in their combos and special. This further drives home that you should be thinking about cheese in the same way as toppings.

Re: The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

#106

Post by SkyPuncher »

mh- wrote: post #79
jjmarr wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every fast food place I've been to, a "plain cheeseburger" includes cheese. However, at every high-end burger place I've been to, "plain" does NOT include cheese. So there is a somewhat standard meaning. I have this conversation enough that I now call out "plain no cheese" and ensure "no cheese" is written on the ticket.

That's a strange source of confusion. A plain cheeseburger without cheese has a different name: a plain hamburger. I can't imagine saying "cheeseburger", no matter what qualifying words around it, and being surprised it included cheese.

Even more confusing when McDonalds calls them "burgers with cheese". Cheese seems to be a uniquely distinct event.

Also "I'll take a number 3 meal plain" is void of an actual subject for the type of burger.

Re: The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

#107

Post by joshstrange »

sfn42 wrote: post #63
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in 2025 how is it so hard to make a user interface that doesn't lag like a bastard on every scroll/click/... Because everything is done in fucking React or Node or Blazor or whatever the newest flavor of this wRiTe oNcE rUn aNyWheRe bollocks is, because it always, always, always the exact same fucking thing: abstracting UI elements to fucking goddamn JavaScript and running it in a browser. And heaven knows McDonald…

That's not the issue. All these technologies can be nice and snappy. The problem is that developers suck at making software nice and snappy. I've taken over several react apps over the years and one thing I always end up doing is remove a bunch of spinners because you don't need a spinner when the page loads instantly - as it should. Its very common for pages to take 10-60+ seconds to load, and when I look into it it…

> I always end up doing is remove a bunch of spinners because you don't need a spinner when the page loads instantly

I always have to remind people to add spinners, just because it loads instantly on your developer machine with a fiber connection (if not talking to a local container even) doesn't mean it will in the real world. But spinners only show when actively fetching so if it's fast they only show for a split-second. It's the best of both worlds.

Re: The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

#108

Post by gilbetron »

SoftTalker wrote: post #48
ecshafer wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I worked at McDonalds, a major thing I learned is that when 95% of people say they got an order wrong, the customer ordered it wrong without realizing it. Customer says "I want a cheeseburger, plain", Mcdonalds puts that in as "Cheesebuger, no ketchup, mustard, onion or pickle". Customers will take plain to mean a dozen different things.

Rule #1 at McDonald's: Never customize. If you don't want pickles, take them off yourself. Otherwise they'll just get it wrong. Whenever I took my kids there I told them "if you don't want it the way they make it then don't order it."

I've customized our McD's orders for my entire life - they mess it up maybe 1/20 times, about the same ratio I'll have to park and wait. Otherwise it's always worked for me!

Re: The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

#109

Post by thejazzman »

fragmede wrote: post #89
Jensson wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it silly? Cars haven't fundamentally changed in the past 50 years, they have gotten a lot better but not in a game changing way, society still functions the same with cars as 50 years ago. I see the same thing with text models, you can say they improve but not in a game changing way, and you have the same scenario as cars. It wouldn't be wrong for a person to say "cars are as good as they ever going to get" 50…

Tesla self-driving/Waymo/Comma.ai isn't perfect, but they're good at what they do. That's a pretty dramatic change, in the last year or so. You get in the car, and then don't actually have to drive it, the car does it for you. Sure there are some corner cases that still haven't been solved, but most of the time, I get in the car and it just does its thing for me.

and you didn't even mention the fact that they can now run on solar power instead of dinosaur fuel

quite a lot has changed with cars

doesn't really have anything to do with the future of AI, tho

Re: The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

#110

Post by Nextgrid »

sfn42 wrote: post #63
ToucanLoucan wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in 2025 how is it so hard to make a user interface that doesn't lag like a bastard on every scroll/click/... Because everything is done in fucking React or Node or Blazor or whatever the newest flavor of this wRiTe oNcE rUn aNyWheRe bollocks is, because it always, always, always the exact same fucking thing: abstracting UI elements to fucking goddamn JavaScript and running it in a browser. And heaven knows McDonald…

That's not the issue. All these technologies can be nice and snappy. The problem is that developers suck at making software nice and snappy. I've taken over several react apps over the years and one thing I always end up doing is remove a bunch of spinners because you don't need a spinner when the page loads instantly - as it should. Its very common for pages to take 10-60+ seconds to load, and when I look into it it…

> All these technologies can be nice and snappy

Maybe in theory, but in practice I see it very rarely. Maybe it starts out great and fast and then devolves into a shitfest.

Given how frequent this is, maybe it’s time to actually blame the technology itself if it makes it so easy to mess up?

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