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Chatbots are not the future

wattenberger.com

41–50 of 156 posts

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#41
post #15

> When I go up the mountain to ask the ChatGPT oracle a question, I am met with a blank face. What does this oracle know? I think if your attitude is that its an oracle, then you already have the wrong attitude for using the tool. Chatgpt is a tool, if you dont know how to use the tool, stop complaining that you don't like it. Imagine telling everyone scalpels are horrible tools because they tried to perform surgery…

Yes, sure. But you know what makes most of human history's output of art, music, literature et al great? Intent, attention to detail and self-expression . Broad strokes are broad strokes. I can procedurally generate levels all day long in a video game, but for me, they're never going to be as compelling or interesting as a lower-resolution and low quality textured game from the '90s or '00s where every single tree an…

Really?

For a writer, if you write out a plot, you can get the AI to actually simulate the character's responses and dialogue (even voiced by AI!). There, you've LITERALLY brought a character to life, each character is driven by a different persona simulated by a different AI, the quality of stories that will create, will annihilate what came before.

You want to write an adventure, but want to keep it unpredictable. Ask the AI for ideas, there, the adventure is now a true adventure, not a fake mirage created by the writer.

No need to describe scenery, no need to describe character appearances. Feed those descriptions into txt2img, and you get portraits that would have cost $1000/pic from top tier artists.

Generic and formulaicness, comes from having TOO MANY PEOPLE. Too many people involved in production, means the creator must dilute intent, appeal to wider audiences, and limit risks, to ensure costs are reclaimed. Once AI gets going, you'll see indie creators making full anime series, and releasing them on youtube. Because for an individual creator, even ad + patreon revenue alone would be able to sustain a comfortable existence, with no dependency on corporate or teams.

I thought people who love art, would be exhilarated by AI. I realized, the majority of artists don't love art. They love drawing, but not art. They love socializing with artists, but not art. They love receiving attention and income from their art, but not art. That's all fair and fine. But there will be people, who just want to create the best possible art, no matter the method, no matter the reward, and with AI, this latter group will outcompete the first, hard.

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#43
post #15

> When I go up the mountain to ask the ChatGPT oracle a question, I am met with a blank face. What does this oracle know? I think if your attitude is that its an oracle, then you already have the wrong attitude for using the tool. Chatgpt is a tool, if you dont know how to use the tool, stop complaining that you don't like it. Imagine telling everyone scalpels are horrible tools because they tried to perform surgery…

Exactly. I use ChatGPT for help coding sometimes and it's like 50/50 if I get an answer that is truly helpful, but that's infinitely better of a tool than I thought we'd have 1 year ago.

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#44
post #15

> When I go up the mountain to ask the ChatGPT oracle a question, I am met with a blank face. What does this oracle know? I think if your attitude is that its an oracle, then you already have the wrong attitude for using the tool. Chatgpt is a tool, if you dont know how to use the tool, stop complaining that you don't like it. Imagine telling everyone scalpels are horrible tools because they tried to perform surgery…

Yes, sure. But you know what makes most of human history's output of art, music, literature et al great? Intent, attention to detail and self-expression . Broad strokes are broad strokes. I can procedurally generate levels all day long in a video game, but for me, they're never going to be as compelling or interesting as a lower-resolution and low quality textured game from the '90s or '00s where every single tree an…

Procedural generation is miles away from what these LLMs are doing. It’s not just coming up with a random maze/map for a fetch mission. Right now, it can generate a novel quest, with all of its characters, come up with a unique set of mission goals and theoretically generate those assets and characters (atleast in 2D). Turns out, all this self-expression or whatever is cheap.

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#45
post #15

> When I go up the mountain to ask the ChatGPT oracle a question, I am met with a blank face. What does this oracle know? I think if your attitude is that its an oracle, then you already have the wrong attitude for using the tool. Chatgpt is a tool, if you dont know how to use the tool, stop complaining that you don't like it. Imagine telling everyone scalpels are horrible tools because they tried to perform surgery…

ChatGPT including the GPT-4 variant sucks quite terribly at creative writing, especially the kind of writing necessary to create long-form narratives like that in serial television and especially novels. The technology will certainly improve and it will definitely become a staple in the editor's toolbox, but it is so far away from being able to produce long form narratives well that it's not a given it will eventually get there.

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#46
post #15

> When I go up the mountain to ask the ChatGPT oracle a question, I am met with a blank face. What does this oracle know? I think if your attitude is that its an oracle, then you already have the wrong attitude for using the tool. Chatgpt is a tool, if you dont know how to use the tool, stop complaining that you don't like it. Imagine telling everyone scalpels are horrible tools because they tried to perform surgery…

Yes, sure. But you know what makes most of human history's output of art, music, literature et al great? Intent, attention to detail and self-expression . Broad strokes are broad strokes. I can procedurally generate levels all day long in a video game, but for me, they're never going to be as compelling or interesting as a lower-resolution and low quality textured game from the '90s or '00s where every single tree an…

> I can procedurally generate levels all day long in a video game, but for me, they're never going to be as compelling or interesting as a lower-resolution and low quality textured game from the '90s or '00s where every single tree and rock is placed with intent.

The popularity of Minecraft and other procedural games would imply that there is still a large number of people who value exploring the unknown generated content, even if it means it's not curated.

Yes the quality won't be as good, but you do get quantity instead. And the quality will improve.

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#48
post #27

> Text inputs have no affordances It has all the affordances. You can turn it into anything you want. Want it respond with json, check, it can do that. Turn a wall of text into a Python data structures, check, it can do that too. You can take your LLM text interface and put what ever api you want on top. You start with clay and mold it into anything you need. You construct a parser so that the way data is already con…

> Text inputs have no affordances

>It has all the affordances.

these are two different ways of saying the same thing

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#49
post #27

> Text inputs have no affordances It has all the affordances. You can turn it into anything you want. Want it respond with json, check, it can do that. Turn a wall of text into a Python data structures, check, it can do that too. You can take your LLM text interface and put what ever api you want on top. You start with clay and mold it into anything you need. You construct a parser so that the way data is already con…

Whether you want to call it an "empty set" or "the set of all possible sets" isn't really relevant to the authors point that an empty box has discoverability problems.

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#50
post #27

> Text inputs have no affordances It has all the affordances. You can turn it into anything you want. Want it respond with json, check, it can do that. Turn a wall of text into a Python data structures, check, it can do that too. You can take your LLM text interface and put what ever api you want on top. You start with clay and mold it into anything you need. You construct a parser so that the way data is already con…

But what if I don't know what I want?

A graphical UI can provide much more and much more intuitive guidance than a chat input ever will. And I say that as a big fan of Unix and the shell.

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