7 ms·

i legitimately don't understand this viewpoint. 3 years ago, if you told me you could facetime with a robot, and they could describe the environment and have a

i legitimately don't understand this viewpoint. 3 years ago, if you told me you could facetime with a robot, and they could describe the environment and have a "normal" conversation with me, i would be in disbelief, and assume that tech was a decade or two in the future. Even the stuff that was happening a 2 years ago felt unrealistic. astrology is giving vague predictions like "you will be happy today". GPT-4o is describing to you actual events in real time.

demondemidi 2y ago
Maybe you just haven't been around enough to seen the meta-analysis? I've been through four major tech hype cycles in 30+ years. This looks and smells like all the others.
- HelloMcFly 2y ago
  I'm 40ish, I'm in the tech industry, I'm online, I'm often an early adopter. What hype cycle does this smell like? Because it feels different to me, but maybe I'm not thinking broadly enough. If your answer is "the blockchain" or Metaverse then I know we're experiencing these things quite differently.
  - threeseed 2y ago
    It feels like the cloud. Where platforms and applications are rewritten to take advantage of it and it improves the baseline of capabilities that they offer. But the end user benefits are far more limited than predicted. And where the power and control is concentrated in the hands of a few mega corporations.
    - whimsicalism 2y ago
      > the end user benefits are far more limited than predicted How have you judged the end user benefits of the cloud? I don't agree personally - the cloud has enabled most modern tech startups and all of those have been super beneficial to me.
      - threeseed 2y ago
        Direct versus indirect benefits. Cloud is hidden to end users whereas other waves like internet and smartphone apps were very visible. AI will soon stop being a buzzword and just be another foundation we build apps on.
    - idopmstuff 2y ago
      This is such a strange take - do you not remember 2020 when everyone started working from home? And today, when huge numbers of people continue to work from home? Most of that would be literally impossible without the cloud - it has been a necessary component in reshaping work and all the downstream effects related to values of office real estate, etc. Literally a society-changing technology.
    - bongodongobob 2y ago
      No way. Small to medium sized businesses don't need physical servers anymore. Which is most businesses. It's been a huge boon to most people. No more running your exchange servers on site. Most things that used to be on-prem software have moved to the cloud and integrate with mobile devices. You don't need some nerd sitting around all day in case you need to fix your on-prem industry specific app. I have no idea how you can possibly shrug off the cloud as not that beneficial.
      - threeseed 2y ago
        > I have no idea how you can possibly shrug off the cloud as not that beneficial. I have no idea either. Since I never said it.
    - helicalmix 2y ago
      i feel like a common consumer fallacy is that, because you don't interact with a technology in your day-to-day life, it leads you to conclude that the technology is useless. I guarantee you that the cloud has benefitted you in some way, even though you aren't aware of the benefits of the cloud.
- TulliusCicero 2y ago
  And some of those hype cycles were very impactful? The spread of consumer internet access, or smartphones, as two examples.
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  And maybe you just enjoy the perspective of "I've seen it all" so much that you've shut off your capacity for critical analysis.
- samatman 2y ago
  Yeah, I remember all that dot com hysteria like it was yesterday. Page after page of Wired breathlessly predicting the future. We'd shop online, date online, the world's information at our fingertips. It was going to change everything! Silly now, of course, but people truly believed it.
  - homami 2y ago
    I am just imagining GPT-4o saying this in her sarcastic voice!
- kristiandupont 2y ago
  If this smells like anything to me, it's the start of the internet.
- helicalmix 2y ago
  which hype cycles are you referring to? and, after the dust settled, do you conclusively believe nothing of value was generated from these hype cycles?
cogman10 2y ago
People said pretty much exactly the same thing about 3d printing. "Rather than ship a product, companies can ship blueprints and everyone can just print stuff at their own home! Everything will be 3d printed! It's so magical!" Just because a tech is magical today, doesn't mean that it will be meaningful tomorrow. Sure, 3d printing has its place (mostly in making plastic parts for things) but it's hardly the revolutionary change in consumer products that it was touted to be. Instead, it's just a hobbiest toy. GPT-4o being able to describe actual events in real time is interesting, it's yet to be seen if that's useful. That's mostly the thinking here. A lot of the "killer" AI tech has really boiled down to "Look, this can replace your customer support chat bot!". Everyone is rushing to try and figure out what we can use LLMs (Just like they did when ML was supposed to take over the world) and so far it's been niche locations to make shareholders happy.
