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You’re asking “what’s so big about GUIs? Literally nobody has asked to move a pointer around a screen”. It’s the use cases these thing enable that are importan

You’re asking “what’s so big about GUIs? Literally nobody has asked to move a pointer around a screen”. It’s the use cases these thing enable that are important. Today, I wrote a draft product announcement. Only after I was done did I realize I had written it in a really impersonal third person (“users will be able to”). No big deal, but maybe 10-20 minutes of work to make it energetic and second person (“now you can…”). 30 seconds with chatgpt. “Rewrite with more energy, in the second person, using best practices for announcements”). Six months ago I would never have asked for that. Today it was glorious and let me move on to focus on more important things.

cgearhart 4y ago
Hmm…no, I’m not doubting the value of the interface. I’m asking what’s the “killer app”. Maybe I should just ask ChatGPT to explain it to me…
- joe_the_user 4y ago
  It seems like the use of ChatGPT is something like "microtasks". Little things a given person could do but would rather not and so is able to delegate to an automatic thing whose output they can verify. It seems like it's potential as of today is increasing or seeming to increase the productivity of a segment of white collar workers in the fashion that email and the web did (or might not have). A lot of researchers might not have need for this and so not understand this appeal of this.
  - cgearhart 4y ago
    Thanks for your comment, I think this is actually very helpful framing! It at least gives me something more tangible to think about—“micro tasks”.
    - mos_basik 4y ago
      I, too, have been experimenting a bit to see if/how an LLM might help me. This microtask framing jives with my experience. One of the best examples so far for me (and it's truly micro) was at grocery store. Friend trying to figure out how big of a rice bag to get and avoid not finishing it before a long trip coming up. She knew she ate a couple of cups dry a week. "I eat 2 cups dry rice per week. Can I finish a 25lb bag in less than 4 months?" "Yes" (it did show its work). One shot, perfect response. I know this kind of computational thing is what WolframAlpha was for, but that wasn't nearly as reliable. I know I could figure it out myself, but I'd need to find a reasonable figure for the density of rice and probably do some imperial metric conversions and generally futz around for longer than one would want to stand in front of a pallet of rice bags.
      - jacquesm 4y ago
        50 cups of rice in a 25 lb bag, 4 months = 16 weeks = 32 cups at 2 cups / week. I think there will be some rice left. Maybe this is one of those examples where this tool gives a confident and wrong answer even when it shows its homework?
        pixl97 4y ago
        Honestly this sounds more like a place for GPT/Wolfram API than just LLM alone.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 4y ago
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      - JohnFen 4y ago
        Really? You're using ChatGPT to do basic math you could easily do in your head?
- bionhoward 4y ago
  It’s programming. The thing is really great at programming, and everything else is icing on the cake. They already got my $20 a month lol
  - copperx 4y ago
    Bingo. No programmer seems to want to program without it anymore. Sounds like a killer app to me.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - Joeboy 4y ago
    Anecdotally, I've had more writers (screenwriters and copywriters) tell me they're using ChatGPT than programmers. I think people here might underestimate how big a deal it is in "the real world".
  - valenterry 4y ago
    Not really programming but generelly producing text (or maybe generally certain structure like ASTs at some point). Programming is a subset. I expect that this will move lots of things into the world of text that weren't before.
- safety1st 4y ago
  If we're characterizing LLMs as a kind of input interface I'd point out that the first GUI was released in 1973 by Xerox and the first commercially successful GUI was released in 1984 with the Mac 128K. It took 11 years for someone to answer this question. Sure things move faster these days, but we're still only a couple of months in. With blockchains there was also a fundamental technological breakthrough (I'd argue less revolutionary than LLMs). The problem was that everyone jumped the gun and proclaimed the killer app had been discovered too soon: cryptocurrency's incarnations to date have yet to demonstrate much utility apart from being a vehicle for speculation. Nakomoto invented the first distributed blockchain in 2008...
nwienert 4y ago
