Live data from Hacker News

Chatbots are not the future

wattenberger.com

71–80 of 156 posts

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#71
post #26
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not arguing artists are going to go away, just that story telling is going to become a lot easier. it also doesn't mean the content produced is necessarily painted with 'broad strokes' and absolutely doesn't mean its soulless. It means the barriers to entry for producing stories just came down a whole lot - akin to the printing press did for books.

But is the person using the tool an artist? I think this is an important question. If I give detailed instructions to a human ghost writer about a story I want them to write, I don't think anyone would say that I wrote the story. It was written by the ghost writer. If a piece of art is made by a computer based on detailed instructions, that art was made by a computer, not a person. If you are in the camp that you don…

In the early days of Pixar, some traditionalist animators claimed that Pixar was "cheating" because they used 3D modelling tools rather than physically drawing the frames. The traditionalists didn't see computer animation as a "tool"; they saw it as the computer doing the work of the animator. Were they right? Computers make making things easier. But the human using the computer is the real creator.

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#72
When it's about the future, limitations of current implementations aren't a strong argument.

ChatGPT can be confidently stupid, but what if it gets better?

You need explanations/affordances of what it can and can't do only when its capabilities are limited. If it really could do whatever you asked, you wouldn't need it. Just say what you want.

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not in this context of self-expression. Neither are intentional, both are broad strokes.

Technologically? Yes, you're right, very different.

But in output? It's still generative.

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#74
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…

> As an experiment, I asked chatgpt to write a business plan (one my brother started). The business plan was very close to what my brother produced, after working on it for a month. That's powerful, that's worthy of being 'the future'.

How much knowledge and ideas did your brother personally develop over this month in addition to the business plan? Being handed a working plan is sometimes less useful than the aggregate experience leading up to the plan.

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#75
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But is the person using the tool an artist? I think this is an important question. If I give detailed instructions to a human ghost writer about a story I want them to write, I don't think anyone would say that I wrote the story. It was written by the ghost writer. If a piece of art is made by a computer based on detailed instructions, that art was made by a computer, not a person. If you are in the camp that you don…

In the early days of Pixar, some traditionalist animators claimed that Pixar was "cheating" because they used 3D modelling tools rather than physically drawing the frames. The traditionalists didn't see computer animation as a "tool"; they saw it as the computer doing the work of the animator. Were they right? Computers make making things easier. But the human using the computer is the real creator.

Toy Story was not generative art though. Pointless comparison.

Compare generative art tools to other generative art tools.

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#76
Not sure I'm convinced - natural language is one of the most intuitive interfaces we have, it's also how most instructions in professional contexts are delivered. What current ChatBots are missing right now isn't radiobuttons for different styles but context. No one who just reads my messages can know what kind of style I'm looking for until they either get laborious instructions, or, probably better, they see some examples.

I'm guessing that training custom language models on a company's data must be one of the hottest things you can be working on right now if you're looking for VC money (if there's something out there that compares to how well StableDiffusion+Dreambooth works for images, I'd be thankful for any pointers).

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#77
Not a very convincing argument, your gizmo sliders and checkboxes or whatever aren't going to replace chatbots but only slightly extend them and really aren't needed if AI gets better over time.

Some neural connection to the brain that will interpret your thoughts is the only logical thing that will supersede chat ai, but that won't happen for a while. Maybe a connection to all your data will happen first so the AI will better understand what type of person you are and what you want, that's already probably happening based on past responses.

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#78
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 is a tool When you use a hammer or a drill, do you expect it to sometimes not hit/screw the nail? If ChatGPT is a tool for knowledge transfer/extraction, it can't hallucinate/lie to you/be wrong/make stuff up. If it's a tool for potentially discovering some knowledge that may be true and needs to almost always be verified by either a compiler or a followup "find me a reference/discussion" Google search to m…

Beyond the obvious fact that you can accidentally hit your thumb with a hammer or strip the head off a screw with a screwdriver, I’d very much like to hear about any tool for collecting knowledge that is perfect.

Web searches will for sure give you wrong answers. Even professors or other experts in a field will be wrong sometimes. Heck, even Einstein got some things wrong.

Your goalpost is in the wrong spot. Tools don’t need to be and probably never can be perfect. But that doesn’t mean they’re not useful.

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Perhaps the resolution to your cognitive dissonance is not to conclude that artists hate art. Instead I’d suggest that often, artists’ love of art doesn’t stem from concepts like “annihilating what came before” or “outcompeting hard.” Perhaps, like the parent comment said, it comes from self-expression — the pleasure, for both creator and audience, of the “mirage created by the writer,” to borrow your poetic term.

There is some competitive notion, for certain, since there is a lot of pushback on AI-generated art from artists.

Re: Chatbots are not the future

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not in this context of self-expression. Neither are intentional, both are broad strokes. Technologically? Yes, you're right, very different. But in output? It's still generative.

“Intentional” is a weasel word in this context. It means very little in terms of the end result. Humans making art is generative as well even all the way back to cave paintings which were interpretations of animals in nature.
Post reply on HN