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Oh, please. Its not that we don’t wish to ever hear about the technology again. We’re just sick of the current wave of breathless, manic speculation from ninc

Oh, please. Its not that we don’t wish to ever hear about the technology again. We’re just sick of the current wave of breathless, manic speculation from nincompoops engaged in magical thinking.

kobalsky 4y ago
Yesterday I asked my own computer how to crop a video that was recorded vertically and published in widescreen format and it spew out a ffmpeg command that worked perfectly. To be fair, I would have called that magic a few months ago.
- reidjs 4y ago
  That's cool, but you could have probably figured out how to do that with a google search as well, albeit not as quickly. So your example speeds up something that was already possible, but doesn't necessarily introduce anything novel.
  - kobalsky 4y ago
    > So your example speeds up something that was already possible, but doesn't necessarily introduce anything novel. yes that's true, but you could say the same thing about a spreadsheet. with the correct tooling this thing will have a serious impact on the productivity of a lot of people.
    - reidjs 4y ago
      It may be comparable to the invention of the search engine: instead of looking up stuff in dictionaries and encyclopedias people could find information online way faster. The accuracy of the information back then, however, was not as great as it is nowadays. For a long time teachers told kids not to trust anything they read on Wikipedia because “anyone can edit it” so it was best to verify information with another source. Probably still a good idea to do that. IMO what makes GPT even cooler than a search engine or online forums is you don’t have to wait for a human to respond to your highly technical or niche questions, in some cases GPT can just generate an accurate response to your prompt on the fly. exciting stuff
- oliveshell 4y ago
  Good use case! We’re still decades from AGI in my opinion, and the Chicken Little types ought to pace themselves, is all I’m saying.
- JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 4y ago
  It's good, but if I looked at the man pages of ffmpeg I would have got the same result and learned something. My issue with ChatGPT is that you don't learn, you get a solution but you still depend on that if you need it later. I don't mind when a solution is provided by an open-source framework, but I'm very cautious when this solution is given by a closed-source application from a random company.
  - JohnFen 4y ago
    This is the problem with programming by SO or search engine. I think it's a terrible habit, and developers who do it are cheating their future selves. I truly understand the urge that "I just need an answer, right now!", but in chasing the quick fix, you aren't bettering yourself as a developer. And we all know that in our industry, if you aren't constantly improving, you're becoming worse.
    - capableweb 4y ago
      I agree with you and I also started using ChatGPT a lot since the GPT4 release. I think there are different problems that needs different solutions. Sometimes I'm hacking around in a language I don't know and I don't want to know, I just have to fix/implement something in that language because program/library X happens to use that language. I don't really care about learning, I just want the damn problem solved. But then most of the times I spend in a language I expect myself to continue to use for a long time, then it makes sense to spend time coming up with a solution by myself through reading long manuals, other reference documentation or even purchasing books and working through them. But, it doesn't make sense to do that for everything.
  - gardenhedge 4y ago
    Or another way to look at it is: it's not worth learning if you're just doing it once or twice. By the 10th time you've asked ChatGPT I presume some learning/remembering will take place.
    - precompute 4y ago

Oh, please. Its not that we don’t wish to ever hear about the technology again. We’re just sick of the current wave of breathless, manic speculation from nincompoops engaged in magical thinking.

kobalsky 4y ago

Yesterday I asked my own computer how to crop a video that was recorded vertically and published in widescreen format and it spew out a ffmpeg command that worked perfectly. To be fair, I would have called that magic a few months ago.

reidjs 4y ago
That's cool, but you could have probably figured out how to do that with a google search as well, albeit not as quickly. So your example speeds up something that was already possible, but doesn't necessarily introduce anything novel.
- kobalsky 4y ago
  > So your example speeds up something that was already possible, but doesn't necessarily introduce anything novel. yes that's true, but you could say the same thing about a spreadsheet. with the correct tooling this thing will have a serious impact on the productivity of a lot of people.
  - reidjs 4y ago
    It may be comparable to the invention of the search engine: instead of looking up stuff in dictionaries and encyclopedias people could find information online way faster. The accuracy of the information back then, however, was not as great as it is nowadays. For a long time teachers told kids not to trust anything they read on Wikipedia because “anyone can edit it” so it was best to verify information with another source. Probably still a good idea to do that. IMO what makes GPT even cooler than a search engine or online forums is you don’t have to wait for a human to respond to your highly technical or niche questions, in some cases GPT can just generate an accurate response to your prompt on the fly. exciting stuff
oliveshell 4y ago
Good use case! We’re still decades from AGI in my opinion, and the Chicken Little types ought to pace themselves, is all I’m saying.
JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 4y ago
It's good, but if I looked at the man pages of ffmpeg I would have got the same result and learned something. My issue with ChatGPT is that you don't learn, you get a solution but you still depend on that if you need it later. I don't mind when a solution is provided by an open-source framework, but I'm very cautious when this solution is given by a closed-source application from a random company.
- JohnFen 4y ago
  This is the problem with programming by SO or search engine. I think it's a terrible habit, and developers who do it are cheating their future selves. I truly understand the urge that "I just need an answer, right now!", but in chasing the quick fix, you aren't bettering yourself as a developer. And we all know that in our industry, if you aren't constantly improving, you're becoming worse.
  - capableweb 4y ago
    I agree with you and I also started using ChatGPT a lot since the GPT4 release. I think there are different problems that needs different solutions. Sometimes I'm hacking around in a language I don't know and I don't want to know, I just have to fix/implement something in that language because program/library X happens to use that language. I don't really care about learning, I just want the damn problem solved. But then most of the times I spend in a language I expect myself to continue to use for a long time, then it makes sense to spend time coming up with a solution by myself through reading long manuals, other reference documentation or even purchasing books and working through them. But, it doesn't make sense to do that for everything.
- gardenhedge 4y ago
  Or another way to look at it is: it's not worth learning if you're just doing it once or twice. By the 10th time you've asked ChatGPT I presume some learning/remembering will take place.
  - precompute 4y ago