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It is very nearly the opposite to a calculator. A calculator gives you exact results for a very small subset of problems (equations). Chat-GPT will give you a

It is very nearly the opposite to a calculator. A calculator gives you exact results for a very small subset of problems (equations). Chat-GPT will give you approximate (and occasionally incorrect) solutions to an extremely wide range of problems. The main problem with AI is that there are only so many problems where an approximate solution is fine, and an incorrect solution is easy to work around. In order for AI to be broadly useful, it has to get to the point where it's correct more often than an expert human. It may well get there within the next couple of years, but this isn't a space LLMs are designed to be able to solve so it's not as guaranteed as a lot of people seem to think.

MVissers 4y ago
Disagree. For AI to be useful it needs to be better at the job than how the job currently being done. We humans rely on thousands of things where an approximate solution is fine. Especially when it's about interacting with other humans. Programming is an exception, but what % of the population are programmers and engineers?
- Turskarama 4y ago
  Programmers, engineers, accountants, lawyers, doctors, nurses, builders, farmers, manufacturers, drivers (including pilots and ships captains), and scientists all need to be very precise in their work and mistakes will cause deaths (I have almost certainly forgotten some). This may not be the majority of workers by number, but these are the jobs civilization is _built_ on, they are the jobs that need to keep going no matter what or the whole house of cards collapses. The majority of jobs that require less precision falls under the umbrella of artists (I will include advertisers here), people managers, and service workers.
  - noobermin 4y ago
    I would put cooks into that too, allergic reactions can kill, badly cooked food can kill, and in fact people can be penalized for it too.
    - pharmakom 4y ago
      Ture but does it matter if the chicken is cooked for 10 minutes, 10 minutes 5 seconds, 10 minutes 10 seconds,... programming requires far more precision.
      - Turskarama 4y ago
        It does matter if you put some peanut in when the customer is allergic to peanuts.
        eternityforest 4y ago
        That's the kind of thing you can solve with deterministic algorithm guardrails though.
PeterisP 4y ago
In order for a system to be useful it doesn't need to match an expert human, it's sufficient if it can do most of the job. If companies can replace an entry-level person with something that's slightly worse but much cheaper, they're going to be widely used. In any profession where you have some sort of supervisor handing off tasks to unskilled humans and verifying their work, it will be broadly useful to hand those tasks to some AI model instead even if it needs a bit more handholding than humans, since it's going to be much cheaper than those humans and that is what makes something economically useful.

MVissers 4y ago

Disagree. For AI to be useful it needs to be better at the job than how the job currently being done. We humans rely on thousands of things where an approximate solution is fine. Especially when it's about interacting with other humans. Programming is an exception, but what % of the population are programmers and engineers?

Turskarama 4y ago
Programmers, engineers, accountants, lawyers, doctors, nurses, builders, farmers, manufacturers, drivers (including pilots and ships captains), and scientists all need to be very precise in their work and mistakes will cause deaths (I have almost certainly forgotten some). This may not be the majority of workers by number, but these are the jobs civilization is _built_ on, they are the jobs that need to keep going no matter what or the whole house of cards collapses. The majority of jobs that require less precision falls under the umbrella of artists (I will include advertisers here), people managers, and service workers.
- noobermin 4y ago
  I would put cooks into that too, allergic reactions can kill, badly cooked food can kill, and in fact people can be penalized for it too.
  - pharmakom 4y ago
    Ture but does it matter if the chicken is cooked for 10 minutes, 10 minutes 5 seconds, 10 minutes 10 seconds,... programming requires far more precision.
    - Turskarama 4y ago
      It does matter if you put some peanut in when the customer is allergic to peanuts.
      - eternityforest 4y ago
        That's the kind of thing you can solve with deterministic algorithm guardrails though.

PeterisP 4y ago

In order for a system to be useful it doesn't need to match an expert human, it's sufficient if it can do most of the job. If companies can replace an entry-level person with something that's slightly worse but much cheaper, they're going to be widely used. In any profession where you have some sort of supervisor handing off tasks to unskilled humans and verifying their work, it will be broadly useful to hand those tasks to some AI model instead even if it needs a bit more handholding than humans, since it's going to be much cheaper than those humans and that is what makes something economically useful.