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I think the difference between those other hype cycles and this one is utility. I found Bitcoin very interesting (Erlang as well, still do) but not very practi
by bmurphy1976 3y ago
I think the difference between those other hype cycles and this one is utility. I found Bitcoin very interesting (Erlang as well, still do) but not very practical in my day-to-day life. Unless I'm going to be hired by a firm that specializes in that tech, they're just not very useful. Nerdy and interesting and fun yes, but I just don't need them in my day-to-day life.
On the other hand ChatGPT 3.5 has become immediately useful today. It's already saved multiple hours of time doing nonsense work, or digging around for an answer to that one problem I have. It's succeeded when Stack Overflow, Google, Reddit, and the Official Documentation™ failed me.
That's incredible!!
And like a car I don't really have to know or care how it works (traditionally I didn't care at all about AI tech). Sure, it's a new skill (like driving) that takes some practice to do safely and effectively, but I don't have to know the details of how it works. Just how to use it.
That's why this hype cycle is different, that's why it's not going away. It's useful, and we are collectively figuring out how to use it effectively. We do that through collaboration and communication and HN is one of the key points where ideas are shared. To put a stop on that now would be insanely short sighted. The criticism, post-mortems, retrospectives and "AI is dead" articles will come in time.
- davidw 3y agoYeah, more or less in this boat too. ChatGPT does things. Useful things. "Crypto" has some clever ideas, but always seemed too full of utopians and grifters and people with a solution in search of a problem. I've used Erlang professionally and like the ecosystem very much. I am a bit annoyed with myself for still not having a better understanding of how these LLM's work, because that's important, at the end of the day for evaluating where they are best applied, and where danger lurks. But they are clearly going to be a game changer. Maybe more, maybe less than some people think, but I've seen enough hype cycles to think there is some substance here.
- loudmax 3y agoI feel the same way about not understanding how LLMs work. I've found Hugginface's tutorials a good place to start: https://huggingface.co/course/ https://huggingface.co/course/
- yummypaint 3y agoIt may be that the game has already changed and people are just starting to figure out the new rules. Im looking forward to continuing to slap my forehead in these "wish i had seen that low-hanging fruit" moments. Suddenly being able to largely automate so many formerly human-only tasks using plain language instructions makes me feel like the nature of the computing experience itself may be evolving profoundly. It has been said that technological progress generally shifts people from being tool users to tool managers, and these language models certainly fit that trend.
- cudgy 3y ago“Suddenly being able to largely automate so many formerly human-only tasks using plain language instructions makes me feel like the nature of the computing experience itself may be evolving profoundly.” Can you provide some examples of the so many tasks that these LLM’s are performing for you that a human was needed before?
- vlovich123 3y agoFiguring out utility doesn’t bother me. The hype that bothers me is applying it to random shit it should not be yet (eg using it to write anything more than starter code). I’m also bothered by the absolute fantastical BS lay people are being fed about the possibilities. Like the problem with ChatGPT is the scams. Having it generate “offensive” material is a joke - not only is it trivial to bypass any/all protections OpenAI tries to put in place, the protections themselves are laughable trying to stay away from any possible thing that could possibility generate any controversy for anyone anywhere.