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Even Apple cannot explain why we need AI in our lives

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Re: Even Apple cannot explain why we need AI in our lives

#71

Post by next_xibalba »

thepasswordis wrote: post #13

It certainly feels like the AI bubble is popping. Code completion is a great use, some writing tools are nice, I love chatGPT for information lookup (while knowing that it hallucinates), ChatGPT/whatever is great for generating icons and some images, and it’s much better at writing in corpo than I am. But…Nvidia as the most valuable company in the world? $1B valuations for freshly minted companies? Radical changes to…

> It certainly feels like the AI bubble is popping.

I wonder how much of this has to do with 15+ years of the narrative of AGI/"The Singularity" being near. Deep learning seemed to really reinforce the narrative as it has blown away classical machine learning and succeeded in so many applications. It started to look like all of Kurzweil, et al's predictions were dead on. Particularly as LLMs took off.

Of course, we're now seeing the apparent limitations in very difficult applications like reasoning as LLMs have mostly been revealed to be a dead end path towards reasoning (with apologies to Blake Lemoine ;) ). And self driving is being revealed to be extremely, extremely difficult to solve with pattern matching alone.

Even the traditionally conservative Apple seems to have bought into the hype (though some of the applications will be pretty useful, IMO, after a few generations of release).

I saw somewhere (X I think) someone made the case that the latest generation of AI buzz has only created between $5-$50 billion in value despite investments measured as a multiple of that. I found it convincing.

Personally, I'm still a believer that AGI will happen, but I am convinced by Yann Lecun's take. We're not even on the on ramp yet, and all the bluster and hand wringing over safety threatens to kill or tragically stall the most important technology in all of human history. [1][2][3][4]

[1] https://x.com/ylecun/status/1662020967529435140

[2] https://x.com/ylecun/status/1801018194121118103

[3] https://twitter.com/ylecun/status/1791890883425570823

[4] https://x.com/ylecun/status/1795032310590378405?lang=en

Re: Even Apple cannot explain why we need AI in our lives

#72

Post by zombiwoof »

retrocryptid wrote: post #22
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #6

I felt invoking the original Macintosh tagline "For The Rest of Us" to describe what feels like a hastily shoved together selection of OpenAI API calls and some aesthetically tasteless diffusion models particularly strange. Not to mention the reveal was extremely strange and almost felt like they were not releasing anything at all for the first 15 minutes before they showed it in action, almost felt very self conscio…

It's as if apple had a pair of visionary co-founders who are no longer with the company and the people left are excellent at getting things done but don't have an intuitive understanding of what people want.

Correct but I would argue after Siri hasn’t improved in 15 years they can’t even execute to get things done

Hence the WwDC was no live demos and all “future promised” features we have seen everywhere else already

Re: Even Apple cannot explain why we need AI in our lives

#73

Post by pjc50 »

retrocryptid wrote: post #15

I know Apple is relevant because they have a lot of money. But when was the last time their products were relevant? 2008 w/ the iPhone? 2010 with the iPad? 2002 w/ the iPod? MacBooks in 1998? Most of my family uses iPhones and it's painful to watch them struggle with basic tasks. My mom tries to find out how to access gmail instead of me.com. My brother downloads yet another app to add metadata to pictures. No one at…

> So "apple intelligence" is just repackaging other people's stuff in a way that their users can digest?

HN really underestimates how important this is to billions of consumers.

Having said that, last year someone I knew went from following every Apple event to buying a Nothing phone (Android), because Apple were offering nothing new for unreasonable prices. The iPhone diminishing returns era is here. Even the US might fix the "wrong colour in chat" problem.

Re: Even Apple cannot explain why we need AI in our lives

#74

Post by hedora »

GJim wrote: post #34
thepasswordis wrote: post #13

It certainly feels like the AI bubble is popping. Code completion is a great use, some writing tools are nice, I love chatGPT for information lookup (while knowing that it hallucinates), ChatGPT/whatever is great for generating icons and some images, and it’s much better at writing in corpo than I am. But…Nvidia as the most valuable company in the world? $1B valuations for freshly minted companies? Radical changes to…

> I love chatGPT for information lookup (while knowing that it hallucinates) Hallucinates? I'd use the term 'bullshits' when it doesn't know the right answer. This makes it a dangerous thing to trust.

I use the phrase "compulsive liar".

"Bullshits" implies it knows what it's doing, and can have a positive connotation depending on context.

Re: Even Apple cannot explain why we need AI in our lives

#75

Post by AlexandrB »

tmpz22 wrote: post #19
thepasswordis wrote: post #13

It certainly feels like the AI bubble is popping. Code completion is a great use, some writing tools are nice, I love chatGPT for information lookup (while knowing that it hallucinates), ChatGPT/whatever is great for generating icons and some images, and it’s much better at writing in corpo than I am. But…Nvidia as the most valuable company in the world? $1B valuations for freshly minted companies? Radical changes to…

If it is a pop how can Big Tech walk it back? Am I overreacting here or have companies like Google and Microsoft pimped out their reputations in an irreversible fashion?