- idopmstuff 2y ago
  Remember when Chegg's stock price tanked? That's because GPT is extremely valuable as a homework helper. It can make mistakes, but that's very infrequent on well-understood topics like English, math and science through the high school level (and certainly if you hire a tutor, you'd pay a whole lot more for something that can also make mistakes). Is that not a very meaningful thing to be able to do?
  - j2kun 2y ago
    If you follow much of the education world, it's inundated with teachers frantically trying to deal with the volume and slop their students produce with AI tools. I'm sure it can be useful in an educational context, but "replacing a poor-quality cheating tool with a more efficient poor-quality cheating tool" isn't exactly what I'd call "meaningful." The most interesting uses of AI tools in a classroom I've seen is teachers showing students AI-generated work and asking students to critique it and fact check it, at which point the students see it for what it is.
  - delusional 2y ago
    > Is that not a very meaningful thing to be able to do? No? Solving homework was never meaningful. Being meaningful was never the point of homework. The point was for you to solve it yourself. To Learn with your human brain, such that your human brain could use those teaching to make new meaningful knowledge. John having 5 apples after Judy stole 3 is not interesting.
rurp 2y ago
Ok, but what will the net effects be? Technology can be extremely impressive on a technical level, but harmful in practical terms. So far the biggest usecase for LLMs is mass propaganda and scams. The fact that we might also get AI girlfriends out of the tech understandly doesn't seem that appealing to a lot of folks.
- helicalmix 2y ago
  this is a different thesis than "AI is basically bullshit astrology", so i'm not disagreeing with you. Understanding atomic energy gave us both emission-free energy and the atomic, and you are correct that we can't necessarily where the path of AI will take us.
croes 2y ago
GPT-4o is also describing things that never happened. The first users of Eliza felt the same about the conversation with it. The important point is to know that GPTs don't know or understand. It may feel like a normal conversation but is a Chinese Room on steroids. People started to ask GPTs questions and take the answers as facts because the believe it's intelligent.
- holoduke 2y ago
  But it may be intelligent. After all you are with a few trillion synapses also intelligent.
- LordDragonfang 2y ago
  I'm increasing exhausted by the people who will immediately jumps to gnostic assertions that <LLM> isn't <intelligent|reasoning|really thinking|> because <thing that applies to human cognition> >GPT-4o is also describing things that never happened. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/half-of-people-remember-events-that-never-happened/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/half-of-people-remember-events-... >People started to ask [entity] questions and take the answers as facts because the believe it's intelligent. Replace that with any political influencer (Ben Shapiro, AOC, etc) and you will see the exact same argument. People remember things that didn't happen and confidently present things they just made up as facts on a daily basis. This is because they've learned that confidently stating incorrect information is more effective than staying silent when you don't know the answer. LLMs have just learned how to act like a human. At this point the real stochastic parrots are the people who bring up the Chinese room because it appears the most in their training data of how to respond to this situation.
- helicalmix 2y ago
  > It may feel like a normal conversation but is a Chinese Room on steroids. Can you prove that humans are not chinese rooms on steroids themselves?
myfavoritedog 2y ago
[dead]
listenallyall 2y ago
There are 8 billion humans you could potentially facetime with. I agree, a large percentage are highly annoying, but there are still plenty of gems out there, and the quest to find one is likely to be among the most satisfying journeys of your life.
- helicalmix 2y ago
  sure, but we're not discussing the outsourcing of human companionship in this context. we're discussing the capabilities of current technology.
  - listenallyall 2y ago
    But technology has secondary effects that you can't just dismiss. Sure, it is fascinating that a computer embedded into a mechanical robot can uphold one end of an engaging conversation. But you can't ignore the fact that simply opens the door towards eventual isolation, where people withdraw from society more and more and human-to-human contact gets more and more rare. We're already well on the way, with phone apps and online commerce and streaming entertainment all reducing human interactions, perhaps it doesn't bother you, but it scares the hell out of me.

demondemidi 2y ago

Maybe you just haven't been around enough to seen the meta-analysis? I've been through four major tech hype cycles in 30+ years. This looks and smells like all the others.

