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This isn't really surprising. Even the HN comments for ChatGPT/Stable Diffusion related topics completely drank the kool-aid for a bit. I saw absolutely unhinge

by mjr00 4y ago

This isn't really surprising. Even the HN comments for ChatGPT/Stable Diffusion related topics completely drank the kool-aid for a bit. I saw absolutely unhinged blanket statements like "ChatGPT is going to replace junior developers;" "Stable Diffusion is going to destroy the art industry;" "in a few years people will listen to completely AI-generated music playlists on Spotify." The hype has died down a bit and sanity has been mostly restored to the comment sections here, but holy hell, HN readers are in this industry, they should know better, yet so many were, and maybe are, still fully bought in. The average VC, or other manifestation of "fool with money", has zero chance. The macro economy aside, it's absolutely going to be a feeding frenzy for the entrepreneurs and grifters who can put together a convincing presentation on how they're making an AI Netflix that will show infinitely generated AI TV shows or whatever.

fragmede 4y ago
[flagged]
dmix 4y ago
I've also seen plenty of serious journalism and comments about ChatGPT destroying Google search, writing, journalism, art, education, and on HN the usual bits about countless programmers thoughtlessly copying/pasting buggy code into production without testing/QA/getting fired after the 3rd time, or even people shoving pills down their throat because they read some health stuff on ChatGPT without second thought. There's a lot of people getting hysterical about it... just like there's the usual true believer audience (see: new age/conspiracy/etc in the past and now crypto). Every major new change generates these extremes... and no its not unique to HN or crypto bros. Personally I'm skeptical things are getting worse because we still have the same reputation and social critique systems to keep these groups in check. But it's always good to keep on top of the current things these groups latch on to... including both doomers AND culty/conspiracy extremes.
jameshart 4y ago
There's a big difference between NFTs and most DeFi, and LLMs and other generative AIs. NFTs and shitcoins clearly had no actual non-scam usecases - they didn't actually enable anything genuinely interesting to be done that was previously impossible (except for breaking the law in some slightly new and interesting ways). But LLMs and friends... these bring things that were impossible, or impractical, or unscalable, into the realm of possibility. There will be genuinely important things built on this tech. Figuring out what is going to be properly hard work though. But of course, there will also be a ton of lazy ill-thought-out crap, too. And the danger is that NFTs and cryptoscams created a bunch of random lottery winners who think they got rich off their genius insight into how to apply innovative tech, but who actually only proved they know how to generate ill-thought-out crap, very quickly, at the start of a hype curve. So unsurprising to see them moving in. But without the obvious get-rich-quick scam opportunities, and the likely massive compute fees doing anything interesting in this space will involve, it's less obvious how long those folks will stick around.
p-e-w 4y ago
> "Stable Diffusion is going to destroy the art industry;" While there is of course a bit of hyperbole in that statement, I do think it has a lot of truth in it as well. Stable Diffusion isn't going to destroy art since art is fundamentally a human endeavor. But many of the creative professions commonly called "[something] artist", whose day-to-day work consists of drawing pictures to illustrate a point, making things "look good" etc. are absolutely going to be wiped out. Logo designs, cover illustrations for books and music albums, pictures for marketing releases and so on. No one is going to keep paying people to do those when AIs can do it faster, better, and at no cost. I wouldn't be surprised if already in 2023, AI had a noticeable financial impact on those professions.
- rib3ye 4y ago
  Totally. We commonly employ "tech artists" to do fairly tedious things in avatar asset creation (we build roblox games for brands). This is slowly going away thanks to ML tools being built internally by roblox.
- aardvarkr 4y ago
  Idk if it’s going to replace the “artists that make logos” industry, for example. I’d wager that the venn diagram of people with businesses that want logos and people who know how to use stable diffusion to get what they want is going to be exceedingly small. SD is just going to become a new tool in the artist’s tool belt that levels the playing field for geeks and allows them to encroach into the world of art. It’s just a new kind of artist.
- jeffreyrogers 4y ago
  You pay an artist to make decisions for you that you have no expertise to make yourself. Stable Diffusion and similar things don't help with that because ultimately what it requires is taste. The job might change and different people might be better at it than current artists, but you still need a human making that decision.
  - p-e-w 4y ago
    That isn't how commercial art works in practice. Executives rarely turn art decisions over to artists. What happens is that artists come up with multiple proposals, and executives pick the one they like best, usually after several iterations of suggestions from the same executives have already been implemented. Generative AI fits that process like a glove.
Dalewyn 4y ago
To be clear, I still consider "AI" as nothing more than overgrown MS Word macros. I have seen precisely nothing to contend this perspective. But going beyond that I've just felt something has been "off" about the whole AI fad in recent months. I wonder if this is the reason behind that dissonance; the absolute insincerity of the people now doing most of the talking.
anonzzzies 4y ago
HN actually is generally quite negative on AI/ML and are the first to point out that humans are vastly better than this so we have no worries. This is indeed generally true for people on HN. However, it seems like many here never talk or see ‘other people’ as I have said and keep saying; if you use fiverr or upwork, for the vast crowd of workers (as they are called) are far worse than stable diffusion (compared to the ‘artists’) or chatgpt (compared to programmers, writers, reviewers etc) now. Not only in what they sell, but also their communication about it. So this is now; soon these people have 0 chance if they don’t pivot.
tee_0 4y ago
Here’s the full picture. Since 2018 we have experienced a series of tremors in AI. We know that eventually the big quake will happen — it’s inevitable. Some people said the tremors were directly preceding the big one, most people denied the tremors were even happening. Now that the tremors are over, we have a new geography where things are different but thankfully chatgtp has turned out to be very advanced search. But that’s not all it is. And it’s clear that we are building the subconscious of what will eventually become AGI. People who are alarmed at these recent surges forward are justified. People who assume the worst are justified too. We can’t turn it back. And no matter when AGI comes, people will think that it has come too soon.
- roperj 4y ago
  > Since 2018 we have experienced a series of tremors in AI. We know that eventually the big quake will happen — it’s inevitable. You can say/type anything, including this. But you offer no actual argument why this is true. > And it’s clear that we are building the subconscious of what will eventually become AGI. No it is not “clear”.
  - kbrkbr 4y ago
    This. It’s not clear and I see a lot of ways the story could go differently. If the past is a guide, another ai winter is much more likely than agi. Intuition feels the same when it’s right and when it’s wrong and it’s not a guide to decide what is clear, let alone inevitable. Show proof/evidence or accept that it’s just an unfounded opinion.
    - tee_0 4y ago
      This is laughable. Proof? How could anyone prove that AGI is imminent in a mathematical way? You would need to know the mathematical underpinning of intelligence and nobody will have that until after the fact. It’s more likely for a winter? Dude, you either think AGI is inevitable or not. I never said how many winters are between there and now. But the idea of a winter now is completely insane. What is it precisely about the past 6 months that indicates a coming winter? Show proof or evidence. Lol. The evidence is clear as day. The indicators and heuristics. Look at what software did 20 years ago and look at what it does now you fool.
ActorNightly 4y ago
>ChatGPT is going to replace junior developers Funny enough, when chatgpt was released on the first day, I managed to get in and posted the interview questions we used to ask at Amazon, both the behavioral and coding, and forwarded responses to my past manager asking if he would hire this person. Manager said, and I quote, "Yes, guy sounds very competent"