I mean Google revolutionized search. Apple revolutionized personal computing. OpenAI revolutionized… rewriting things with slightly different wording? I’ve seen so many breathless people posting “this would have taken me so long to search” and then I type 3 keywords from their massive prompt they crafted and find it instantly on Google. We’re talking 1000x or more faster. I feel like the same is happening in your comment. How often have I thought “damn I wish I wrote this blog post ever so slightly differently” in my life? Maybe a handful of times? And yes I’m including all generalizations of that question. But certainly fake girlfriends and summarization will be mid size fields. Image generation has some mid size potential. But these will be spread between many companies. I really think it has uses no doubt, but is it a revolution? Where? It’s not creative in the valuable sense - media, art, fashion, etc all will adopt it marginally but ultimately it will actually only serve to further the desire for genuine human experience, and cohesive creativity that we see it really falls flat at. It saves some marginal time perhaps if you’re ok sounding like a robot. Taking into account the downsides it looks like a hype bubble right now to me, and a draw in the long run. There’s just a whole lot of tech people trying to cash in on the hype.
- melagonster 4y ago
  if we only focus on this part. this function represents that most of content creator don't need to convert or reproduce their content to fit another group of customers.
- rvz 4y ago
  > Taking into account the downsides it looks like a hype bubble right now to me, and a draw in the long run. There’s just a whole lot of tech people trying to cash in on the hype. Techies will realize that they are just giving ideas to O̶p̶e̶n̶AI.com, Microsoft Word, Google Docs and Notion. It is just the same AI bros re-selling their hallucinating snake oil chatbot that are under a new narrative for AI. There is a reason why the only safe serious use-case of LLMs is summarization of existing text, since everything else it does is untrustworthy and is complete bullshit. Their so-called 'revolution' is a grift.
  - spondylosaurus 4y ago
onion2k 4y ago
That's very cool, and right now it's a good idea, but I strongly suspect GPT only looks clever and does a good job in isolation. If everyone starts using it product announcements will start looking very similar, and they'll lose a lot of their impact. This is definitely the case with cover letters for jib applications. The ones written by GPT appear to be pretty obvious - my guesses could be wrong, but after seeing most applications not having a cover letter for years to most applications having one over the past few months, I suspect GPT is involved, and there's a distinct 'style' that seems to be showing up. Using GPT could be the 'bootstrap ui' of product announcements. It looks great on its own, but put it next to a bunch of other companies and they all fail to stand out.
- SanderNL 4y ago
  I find it interesting it’s very hard to make it do typos. The type of errors humans make. It can do typos but even those seem weird. If I push it to make errors it either over- or undershoots. The “correctness” of it is a definite give away IMO.
  - dizhn 4y ago
    It can imitate styles of little kids with their phonetic spelling. (Though this is so common in English, French etc but not Italian or Turkish where the spelling is very regular) I am sure it can at least do very common mistakes like it's vs its or "would of" if prompted right since there's a huge body of that kind of work. Or maybe a human needs to add the finishing touches to make it look more human. :)
  - notahacker 4y ago
    In fairness, lack of typos in a cover letter has traditionally been interpreted as a sign of diligence! For more general queries its "house style" tends to be really obvious, with all it's "however, it's important to note" and "ultimately it depends on"s and the tendency to flesh out a one sentence answer to the specific question with two paragraphs or five bullet points of detail at a slight tangent to it...
- ptd 4y ago
tuatoru 4y ago
Most of the economy involves moving around physical things. Construction, transport, nursing and related health occupations (physiotherapy, home aid, etc.), retail and wholesale logistics. Manufacturing employs another chunk. Services for agriculture, fishing, mining also employ more people than are directly employed in those industries and are mostly to do with machines and equipment. Utilities. Most of the rest is high-touch. People want interactions with humans for important stuff, not with AI. Remote teaching was an unmitigated disaster for most school students: how will AI teachers do, do you think? Attempts at robot police and security guards haven't gone down very well to date. It'll be a while before there are AI EMTs and firemen. So there are grounds for skepticism.
- williamcotton 4y ago
  Well clearly you’re going to be sitting on the sidelines for the next few years.
avidphantasm 4y ago
I guess if you don’t like writing, this is good for you. However, I like writing. Moreover, many people are lousy at it (not that I couldn’t improve). I’m not sure I want something trained on lots of mediocre writing doing editing for me.
- williamcotton 4y ago
  LLMs are trained on language. Not mediocre language. This is why models can be fine-tuned in one language and then see the benefits in other languages. How much longer with this fundamental misunderstanding of these models continue and how often will they be put forth by people who are worried about task X that they enjoy being replaced?