HelloMcFly 2y ago
I'm 40ish, I'm in the tech industry, I'm online, I'm often an early adopter. What hype cycle does this smell like? Because it feels different to me, but maybe I'm not thinking broadly enough. If your answer is "the blockchain" or Metaverse then I know we're experiencing these things quite differently.
- threeseed 2y ago
  It feels like the cloud. Where platforms and applications are rewritten to take advantage of it and it improves the baseline of capabilities that they offer. But the end user benefits are far more limited than predicted. And where the power and control is concentrated in the hands of a few mega corporations.
  - whimsicalism 2y ago
    > the end user benefits are far more limited than predicted How have you judged the end user benefits of the cloud? I don't agree personally - the cloud has enabled most modern tech startups and all of those have been super beneficial to me.
    - threeseed 2y ago
      Direct versus indirect benefits. Cloud is hidden to end users whereas other waves like internet and smartphone apps were very visible. AI will soon stop being a buzzword and just be another foundation we build apps on.
  - idopmstuff 2y ago
    This is such a strange take - do you not remember 2020 when everyone started working from home? And today, when huge numbers of people continue to work from home? Most of that would be literally impossible without the cloud - it has been a necessary component in reshaping work and all the downstream effects related to values of office real estate, etc. Literally a society-changing technology.
  - bongodongobob 2y ago
    No way. Small to medium sized businesses don't need physical servers anymore. Which is most businesses. It's been a huge boon to most people. No more running your exchange servers on site. Most things that used to be on-prem software have moved to the cloud and integrate with mobile devices. You don't need some nerd sitting around all day in case you need to fix your on-prem industry specific app. I have no idea how you can possibly shrug off the cloud as not that beneficial.
    - threeseed 2y ago
      > I have no idea how you can possibly shrug off the cloud as not that beneficial. I have no idea either. Since I never said it.
  - helicalmix 2y ago
    i feel like a common consumer fallacy is that, because you don't interact with a technology in your day-to-day life, it leads you to conclude that the technology is useless. I guarantee you that the cloud has benefitted you in some way, even though you aren't aware of the benefits of the cloud.
TulliusCicero 2y ago
And some of those hype cycles were very impactful? The spread of consumer internet access, or smartphones, as two examples.
whimsicalism 2y ago
And maybe you just enjoy the perspective of "I've seen it all" so much that you've shut off your capacity for critical analysis.
samatman 2y ago
Yeah, I remember all that dot com hysteria like it was yesterday. Page after page of Wired breathlessly predicting the future. We'd shop online, date online, the world's information at our fingertips. It was going to change everything! Silly now, of course, but people truly believed it.
- homami 2y ago
  I am just imagining GPT-4o saying this in her sarcastic voice!
kristiandupont 2y ago
If this smells like anything to me, it's the start of the internet.
helicalmix 2y ago
which hype cycles are you referring to? and, after the dust settled, do you conclusively believe nothing of value was generated from these hype cycles?

cogman10 2y ago

People said pretty much exactly the same thing about 3d printing. "Rather than ship a product, companies can ship blueprints and everyone can just print stuff at their own home! Everything will be 3d printed! It's so magical!" Just because a tech is magical today, doesn't mean that it will be meaningful tomorrow. Sure, 3d printing has its place (mostly in making plastic parts for things) but it's hardly the revolutionary change in consumer products that it was touted to be. Instead, it's just a hobbiest toy. GPT-4o being able to describe actual events in real time is interesting, it's yet to be seen if that's useful. That's mostly the thinking here. A lot of the "killer" AI tech has really boiled down to "Look, this can replace your customer support chat bot!". Everyone is rushing to try and figure out what we can use LLMs (Just like they did when ML was supposed to take over the world) and so far it's been niche locations to make shareholders happy.

