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This comment comes up over and over again and it's incredibly ignorant. To give just a single example, ai code dev has enabled people to make tools for themsel

by peab 27d ago

This comment comes up over and over again and it's incredibly ignorant. To give just a single example, ai code dev has enabled people to make tools for themselves that they didn't have before. I've made a language learning app for myself. Its working better than Duolingo so far, for me. Its not really public

centuryfall 26d ago
It’s really not ignorant at all when a large majority of these changes go untested.
georgel 27d ago
On the topic of translation/ language learning, I still find Google Translate better for when I need to type emails in Russian (my older family who only speak it) as far as grammar is concerned than what LLMs spit out.
- sznio 27d ago
  The transformer was invented as a machine-translation algorithm, later adapted to create LLMs. I think it's a reasonable hypothesis that a ML system designed for translation will always beat an LLM role-playing a translation system (assuming equal computing power and engineer effort). We're going to see is a lot of stuff people use LLMs for moving back to using bespoke algorithms solving the one specific issue. LLMs are just machine learning unlocked for the masses, where you can ask it "translate this for me", "what's the sentiment of this text", and it just does it. Any of these were already achievable before LLMs, they just needed a machine learning engineer to implement. I myself started an LLM driven project to classify and sort all the photos I've got. I just ask an LLM to poop out tags for an image. Using a proper algorithm for this is possible, but I'd need to put in some effort to actually get it set up. LLMs do make it easier since they can directly, instructively help you that set up, and provide an easy stream of training data to distill out a model perfectly fit to your usecase. I think majority of work currently going through LLMs is such inefficient tasks that can be solved quicker and better with a limited algorithm. You don't need a chatbot.
- sfdfsdfsd 27d ago
  I'd be surprised if Google Translate isn't powered by a specialized, Transformer-powered model we would now recognize as a "small" language model heavily constrained to a specific task.
  - fragmede 26d ago
    that already happened in like 2016
dca88 27d ago
Why is it incredibly ignorant? Where is he wrong? We have definitely lost the plot.
- juggle-anyhow 27d ago
  and where is your evidence of that?
27183 27d ago
> ai code dev has enabled people to make tools for themselves that they didn't have before. ...that sounds pretty worthless tbh. The promise of AI wasn't that you can bang out your own little half baked duolingo clone. It was that every engineer was supposed to become hundreds or thousands of percent more productive. The assumption being that things generally would therefore get noticeably better. We're seeing hundreds of percent more commits. We're not seeing that translate to any real world improvement of anything. That's the problem. Call me "ignorant" if you want, but back it up by showing what all this "AI productivity" has actually accomplished in real economic terms. Not vaporware.
- devrob 26d ago
  Out of curiosity, what real economic terms would you have to see to be convinced? Do you mean more earnings per share for corporations or real utility impacts on social systems (e.g., more new drugs) When I ask Claude about the AI ROI, it seems to cite that ~95% of AI PoC's are negative ROI but the 5% that do have ROI tend to have decent return -- my guess is mostly back office clean up to reduce expenses and increase revenue/profit. IIRC Uber claim their 1.5k/mo budget lead to no new value creation. FWIW, I look at the situation with similar skepticism. One argument you could make was what Marc Andreesen said with the hypothesis that "all the big companies get nuked", so no new valued gets created but the large market cap companies get eaten by thousands of little pirañas. Obviously, so far, that doesn't seem to be the case.
  - 27183 25d ago
    > Do you mean more earnings per share for corporations or real utility impacts on social systems (e.g., more new drugs) I mean real utility impacts. More reliable and efficient software, better features, etc. So far we've seen none of that. In fact, it seems like the opposite--more volume but a much lower quality product.
zombot 27d ago
Having an app means exactly nothing. How good your language skills will be after N years of learning is the actual measure of whether it's worth anything.
- peab 26d ago
  True, i agree. Which is why it will take quite some time for this technology to diffuse and for people to learn which apps really are good
globular-toast 27d ago
Are you going to be writing your own exam too?
throwawayqqq11 27d ago
Speaking of ignorance, how does your success story relate to the societal issues GP brought up?
- peab 26d ago
  It relates to software making my life better, as OP said he can't see any examples of this
gilrain 26d ago
> I've made a language learning app for myself. Its working better than Duolingo so far, for me. Its not really public On the other hand, famine is coming. Come back and read this next year. Was your dalliance worth these food shortages?
- fragmede 26d ago
  Hang on! What's the proposed causal chain from AI to famine here? Inference -> energy prices -> fertilizer/food prices? Or are you referring to the war?
  - nimonian 26d ago
    Climate change, most likely.
- peab 26d ago
  Food production is at record highs last time i checked, thanks to technology
layer8 26d ago
Most people would prefer an excellent language learning app to simply be available and ready for them to use, rather than having to come up with how such an app could best work, and to get an AI to implement it by themselves, and having to iterate on that. Just like most people simply want to buy nice clothes, and don’t want to become fashion designers and managers of a clothing factory. So far it doesn’t look like AI is making the former (readily available excellent apps) more widespread.
- peab 26d ago
  I think I agree. But it's nice to have the option. Furthermore, i think it's too early to see the results of this, as technology takes a while to diffuse. Since there are so many people trying to take advantage of the hype to make a quick buck, it takes time to figure out what is actually useful and what is not
- tetec1 26d ago
  As someone also building a language-learning app for myself, it's not too hard to create an excellent app right now, but the "readily available" part of your requirements is now 10x harder than a few years ago. Users are getting bombarded by new apps, so marketing an app, which was already hard before AI, is now much, much harder. I could try to market this app, but I tried that 2 years ago, and it was already essentially a failure. So I'm probably going to keep it for myself or just try to find a few users who like it and will use it for free.

