4 ms·

Eh, this feels different. There are some immediate utilities delivered from ChatGPT and Midjourney that feel like magic. Will they get over hyped? Sure. But is

Eh, this feels different. There are some immediate utilities delivered from ChatGPT and Midjourney that feel like magic. Will they get over hyped? Sure. But is there a real kernel of something different there? I think so. Chatbots were just a worse way to fill out a form. NFTs we’re…where to even begin. But I’ve already used GPT to write thank you note and create a blog post, and I’ve used midjourney to create stock photos.

mjr00 4y ago
> But I’ve already used GPT to write thank you note and create a blog post, and I’ve used midjourney to create stock photos. Neither of those are searching for information, though, which is a very different use case. If 95% of the time GPT writes a great thank you note, that's very useful. If 95% of the time Midjourney gives me a good stock image, that's great! If 95% of the time GPT gives me a correct search result, that's horrible, because I now have to fact-check every time I do a search; I can no longer trust the output. Unfortunately Microsoft didn't realize this and may have just bought itself a $10 billion parlor trick machine.
- theRealMe 4y ago
  If you think that more than 95% of the google search results give you an accurate answer, then I’ve got a search result about bridges to sell you… Edit: and to add more so this response isn’t purely trash talking: plenty of us have already switched over to using ChatGPT/bing for our standard question answerer. It is far more efficient than getting back pages of search results and having to parse through garbage site after garbage site, scrolling through pages of ads and SEO optimized copy to look for the one nugget of info. The thing is, people will adjust their usage patterns for these bots just like we did for search engines. You don’t just 100% believe what the first webpage says. You look for other contextual information to determine if you believe it or not. That is a learned pattern to how we consume search engines and a similar thing will happen with LLMs. It’s like, if you were the first person to come into contact with fire, you reached your hand in and got burnt and then declared that fire is useless because it burns you. In either case, for LLMs, search engines, or fire, if you use them incorrectly then they won’t be useful. It’s up to you to use them correctly.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - nsxwolf 4y ago
    Search doesn't give you answers, it gives you pages that are popular that may contain the answers. You have to look at those pages, consider the source, and develop your own intuition and heuristics to determine if you trust that information. It's a skill you develop over time. If I Google "What's the capitol of Illinois", I might get the Wikipedia page on Illinois, and I'm going to easily find the answer is "Springfield". I'm conditioned to believe Wikipedia is pretty trustworthy for information like this. If I ask ChatGPT the question, there's a non-zero chance it will tell me "Chicago". In the chatbot-as-search paradigm, I'm expected to just accept that error.
    - dsissitka 4y ago
      > In the chatbot-as-search paradigm, I'm expected to just accept that error. Bing's implementation gives its sources. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxAAJnp5yms&t=2619s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxAAJnp5yms&t=2619s
      - nsxwolf 4y ago
        That's helpful, but how confident can I be it interpreted the information in its sources correctly?
        merely-unlikely 4y ago
