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Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well

garymarcus.substack.com

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Re: Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well

#131

Post by retrac »

daveguy wrote: post #129
retrac wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done similar loose experiments using a 19th century French novel I have read (L'Agonie by Jean Lombard), and which is quite obscure. There is no English translation of the novel published. Using Gemini Notebooks I've found it passable at summarizing chapters, listing characters, major theme and so on, and it can do this in English. "What is the symbolism of the Black Stone?" > In the sources, the Black Stone (re…

"quite obscure" doesn't mean there is nothing in the internet that directly addresses the question. Here is an english analysis of the text that easily showed up in an internet search: https://www.cantab.net/users/leonardo/Downloads/Varian%20Sym... This source includes analysis of "the Black Stone."

Not quite the same analysis. The human is better, no surprise. But the NotebookLM output links back to the original book in a very useful way. If you think about it as fuzzy semantic search it's amazing. If you want an essay or even just creativity, yes it's lacking.

Re: Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well

#132

Post by jaffee »

What a joke this guy is. I can sit down and crank out a real, complex feature in a couple hours that would have previously taken days and ship it to the users of our AI platform who can then respond to RFQs in minutes where they would have previously spent hours matching descriptions to part numbers manually.

...and yet we still see these articles claiming LLMs are dying/overhyped/major issues/whatever.

Cool man, I'll just be over here building my AI based business with AI and solving real problems in the very real manufacturing sector.

Re: Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well

#133

Post by daveguy »

retrac wrote: post #131
daveguy wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"quite obscure" doesn't mean there is nothing in the internet that directly addresses the question. Here is an english analysis of the text that easily showed up in an internet search: https://www.cantab.net/users/leonardo/Downloads/Varian%20Sym... This source includes analysis of "the Black Stone."

Not quite the same analysis. The human is better, no surprise. But the NotebookLM output links back to the original book in a very useful way. If you think about it as fuzzy semantic search it's amazing. If you want an essay or even just creativity, yes it's lacking.

It doesn't have to be the same analysis to put it in a partially overlapping vector space. Not saying it wasn't a useful perspective shuffling in the vector space, but it definitely wasn't original.

LLMs haven't solved any of the 2029 predictions as they were posited. But I expect some will be reached by 2029. The AI hype acts like all this is easy. Not by 2029 doesn't mean impossible or even most of the way there.

Re: Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well

#134

Post by margalabargala »

jgalt212 wrote: post #104
gejose wrote: post #42

I believe Gary Marcus is quite well known for terrible AI predictions. He's not in any way an expert in the field. Some of his predictions from 2022 [1] > In 2029, AI will not be able to watch a movie and tell you accurately what is going on (what I called the comprehension challenge in The New Yorker, in 2014). Who are the characters? What are their conflicts and motivations? etc. > In 2029, AI will not be able to r…

This comment or something very close always appears alongside a Gary Marcus post.

Which is fortunate, considering how asinine it is in 2026 to expect that none of the items listed will be accomplished in the next 3.9 years.

Re: Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well

#135

Post by blindriver »

This entire take is nonsense.

I just used ChatGPT to diagnose a very serious but ultimately not-dangerous health situation last week and it was perfect. It literally guided me perfectly without making me panic and helped me understand what was going on.

We use ChatGPT at work to do things that we have literally laid people off for, because we don't need them anymore. This included fixing bugs at a level that is at least E5/senior software engineer. Sometimes it does something really bad but it definitely saves times and helps avoid adding headcount.

Generative AI is years beyond what I would have expected even 1 year ago. This guy doesn't know what he's talking about, he's just picking and choosing one-off articles that make it seem like it's supporting his points.

Re: Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well

#136

Post by nonethewiser »

mattmaroon wrote: post #6

Meanwhile, my cofounder is rewriting code we spent millions of salary on in the past by himself in a few weeks. I myself am saving a small fortune on design and photography and getting better results while doing it. If this is not all that well I can’t wait until we get to mediocre!

> Meanwhile, my cofounder is rewriting code we spent millions of salary on in the past by himself in a few weeks.

Why?

Im not even casting shade - I think AI is quite amazing for coding and can increase productivity and quality a lot.

But I'm curious why he's doing this.

Re: Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well

#137

Post by nonethewiser »

nsoonhui wrote: post #45
mattmaroon wrote: post #6

Meanwhile, my cofounder is rewriting code we spent millions of salary on in the past by himself in a few weeks. I myself am saving a small fortune on design and photography and getting better results while doing it. If this is not all that well I can’t wait until we get to mediocre!

It's not directly comparable. The first time writing the code is always the hardest because you might have to figure out the requirements along the way. When you have the initial system running for a while, doing a second one is easier because all the requirements kinks are figured out. By the way, why does your co-founder have to do the rewrite at all?

You can compare it - just factor that in. And compare writing it with AI vs. writing it without AI.

We have no clue the scope of the rewrite but for anything non-trivial, 2 weeks just isn't going to be possible without AI. To the point of you probably not doing it at all.

I have no idea why they are rewriting the code. That's another matter.

Re: Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well

#138

Post by nonethewiser »

aprdm wrote: post #26
mattmaroon wrote: post #6

Meanwhile, my cofounder is rewriting code we spent millions of salary on in the past by himself in a few weeks. I myself am saving a small fortune on design and photography and getting better results while doing it. If this is not all that well I can’t wait until we get to mediocre!

lol same. I just wrote a bunch of diagrams with mermaid that would legit take me a week, also did a mock of an UI for a frontend engineer that would take me another week to do .. or some designers. All of that in between meetings... Waiting for it to actually go well to see what else I can do !

The more I have this experience and read people maligning AI for coding, the more I think the junior developers are actually not the ones in danger.

Re: Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well

#139

Post by nonethewiser »

tombert wrote: post #10

I find it a bit odd that people are acting like this stuff is an abject failure because it's not perfect yet. Generative AI, as we know it, has only existed ~5-6 years, and it has improved substantially, and is likely to keep improving. Yes, people have probably been deploying it in spots where it's not quite ready but it's myopic to act like it's "not going all that well" when it's pretty clear that it actually is g…

>Generative AI, as we know it, has only existed ~5-6 years

Probably less than that, practically speaking. ChatGPT's initial release date was November 2022. It's closer to 3 years, in terms of any significant amount of people using them.

Re: Let's be honest, Generative AI isn't going all that well

#140

Post by nonethewiser »

maccard wrote: post #14
tombert wrote: post #10

I find it a bit odd that people are acting like this stuff is an abject failure because it's not perfect yet. Generative AI, as we know it, has only existed ~5-6 years, and it has improved substantially, and is likely to keep improving. Yes, people have probably been deploying it in spots where it's not quite ready but it's myopic to act like it's "not going all that well" when it's pretty clear that it actually is g…

> Generative AI, as we know it, has only existed ~5-6 years, and it has improved substantially, and is likely to keep improving. Every 2/3 months we're hearing there's a new model that just blows the last one out of the water for coding. Meanwhile, here I am with Opus and Sonnet for $20/mo and it's regularly failing at basic tasks, antigravity getting stuck in loops and burning credits. We're talking "copy basic exam…

>Every 2/3 months we're hearing there's a new model that just blows the last one out of the water for coding

I haven't heard that at all. I hear about models that come out and are a bit better. And other people saying they suck.

>Meanwhile, here I am with Opus and Sonnet for $20/mo and it's regularly failing at basic tasks, antigravity getting stuck in loops and burning credits.

Is it bringing you any value? I find it speeds things up a LOT.

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