by peab 27d ago

centuryfall 26d ago

It’s really not ignorant at all when a large majority of these changes go untested.

georgel 27d ago

On the topic of translation/ language learning, I still find Google Translate better for when I need to type emails in Russian (my older family who only speak it) as far as grammar is concerned than what LLMs spit out.

sznio 27d ago
The transformer was invented as a machine-translation algorithm, later adapted to create LLMs. I think it's a reasonable hypothesis that a ML system designed for translation will always beat an LLM role-playing a translation system (assuming equal computing power and engineer effort). We're going to see is a lot of stuff people use LLMs for moving back to using bespoke algorithms solving the one specific issue. LLMs are just machine learning unlocked for the masses, where you can ask it "translate this for me", "what's the sentiment of this text", and it just does it. Any of these were already achievable before LLMs, they just needed a machine learning engineer to implement. I myself started an LLM driven project to classify and sort all the photos I've got. I just ask an LLM to poop out tags for an image. Using a proper algorithm for this is possible, but I'd need to put in some effort to actually get it set up. LLMs do make it easier since they can directly, instructively help you that set up, and provide an easy stream of training data to distill out a model perfectly fit to your usecase. I think majority of work currently going through LLMs is such inefficient tasks that can be solved quicker and better with a limited algorithm. You don't need a chatbot.
sfdfsdfsd 27d ago
I'd be surprised if Google Translate isn't powered by a specialized, Transformer-powered model we would now recognize as a "small" language model heavily constrained to a specific task.
- fragmede 26d ago
  that already happened in like 2016

dca88 27d ago

Why is it incredibly ignorant? Where is he wrong? We have definitely lost the plot.

juggle-anyhow 27d ago
and where is your evidence of that?

27183 27d ago

> ai code dev has enabled people to make tools for themselves that they didn't have before. ...that sounds pretty worthless tbh. The promise of AI wasn't that you can bang out your own little half baked duolingo clone. It was that every engineer was supposed to become hundreds or thousands of percent more productive. The assumption being that things generally would therefore get noticeably better. We're seeing hundreds of percent more commits. We're not seeing that translate to any real world improvement of anything. That's the problem. Call me "ignorant" if you want, but back it up by showing what all this "AI productivity" has actually accomplished in real economic terms. Not vaporware.

devrob 26d ago
Out of curiosity, what real economic terms would you have to see to be convinced? Do you mean more earnings per share for corporations or real utility impacts on social systems (e.g., more new drugs) When I ask Claude about the AI ROI, it seems to cite that ~95% of AI PoC's are negative ROI but the 5% that do have ROI tend to have decent return -- my guess is mostly back office clean up to reduce expenses and increase revenue/profit. IIRC Uber claim their 1.5k/mo budget lead to no new value creation. FWIW, I look at the situation with similar skepticism. One argument you could make was what Marc Andreesen said with the hypothesis that "all the big companies get nuked", so no new valued gets created but the large market cap companies get eaten by thousands of little pirañas. Obviously, so far, that doesn't seem to be the case.
- 27183 25d ago
  > Do you mean more earnings per share for corporations or real utility impacts on social systems (e.g., more new drugs) I mean real utility impacts. More reliable and efficient software, better features, etc. So far we've seen none of that. In fact, it seems like the opposite--more volume but a much lower quality product.

zombot 27d ago

Having an app means exactly nothing. How good your language skills will be after N years of learning is the actual measure of whether it's worth anything.

peab 26d ago
True, i agree. Which is why it will take quite some time for this technology to diffuse and for people to learn which apps really are good

globular-toast 27d ago

Are you going to be writing your own exam too?

throwawayqqq11 27d ago

Speaking of ignorance, how does your success story relate to the societal issues GP brought up?

peab 26d ago
It relates to software making my life better, as OP said he can't see any examples of this

gilrain 26d ago

> I've made a language learning app for myself. Its working better than Duolingo so far, for me. Its not really public On the other hand, famine is coming. Come back and read this next year. Was your dalliance worth these food shortages?

fragmede 26d ago
Hang on! What's the proposed causal chain from AI to famine here? Inference -> energy prices -> fertilizer/food prices? Or are you referring to the war?
- nimonian 26d ago
  Climate change, most likely.
peab 26d ago
Food production is at record highs last time i checked, thanks to technology

layer8 26d ago

Most people would prefer an excellent language learning app to simply be available and ready for them to use, rather than having to come up with how such an app could best work, and to get an AI to implement it by themselves, and having to iterate on that. Just like most people simply want to buy nice clothes, and don’t want to become fashion designers and managers of a clothing factory. So far it doesn’t look like AI is making the former (readily available excellent apps) more widespread.

peab 26d ago
I think I agree. But it's nice to have the option. Furthermore, i think it's too early to see the results of this, as technology takes a while to diffuse. Since there are so many people trying to take advantage of the hype to make a quick buck, it takes time to figure out what is actually useful and what is not
tetec1 26d ago
As someone also building a language-learning app for myself, it's not too hard to create an excellent app right now, but the "readily available" part of your requirements is now 10x harder than a few years ago. Users are getting bombarded by new apps, so marketing an app, which was already hard before AI, is now much, much harder. I could try to market this app, but I tried that 2 years ago, and it was already essentially a failure. So I'm probably going to keep it for myself or just try to find a few users who like it and will use it for free.