Live data from Hacker News

AI Crap

drewdevault.com

221–230 of 260 posts

Re: AI Crap

#221

A one sided argument with sweeping generalities and something about minorities being killed in the process. Got it.

Seems we just can't resist hating on anything new, no matter what it is these days. Drew has some good ideas but they're often lost in his reactionary rejection of anything not his narrowly defined vision of UNIXy enough. His inexplicable dislike of containers being just one example. There can be nuance to our view of new things. It's important we stress our ability as humans to think this way. LLMs are not all or no…

Yeah, but they are not being stressed enough or considered at a greater level. The same can be said with stuff such as Global Warming for instance, whereas every other company knows that stuff they're doing is terrible, but don't give a shit and we continue to follow as if nothing is going on. AI >right now< is not doing anything specifically dangerous, BUT people adding that "tool to their toolset" is not us, mere mortals but people who intend to use AI in crappier ways. Thinking about those things is not "shitting on anything new" but to think critically about stuff.

Re: AI Crap

#222

Maybe what we need is a hybrid communist/capitalist system. Governments should nationalize public stock markets and all large companies with a market cap above a certain amount.

This way the companies will be sure not to ever reach a certain market cap.

If they will be close, the companies will split, so that they'll never be big enough.

Re: AI Crap

#223
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accelerate education at unprecedented levels (if we can figure out how to integrate LLMs into the education system). To this day I find myself doing a double take every time I'm about to ask ChatGPT to produce a ludicrous amount of output, because it would simply not be reasonable to ask that of some random person. But with LLMs you can do that, over and over again and it will comply every time. How great is it that…

>Accelerate education at unprecedented levels (if we can figure out how to integrate LLMs into the education system). More likely we'll replace poor people's teachers with ChatGPT and whoever has more cash affords actual teachers. This is so real that we're experiencing this >today<, in a different scale with private schools and distance learning in countries such as Brasil where there are projects to reduce schools…

For most people today, learning / teachers can be far, far worse that even what ChatGPT 3.5 can provide.

Re: AI Crap

#225
post #126

The rush to just shit on everything is so tiresome. Why write this article other than to to smugly say "told you so" in the cases where you turn out right. It is a zero risk take. Looking at the advances in AI (Chess, Go, Protein Folding, MidJourney, ChatGPT) and your takeaway being "Humans will use this in bad ways" shows a ferocious lack of imagination. I notice a desperate, but failing, attempt to lump the advance…

Yeah it's like crypto created this weird crop of "debunkers" who think that being permacynical is good just because it was smart to be cynical about crypto. So now "everything I don't like is just like crypto currency"

I think it's about more than crypto. 'Enshittification' as described here has created a lot of distrust: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/mar/11/users-...

Re: AI Crap

#226
post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has not been my experience with ChatGPT 4. If I were to ask it about some specialized info about quantum field theory or superconductor tech, I'm sure it would send back nonsense fairly frequently. But if I ask it to explain the difference between median, mean and average, or ask for examples on an architectural pattern, it's seldom incorrect.

If you prompt directly about the subject it can be fine but it veers into BS territory more often if you try to get it to synthesise information meaning it's less good with applied examples that are given to it by the user. Not always but the error potential is definitely higher. The problem then I think is that this means that students will have to prompt "on rails" to get reliable answers. The most curious students…

I'm not sure the error potential is much higher than with average teachers, but I guess it depends on the domain. For coding the error rate is lower than a typical teacher right now.

I suspect we'll soon figure out an effective way for LLMs to look-up reliable references to confirm their answers, which should improve the situation drastically. As they are now most LLMs are very barebones. An educational LLM could e.g. connect to the university textbook library and use that to verify its answers.

Re: AI Crap

#227
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately, I suspect we will get a two-tiered system, where the "middle class" (whether that's disappearing is another question) can afford human content/human support/etc, and the working class are forced to endure poor experiences with AI generated content and so on I’m imagining world where companies like Netflix and Spotify introduce dirt-cheap subscription tiers that are populate with AI generated content,…

Well let's hope that's the worst effect. I'm seeing a world where kids are put in a room with an AI that "educates" them, setting the lowest possible bar for personal development for your average kid and as quickly as possible expelling kids who are deemed to be a problem. Having real teachers will be a luxury.

Perhaps not even the lowest possible, but the highest allowed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Examination_Day

Re: AI Crap

#228
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking from one of the formerly rich countries (UK), we treat our doctors and teachers incredibly shabbily - long hours, low pay, terrible conditions. It's frankly a miracle that anyone over the last 15 years has gone into either profession. Fix the low pay and terrible conditions and yeah, you'll easily produce enough doctors and teachers, but late-stage capitalism isn't going to do that...

Fix the low pay and terrible conditions and yeah If the UK where to offer doctors the best pay and working conditions in the world, it could fix the UK doctor shortage, but only by 'stealing' doctors from other countries and making their situation even worse. To the best of my knowledge there aren't many empty slots at UK medical schools due to no one wanting to be doctors. It's 'easy' for any one richer country to f…

> there aren't many empty slots at UK medical schools

Also underfunded and treated shabbily (like all the educational establishments in the UK.) I should have been clearer, I suppose, and said that just improving conditions for the existing doctors and teachers is a stopgap, what's actually needed is a burning out of the hideous policies of the last 12 years and a solid return to a more socialist approach to government.

Re: AI Crap

#229

As with much of this author's content this is a strong opinion that lacks nuance, but I basically agree with the fundamental assertion: that the lasting impact of this AI bubble will be to further centralise power, taking it away from workers. My hope is that a desire for authenticity prevents this from happening – whether that's a strong bias towards human content creators, towards speaking to a human on the phone f…

Couple thus with the expectation of everyone carrying a phone at all times:

1 in Italy booking a train ride without providing your phone number, email and tessera sanitaria, proved a challenge last month

2 civid required us to carry our green pass everywhere (I'm not anti vaxx)

3 get stopped on some countries (like US) at a border and unable to present a phone for search might deny you entry.

The whole affair was predicted already 50-70 years ago. Jacques Ellul's La Technique is a great comprehensive read on this idiocy

Re: AI Crap

#230
post #63

As with much of this author's content this is a strong opinion that lacks nuance, but I basically agree with the fundamental assertion: that the lasting impact of this AI bubble will be to further centralise power, taking it away from workers. My hope is that a desire for authenticity prevents this from happening – whether that's a strong bias towards human content creators, towards speaking to a human on the phone f…

> Unfortunately, I suspect we will get a two-tiered system, where the "middle class" (whether that's disappearing is another question) can afford human content/human support/etc, and the working class are forced to endure poor experiences with AI generated content and so on I’m imagining world where companies like Netflix and Spotify introduce dirt-cheap subscription tiers that are populate with AI generated content,…

That’s already how Netflix works - shitty mass-produced content.

All good movies/shows are elsewhere and usually “for rent”. Anything IMDB top 100 is for rent, not included in any subscription.

Post reply on HN