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The Generative AI Con

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Re: The Generative AI Con

#291

Post by Piskvorrr »

lukevp wrote: post #12

I’m a little shocked at how much negativity there is around LLMs among developers. It’s a new tool that requires some learning, and it’s sometimes not so great, but if you’ve used an IDE with real coding assistance built in (eg. VS Code in Edit with Copilot mode - NOT Chat mode, using Claude 3.5), it’s honestly not much worse than a junior dev and 100x faster. And if the code is bad you throw it away and try again 10…

So, in essence, it's now incrementally better than a templating script (except when worse), but Have Faith, it will be Better Soon. TBH, that's the same song that's been on repeat since the Dartmouth Workshop. In 1956. Jam yesterday and jam tomorrow, never any jam today.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#292

Post by jcgrillo »

skydhash wrote: post #271
jcgrillo wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. There's obviously been a precipitous drop in the sticker price, but has there really been a concomitant efficiency increase? It's hard to believe the sticker price these companies are charging has anything to do with reality given how massively they're subsidized (free Azure compute, billions upon billions in cash, etc). Is this efficiency trend real? Do you know of any data demonstrating it?

People are comparing the current rush to the investments made in the early days of the internet while (purposely?) forgetting how expensive access to it was back then. Not saying that AI companies should make a profit today, but I don't see or hear that AI usage is becoming essentials in any way or form.

Yeah that's the big problem. The Internet (e-commerce, specifically) is an obviously good idea. Technologies which facilitate it are profitable because they participate in an ecosystem which is self sustaining. Brick and mortar businesses have something to gain by investing in an online presence. As far as I can tell, there's nothing similar with AI. The speech to text technology in my phone that I'm using right now to write this post is cool but it's not a killer app in the same way that an online shopping cart is.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#293

Post by hnthrow90348765 »

levkk wrote: post #91

If my Android (or IPhone) disappeared tomorrow, I would feel like I time traveled back a century. If Google search was gone, I wouldn't be able to do my job anymore. If the cloud disappeared, I wouldn't be able to build apps anymore. There are no workarounds, unless you feel like going to a library...? If ChatGPT disappeared tomorrow (or derivatives like Copilot, etc.), I would be mildly inconvenienced. Then I'd go b…

If Google search disappeared and ChatGPT was still around, you could replace Google search with ChatGPT and still do your job

That's why it's not a completely product hype driven bubble since there is a useful product there

Re: The Generative AI Con

#294

Post by smeeger »

anothermathbozo wrote: post #3

This is one of the most tilted pieces I’ve ever read. For months Ed has predicted The AI Bubble will burst “any day now” frequently citing ai company’s revenue as a sign the product is not viable and the valuations are too high. The valuations seem to be primarily based on the R&D progress instead of on a theory that widespread adoption of the existing product will experience an uptick. The current landscape imho sho…

hes missing a critical insight which is that this is being treated as an arms race now. the money will keep coming for a lot longer than it should.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#295

Post by lblume »

card_zero wrote: post #267
petesergeant wrote: post #139

Article is a motte-and-bailey[0] argument. Bailey (the clickbait): “Generative AI is a con!!” Motte (narrow defendable argument): OpenAI and Anthropic have not shown that building a proprietary model and selling inference is a sustainable business. 0: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

I see, so whenever anybody states their position tersely, I can accuse them of using a motte-and-bailey argument, and force them to be so pedantic and long winded that their point get lost in the weeds. Unless I like what they're saying, of course. I'll keep it in mind!

These two are completely different statements, though.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#296

Post by card_zero »

lblume wrote: post #295
card_zero wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see, so whenever anybody states their position tersely, I can accuse them of using a motte-and-bailey argument, and force them to be so pedantic and long winded that their point get lost in the weeds. Unless I like what they're saying, of course. I'll keep it in mind!

These two are completely different statements, though.

I thought they were fairly similar. I suppose there's the question whether it's a sincere misdirection.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#297

Post by vonneumannstan »

levkk wrote: post #91

If my Android (or IPhone) disappeared tomorrow, I would feel like I time traveled back a century. If Google search was gone, I wouldn't be able to do my job anymore. If the cloud disappeared, I wouldn't be able to build apps anymore. There are no workarounds, unless you feel like going to a library...? If ChatGPT disappeared tomorrow (or derivatives like Copilot, etc.), I would be mildly inconvenienced. Then I'd go b…

>If ChatGPT disappeared tomorrow (or derivatives like Copilot, etc.), I would be mildly inconvenienced. Then I'd go back to reading docs, writing code slightly slower and carry on.

Except this is exactly what you would do if Google disappeared and did before Google existed. You're applying different standards.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#298

Post by vonneumannstan »

lukevp wrote: post #12

I’m a little shocked at how much negativity there is around LLMs among developers. It’s a new tool that requires some learning, and it’s sometimes not so great, but if you’ve used an IDE with real coding assistance built in (eg. VS Code in Edit with Copilot mode - NOT Chat mode, using Claude 3.5), it’s honestly not much worse than a junior dev and 100x faster. And if the code is bad you throw it away and try again 10…

It's just status anxiety. Mid engineers go on and on claiming theres literally no value from LLMs even possible in principle while top tier people are using them as force multipliers.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#299

Post by rpcope1 »

levkk wrote: post #91

If my Android (or IPhone) disappeared tomorrow, I would feel like I time traveled back a century. If Google search was gone, I wouldn't be able to do my job anymore. If the cloud disappeared, I wouldn't be able to build apps anymore. There are no workarounds, unless you feel like going to a library...? If ChatGPT disappeared tomorrow (or derivatives like Copilot, etc.), I would be mildly inconvenienced. Then I'd go b…

I agree (mostly), but

> If the cloud disappeared, I wouldn't be able to build apps anymore.

Seems rather hyperbolic. Colos and shared hosting were a thing long before the cloud craze, and still continue to be a thing. I figure if nothing else a lot of people would go back to the still relatively low touch environment of uploading PHP or CGI scripts, which honestly seems like a pleasant change these days.

Re: The Generative AI Con

#300

Post by godelski »

hoseja wrote: post #236
whatshisface wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally it was thought to have shortened a very expensive war, and may have prevented the USSR from taking over Europe by leveraging its unquestioned postwar conventional forces advantage.

Well sure but how much cash did the MaPr corp. make selling their new and improved model implosion-type-u-235?

I don't know how to tell you this, but the government isn't a business and has completely different objectives and operating conditions
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