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The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

theregister.com

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Re: The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

#81

Post by incone123 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #53
diggan wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I almost always (except if there is a big queue) customize something, because then it's guaranteed made at the spot, instead of the heated old stuff. And since I started using the kiosks, the orders are always right, and fresh.

A custom order used to be a hack to be sure you got a freshly-made sandwich and not one that had been sitting in a warmer for 15 minutes, but they make everything to order now. And they still fuck them up, often.

And many people are now getting delivery which means another 15 minutes in the delivery vehicle picnic bag.

Re: The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

#82

Post by Jensson »

mh- wrote: post #77
JKCalhoun wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read on then — the author suggests a 4th camp that I believe you (and I as a matter of fact) can agree with. "I propose a fourth: AI is now as good as it's going to get, and that's neither as good nor as bad as its fans and haters think…" I suppose I disagree with "as good as it's going to get" … but for the time being (this decade?) this might be correct.

Taking out the fact we're talking about "AI" for the moment.. doesn't it seem unusual to speculate that despite recent progress, it's just going to be.. flat from here out? (That's directed at El Reg, not you.) Hard to take the rest of it seriously with them taking a position like that. I can't think of a time that's been true for any technology in my career. Whether they were ones I found useful or not.

> doesn't it seem unusual to speculate that despite recent progress, it's just going to be.. flat from here out?

No? When new tech arrives there is always a bunch of low hanging fruit around so there is quick progress immediately afterwards, but then it flatlines relatively quickly and progress is as slow as usual again.

So its a safe bet that progress will slow down to the usual level sooner or later, and it seems to be around now for text models, as this flatlining happens faster the more you invest into it since you exhaust the low hanging fruit faster.

Re: The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

#83

Post by mh- »

Jensson wrote: post #82
mh- wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking out the fact we're talking about "AI" for the moment.. doesn't it seem unusual to speculate that despite recent progress, it's just going to be.. flat from here out? (That's directed at El Reg, not you.) Hard to take the rest of it seriously with them taking a position like that. I can't think of a time that's been true for any technology in my career. Whether they were ones I found useful or not.

> doesn't it seem unusual to speculate that despite recent progress, it's just going to be.. flat from here out? No? When new tech arrives there is always a bunch of low hanging fruit around so there is quick progress immediately afterwards, but then it flatlines relatively quickly and progress is as slow as usual again. So its a safe bet that progress will slow down to the usual level sooner or later, and it seems t…

Sure, slowing is natural for the reason you say. But the statement we're commenting on is:

> AI is now as good as it's going to get

And that's just silly, from my point of view.

Re: The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

#84

Post by [deleted] »

AlexandrB wrote: post #39
bachmeier wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On net I would much prefer to have ai around than not. I agree sort of, but on the other hand we don't know their true cost, whether that's the out-of-pocket expenses, or the pollution and high electricity/water costs that will result.

You forget to include the information pollution cost. AI slop is becoming inescapable in Google search results. So this new tool is completely obliterating the usefulness of old tools by flooding them with VC-subsidized crap.

[deleted]

Re: The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

#85

Post by Jensson »

mh- wrote: post #83
Jensson wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> doesn't it seem unusual to speculate that despite recent progress, it's just going to be.. flat from here out? No? When new tech arrives there is always a bunch of low hanging fruit around so there is quick progress immediately afterwards, but then it flatlines relatively quickly and progress is as slow as usual again. So its a safe bet that progress will slow down to the usual level sooner or later, and it seems t…

Sure, slowing is natural for the reason you say. But the statement we're commenting on is: > AI is now as good as it's going to get And that's just silly, from my point of view.

Why is it silly? Cars haven't fundamentally changed in the past 50 years, they have gotten a lot better but not in a game changing way, society still functions the same with cars as 50 years ago.

I see the same thing with text models, you can say they improve but not in a game changing way, and you have the same scenario as cars. It wouldn't be wrong for a person to say "cars are as good as they ever going to get" 50 years ago, in his lifetime he was right, nothing happened with cars that would force him to change his habits during his life.

But up to 50 years ago cars changed quite quickly, so you could say it is weird to say cars wouldn't start flying or such in 50 years, but here we are, nothing dramatically changed.

