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This time is different

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Re: This time is different

#201

Post by buzzerbetrayed »

parliament32 wrote: post #123

When I look at LLMs as an interface, I'm reminded of back when speech-to-text first became mainstream. So many promises about how this is the interface for how we'll talk to computers forevermore. Here we are a few decades later, and we don't see business units using Word's built-in dictation feature to write documents, right? Funny how that tech seems to have barely improved in all that time. And, despite dictation…

The completely different way people are experiencing AI is fascinating.

In my world AI is already far more influential than text to speech.

People on here act like we don’t know if AI will be useful. And I’m sitting over here puzzled because of how fucking useful it is.

Very strange.

Re: This time is different

#202

Post by buzzerbetrayed »

thomassmith65 wrote: post #69

The hype around AI is admittedly annoying - especially from the Wall St crowd who don't know how to pronounce 'Nvidia' correctly, and who haven't managed to internalize the fact that the chatbots they use hallucinate. It really is 'different' , though, in the same way the Internet was. It took about 20 years (ie: since The World ISP) for the Internet to work its way into every facet of life. And the dot com bubble po…

What world are you living in where AI is underwhelming currently? I can’t even comprehend this. Are you just not using it or something?

Re: This time is different

#203

Post by alpaca128 »

johnfn wrote: post #124
parliament32 wrote: post #123

When I look at LLMs as an interface, I'm reminded of back when speech-to-text first became mainstream. So many promises about how this is the interface for how we'll talk to computers forevermore. Here we are a few decades later, and we don't see business units using Word's built-in dictation feature to write documents, right? Funny how that tech seems to have barely improved in all that time. And, despite dictation…

I'm curious about the statement that hallucinations are "fundamentally unsolvable". I don't think an AI agent has left a hallucination in my code - by which I mean a reference to something which doesn't exist at all - in many months. I have had great luck driving hallucinations to effectively 0% by using a language with static typechecking, telling LLMs to iterate on type errors until there are none left, and of cour…

So type errors are not hallucinations in your book, but "a reference to something which doesn't exist at all" is?

In the context of AI most people I know tend to mean wrong output, not just hallucinations in the literal sense of the word or things you cannot catch in an automated way.

Re: This time is different

#204

Post by Retric »

dfabulich wrote: post #199
edent wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP here! Thanks for replying. To take, for example, calculators. I can't find any evidence of a massive influx of hyperbolic articles talking about how the calculator will change everything. With bikes, there were plenty of articles decrying how women would get "bicycle face" but very little in terms of endless coverage about them being miracle technology. People adopted bikes and calculators and electricity because…

You have gotta stop cherrypicking. The massive influx of hyperbolic articles about how electricity will change everything started in the 19th century. It became a common theme in fiction (including classics like Frankenstein ) and became an enormous media hype war, which historians call the War of the Currents. Yes, electricity was useful. And it had hyperbolic articles talking about how transformative it would be. L…

There was a great deal of hype around the atom changing everything, but electricity was just too slow to see such breathless anticipation takeoff.

200 years ago the was some hype around how electricity caused mussel contractions in dead flesh, but unless you consider Frankenstein part of the hype cycle it really doesn’t compare to how much people hyped social media etc etc.

Public street lights long predated light bulbs as did both indoor and outdoor Gas lighting 1802 vs 1880’s was just a long time. People were burn, grew up, had kids, and become old between the first electric lighting and the first practical electric bulb. People definitely appreciated the improvement to air quality etc, but the tech simply wasn’t that novel. Rural electrification was definitely promoted but not because what it did was some unknown frontier.

Similarly electric motors had a lot of competition, even today there’s people buying pneumatic shop tools.

Re: This time is different

#205

Post by johnfn »

alpaca128 wrote: post #203
johnfn wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious about the statement that hallucinations are "fundamentally unsolvable". I don't think an AI agent has left a hallucination in my code - by which I mean a reference to something which doesn't exist at all - in many months. I have had great luck driving hallucinations to effectively 0% by using a language with static typechecking, telling LLMs to iterate on type errors until there are none left, and of cour…

So type errors are not hallucinations in your book, but "a reference to something which doesn't exist at all" is? In the context of AI most people I know tend to mean wrong output, not just hallucinations in the literal sense of the word or things you cannot catch in an automated way.

My statement is that if your only hallucinations are type errors, that can be solved by simply wrapping the LLM in a harness that says "Please continue working until `yarn run tsc` is clean". Yes, the LLM still hallucinates, but it doesn't affect me, because by the time I see the code, the hallucinations are gone.

This is something I do every day; to be quite honest, it's a fairly mundane use of AI and I don't understand why it's controversial. To give context, I've probably generated somewhere on the order of 100k loc of AI generated code and I can't remember the last time I have seen a hallucination.