by mjr00 4y ago

fragmede 4y ago

[flagged]

dmix 4y ago

I've also seen plenty of serious journalism and comments about ChatGPT destroying Google search, writing, journalism, art, education, and on HN the usual bits about countless programmers thoughtlessly copying/pasting buggy code into production without testing/QA/getting fired after the 3rd time, or even people shoving pills down their throat because they read some health stuff on ChatGPT without second thought. There's a lot of people getting hysterical about it... just like there's the usual true believer audience (see: new age/conspiracy/etc in the past and now crypto). Every major new change generates these extremes... and no its not unique to HN or crypto bros. Personally I'm skeptical things are getting worse because we still have the same reputation and social critique systems to keep these groups in check. But it's always good to keep on top of the current things these groups latch on to... including both doomers AND culty/conspiracy extremes.

jameshart 4y ago

There's a big difference between NFTs and most DeFi, and LLMs and other generative AIs. NFTs and shitcoins clearly had no actual non-scam usecases - they didn't actually enable anything genuinely interesting to be done that was previously impossible (except for breaking the law in some slightly new and interesting ways). But LLMs and friends... these bring things that were impossible, or impractical, or unscalable, into the realm of possibility. There will be genuinely important things built on this tech. Figuring out what is going to be properly hard work though. But of course, there will also be a ton of lazy ill-thought-out crap, too. And the danger is that NFTs and cryptoscams created a bunch of random lottery winners who think they got rich off their genius insight into how to apply innovative tech, but who actually only proved they know how to generate ill-thought-out crap, very quickly, at the start of a hype curve. So unsurprising to see them moving in. But without the obvious get-rich-quick scam opportunities, and the likely massive compute fees doing anything interesting in this space will involve, it's less obvious how long those folks will stick around.

