8 ms·

Why are people so confident about this tech? We've had years of underwhelming AI products--why is the hype for this so different? Is it because it's the most re

by boh 4y ago

Why are people so confident about this tech? We've had years of underwhelming AI products--why is the hype for this so different? Is it because it's the most recent?

fragmede 4y ago
Be however whelmed you want to be. The scale from 1-10 of home automation with an AI assistant goes from Luddite still using a simple dumb switch that cannot be hacked, to fully automated turn on the lights and heating when I get home, and user voice commands to run the house and boil water in the morning for coffee. However hyped you percieve it to be, the automated IoT future is already here for those that want it and can afford it.
- mellavora 4y ago
  I find turning a simple dumb switch easier and faster than issuing a voice command. Especially if the switch is conveniently located next to where I enter/exit the room. I think in the 80s they sold coffee machines with clocks in them which would start to brew at the time you set.
  - 8note 4y ago
    I really enjoy not stubbing my toes and banging my knees on stuff when I go to bed
    - kortilla 4y ago
      Invest in a lamp?
  - sockaddr 4y ago
    I dunno, I rather enjoy standing in the dark for 45 seconds while I toggle my phone’s wifi on and off and wait for my Hue app to try connect and then agree to a surprise 80 page EULA and a lecture about how Philips cares about my privacy so I can turn on my bathroom light to take a piss. If I could just flip a switch I might get used to the convenience and not really appreciate the whole procedure as much. Sometimes it’s nice to have a million lines of code between you and your lightbulb.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    Sorry, but the state police decided you are protesting against voice activated smart light bulb manufacturers and now deserve to get shot at like the Luddites.
- boh 4y ago
  It's here but not exactly a huge success: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-colossal-failure-on-pace-to-lose-10-billion-this-year/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-co... Although making a profit is generally a foreign concept in Silicon Valley, at some point just pouring money into things without an actual path to revenue doesn't work as a business model in the long term.
- bawolff 4y ago
  I think this is peak silicon valley bubble right here. Most people do not have home automation products at all. Not because they are ludites but because the technology is not evenly distributed and isn't doing as well in all markets.
  - tidenly 4y ago
    I mean we can only speak for our own bubbles. I live in Tokyo and most of my friends (20s) have some kind of automation in their apartments, mostly using Alexa or Google Home. Again, just another bubble, but its not all Silicon Valley.
    - bawolff 4y ago
      i live in canada. Smart thermostats and smart doorbells do seem on the rise, but i have never met anyone who actually has a home assistant. But all the americans i know seem to have one
  - berniedurfee 4y ago
    Not to mention home automation hardware and software is 99% unreliable bespoke crap.
    - sockaddr 4y ago
      Can confirm. My house is full of unreliable bespoke crap. Looking forward to a non-smart home next.
  - fragmede 4y ago
    Are you sure you're not just in a Luddite bubble? Philips Hue was released in 2012, 11 years ago, and the smart lighting category is estimated at $12.7 billion for 2022. For sure the future is unevenly distributed, but pretending it's solely a Silicon Valley phenomenon, when Philips Hue didn't even originate from there (though it integrates with Apple which certainly does) seems like a mistake that a Luddite or someone without access to Wikipedia and a map might make.
- jaclaz 4y ago
  >the automated IoT future is already here for those that want it and can afford it. And that can (is able to) mantain and troubleshoot it ...
abrichr 4y ago
Many (most?) people who try it (lay and expert alike) agree there is something qualitatively different going on. You could say it responds in a way that may be coherent enough to be useful in certain contexts. I am not aware of previous instances where this was the case to the same extent, although I would be happy to be proven wrong! I think it's fair to be skeptical of the economic utility in the near term, but cautiously optimistic about the potential in defining and expanding on what exactly it is that causes people to perceive it in this way.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  It just keeps telling me it can't do this or that. I think I asked who are the tallest whoever in some country and it came back and said that information is off limits. It's usefulness is similiar to searching google and reading the top box if it wasn't filtered. You can ask it for a story and it will give you a weak rewording of your prompt. There is nothing more meaningless than talking to it. It's a void
  - kanyethegreat 4y ago
    Untrue. I get a tremendous amount of utility. It’s generative (new compared to traditional search) and I think I get valuable responses for maybe like 85% of my questions. Incredibly helpful for navigating new domains (when you don’t know what you’re looking for)
  - Tv9m 4y ago
    Not sure if you meant this comment rhetorically or not, but try asking ChatGPT to do something useful like convert some text into JSON, or what conjugation of a verb you should use, or for writing feedback on an email. If you treat it like a toy it will be disappointing but it's useful as a tool.
    - imtringued 4y ago
      It's not very useful, unless you only want to write a single isolated class in Java. Every time I refine my prompt I get a completely different answer and often it just repeats answers it gave me earlier which wipes out improvements made in the meantime. It produces bad code faster than you can check it. When you ask it to do something simple like chess it whips out crazy illegal moves. "the omnipotent f6 pawn" is already an internet meme [0]. You might now claim that it is a language model and it shouldn't be able to play chess but this is a very real limitation that you are going to pretend doesn't exist later on when it is about "language tasks". If it can't follow basic rules like rooks only moving horizontally or vertically or bishops only moving diagonally which is purely defined by logic then how on earth can it possibly do something that actually requires complex reasoning? The problem with these large language models is that it gets harder and harder to notice the limitations, but they are still the same regardless of the size of the model. So every iteration you get to hype up more people about the same thing. They will make the same bad projections into the future like everyone else. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/AnarchyChess/comments/10yym4o/why_is_this_a_blunder/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AnarchyChess/comments/10yym4o/why_i... (Context: ChatGPT will play pawn f6 which summons a pawn out of nowhere, beating the queen)
Tv9m 4y ago
You can ask it why yourself. That might have something to do with it.

