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At this point, I'm numb from all of the AI overhype. I was extremely excited about DALL-E and convinced myself that concrete fruits of the AI revolution were fi

by evouga 4y ago

At this point, I'm numb from all of the AI overhype. I was extremely excited about DALL-E and convinced myself that concrete fruits of the AI revolution were finally here... until a few seconds after I got the chance to try some queries myself. Ditto Copilot. The recent progress on generative models is a major research achievement, to be sure. That said, I'm not sure what it means it "terraform society," but so far AI shows no signs of making the same magnitude of impact on society as, say, the S-tier technological advances of the 20th and early 21st centuries, such as the personal computer, Internet, smartphone, or atomic bomb. That all may change if we get AGI that actually works, of course.

rebelos 4y ago
- version_five 4y ago
  - rebelos 4y ago
    Flagged for unsubstantiated ad hominem. EDIT: I saw you delete that comment. I won't point out how amusing it is that someone like you would accuse another person of being a troll.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- evouga 4y ago
  I mentioned DALL-E and Copilot in my post, so I'm not sure why you're linking me to a article summarizing recent high-profile research in large language models...
  - rebelos 4y ago
    You appear to have skipped over two links? And the LLM article goes well beyond DALL-E and Copilot. You should try reading it.
- trention 4y ago
  Is any of those links supposed to show something impressive? If that was the intent, you failed.
  - rebelos 4y ago
    My view is they illustrate what's on the horizon. But clearly we have a difference of opinion on the matter.
    - trention 4y ago
      It's behind the horizon. You people should learn by the history of the whole field that progress is always slower than the marketing hype, usually by an enormous gap.
      - rebelos 4y ago
        > It's behind the horizon. You people should learn by the history of the whole field that progress is always slower than the marketing hype, usually by an enormous gap. I'm going to quote my original comment: > seeds of AI that will terraform society and rapidly displace human labor over the coming decades
        UncleEntity 4y ago
        > seeds of AI that will terraform society and rapidly displace human labor over the coming decades Replace AI with any other labor saving technology and your statement becomes just a truism without substance. AI is already displacing human labor, just try to talk to a non-robot when you call a customer service line these days. It’s a selling point to have real humans answering phones anymore. Being fungible with human labor is what people are really talking about not some answering machine with “AI” brains that replaced the old-school answering services.
        rebelos 4y ago
        > AI is already displacing human labor, just try to talk to a non-robot when you call a customer service line these days. You’re right. And my point is that substitution due to AI will accelerate. That’s where the informational surprise of my original comment lies. You have a fatal misapprehension about how automation transforms a labor market. Higher productivity of certain kinds of work due to automation pushes labor supply elsewhere, making the “elsewhere” in turn both more competitive/demeaning (think Amazon warehouse workers peeing in bottles at the lower end of the market and Stripe engineers burning out at the upper end) and less remunerative. The terminal point of this trend is complete human obsolescence, but the displacement along the way is additive, will likely accelerate in the coming decades due to advances in AI, and is especially problematic because there are limits to the elasticity of the labor pool (i.e. its ability to adapt to rapidly changing conditions). I would furthermore predict that governments will be too slow to respond to this and that social upheaval will consequently escalate dramatically. Come back to this comment in ten years and see how I did.
Semaphor 4y ago
> until a few seconds after I got the chance to try some queries myself. I’m the opposite. I’m finally, after a long time, starting to get excited about AI. Yes, most outputs still suck and require a lot of experimentation and rephrasing, and yes, midjourney produces a lot of same-looking things (less freedom, but also less crap compared to dall-e). But wow, now even I, someone with no artistic talent whatsoever, can with just a few prompts create a cool illustration. My current discord avatar is a sloth drinking a cocktail [0]. Zoomed in, it looks a bit uncanny, but generally and especially at smaller sizes, it’s fine. I could not draw something even halfway as okay. I would not want to pay someone to do it for me as it’s of no big importance to me (I once paid someone for their Stranger Things as sloths image, but even that was just something they already created, not a commission which would have been vastly more expensive). Personally, I really can’t wait what the next generation will be like, and what it will enable people to do, what they will enable me to do. Yes, I’m very excited. [0]: https://i.imgur.com/0RwVNP4.png https://i.imgur.com/0RwVNP4.png

