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Ask HN: Is it just me or ChatGPT's hype is way overblown?

• georgehill 4y ago
  Yes, as of writing this comment there are 3 GPT related posts on the front page. GPT is one of the big thing happened in the AI industry but the hype giving me crypto vibes.
  • senttoschool 4y ago
    Don't get it mixed up with crypto. Crypto was hyped because they spent billions in marketing in 2021 and 2022 pumping ponzi schemes, unregistered secruties, and rug pulls. In addition, because crypto works similarly to pyramid schemes, those who buy into a shitcoin will do free advertising for it. OpenAI does not spend any money on marketing as far as I know. All this hype is through actual current usefulness and future usefulness.
    • ClapperHeid 4y ago
      The original principles behind crypto are sound. If you're happy with your government; being able to know everything you spend your money on, being able to seize your assets, being able to freeze your bank accounts, being able to prevent you moving your money around, being able to invade your privacy to allow you to access your money, being able to control who you can and can't send your money to or receive money from... then crypto does probably seem like a scam and a ponzi scheme. And, yes, of course, there are as many scammers and shitcoins out there as you can shake a stick at. Any "scheme" which can potentially generate cash will attract such people. Cryptocurrency is no different in this regard. But, as I said, the basic concept is sound and something anyone who believes in personal freedom can get behind. And, if crypto is such a "bad thing", why are so many governments suddenly interested in developing their own digital currencies? It's almost like the whole "USA / Huawei, TikTok... etc." scenario all over again. This technology is evil.... up until "the man" invents his own version and takes control of it.
      • verdverm 4y ago
        Governments have seized cryptos, they do not give you protection, they do not help you escape taxes. In the end, they have more guns and can enforce the law, in addition to most people in society having expectations about rules around money
        • ClapperHeid 4y ago
          They've seized cryptos from exchanges and from impounded computers. They can't seize them if you haven't got them on an exchange and you have your secret keys well hidden.
          • verdverm 4y ago
            You hand them over because it's better than being in jail...
• moocow01 4y ago
  Hype has become culturally embedded into the tech world unfortunately. There are whole ecosystems incentivized to hype the next new wave of whatever in hope of monetary or other gain. After this there will be something else so best to practice maintaining a reasonable perspective on tech advancements. I agree its annoying but am trying to use it as a tool where its useful.
• wiseowise 4y ago
  I was like you, until I actually tried it. It’s not overblown, believe me.
• richardjam73 4y ago
  In a way yes, some people are ascribing to these technologies powers they don't actually have. LLMs are good at generating text but they are not AI and AGI is not coming anytime soon.
• lofaszvanitt 4y ago
  Here is the new tech obelisk. Come on, time to worship. Look, the tech influencers are building apps with the GimP-Tech-Four. You have to feed data to the obelisk, come on, it won't hurt.
  • KeyXiote 4y ago
    This reminds me of a fairly recent shiny monolith found in the desert, very reflective.
• KeyXiote 4y ago
  I think we all need a break from "hype" cycles in general. Its become pervasive in every space, and IMO it correlates with how we consume and receive "information". News/posts on this subject have felt unique in how much attention it's gotten, I feel like a lot of it comes from lack of understanding about the technology from many posts especially those from "mainstream" media outlets with limited tech knowledge in general. The news cycle has absolutely turned "AI" into a marketing buzzword and feels hyperfocused on the negative. I'd say do a bit more research if your interested, no need to interact with it if you don't want to. My feeling on LLMs in general is relative to their use cases. LLM's are powerful tools for which can be useful/helpful and unfortunately can and will be leveraged in the opposite way. That said, what new tech advancement which has had a tenable and rapid influence on society hasn't had its speculative doom cycle. It will be a part of our lives, and in some ways has been for longer than many realize, I'm trying to educate myself more as well, there is definitely way too much bs to filter as is.
• ClapperHeid 4y ago
  From my dabblings in interacting with ChatGPT and Bard, I think it marks a very important leap forward in technology. But not in any kind of "intelligence" as we'd generally understand it. After using any of these chatbots for a while you realise that there is no real "intelligence" there. What there is, is a very impressive text-parsing engine combined with a very efficient search facility. But there's no nuance to the replies you get, no "personal" [or machine] opinion. It's just rapidly collated [and often tortuously balanced] data, quickly presented and nicely formatted. The thing that suprised me most about ChatGPT et al is just how quickly everyone seemed to have one on offer. It seemed like one week we were all shaking our heads at the moronic stupidity of Alexa / Siri / etc.... and the next we had all these superficially much more intelligent and responsive AI chatbots to talk to. Most of the "AI Powered" sites and applications that are springing up everywhere are based on ChatGPT [and I presume will be based on Bard too in future]. So are all essentially sharing the same dataset and programming biases. One concern I have about this whole development is that it even further reduces the access to alternate views and non-mainstream controversial opinions. Microsoft has already integrated ChatGPT into Bing and I've been using standalone ChatGPT as a sort of pseudo search engine for a while now, as it's really handy for the kind of questions that you just want a quick answer to, without having to pick through a list of search results. I do worry that, in future, pretty much all search on the web will take this form and these AIs will become the gatekeepers to knowledge in an even more prescriptive way than the current search giants are. I'm very uneasy about a future where our access the sum total of human knowledge and opinion is pre-filtered through the political and social biases of a clutch of pro-Western, pro-Capitalist west coast USA billionaires.
• guilhas 4y ago
  I think it is not, because ChatGPT has immediate widespread practical utility already And this is just starting, most businesses are now trying figure out how can they use it, and monetize it Crypto, NFTs, 5G, metaverse, AR, VR... are yet to prove their widespread high productivity increase