Re: The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

#86

Post by petralithic »

mh- wrote: post #77
JKCalhoun wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read on then — the author suggests a 4th camp that I believe you (and I as a matter of fact) can agree with. "I propose a fourth: AI is now as good as it's going to get, and that's neither as good nor as bad as its fans and haters think…" I suppose I disagree with "as good as it's going to get" … but for the time being (this decade?) this might be correct.

Taking out the fact we're talking about "AI" for the moment.. doesn't it seem unusual to speculate that despite recent progress, it's just going to be.. flat from here out? (That's directed at El Reg, not you.) Hard to take the rest of it seriously with them taking a position like that. I can't think of a time that's been true for any technology in my career. Whether they were ones I found useful or not.

Have you not heard of the various AI winters? Or the Gartner hype cycle?

Re: The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

#87

Post by petralithic »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #50
strict9 wrote: post #3

Interesting to see an opinion piece on the register pointing out 3 camps, none of which apply to most people I know who work in software development. Mainly that ai is a useful tool. Sometimes it is magical but has limits and is often wrong. It can be a great illustrator of sunk cost fallacy when working on very complex problems. But light years faster and more useful than googling for solutions when faced with a dif…

Read on then — the author suggests a 4th camp that I believe you (and I as a matter of fact) can agree with. "I propose a fourth: AI is now as good as it's going to get, and that's neither as good nor as bad as its fans and haters think…" I suppose I disagree with "as good as it's going to get" … but for the time being (this decade?) this might be correct.

Yeah, it does seem like progress has plateaued considerably. The leaps from GPT 2 to 3, 3 to 4, and 4 to 5 shrinks with each one, with 5 being particularly disappointing.

Re: The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

#88

Post by petralithic »

bachmeier wrote: post #10
strict9 wrote: post #3

Interesting to see an opinion piece on the register pointing out 3 camps, none of which apply to most people I know who work in software development. Mainly that ai is a useful tool. Sometimes it is magical but has limits and is often wrong. It can be a great illustrator of sunk cost fallacy when working on very complex problems. But light years faster and more useful than googling for solutions when faced with a dif…

> On net I would much prefer to have ai around than not. I agree sort of, but on the other hand we don't know their true cost, whether that's the out-of-pocket expenses, or the pollution and high electricity/water costs that will result.

There are lots of things people do that are much more polluting and less useful or efficient than AI, such as eating meat, driving cars, traveling on airplanes etc, the latter two particularly in terms of business use cases especially when we have video call technology and remote work.

Re: The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

#89

Post by fragmede »

Jensson wrote: post #85
mh- wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, slowing is natural for the reason you say. But the statement we're commenting on is: > AI is now as good as it's going to get And that's just silly, from my point of view.

Why is it silly? Cars haven't fundamentally changed in the past 50 years, they have gotten a lot better but not in a game changing way, society still functions the same with cars as 50 years ago. I see the same thing with text models, you can say they improve but not in a game changing way, and you have the same scenario as cars. It wouldn't be wrong for a person to say "cars are as good as they ever going to get" 50…

Tesla self-driving/Waymo/Comma.ai isn't perfect, but they're good at what they do. That's a pretty dramatic change, in the last year or so. You get in the car, and then don't actually have to drive it, the car does it for you. Sure there are some corner cases that still haven't been solved, but most of the time, I get in the car and it just does its thing for me.

Re: The air is hissing out of the overinflated AI balloon

#90

Post by petralithic »

jjmarr wrote: post #72
SkyPuncher wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also worked at McDonalds. You example is interesting because this specific issue came up often. Different people interpreted it to mean different things. The cashiers who'd been around the longest had learned to clarify exactly what the customer wants. Also, this is absolutely NOT a customer issue. It's a restaurant issue to clarify. Plain means different things at different restaurants, so the solution is to _alwa…

Every fast food place I've been to, a "plain cheeseburger" includes cheese. However, at every high-end burger place I've been to, "plain" does NOT include cheese. So there is a somewhat standard meaning. I have this conversation enough that I now call out "plain no cheese" and ensure "no cheese" is written on the ticket.

You're conflating two different things. A plain cheeseburger obviously will include cheese by definition. A "plain" at a "burger place" would mean a plain hamburger. Both are correct usages of the adjective "plain" because the nouns they're describing are inherently different.
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