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So I guess just ignore all the people getting real value out of ChatGPT/etc? How can you compare that to crypto at all with a straight face. Yes, you need to be
by Vanit 4y ago
So I guess just ignore all the people getting real value out of ChatGPT/etc? How can you compare that to crypto at all with a straight face. Yes, you need to be an expert to validate the output. Welcome to being an expert using any tool.
- EGreg 4y agoI predict this comment will be heavily donvoted with zero explanation. Because HN is always predictable when it comes to the trigger words: “Crypto bad” and “AI good” Crypto can actually help people transact trustlessly, let communities govern themselves without a king etc. Whereas AI swarms can generate bullshit at scale and turn every forum into a dark forest, with 99% bot-generated content deployed to silence or distract groups of people whose viewpoint is to be buried. One has the potential to quickly destroy all the systems we rely on, including public discourse, voting, and so on. I would say that is far worse than a few silly smart contracts.
- h10h10h10 4y agoI've been using Bitcoin for over a decade almost daily and it's a great tool that has passed the test of time, and will continue to be useful unless governments around the world actually go out of teh way to ban it. As for Chatgpt, I think it's really useful as well, but there's no way to compare the two.
- pmoriarty 4y agoHow's bitcoin useful for anything other than money laundering and selling it to the bigger sucker?
- Karrot_Kream 4y agoTrustless, programmable money. It's useful. The problem centers generally around how useful "trustless" really is. Developed nations usually already have a trusted currency and underdeveloped nations have so many extant corruption issues that trustless money isn't necessarily spendable. The goldilocks zone so far for crypto has been remittances to developing countries, a small market indeed. Crypto's narrow application range is what makes it, so far at least, more hype than bite. Sure ChatGPT and other LLMs can do all sorts of stuff. It can give you inspiration, help you search through a corpus that hasn't been scraped properly, or just fill in the blanks for laborious writing that was generally a waste of your time. It's lots of fun to play around with. But is that worth enough to offset the R&D, training, compute, and profit costs associated? Are people willing to pay for LLMs at a scale that makes sense? For companies that really need this kind of writing done, is it that much cheaper than hiring an English literature major intern? Can the sorts of "hallucinations" an LLM outputs be tolerated in actual applications? The two fields suffer from a similar problem. Sure they're breakthroughs, but are they enough to derive broad utility? Regardless I disagree with the premise of Doctorow's post. I think the problem is subtle and not deserving of the silly snark that his post contains as it tried to pick apart banal definitions.
- h10h10h10 4y agoBitcoin is mainly useful for money laundering... or... er... disagreeing with the government. In other words, removing the middleman. Also, depending on inflation levels, it can be a good storage of value. All in all, I think it's the most useful technology in the last decade. If you live in a bubble you won't realize that, but it's what it is.
- wiseowise 4y agoChatGPT can provide huge value to average Joe or Jane, provide me at least one reason how Bitcoin is useful to average Joe compared to fiat currency.