cgearhart 4y ago

Hmm…no, I’m not doubting the value of the interface. I’m asking what’s the “killer app”. Maybe I should just ask ChatGPT to explain it to me…

joe_the_user 4y ago
It seems like the use of ChatGPT is something like "microtasks". Little things a given person could do but would rather not and so is able to delegate to an automatic thing whose output they can verify. It seems like it's potential as of today is increasing or seeming to increase the productivity of a segment of white collar workers in the fashion that email and the web did (or might not have). A lot of researchers might not have need for this and so not understand this appeal of this.
- cgearhart 4y ago
  Thanks for your comment, I think this is actually very helpful framing! It at least gives me something more tangible to think about—“micro tasks”.
  - mos_basik 4y ago
    I, too, have been experimenting a bit to see if/how an LLM might help me. This microtask framing jives with my experience. One of the best examples so far for me (and it's truly micro) was at grocery store. Friend trying to figure out how big of a rice bag to get and avoid not finishing it before a long trip coming up. She knew she ate a couple of cups dry a week. "I eat 2 cups dry rice per week. Can I finish a 25lb bag in less than 4 months?" "Yes" (it did show its work). One shot, perfect response. I know this kind of computational thing is what WolframAlpha was for, but that wasn't nearly as reliable. I know I could figure it out myself, but I'd need to find a reasonable figure for the density of rice and probably do some imperial metric conversions and generally futz around for longer than one would want to stand in front of a pallet of rice bags.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      50 cups of rice in a 25 lb bag, 4 months = 16 weeks = 32 cups at 2 cups / week. I think there will be some rice left. Maybe this is one of those examples where this tool gives a confident and wrong answer even when it shows its homework?
      - pixl97 4y ago
        Honestly this sounds more like a place for GPT/Wolfram API than just LLM alone.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      Really? You're using ChatGPT to do basic math you could easily do in your head?
bionhoward 4y ago
It’s programming. The thing is really great at programming, and everything else is icing on the cake. They already got my $20 a month lol
- copperx 4y ago
  Bingo. No programmer seems to want to program without it anymore. Sounds like a killer app to me.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Joeboy 4y ago
  Anecdotally, I've had more writers (screenwriters and copywriters) tell me they're using ChatGPT than programmers. I think people here might underestimate how big a deal it is in "the real world".
- valenterry 4y ago
  Not really programming but generelly producing text (or maybe generally certain structure like ASTs at some point). Programming is a subset. I expect that this will move lots of things into the world of text that weren't before.
safety1st 4y ago
If we're characterizing LLMs as a kind of input interface I'd point out that the first GUI was released in 1973 by Xerox and the first commercially successful GUI was released in 1984 with the Mac 128K. It took 11 years for someone to answer this question. Sure things move faster these days, but we're still only a couple of months in. With blockchains there was also a fundamental technological breakthrough (I'd argue less revolutionary than LLMs). The problem was that everyone jumped the gun and proclaimed the killer app had been discovered too soon: cryptocurrency's incarnations to date have yet to demonstrate much utility apart from being a vehicle for speculation. Nakomoto invented the first distributed blockchain in 2008...

nwienert 4y ago

I mean Google revolutionized search. Apple revolutionized personal computing. OpenAI revolutionized… rewriting things with slightly different wording? I’ve seen so many breathless people posting “this would have taken me so long to search” and then I type 3 keywords from their massive prompt they crafted and find it instantly on Google. We’re talking 1000x or more faster. I feel like the same is happening in your comment. How often have I thought “damn I wish I wrote this blog post ever so slightly differently” in my life? Maybe a handful of times? And yes I’m including all generalizations of that question. But certainly fake girlfriends and summarization will be mid size fields. Image generation has some mid size potential. But these will be spread between many companies. I really think it has uses no doubt, but is it a revolution? Where? It’s not creative in the valuable sense - media, art, fashion, etc all will adopt it marginally but ultimately it will actually only serve to further the desire for genuine human experience, and cohesive creativity that we see it really falls flat at. It saves some marginal time perhaps if you’re ok sounding like a robot. Taking into account the downsides it looks like a hype bubble right now to me, and a draw in the long run. There’s just a whole lot of tech people trying to cash in on the hype.