by evouga 4y ago

rebelos 4y ago

version_five 4y ago
- rebelos 4y ago
  Flagged for unsubstantiated ad hominem. EDIT: I saw you delete that comment. I won't point out how amusing it is that someone like you would accuse another person of being a troll.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
evouga 4y ago
I mentioned DALL-E and Copilot in my post, so I'm not sure why you're linking me to a article summarizing recent high-profile research in large language models...
- rebelos 4y ago
  You appear to have skipped over two links? And the LLM article goes well beyond DALL-E and Copilot. You should try reading it.
trention 4y ago
Is any of those links supposed to show something impressive? If that was the intent, you failed.
- rebelos 4y ago
  My view is they illustrate what's on the horizon. But clearly we have a difference of opinion on the matter.
  - trention 4y ago
    It's behind the horizon. You people should learn by the history of the whole field that progress is always slower than the marketing hype, usually by an enormous gap.
    - rebelos 4y ago
      > It's behind the horizon. You people should learn by the history of the whole field that progress is always slower than the marketing hype, usually by an enormous gap. I'm going to quote my original comment: > seeds of AI that will terraform society and rapidly displace human labor over the coming decades
      - UncleEntity 4y ago
        > seeds of AI that will terraform society and rapidly displace human labor over the coming decades Replace AI with any other labor saving technology and your statement becomes just a truism without substance. AI is already displacing human labor, just try to talk to a non-robot when you call a customer service line these days. It’s a selling point to have real humans answering phones anymore. Being fungible with human labor is what people are really talking about not some answering machine with “AI” brains that replaced the old-school answering services.
        rebelos 4y ago
        > AI is already displacing human labor, just try to talk to a non-robot when you call a customer service line these days. You’re right. And my point is that substitution due to AI will accelerate. That’s where the informational surprise of my original comment lies. You have a fatal misapprehension about how automation transforms a labor market. Higher productivity of certain kinds of work due to automation pushes labor supply elsewhere, making the “elsewhere” in turn both more competitive/demeaning (think Amazon warehouse workers peeing in bottles at the lower end of the market and Stripe engineers burning out at the upper end) and less remunerative. The terminal point of this trend is complete human obsolescence, but the displacement along the way is additive, will likely accelerate in the coming decades due to advances in AI, and is especially problematic because there are limits to the elasticity of the labor pool (i.e. its ability to adapt to rapidly changing conditions). I would furthermore predict that governments will be too slow to respond to this and that social upheaval will consequently escalate dramatically. Come back to this comment in ten years and see how I did.

Semaphor 4y ago

> until a few seconds after I got the chance to try some queries myself. I’m the opposite. I’m finally, after a long time, starting to get excited about AI. Yes, most outputs still suck and require a lot of experimentation and rephrasing, and yes, midjourney produces a lot of same-looking things (less freedom, but also less crap compared to dall-e). But wow, now even I, someone with no artistic talent whatsoever, can with just a few prompts create a cool illustration. My current discord avatar is a sloth drinking a cocktail [0]. Zoomed in, it looks a bit uncanny, but generally and especially at smaller sizes, it’s fine. I could not draw something even halfway as okay. I would not want to pay someone to do it for me as it’s of no big importance to me (I once paid someone for their Stranger Things as sloths image, but even that was just something they already created, not a commission which would have been vastly more expensive). Personally, I really can’t wait what the next generation will be like, and what it will enable people to do, what they will enable me to do. Yes, I’m very excited. [0]: https://i.imgur.com/0RwVNP4.png https://i.imgur.com/0RwVNP4.png