p-e-w 4y ago

> "Stable Diffusion is going to destroy the art industry;" While there is of course a bit of hyperbole in that statement, I do think it has a lot of truth in it as well. Stable Diffusion isn't going to destroy art since art is fundamentally a human endeavor. But many of the creative professions commonly called "[something] artist", whose day-to-day work consists of drawing pictures to illustrate a point, making things "look good" etc. are absolutely going to be wiped out. Logo designs, cover illustrations for books and music albums, pictures for marketing releases and so on. No one is going to keep paying people to do those when AIs can do it faster, better, and at no cost. I wouldn't be surprised if already in 2023, AI had a noticeable financial impact on those professions.

rib3ye 4y ago
Totally. We commonly employ "tech artists" to do fairly tedious things in avatar asset creation (we build roblox games for brands). This is slowly going away thanks to ML tools being built internally by roblox.
aardvarkr 4y ago
Idk if it’s going to replace the “artists that make logos” industry, for example. I’d wager that the venn diagram of people with businesses that want logos and people who know how to use stable diffusion to get what they want is going to be exceedingly small. SD is just going to become a new tool in the artist’s tool belt that levels the playing field for geeks and allows them to encroach into the world of art. It’s just a new kind of artist.
jeffreyrogers 4y ago
You pay an artist to make decisions for you that you have no expertise to make yourself. Stable Diffusion and similar things don't help with that because ultimately what it requires is taste. The job might change and different people might be better at it than current artists, but you still need a human making that decision.
- p-e-w 4y ago
  That isn't how commercial art works in practice. Executives rarely turn art decisions over to artists. What happens is that artists come up with multiple proposals, and executives pick the one they like best, usually after several iterations of suggestions from the same executives have already been implemented. Generative AI fits that process like a glove.

Dalewyn 4y ago

To be clear, I still consider "AI" as nothing more than overgrown MS Word macros. I have seen precisely nothing to contend this perspective. But going beyond that I've just felt something has been "off" about the whole AI fad in recent months. I wonder if this is the reason behind that dissonance; the absolute insincerity of the people now doing most of the talking.

anonzzzies 4y ago

HN actually is generally quite negative on AI/ML and are the first to point out that humans are vastly better than this so we have no worries. This is indeed generally true for people on HN. However, it seems like many here never talk or see ‘other people’ as I have said and keep saying; if you use fiverr or upwork, for the vast crowd of workers (as they are called) are far worse than stable diffusion (compared to the ‘artists’) or chatgpt (compared to programmers, writers, reviewers etc) now. Not only in what they sell, but also their communication about it. So this is now; soon these people have 0 chance if they don’t pivot.

tee_0 4y ago

Here’s the full picture. Since 2018 we have experienced a series of tremors in AI. We know that eventually the big quake will happen — it’s inevitable. Some people said the tremors were directly preceding the big one, most people denied the tremors were even happening. Now that the tremors are over, we have a new geography where things are different but thankfully chatgtp has turned out to be very advanced search. But that’s not all it is. And it’s clear that we are building the subconscious of what will eventually become AGI. People who are alarmed at these recent surges forward are justified. People who assume the worst are justified too. We can’t turn it back. And no matter when AGI comes, people will think that it has come too soon.

roperj 4y ago
> Since 2018 we have experienced a series of tremors in AI. We know that eventually the big quake will happen — it’s inevitable. You can say/type anything, including this. But you offer no actual argument why this is true. > And it’s clear that we are building the subconscious of what will eventually become AGI. No it is not “clear”.
- kbrkbr 4y ago
  This. It’s not clear and I see a lot of ways the story could go differently. If the past is a guide, another ai winter is much more likely than agi. Intuition feels the same when it’s right and when it’s wrong and it’s not a guide to decide what is clear, let alone inevitable. Show proof/evidence or accept that it’s just an unfounded opinion.
  - tee_0 4y ago
    This is laughable. Proof? How could anyone prove that AGI is imminent in a mathematical way? You would need to know the mathematical underpinning of intelligence and nobody will have that until after the fact. It’s more likely for a winter? Dude, you either think AGI is inevitable or not. I never said how many winters are between there and now. But the idea of a winter now is completely insane. What is it precisely about the past 6 months that indicates a coming winter? Show proof or evidence. Lol. The evidence is clear as day. The indicators and heuristics. Look at what software did 20 years ago and look at what it does now you fool.

ActorNightly 4y ago

>ChatGPT is going to replace junior developers Funny enough, when chatgpt was released on the first day, I managed to get in and posted the interview questions we used to ask at Amazon, both the behavioral and coding, and forwarded responses to my past manager asking if he would hire this person. Manager said, and I quote, "Yes, guy sounds very competent"