AI Is Smoke and Mirrors • Hacker News Board

Re: AI Is Smoke and Mirrors

#81

Post by rsynnott » Tue, Apr 23, 2024, 12:48 AM UTC

bigyikes wrote: post #12

This article, like so many AI hit pieces, fails to make any credible claim against AI. This one spent far too long propping up a tenuous analogy to smoke and mirrors. Is current-gen AI valuable? Obviously. Look at how many people say as much and willingly pay for the services. Is current-gen AI worth the hype? No, not really. Current models are impressive but highly limited, as any user can attest (and as any hater w…

> What the naysayers always miss is exponential growth.

Exponential growth isn’t _normal_, tho. I think that Moore’s Law has messed us up a bit, honestly; there is a tendency to expect _everything_ to behave that way. And so far, with LLMs, it just doesn’t seem to be happening. When you double the compute, you double the amazingness of the LLM, right? Well, actually, no; based on current results there’s little reason to think that, and if that doesn’t hold your exponential growth is in _serious_ doubt.

> but also because the market is anticipating huge advancements in model ability

Markets anticipate all sorts of things which never, in the end, happen, remember.

> Current models are limited, but future models are world-changing

See, this is why people draw the comparison to blockchain stuff. “Yeah, the current thing’s a bit shit, but just wait for the next one. In the meantime, can I convince you to invest a hundred million in my robot tax advisor?”

> and we have every reason to believe models will continue to scale in this way.

Do we? I mean, to me it looks like it has clearly slowed down, already.

Re: AI Is Smoke and Mirrors

#82

Post by emodendroket » Tue, Apr 23, 2024, 4:13 AM UTC

yawnxyz wrote: post #10

That's a lot of words from someone who doesn't seem to have tried using these tools yet? The Hype is smoke and mirrors, but there are tons of real use cases where things were MUCH easier than before. Things like text to speech or image recognition previously required a team of 10 ML engineers a couple of years to build now take a weekend. It's smoke and mirrors to the "business world" because none of these translate…

I think you've misconstrued the argument being made. The historical analogy is kind of interesting -- "smoke and mirrors" was a real technology with genuinely useful applications, but also attracted hucksters promising the impossible. Is it really that implausible that the supposedly world-ending powers of chat bots might have something in common?

Re: AI Is Smoke and Mirrors

#83

Post by tim333 » Tue, Apr 23, 2024, 11:30 AM UTC

>AI’s smoke and mirrors moment - Because of course, AI is not inevitable.

Long term it seems pretty inevitable to me. Maybe the current LLMs are overhyped and there will be an investment slump before the next improved algorithm but long term it's here to stay.

It's probably a bit like the early days of electical power. Some of the early gadgets were no doubt rubbish but electrical stuff was there to stay and become a normal part of the world.