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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

#91

Post by rty32 »

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…

I have to point out that the new M series macbook and Apple watch are immensely popular (and just to name two of them), to the point they change the established market -- Windows market share dropped below 90% despite being at around 95% for many years, and people who never wore a watch are wearing an Apple watch every day.

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

#92

Post by AlexandrB »

greenpizza13 wrote: post #35
neilv wrote: post #9

Right now, the main consumer uses of LLMs and generative AI seem to be for cheating at homework and their jobs, when quality is not a high priority.

It's hard to know if this take is meant to be taken seriously... it's so detached from at least how people on HN use LLMs. "Cheating at homework." Is a calculator cheating? Was using encyclopedias cheating? What about wikipedia? What about Wolfram Alpha? This mentality that one must do all work originally or it's cheating is not how learning works / should work. We should teach kids how to leverage all the tools they…

> Is a calculator cheating?

Yes if the point of the exercise is to improve your mental arithmetic skills. It's a bit arbitrary but it's not complicated. This is the same way that steroids is cheating - the competition is defined such that PED are considered cheating, so using them is cheating.

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

#93

Post by SoftTalker »

greenpizza13 wrote: post #35
neilv wrote: post #9

Right now, the main consumer uses of LLMs and generative AI seem to be for cheating at homework and their jobs, when quality is not a high priority.

It's hard to know if this take is meant to be taken seriously... it's so detached from at least how people on HN use LLMs. "Cheating at homework." Is a calculator cheating? Was using encyclopedias cheating? What about wikipedia? What about Wolfram Alpha? This mentality that one must do all work originally or it's cheating is not how learning works / should work. We should teach kids how to leverage all the tools they…

> Is a calculator cheating?

Yes, if you are supposed to be learning arithmetic facts.

> Was using encyclopedias cheating?

Yes, if you are supposed to be learning how to find, evaluate, and cite original sources.

> What about wikipedia?

Often not accepted as a source in school classwork.

> What about Wolfram Alpha?

Same, all these things are great assistants for quickly performing tasks you know how to do, but they are a hinderance to learning if you don't know. And if you are using them blindly you won't know when they are wrong.

Do you think a student learns anything by copy/pasting a school report from Wikipedia? If you were starting out today, you would become a highly skilled engineer if you relied on CoPilot? Or did you become a highly skilled engineer by devoting a lot of time, thought, research, and experimenting to your craft?

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

#94

Post by alangibson »

If AGI isn't created in the next 5 years, then the smart money is going to lose interest in this like they did Crypto and self driving cars.

There are serious discussions about multi-100B USD compute clusters and building multi-GW power generation. If we could replace all artists plus half of mathematicians and scientists tomorrow, it still wouldn't be worth the investment. Nothing short of summoning the Computer God will justify that.

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

#95

Post by senordevnyc »

HumblyTossed wrote: post #60
finolex1 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps improvements might fizzle out, but a lot of smart people seem to think they won't. The AI models we are using today are the worst that models will ever be in the future. We can't base our valuations on our current experiences with AI today. 5 years ago, just getting a computer to form vaguely relevant grammatically correct sentences felt magical.

> but a lot of smart people seem to think they won't. A lot of smart people _always_ seem to think won't fizzle out.

Where have they been wrong?

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

#96

Post by ben_w »

HumblyTossed wrote: post #60
finolex1 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps improvements might fizzle out, but a lot of smart people seem to think they won't. The AI models we are using today are the worst that models will ever be in the future. We can't base our valuations on our current experiences with AI today. 5 years ago, just getting a computer to form vaguely relevant grammatically correct sentences felt magical.

> but a lot of smart people seem to think they won't. A lot of smart people _always_ seem to think won't fizzle out.

Sure, hard to tell either way. That's kinda how bubbles happen in the first place, because if we really knew how valuable something was, it would already have the price to reflect that.

But it's also why Lord Kelvin claimed in 1895 "heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible"* and in 1897 that "radio has no future".

* don't ask me why birds were not a proof by example; we have the same problem today with regards to human brains being proof by example that human level intelligence is possible.

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

#97

Post by Hasu »

cogman10 wrote: post #64
j16sdiz wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you put crypto on the same list with ML. (and I guess you meant Web 3.0, not 2.0)

Nah, web 2.0 was a super hype back in the late 90s early 00s. Everyone was all about advertising their adoption and development of web 2.0. Web 3.0 was never really a thing, beyond some crypto enthusiasts nobody cared. As for crypto, I probably should have said blockchain instead. There was one point recently where everything was block chained.

They didn't walk web 2.0 back because web 2.0 won so completely that web 1.0 sites are noted for being quaint and charming callbacks to an older era.

Web 2.0 was "social web", wikis, AJAX requests, and the move towards SPAs. It's very much still the reigning paradigm.

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

#98

Post by throwup238 »

iknownthing wrote: post #86
crazygringo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 locomotive analogy doesn't quite fit. The customers of the locomotive company would buy the locomotives and then use them to profit. Are Nvidia's customers making a profit from the billions they are spending on GPUs? I don't think so, at least not yet.

> Are Nvidia's customers making a profit from the billions they are spending on GPUs? I don't think so, at least not yet.

Yes. NVIDIA's customers are mostly the cloud providers buying tens of thousands of machines each. The latest 8xH100 pods cost almost $400,000 so no one but Facebook and a few other tech giants can afford to buy tons of them without having customers lined up and ready to rent them.

If you look at AWS's reserve pricing, a one year contract costs more than the hardware would if you bought it up front. The on-demand pricing is even crazier, if you're lucky enough to find some capacity. NVIDIA's customers are absolutely printing money, it's their customers' customers that are paying for it.

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

#99

Post by danaris »

senordevnyc wrote: post #95
HumblyTossed wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but a lot of smart people seem to think they won't. A lot of smart people _always_ seem to think won't fizzle out.

Where have they been wrong?

Cryptocurrency? NFTs? The Metaverse? Google Glass? Betamax?

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

#100

Post by [deleted] »

iknownthing wrote: post #86
crazygringo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 locomotive analogy doesn't quite fit. The customers of the locomotive company would buy the locomotives and then use them to profit. Are Nvidia's customers making a profit from the billions they are spending on GPUs? I don't think so, at least not yet.

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