5 ms·

FWIW, I've found uses for it already that will improve the company I'm building in the very short term. Maybe you disagree in the magnitude of the value, but

by noodle 3y ago

FWIW, I've found uses for it already that will improve the company I'm building in the very short term. Maybe you disagree in the magnitude of the value, but I find it to be at least somewhat significant. Enough to pursue. I've never worked for any company where leaning into the Metaverse or crypto would generate any meaningful business value, short or long term. The promises for Metaverse and crypto are always about a nebulous future that could exist if only everyone collectively bought into the vision.

gspencley 3y ago
Anything that is limited to the the company you're building at the moment sounds to me like the very definition of "niche application." If you re-read my comment I didn't say that generative AI does not have any potential to solve any problems ever. What I said is that companies are currently racing to go to market with some "ai thing" and most are chasing it because it is the "next big thing" in their mind, not because they know what problems for their end users that it can actually help solve. I know of companies right now who are banking on "selling AI to customers." That is doomed to fail in my opinion. Customers don't care about AI outside of the novelty and entertainment value it may possess. They have actual problems that need solving. My point was that generative AI, as the broad umbrella that it is, will see the hype train die and people will realize that "it" is not the revolutionary and disruptive Internet or printing press like invention that they think it will be. The value will be in individual applications of it, of which there will be a few but not as many I think people think there will be.
- noodle 3y ago
  > that companies are currently racing to go to market with some "ai thing" and most are chasing it because it is the "next big thing" in their mind, not because they know what problems for their end users that it can actually help solve. And if you re-read my comment, what I am saying is that while I'm not exactly "racing", I do have a very clear problem for my end users that this actually helps to solve. Its possible I could've cobbled together a similar solution with other technologies, but I didn't see a very clear path forward on this user-facing problem until very recent developments. I suspect that the people in this same boat far outnumber people in the Metaverse or crypto equivalents.
DanHulton 3y ago
The metaverse and crypto were entirely about some kind of future industry and society-changing application. "You don't see anything _now,_ but the future will be unrecognizable, trust me!" Gen AI definitely has utility right now, and for some it's a lot of utility. But the hype around it is exactly the same, the hype is all around how "the future will be unrecognizable, trust me!" So I agree that practically, Gen AI is utterly different from crypto/metaverse, it's a real thing with real value. But it's also attracting the exact same hucksters and they're kind of sucking all the air out of the room.
- imhoguy 3y ago
  Gen AI, you got me here, for a second I thought it is the next one after Gen Z.
- stonemetal12 3y ago
  >Gen AI definitely has utility right now People keep saying that, but I don't see it. So far we have chat bots, and Copilot. Copilot is going to be in legal limbo for years until the license issues are solved. Chatting with bing is fun and all but I don't see the long term utility. What is the utility right now? Which of my problems are solved?
  - lawrenci 3y ago
    A few examples: * My company has a very large codebase, and I am not familiar with 99% of it. I can use an AI assistant like Sourcegraph Cody to explain parts of the codebase to me at a high level, and suggest areas where I should dive in to address my specific problem. * If I am working with a language, library, or framework I have not used before, I can ask ChatGPT to explain how a certain function works, and provide some code examples. If I write some code an get unexpected results, I can paste my code and results into ChatGPT, and ask it to tell me what went wrong. * Someone sends me a spreadsheet that specifies some business logic, and I want to transform that spreadsheet into a YAML file, and write some code to parse the YAML config and take some action based on user-supplied data. ChatGPT is pretty good at this. In all of these cases, I have to take the AI output with a grain of salt, and may have to do some supplementary research or debugging. But that's also the case when I ask coworkers for help. Right now, I would say generative AI provides a small boost to my productivity, but I can see that boost growing larger as language models improve.

by noodle 3y ago

gspencley 3y ago

Anything that is limited to the the company you're building at the moment sounds to me like the very definition of "niche application." If you re-read my comment I didn't say that generative AI does not have any potential to solve any problems ever. What I said is that companies are currently racing to go to market with some "ai thing" and most are chasing it because it is the "next big thing" in their mind, not because they know what problems for their end users that it can actually help solve. I know of companies right now who are banking on "selling AI to customers." That is doomed to fail in my opinion. Customers don't care about AI outside of the novelty and entertainment value it may possess. They have actual problems that need solving. My point was that generative AI, as the broad umbrella that it is, will see the hype train die and people will realize that "it" is not the revolutionary and disruptive Internet or printing press like invention that they think it will be. The value will be in individual applications of it, of which there will be a few but not as many I think people think there will be.

noodle 3y ago
> that companies are currently racing to go to market with some "ai thing" and most are chasing it because it is the "next big thing" in their mind, not because they know what problems for their end users that it can actually help solve. And if you re-read my comment, what I am saying is that while I'm not exactly "racing", I do have a very clear problem for my end users that this actually helps to solve. Its possible I could've cobbled together a similar solution with other technologies, but I didn't see a very clear path forward on this user-facing problem until very recent developments. I suspect that the people in this same boat far outnumber people in the Metaverse or crypto equivalents.

DanHulton 3y ago

The metaverse and crypto were entirely about some kind of future industry and society-changing application. "You don't see anything _now,_ but the future will be unrecognizable, trust me!" Gen AI definitely has utility right now, and for some it's a lot of utility. But the hype around it is exactly the same, the hype is all around how "the future will be unrecognizable, trust me!" So I agree that practically, Gen AI is utterly different from crypto/metaverse, it's a real thing with real value. But it's also attracting the exact same hucksters and they're kind of sucking all the air out of the room.

imhoguy 3y ago
Gen AI, you got me here, for a second I thought it is the next one after Gen Z.
stonemetal12 3y ago
>Gen AI definitely has utility right now People keep saying that, but I don't see it. So far we have chat bots, and Copilot. Copilot is going to be in legal limbo for years until the license issues are solved. Chatting with bing is fun and all but I don't see the long term utility. What is the utility right now? Which of my problems are solved?
- lawrenci 3y ago
  A few examples: * My company has a very large codebase, and I am not familiar with 99% of it. I can use an AI assistant like Sourcegraph Cody to explain parts of the codebase to me at a high level, and suggest areas where I should dive in to address my specific problem. * If I am working with a language, library, or framework I have not used before, I can ask ChatGPT to explain how a certain function works, and provide some code examples. If I write some code an get unexpected results, I can paste my code and results into ChatGPT, and ask it to tell me what went wrong. * Someone sends me a spreadsheet that specifies some business logic, and I want to transform that spreadsheet into a YAML file, and write some code to parse the YAML config and take some action based on user-supplied data. ChatGPT is pretty good at this. In all of these cases, I have to take the AI output with a grain of salt, and may have to do some supplementary research or debugging. But that's also the case when I ask coworkers for help. Right now, I would say generative AI provides a small boost to my productivity, but I can see that boost growing larger as language models improve.