Re: This time is different

#206

Post by dfabulich »

Retric wrote: post #204
dfabulich wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have gotta stop cherrypicking. The massive influx of hyperbolic articles about how electricity will change everything started in the 19th century. It became a common theme in fiction (including classics like Frankenstein ) and became an enormous media hype war, which historians call the War of the Currents. Yes, electricity was useful. And it had hyperbolic articles talking about how transformative it would be. L…

There was a great deal of hype around the atom changing everything, but electricity was just too slow to see such breathless anticipation takeoff. 200 years ago the was some hype around how electricity caused mussel contractions in dead flesh, but unless you consider Frankenstein part of the hype cycle it really doesn’t compare to how much people hyped social media etc etc. Public street lights long predated light bu…

> unless you consider Frankenstein part of the hype cycle

It absolutely is. Frankenstein is a seminal work of science-fiction horror, and the mysterious power of electricity to change everything is what made it so chilling to its readers in the 19th century.

> it really doesn’t compare to how much people hyped social media

The media is considerably different now from in 1818, thanks, in significant part, to the power of electricity. I assure you, when the electrical telegraph came on the scene, people were hyped.

Of course, much of that hype was on paper printed on printing presses, so it was, in some sense, "incomparable" to the hype possible on cable television, or the hype that's now possible with online social media.

But if your argument is "Yeah, electricity was kinda hyped, but, you know, not all that hyped, so it proves my point that the more the hype, the less the impact," you have some more research to do. Please just Google "War of the Currents" for a minute.

Re: This time is different

#207

Post by mkozlows »

edent wrote: post #191
esperent wrote: post #167

> 3D TV, AMP, Augmented Reality, Beanie Babies, Blockchain, Cartoon Avatars, Curved TVs, Frogans, Hoverboards, iBeacons, Jetpacks, Metaverse, NFTs, Physical Web, Quantum Computing, Quibi, Small and Safe Nuclear Reactors, Smart Glasses, Stadia, WiMAX. Agreed, these things all failed to live up to the hype. But these didn't: Electricity, cheap computing, calculators, photography, the internet, the steam engine, the pri…

OP here! Thanks for replying. To take, for example, calculators. I can't find any evidence of a massive influx of hyperbolic articles talking about how the calculator will change everything. With bikes, there were plenty of articles decrying how women would get "bicycle face" but very little in terms of endless coverage about them being miracle technology. People adopted bikes and calculators and electricity because…

The personal computer, laptops, web browsers, cell phones, smartphones, AJAX/DHTML, digital cameras, SSDs, WiFi, LCD displays, LED lightbulbs. At some point, all of these things were "overhyped" and "didn't live up to the promise." And then they did.

Re: This time is different

#208

Post by unchar1 »

edent wrote: post #191
esperent wrote: post #167

> 3D TV, AMP, Augmented Reality, Beanie Babies, Blockchain, Cartoon Avatars, Curved TVs, Frogans, Hoverboards, iBeacons, Jetpacks, Metaverse, NFTs, Physical Web, Quantum Computing, Quibi, Small and Safe Nuclear Reactors, Smart Glasses, Stadia, WiMAX. Agreed, these things all failed to live up to the hype. But these didn't: Electricity, cheap computing, calculators, photography, the internet, the steam engine, the pri…

OP here! Thanks for replying. To take, for example, calculators. I can't find any evidence of a massive influx of hyperbolic articles talking about how the calculator will change everything. With bikes, there were plenty of articles decrying how women would get "bicycle face" but very little in terms of endless coverage about them being miracle technology. People adopted bikes and calculators and electricity because…

Calculators are a particularly bad example for your case. There was absolutely hyperbole against calculators when they were introduced. [1]

With similar sentiment as well "They make us dumb" "Machines doing the thinking for us"

Cars were definitely seen as a fad. More accurately a worse version of a horse [2]

If you looked through your other examples, you'd see the same for those as well.

Some things start as fads, but only time will tell if they gain a place in society. Truthfully it's too early to tell for AI, but the arguments you're making, calling it a fad already don't stand up to reason

[1]: https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-item/160697182/ [2]: https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2017/01/get-horse-americ...

Re: This time is different

#209

Post by unchar1 »

camillomiller wrote: post #181
seertaak wrote: post #87

To my mind at least, it is different. I lean heavily on AI for both admin and coding tasks. I just filled out a multipage form to determine my alimony payments in Germany. Gemini was an absolute godsend, helping answer questions in, translate to English, draft explanations, emails requesting time extensions to the Jugendamt case worker. This is super scary stuff for an ADHDer like me. I have an idea for a programming…

This comment is scary. You don’t control these technologies, you are growing dependent on stilts that could disappear any moment.

The good thing is that local models are catching up very fast.

Re: This time is different

#210

Post by parliament32 »

johnfn wrote: post #205
alpaca128 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So type errors are not hallucinations in your book, but "a reference to something which doesn't exist at all" is? In the context of AI most people I know tend to mean wrong output, not just hallucinations in the literal sense of the word or things you cannot catch in an automated way.

My statement is that if your only hallucinations are type errors, that can be solved by simply wrapping the LLM in a harness that says "Please continue working until `yarn run tsc` is clean". Yes, the LLM still hallucinates, but it doesn't affect me, because by the time I see the code, the hallucinations are gone. This is something I do every day; to be quite honest, it's a fairly mundane use of AI and I don't unders…

Well of course it'll eventually work, just a random text generator will eventually produce code that passes your tests if you run it hard enough.

The problem is it's devouring your tokens as it does so. While you're on a subsidized plan that seems like a non-issue, but once the providers start charging you actual costs for usage.. yeah, the hallucinations will be a showstopper for you.

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