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AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

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Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#281

Post by theshrike79 »

leoedin wrote: post #207
jimbokun wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The staggeringly effective compression of LLMs is still under appreciated, I think. 2 years ago you had downloaded onto your laptop an effective and useful summary of all of the information on the Internet, that could be used to generate computer programs in an arbitrarily selected programming language.

I got excited about that, until I actually tried to download a model and run it locally and ask it questions. A current gen local LLM which is small enough to live on disk and fit in my laptop's RAM is very prone to hallucination of facts. Which makes it kind of useless. Ask your local model a verifiable question - for example a list of tallest buildings in Europe. I did it with Gemma on my laptop, and after the top…

Yea, it's not an encyclopedia of facts. Language models store the FEELS of the data in vectors (or angles in Gemma4's case, it's a cool thing) not the exact string.

But what you can do with local models is give them actual data and tools to search it. Download a copy of Wikipedia locally, give the agent a way to search it and BOOM accurate information without an internet connection.

Also "small enough to live on disk" is a bit vague, especially when models get super stupid super fast when you get to the smaller size. At that point they're just basically 40k servitors that can use tools and nothing much.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#282

Post by theshrike79 »

Zealotux wrote: post #4

I'm currently looking for sort of niche clothes for an event and it's the first time I had to give up on buying online because of the sheer amount of AI-generated pictures. Going to a physical store was just a much better experience, I can't recall the last time this happened, almost all sellers on Etsy are using AI for their pictures.

From what I'm following the GenZ and GenA crowd, there are specific subcultures who are moving more to local stuff. DVDs, "cyberdecks", actual mp3 players with no streaming, Plex/Jellyfin setups, etc...

The world is, at least partially, healing.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#283

Post by hansmayer »

theshrike79 wrote: post #280
hansmayer wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think there is that much value in memorizing rarely used, easily looked up information. easily looked up - we don't have that any more since Google decided to entshittify search. What you now have is not looked up information, as that would look the same each time you "looked it up" - instead of a quick 3-4 word search pattern you now write an elaborate verbose "query", and get a chewed up re-interpretation…

And this is why I pay for Kagi. It's in the top5 of services I cancel last if money is tight.

This is something I've been curious about for a long time now. I would happily pay their top tier, but testing their free tier did not seem to produce much different results compared to using google ? Or was I not using it right? Just typing in same stuff and literally getting the same list of results. If you want to share more, I'd be happy to know.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#284

Post by neals »

bandrami wrote: post #82
neals wrote: post #15

I had to code something on a plane today. It used to be that you couldn't get you packages or check stackoverflow. But now, I'm useless. My mind has turned to pudding. I cannot remember basic boilerplate stuff. Crazy how fast that goes.

This conversation keeps missing me because I don't think I've typed out boilerplate in like 20 years. Were people actually physically typing every character of the software they were writing before a couple of years ago?

Yes, I write a lot of things in notepad++ actually, every single character. It really feels like a craft and gives me the same joy as others experience with woodworking or gardening.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#285

Post by theshrike79 »

hansmayer wrote: post #283
theshrike79 wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is why I pay for Kagi. It's in the top5 of services I cancel last if money is tight.

This is something I've been curious about for a long time now. I would happily pay their top tier, but testing their free tier did not seem to produce much different results compared to using google ? Or was I not using it right? Just typing in same stuff and literally getting the same list of results. If you want to share more, I'd be happy to know.

"testing their free tier did not seem to produce much different results compared to using google"

So Kagi gave you ads, sponsored links, AI generated answers etc. as top results? =)

It shouldn't, or you've registered for a scam site. That's the difference. With Kagi it feels like I'm using Google from 10 years ago. On Kagi I can go "searchword -notthisone +thshastobethere inurl:forum" and it actually works.

You can also manually downrank sites in the settings so that they never appear in your results (as I've done for pinterest etc that are 99% crap, but have excellent SEO). Or boost sites with reliably good results.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#286

Post by hansmayer »

theshrike79 wrote: post #285
hansmayer wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I've been curious about for a long time now. I would happily pay their top tier, but testing their free tier did not seem to produce much different results compared to using google ? Or was I not using it right? Just typing in same stuff and literally getting the same list of results. If you want to share more, I'd be happy to know.

"testing their free tier did not seem to produce much different results compared to using google" So Kagi gave you ads, sponsored links, AI generated answers etc. as top results? =) It shouldn't, or you've registered for a scam site. That's the difference. With Kagi it feels like I'm using Google from 10 years ago. On Kagi I can go "searchword -notthisone +thshastobethere inurl:forum" and it actually works. You can a…

> So Kagi gave you ads, sponsored links, AI generated answers etc. as top results? =)

No, I did not register for kaggi.search if that's what you are implying.

This was about ~12 months ago, so no, the AI-generated summaries were not a thing you would expect to see at that time, outside of ocassional A/B experiments. Now maybe my expectation is different to yours. I'd expect I dont have to do much tweaking or downranking at all. My pre-2019 google experience had been roughly "i type in 3-4 words" and one of the first three links is exactly what I searched for. Kagi did not deliver that, much as I would love it to. But with Kagi relying mainly on google search index, it seems to me there is only so much they can do anyway, apart from users ranking and downranking stuff...which I am not keen to do...

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#287

Post by theshrike79 »

hansmayer wrote: post #286
theshrike79 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"testing their free tier did not seem to produce much different results compared to using google" So Kagi gave you ads, sponsored links, AI generated answers etc. as top results? =) It shouldn't, or you've registered for a scam site. That's the difference. With Kagi it feels like I'm using Google from 10 years ago. On Kagi I can go "searchword -notthisone +thshastobethere inurl:forum" and it actually works. You can a…

> So Kagi gave you ads, sponsored links, AI generated answers etc. as top results? =) No, I did not register for kaggi.search if that's what you are implying. This was about ~12 months ago, so no, the AI-generated summaries were not a thing you would expect to see at that time, outside of ocassional A/B experiments. Now maybe my expectation is different to yours. I'd expect I dont have to do much tweaking or downrank…

Actually Kagi uses Bing and Yandex as the backend, not google.

It also tends to surface niche sites more than Google for me.

It also takes maybe 30 seconds to downrank a site and you'll never see it again, unlike Google that will keep giving you shitty "review" sites, Pinterest etc as results.

Re: AI could be the end of the digital wave, not the next big thing

#288

Post by hansmayer »

theshrike79 wrote: post #287
hansmayer wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So Kagi gave you ads, sponsored links, AI generated answers etc. as top results? =) No, I did not register for kaggi.search if that's what you are implying. This was about ~12 months ago, so no, the AI-generated summaries were not a thing you would expect to see at that time, outside of ocassional A/B experiments. Now maybe my expectation is different to yours. I'd expect I dont have to do much tweaking or downrank…

Actually Kagi uses Bing and Yandex as the backend, not google. It also tends to surface niche sites more than Google for me. It also takes maybe 30 seconds to downrank a site and you'll never see it again, unlike Google that will keep giving you shitty "review" sites, Pinterest etc as results.

I know about Yandex ... but I am fairly sure I read the bulk of its search is based on googles index. I know downranking is not much work, but I just dislike the idea of having to work for it.
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