by boh 4y ago

Why are people so confident about this tech? We've had years of underwhelming AI products--why is the hype for this so different? Is it because it's the most recent?

fragmede 4y ago

Be however whelmed you want to be. The scale from 1-10 of home automation with an AI assistant goes from Luddite still using a simple dumb switch that cannot be hacked, to fully automated turn on the lights and heating when I get home, and user voice commands to run the house and boil water in the morning for coffee. However hyped you percieve it to be, the automated IoT future is already here for those that want it and can afford it.

mellavora 4y ago
I find turning a simple dumb switch easier and faster than issuing a voice command. Especially if the switch is conveniently located next to where I enter/exit the room. I think in the 80s they sold coffee machines with clocks in them which would start to brew at the time you set.
- 8note 4y ago
  I really enjoy not stubbing my toes and banging my knees on stuff when I go to bed
  - kortilla 4y ago
    Invest in a lamp?
- sockaddr 4y ago
  I dunno, I rather enjoy standing in the dark for 45 seconds while I toggle my phone’s wifi on and off and wait for my Hue app to try connect and then agree to a surprise 80 page EULA and a lecture about how Philips cares about my privacy so I can turn on my bathroom light to take a piss. If I could just flip a switch I might get used to the convenience and not really appreciate the whole procedure as much. Sometimes it’s nice to have a million lines of code between you and your lightbulb.
- imtringued 4y ago
  Sorry, but the state police decided you are protesting against voice activated smart light bulb manufacturers and now deserve to get shot at like the Luddites.
boh 4y ago
It's here but not exactly a huge success: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-colossal-failure-on-pace-to-lose-10-billion-this-year/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/amazon-alexa-is-a-co... Although making a profit is generally a foreign concept in Silicon Valley, at some point just pouring money into things without an actual path to revenue doesn't work as a business model in the long term.
bawolff 4y ago
I think this is peak silicon valley bubble right here. Most people do not have home automation products at all. Not because they are ludites but because the technology is not evenly distributed and isn't doing as well in all markets.
- tidenly 4y ago
  I mean we can only speak for our own bubbles. I live in Tokyo and most of my friends (20s) have some kind of automation in their apartments, mostly using Alexa or Google Home. Again, just another bubble, but its not all Silicon Valley.
  - bawolff 4y ago
    i live in canada. Smart thermostats and smart doorbells do seem on the rise, but i have never met anyone who actually has a home assistant. But all the americans i know seem to have one
- berniedurfee 4y ago
  Not to mention home automation hardware and software is 99% unreliable bespoke crap.
  - sockaddr 4y ago
    Can confirm. My house is full of unreliable bespoke crap. Looking forward to a non-smart home next.
- fragmede 4y ago
  Are you sure you're not just in a Luddite bubble? Philips Hue was released in 2012, 11 years ago, and the smart lighting category is estimated at $12.7 billion for 2022. For sure the future is unevenly distributed, but pretending it's solely a Silicon Valley phenomenon, when Philips Hue didn't even originate from there (though it integrates with Apple which certainly does) seems like a mistake that a Luddite or someone without access to Wikipedia and a map might make.
jaclaz 4y ago
>the automated IoT future is already here for those that want it and can afford it. And that can (is able to) mantain and troubleshoot it ...

abrichr 4y ago

Many (most?) people who try it (lay and expert alike) agree there is something qualitatively different going on. You could say it responds in a way that may be coherent enough to be useful in certain contexts. I am not aware of previous instances where this was the case to the same extent, although I would be happy to be proven wrong! I think it's fair to be skeptical of the economic utility in the near term, but cautiously optimistic about the potential in defining and expanding on what exactly it is that causes people to perceive it in this way.

ipaddr 4y ago
It just keeps telling me it can't do this or that. I think I asked who are the tallest whoever in some country and it came back and said that information is off limits. It's usefulness is similiar to searching google and reading the top box if it wasn't filtered. You can ask it for a story and it will give you a weak rewording of your prompt. There is nothing more meaningless than talking to it. It's a void
- kanyethegreat 4y ago
  Untrue. I get a tremendous amount of utility. It’s generative (new compared to traditional search) and I think I get valuable responses for maybe like 85% of my questions. Incredibly helpful for navigating new domains (when you don’t know what you’re looking for)
- Tv9m 4y ago
  Not sure if you meant this comment rhetorically or not, but try asking ChatGPT to do something useful like convert some text into JSON, or what conjugation of a verb you should use, or for writing feedback on an email. If you treat it like a toy it will be disappointing but it's useful as a tool.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    It's not very useful, unless you only want to write a single isolated class in Java. Every time I refine my prompt I get a completely different answer and often it just repeats answers it gave me earlier which wipes out improvements made in the meantime. It produces bad code faster than you can check it. When you ask it to do something simple like chess it whips out crazy illegal moves. "the omnipotent f6 pawn" is already an internet meme [0]. You might now claim that it is a language model and it shouldn't be able to play chess but this is a very real limitation that you are going to pretend doesn't exist later on when it is about "language tasks". If it can't follow basic rules like rooks only moving horizontally or vertically or bishops only moving diagonally which is purely defined by logic then how on earth can it possibly do something that actually requires complex reasoning? The problem with these large language models is that it gets harder and harder to notice the limitations, but they are still the same regardless of the size of the model. So every iteration you get to hype up more people about the same thing. They will make the same bad projections into the future like everyone else. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/AnarchyChess/comments/10yym4o/why_is_this_a_blunder/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AnarchyChess/comments/10yym4o/why_i... (Context: ChatGPT will play pawn f6 which summons a pawn out of nowhere, beating the queen)

Tv9m 4y ago

You can ask it why yourself. That might have something to do with it.