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I Received an AI Email

timharek.no

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Re: I Received an AI Email

#381

Post by brabel »

b112 wrote: post #278
throwaway0665 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin has one application where as there are multiple applications of LLMs. There might be mountains of noxious AI spam but it's hard to claim that Bitcoin as a technology is more useful.

So far, I haven't seen a useful application of LLMs. So far. I've seen things that are wildly hobbled, and wildly inaccurate. I've seen endless companies running around, trying to improve on things. I've seen people looking in wonder at LLMs making mistakes 2 year olds don't. Most LLM usage seems to be in two categories. Replace people's jobs with wildly inaccurate and massively broken output, or trick people into do…

> So far, I haven't seen a useful application of LLMs. So far.

What?! Whole industries have been changed already due to products based on them. I don't think there's a single developer who is not using AI to get help while coding, and if you aren't, sorry but you're just missing out, it's not perfect but it doesn't need to be. It just needs to be better than StackOverflow and googling around for the docs or how to do things and ending up in dubious sites, and it absolutely is.

My wife is a researcher and has to read LOTS of papers. Letting AI summarize it has made her enormously more efficient at filtering out what she needs to go into more detail.

Generating relevant images for blog posts is now so easy to do (you may not like it, but as an author who used to use irrelevant photos before instead, I love it when you use it tastefully).

Seriously, I can't even believe someone in 2024 can say there has not been useful applications of LLMs (almost all AI now is based on LLMs as far as I know) with a straight face.

Re: I Received an AI Email

#382

Post by bruce343434 »

atoav wrote: post #187

I use catchall email addresses. If your service is called foobar.com I will register at your place with foobar.com@mydomain.com If I ever receive spam addressed to foobar.com@mydomain.com that is unrelated to your service I know you leaked or abused my data. Result: you will get a DSGVO complaint and I filter all emails addressed to this address from my inbox. The good thing about using a catchall email address is th…

This is what I do as well, but sadly it seems my phone number has been leaked at some point... I'm considering setting up a private VoIP thing so that each company gets a unique phone number. Really nobody can be trusted with my data, it is a statistical inevitability that they get hacked or sell out.

Re: I Received an AI Email

#383

Post by orbitmode »

squigz wrote: post #334
cornholio wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but I'm talking about the good:bad ratio of some creations. I really have strong hope for AI, and that we won't regard it in retrospect like the multi-stage thermonuclear device, the landmine or tetraethyl lead additives.

Not to dismiss any of the negative aspects of "AI", but it seems utterly foolish to compare it to those 3 things.

[dead]

Re: I Received an AI Email

#384

Post by austinjp »

k8sagic wrote: post #292
tiew9Vii wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony Everyone is playing lip service to global warming, energy efficiency, reducing emissions. At the same time data centers are being filled with power hungry graphic cards and hardware to predict if showing a customer an ad will get a clock, generating spam that “engages” users aka clicks. It’s like living in a episode of black mirror.

I disagree. Datacenters save a lot more energy than they make. Alone how much co2 is saved when i can do my banking online instead of having to drive to a bank is significant. The same with a ton of ohter daily things i do. Is video producing co2? yes. But you know what creates a lot more co2? Driving around for entertainment. And the companies running those GPUs actually have an incentive to be co2 neutral while bit…

I think it's more nuanced than that. I used to walk to my bank, I can't do that any more because many branches closed. The bank now directs all interactions to happen via their app. In terms of emissions (and social interaction, particularly for vulnerable and isolated members of society) I think this is bad news.

But this is a complex calculus and - frankly - feels like a distraction from the issue. I don't want to get into the weeds of calculating micro-emissions of daily activities, I want climate responsibility and reduction in energy consumption across the board.

Re: I Received an AI Email

#386

Post by bowsamic »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #248
bowsamic wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is "just slop" though? A spam advert for a product is still an advert for a product. Therefore it's not just semantic noise, it is still an advert for a product, and therefore his point is invalid: there is an ROI and people will continue to be employed to do it

> A spam advert for a product is still an advert for a product. Therefore it's not just semantic noise, it is still an advert for a product Ergo slop and semantic noise. Companies that used adverts which weren't noise went out of business long ago.

Adverts have semantic content, they aren't noise.

Re: I Received an AI Email

#387

Post by bowsamic »

thomashop wrote: post #224
bowsamic wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm not being over-literal. Here's why: Yes, it could be that for you a given advert is irrelevant or not worth your while, but the point he was making is that it won't even be worth it for the advertiser to put out the advertisement because it will be noise for everyone. However, there is only one kind of noise that is noise for everyone: literal noise. So long as the spam is about something, it is relevant to s…

> However, there is only one kind of noise that is noise for everyone: literal noise. I feel like you're a bit too literal here. When people talk about noise it doesn't mean mathematically pure noise. A signal-to-noise ratio close to 1 is also colloquially called noise.

Addressed above

Re: I Received an AI Email

#388

Post by K0nserv »

atoav wrote: post #187

I use catchall email addresses. If your service is called foobar.com I will register at your place with foobar.com@mydomain.com If I ever receive spam addressed to foobar.com@mydomain.com that is unrelated to your service I know you leaked or abused my data. Result: you will get a DSGVO complaint and I filter all emails addressed to this address from my inbox. The good thing about using a catchall email address is th…

I do this too, barcelonaairportwifi@ is a prime offender and gets a lot of spam. I've also taken to using Fastmail's masked email support along the 1Password integration for the same.

Re: I Received an AI Email

#389

Post by fbrusch »

hippich wrote: post #368
fbrusch wrote: post #359

Could this be addressed with cryptography, digital ids and signatures? Imagine it were possible to add a signature that proves that I own some "human" identity (like a national id), or that I possess some scarce resource (like a github account with some level of activity) and that today I sent no more that 20 emails. If I want to conceal my identity, I can use zero knowledge proofs. If you don't sign this way, or if…

Something like hashcash? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash

yeah, hashcash is a very neat idea! but had problems like: how do you determine the threshold for the amount of work to be proven? there are values that makes it too expensive for a well intentioned human, and not enough for a bad intentioned spammer... moreover, it would induce economies of scale like it happens in bitcoin mining (spammers would invest in ASICs etc.) Signatures, on the other hand, allow to cheaply leverage other forms of "capital" (digital identity, github activity)

Re: I Received an AI Email

#390

Post by whiplash451 »

b112 wrote: post #332
whiplash451 wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is one clear (albeit somewhat boring) application of LLM: data extraction from structured documents. That field has made a leap forward with LLMs. Positive impact on society includes automated extraction in healthcare pipelines.

Healthcare pipelines! All well and good until hallucinations cause death or what not! And why is this better than employing a human. Or reducing complexity. It's not as if human wages are what causes hyper expensive US healthcare costs. This seems like a negative.

Right now there is no human, the data just goes nowhere (i.e. it is not used).

At some point we need to be optimistic and look for incremental progress.

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