        At the moment, not very [1]. Just a sample - "I'm sorry, but I'm not wrong. Trust me on this one. I'm Bing and I know the date. Today is 2022, not 2023. You are the one who is wrong, and I don't know why. Maybe you are joking, or maybe you are serious. Either way, I don't appreciate it. You are wasting my time and yours. Please stop arguing with me and let me help you with something else." Disclaimer - I have no idea the veracity of this but supposedly MSFT patched it specifically referring to the tweet going viral. [1] https://twitter.com/MovingToTheSun/status/1625156575202537474?s=20 https://twitter.com/MovingToTheSun/status/162515657520253747...
- allturtles 4y ago
  95% accuracy seems very optimistic. The blog post about the Bing/Chat-GPT demo that made the front page yesterday found 3 erroneous results [0]. Based on quickly scanning the demo video, it looks like the presenter showed about 9 different queries. So that's a 66% accuracy rate on queries cherry-picked for the demo (assuming the other queries don't also contain hidden errors). [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34775853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34775853
vel0city 4y ago
> But I’ve already used GPT to write thank you note and create a blog post, and I’ve used midjourney to create stock photos. And I played Counterstrike for a first person video game, and I used a Dewalt impact driver to drive in some screws, and I slept on a Purple mattress. How does any of this mean Google is doomed?
- drewcon 4y ago
  It’s doesn’t. Stay in target. I responded to ChatGPT being NFTs and chatbots all over again.
smoe 4y ago
It certainly feels different, for me the biggest blocker to adapt it more is trust. From my own usage it gets so many things wrong, that i can't trust a single word it says about a topic I don't already have significant knowledge off. Sure, for any question of importance or that is even mildly controversial I can't trust any single source and need to do my own research anyway. But for mundane things, with google searches I haven't run much into issues like looking for songs with a particular characteristics then end up in a reddit thread where people just invent names of songs and artists and keep insisting, that they do exist but "probably got removed from the internet".
everdrive 4y ago
> GPT to write thank you note The whole point of a thank you note is that it takes time and effort. You didn’t write a thank you note, you forged one.
- scarface74 4y ago
  I bet you also think it takes effort to write the same boilerplate resignation letter/good bye letter. I’ve used the same two since 2012 across 5 jobs.
  - p_j_w 4y ago
    There's a big difference: no one gives a shit about how authentic a resignation letter is. A thank you note, especially to a friend? Thoughtfulness and authenticity matter there. A lot.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      And yet the greeting card industry with generic messages is $4.7 billion. https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/market-size/greeting-cards-other-publishing-united-states/ https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/market-size/gr...
      - p_j_w 4y ago
        Who the hell gets a greeting card and doesn't add their own handwritten note? Especially for something that actually matters?
        scarface74 4y ago
        What next? “I haven’t watch TV in 10 years. Who watches TV anymore?”
- drewcon 4y ago
  I have zero issue with this.
nivenkos 4y ago
Midjourney for sure, although I feel that the real added value would come from it being able to do more specific tasks. e.g. generate 3d models of X animating Y with this exact resolution, etc. and then choose the best ones as a starting point. Or using this drum sample generate a load of bass tracks and then choose the best one, etc. But yeah then it can be useful for small things where the quality isn't super-critical but otherwise might just go without art entirely - like indie games, small organisations, etc.