This kind of thing is not irreversible. Remember when Google tried to get everyone on Google+? A far more annoying product push than shoving AI into Google search.

Re: Even Apple cannot explain why we need AI in our lives

#76

Post by pjc50 »

crazygringo wrote: post #68
thepasswordis wrote: post #13

It certainly feels like the AI bubble is popping. Code completion is a great use, some writing tools are nice, I love chatGPT for information lookup (while knowing that it hallucinates), ChatGPT/whatever is great for generating icons and some images, and it’s much better at writing in corpo than I am. But…Nvidia as the most valuable company in the world? $1B valuations for freshly minted companies? Radical changes to…

> It certainly feels like the AI bubble is popping. Objectively, no it doesn't. Even if you think it's a bubble, then the bubble is just growing. There are zero signs of anything popping yet. Company valuations are only increasing. > Nvidia as the most valuable company in the world? It makes sense when you look at the financials. It's like back in 1800's when railroads were the new thing, and imagine there were only…

The Standard Oil of our time?

AMD ""just"" need to fix their software API ecosystem. Developers, developers, developers. Unfortunately I don't think they can do that even if promised a trillion dollar stock valuation. Not because it's technically difficult, either.

Re: Even Apple cannot explain why we need AI in our lives

#77

Post by thepasswordis »

crazygringo wrote: post #68
thepasswordis wrote: post #13

It certainly feels like the AI bubble is popping. Code completion is a great use, some writing tools are nice, I love chatGPT for information lookup (while knowing that it hallucinates), ChatGPT/whatever is great for generating icons and some images, and it’s much better at writing in corpo than I am. But…Nvidia as the most valuable company in the world? $1B valuations for freshly minted companies? Radical changes to…

> It certainly feels like the AI bubble is popping. Objectively, no it doesn't. Even if you think it's a bubble, then the bubble is just growing. There are zero signs of anything popping yet. Company valuations are only increasing. > Nvidia as the most valuable company in the world? It makes sense when you look at the financials. It's like back in 1800's when railroads were the new thing, and imagine there were only…

It objectively doesn’t feel like then bubble is popping?

Re: Even Apple cannot explain why we need AI in our lives

#78

Post by pjc50 »

gjm11 wrote: post #69
cogman10 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did big tech walk back crypto, ML, Web 2.0? They really don't need to walk back anything. If the features are too expensive to support and ultimately unused, then they'll just quietly kill them off. Otherwise, it'll just be another feature in the feature lists. Not something that really buys anything but also not something making them a lot of money.

I don't think I understand your first sentence. Big tech wasn't invested in crypto in the way it is in AI. For a few days Meta pretended they were going to launch a cryptocurrency, but that's kinda it. Whereas in this case all the biggest tech players are making a lot of noise about how AI is The Future and investing a tremendous amount of resources into trying to make their AI be The Future. Big tech investment into…

A better example from Meta is probably the Metaverse losses: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-66913551

Re: Even Apple cannot explain why we need AI in our lives

#79

Post by kirth_gersen »

The jagged edge of LLMs' capabilities makes it really hard to explain what it's good at, and therefore what it's good for. It can be genius level at one thing and then extremely foolish at a seemingly related task in ways that are hard to intuit. It is still early days and AI is improving at a startling pace. So, eventually even the floor of competency will rise above the threshold of "average human". That's my guess anyways. Asking what AI is good for is kind of like asking what a toddler is good for. The question itself is premature.

Re: Even Apple cannot explain why we need AI in our lives

#80

Post by ben_w »

thepasswordis wrote: post #13

It certainly feels like the AI bubble is popping. Code completion is a great use, some writing tools are nice, I love chatGPT for information lookup (while knowing that it hallucinates), ChatGPT/whatever is great for generating icons and some images, and it’s much better at writing in corpo than I am. But…Nvidia as the most valuable company in the world? $1B valuations for freshly minted companies? Radical changes to…

I see things at a slightly different angle than you.

Yes, there's a bubble.

Those things you list, I find it very easy to believe they add up to at least 3% productivity boost globally. A single tech doing this in one year (or even 18 months) before we really understand how to best apply it, is a radical change all by itself, even if we don't use it to speed up future growth.

The world economy is $109 trillion; 3% of that is thus just over $3 trillion per year, which is enough to justify NVIDIA's valuation… assuming they get to collect all the profits and nobody else manages any, which is unlikely given their hardware burns a lot of expensive (in aggregate) electricity.

I can also easily believe that this triggers a painful demand increase for electricity.

I hope it isn't economically dominant, because nobody is ready for that transition.

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