idopmstuff 2y ago
Remember when Chegg's stock price tanked? That's because GPT is extremely valuable as a homework helper. It can make mistakes, but that's very infrequent on well-understood topics like English, math and science through the high school level (and certainly if you hire a tutor, you'd pay a whole lot more for something that can also make mistakes). Is that not a very meaningful thing to be able to do?
- j2kun 2y ago
  If you follow much of the education world, it's inundated with teachers frantically trying to deal with the volume and slop their students produce with AI tools. I'm sure it can be useful in an educational context, but "replacing a poor-quality cheating tool with a more efficient poor-quality cheating tool" isn't exactly what I'd call "meaningful." The most interesting uses of AI tools in a classroom I've seen is teachers showing students AI-generated work and asking students to critique it and fact check it, at which point the students see it for what it is.
- delusional 2y ago
  > Is that not a very meaningful thing to be able to do? No? Solving homework was never meaningful. Being meaningful was never the point of homework. The point was for you to solve it yourself. To Learn with your human brain, such that your human brain could use those teaching to make new meaningful knowledge. John having 5 apples after Judy stole 3 is not interesting.

rurp 2y ago

Ok, but what will the net effects be? Technology can be extremely impressive on a technical level, but harmful in practical terms. So far the biggest usecase for LLMs is mass propaganda and scams. The fact that we might also get AI girlfriends out of the tech understandly doesn't seem that appealing to a lot of folks.

helicalmix 2y ago
this is a different thesis than "AI is basically bullshit astrology", so i'm not disagreeing with you. Understanding atomic energy gave us both emission-free energy and the atomic, and you are correct that we can't necessarily where the path of AI will take us.

croes 2y ago

GPT-4o is also describing things that never happened. The first users of Eliza felt the same about the conversation with it. The important point is to know that GPTs don't know or understand. It may feel like a normal conversation but is a Chinese Room on steroids. People started to ask GPTs questions and take the answers as facts because the believe it's intelligent.

holoduke 2y ago
But it may be intelligent. After all you are with a few trillion synapses also intelligent.
LordDragonfang 2y ago
I'm increasing exhausted by the people who will immediately jumps to gnostic assertions that <LLM> isn't <intelligent|reasoning|really thinking|> because <thing that applies to human cognition> >GPT-4o is also describing things that never happened. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/half-of-people-remember-events-that-never-happened/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/half-of-people-remember-events-... >People started to ask [entity] questions and take the answers as facts because the believe it's intelligent. Replace that with any political influencer (Ben Shapiro, AOC, etc) and you will see the exact same argument. People remember things that didn't happen and confidently present things they just made up as facts on a daily basis. This is because they've learned that confidently stating incorrect information is more effective than staying silent when you don't know the answer. LLMs have just learned how to act like a human. At this point the real stochastic parrots are the people who bring up the Chinese room because it appears the most in their training data of how to respond to this situation.
helicalmix 2y ago
> It may feel like a normal conversation but is a Chinese Room on steroids. Can you prove that humans are not chinese rooms on steroids themselves?

myfavoritedog 2y ago

[dead]

listenallyall 2y ago

There are 8 billion humans you could potentially facetime with. I agree, a large percentage are highly annoying, but there are still plenty of gems out there, and the quest to find one is likely to be among the most satisfying journeys of your life.

helicalmix 2y ago
sure, but we're not discussing the outsourcing of human companionship in this context. we're discussing the capabilities of current technology.
- listenallyall 2y ago
  But technology has secondary effects that you can't just dismiss. Sure, it is fascinating that a computer embedded into a mechanical robot can uphold one end of an engaging conversation. But you can't ignore the fact that simply opens the door towards eventual isolation, where people withdraw from society more and more and human-to-human contact gets more and more rare. We're already well on the way, with phone apps and online commerce and streaming entertainment all reducing human interactions, perhaps it doesn't bother you, but it scares the hell out of me.