melagonster 4y ago
if we only focus on this part. this function represents that most of content creator don't need to convert or reproduce their content to fit another group of customers.
rvz 4y ago
> Taking into account the downsides it looks like a hype bubble right now to me, and a draw in the long run. There’s just a whole lot of tech people trying to cash in on the hype. Techies will realize that they are just giving ideas to O̶p̶e̶n̶AI.com, Microsoft Word, Google Docs and Notion. It is just the same AI bros re-selling their hallucinating snake oil chatbot that are under a new narrative for AI. There is a reason why the only safe serious use-case of LLMs is summarization of existing text, since everything else it does is untrustworthy and is complete bullshit. Their so-called 'revolution' is a grift.
- spondylosaurus 4y ago

onion2k 4y ago

That's very cool, and right now it's a good idea, but I strongly suspect GPT only looks clever and does a good job in isolation. If everyone starts using it product announcements will start looking very similar, and they'll lose a lot of their impact. This is definitely the case with cover letters for jib applications. The ones written by GPT appear to be pretty obvious - my guesses could be wrong, but after seeing most applications not having a cover letter for years to most applications having one over the past few months, I suspect GPT is involved, and there's a distinct 'style' that seems to be showing up. Using GPT could be the 'bootstrap ui' of product announcements. It looks great on its own, but put it next to a bunch of other companies and they all fail to stand out.

SanderNL 4y ago
I find it interesting it’s very hard to make it do typos. The type of errors humans make. It can do typos but even those seem weird. If I push it to make errors it either over- or undershoots. The “correctness” of it is a definite give away IMO.
- dizhn 4y ago
  It can imitate styles of little kids with their phonetic spelling. (Though this is so common in English, French etc but not Italian or Turkish where the spelling is very regular) I am sure it can at least do very common mistakes like it's vs its or "would of" if prompted right since there's a huge body of that kind of work. Or maybe a human needs to add the finishing touches to make it look more human. :)
- notahacker 4y ago
  In fairness, lack of typos in a cover letter has traditionally been interpreted as a sign of diligence! For more general queries its "house style" tends to be really obvious, with all it's "however, it's important to note" and "ultimately it depends on"s and the tendency to flesh out a one sentence answer to the specific question with two paragraphs or five bullet points of detail at a slight tangent to it...
ptd 4y ago

tuatoru 4y ago

Most of the economy involves moving around physical things. Construction, transport, nursing and related health occupations (physiotherapy, home aid, etc.), retail and wholesale logistics. Manufacturing employs another chunk. Services for agriculture, fishing, mining also employ more people than are directly employed in those industries and are mostly to do with machines and equipment. Utilities. Most of the rest is high-touch. People want interactions with humans for important stuff, not with AI. Remote teaching was an unmitigated disaster for most school students: how will AI teachers do, do you think? Attempts at robot police and security guards haven't gone down very well to date. It'll be a while before there are AI EMTs and firemen. So there are grounds for skepticism.

williamcotton 4y ago
Well clearly you’re going to be sitting on the sidelines for the next few years.

avidphantasm 4y ago

I guess if you don’t like writing, this is good for you. However, I like writing. Moreover, many people are lousy at it (not that I couldn’t improve). I’m not sure I want something trained on lots of mediocre writing doing editing for me.

williamcotton 4y ago
LLMs are trained on language. Not mediocre language. This is why models can be fine-tuned in one language and then see the benefits in other languages. How much longer with this fundamental misunderstanding of these models continue and how often will they be put forth by people who are worried about task X that they enjoy being replaced?