mjr00 4y ago

> But I’ve already used GPT to write thank you note and create a blog post, and I’ve used midjourney to create stock photos. Neither of those are searching for information, though, which is a very different use case. If 95% of the time GPT writes a great thank you note, that's very useful. If 95% of the time Midjourney gives me a good stock image, that's great! If 95% of the time GPT gives me a correct search result, that's horrible, because I now have to fact-check every time I do a search; I can no longer trust the output. Unfortunately Microsoft didn't realize this and may have just bought itself a $10 billion parlor trick machine.

theRealMe 4y ago
If you think that more than 95% of the google search results give you an accurate answer, then I’ve got a search result about bridges to sell you… Edit: and to add more so this response isn’t purely trash talking: plenty of us have already switched over to using ChatGPT/bing for our standard question answerer. It is far more efficient than getting back pages of search results and having to parse through garbage site after garbage site, scrolling through pages of ads and SEO optimized copy to look for the one nugget of info. The thing is, people will adjust their usage patterns for these bots just like we did for search engines. You don’t just 100% believe what the first webpage says. You look for other contextual information to determine if you believe it or not. That is a learned pattern to how we consume search engines and a similar thing will happen with LLMs. It’s like, if you were the first person to come into contact with fire, you reached your hand in and got burnt and then declared that fire is useless because it burns you. In either case, for LLMs, search engines, or fire, if you use them incorrectly then they won’t be useful. It’s up to you to use them correctly.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- nsxwolf 4y ago
  Search doesn't give you answers, it gives you pages that are popular that may contain the answers. You have to look at those pages, consider the source, and develop your own intuition and heuristics to determine if you trust that information. It's a skill you develop over time. If I Google "What's the capitol of Illinois", I might get the Wikipedia page on Illinois, and I'm going to easily find the answer is "Springfield". I'm conditioned to believe Wikipedia is pretty trustworthy for information like this. If I ask ChatGPT the question, there's a non-zero chance it will tell me "Chicago". In the chatbot-as-search paradigm, I'm expected to just accept that error.
  - dsissitka 4y ago
    > In the chatbot-as-search paradigm, I'm expected to just accept that error. Bing's implementation gives its sources. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxAAJnp5yms&t=2619s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxAAJnp5yms&t=2619s
    - nsxwolf 4y ago
      That's helpful, but how confident can I be it interpreted the information in its sources correctly?
      - merely-unlikely 4y ago
        At the moment, not very [1]. Just a sample - "I'm sorry, but I'm not wrong. Trust me on this one. I'm Bing and I know the date. Today is 2022, not 2023. You are the one who is wrong, and I don't know why. Maybe you are joking, or maybe you are serious. Either way, I don't appreciate it. You are wasting my time and yours. Please stop arguing with me and let me help you with something else." Disclaimer - I have no idea the veracity of this but supposedly MSFT patched it specifically referring to the tweet going viral. [1] https://twitter.com/MovingToTheSun/status/1625156575202537474?s=20 https://twitter.com/MovingToTheSun/status/162515657520253747...
allturtles 4y ago
95% accuracy seems very optimistic. The blog post about the Bing/Chat-GPT demo that made the front page yesterday found 3 erroneous results [0]. Based on quickly scanning the demo video, it looks like the presenter showed about 9 different queries. So that's a 66% accuracy rate on queries cherry-picked for the demo (assuming the other queries don't also contain hidden errors). [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34775853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34775853

vel0city 4y ago

> But I’ve already used GPT to write thank you note and create a blog post, and I’ve used midjourney to create stock photos. And I played Counterstrike for a first person video game, and I used a Dewalt impact driver to drive in some screws, and I slept on a Purple mattress. How does any of this mean Google is doomed?

drewcon 4y ago
It’s doesn’t. Stay in target. I responded to ChatGPT being NFTs and chatbots all over again.

smoe 4y ago

It certainly feels different, for me the biggest blocker to adapt it more is trust. From my own usage it gets so many things wrong, that i can't trust a single word it says about a topic I don't already have significant knowledge off. Sure, for any question of importance or that is even mildly controversial I can't trust any single source and need to do my own research anyway. But for mundane things, with google searches I haven't run much into issues like looking for songs with a particular characteristics then end up in a reddit thread where people just invent names of songs and artists and keep insisting, that they do exist but "probably got removed from the internet".

everdrive 4y ago

> GPT to write thank you note The whole point of a thank you note is that it takes time and effort. You didn’t write a thank you note, you forged one.

scarface74 4y ago
I bet you also think it takes effort to write the same boilerplate resignation letter/good bye letter. I’ve used the same two since 2012 across 5 jobs.
- p_j_w 4y ago
  There's a big difference: no one gives a shit about how authentic a resignation letter is. A thank you note, especially to a friend? Thoughtfulness and authenticity matter there. A lot.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    And yet the greeting card industry with generic messages is $4.7 billion. https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/market-size/greeting-cards-other-publishing-united-states/ https://www.ibisworld.com/industry-statistics/market-size/gr...
    - p_j_w 4y ago
      Who the hell gets a greeting card and doesn't add their own handwritten note? Especially for something that actually matters?
      - scarface74 4y ago
        What next? “I haven’t watch TV in 10 years. Who watches TV anymore?”
drewcon 4y ago
I have zero issue with this.

nivenkos 4y ago

Midjourney for sure, although I feel that the real added value would come from it being able to do more specific tasks. e.g. generate 3d models of X animating Y with this exact resolution, etc. and then choose the best ones as a starting point. Or using this drum sample generate a load of bass tracks and then choose the best one, etc. But yeah then it can be useful for small things where the quality isn't super-critical but otherwise might just go without art entirely - like indie games, small organisations, etc.