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I understand the sentiment, and I definitely think there are appropriate comparisons to be made to past hype waves like crypto and even AVs, but the fact that s

by _jab 3y ago

I understand the sentiment, and I definitely think there are appropriate comparisons to be made to past hype waves like crypto and even AVs, but the fact that so many normal people use ChatGPT and find it not only interesting but also, critically, useful, tells me that LLMs may follow a different path in the long term.

osigurdson 3y ago
For sure. The argument that there was hype about something in the past, therefore any hype is unwarranted is not a logical conclusion.
- williamcotton 3y ago
  Not only is it unwarranted it is more obnoxious than some YouTuber making predictions about all lawyers being replaced in the next three years.
uoaei 3y ago
I've yet to see a serious study where there are measured improvements to QoL vis a vis workload, time required, etc. vs accuracy and fallibility issues that have been comprehensively demonstrated with the current crop of LLMs.
- extheat 3y ago
  I already have a massive improvement in productivity from GitHub Copilot that I don’t find it hard to imagine that fine tuned LLMs will be able to automate the bulk of mundane work in software (maybe even all of it). Programming, and other computer based activities that involve writing are the exact types of things that language models are good at.
- oulu2006 3y ago
  Luckily, I was just reading such a study a few days ago: https://www.itnews.com.au/news/westpac-sees-46-percent-productivity-gain-from-ai-coding-experiment-596423 https://www.itnews.com.au/news/westpac-sees-46-percent-produ...
- feyman_r 3y ago
  That’s how folks initially thought of cars too - the accident rates, lack of speed etc. The point is, as a technology, this is going to change the future. It’s a valid point that the current state might be less than what you expect. The only way to improve it is to double down on it. Comparisons to crypto are a bit shallow - except that they both are ‘new’ technologies and need GPUs, there’s not much.
- khazhoux 3y ago
  You are probably right that in the six months since the release of ChatGPT, we do not have academic surveys of the productivity gains of LLMs in real-world scenarios. But that is hardly the measure of a new technology.
- usaar333 3y ago
  One was just posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36152510 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36152510
dangwhy 3y ago
> so many normal people use ChatGPT and find it not only interesting but also, critically, useful Is this actually true though. I write code for living and tried to use it many times but it wasn't really that useful to me ( vs google search) Curious to hear ppl who are using it in 'critically useful way' . i am eager to use it my workflows .
- somehnguy 3y ago
  To your point - I don’t actually know a single ‘normal’ person IRL who uses ChatGPT or any other LLM app in general. The only people I know that have ever even mentioned them are other engineers at my job. Even then it’s more just bragging in passing about getting into the latest beta $whatever or making it generate some outrageous paragraph for 30 seconds of fun.
  - gbraad 3y ago
    I have seen several people justifying their use for it to work on that novel they always wanted to write. when challenged on who is actually writing it, they respond with "you need to understand the limitations", and that by itself it "can't write the novel". in short, they mean that ChatGPT only grnerates short passages the size of a few paragraphs. they are therefore just puzzling and joining these short plots together. can't imagine what kind of novel could be resulting from this.
    - qbasic_forever 3y ago
      We are already seeing stories of AI fail too, like this lawyer that tried to use it to write an argument and it invented entire cases which don't exist. The judge is not pleased! https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65735769 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65735769
- taf2 3y ago
  I was on vacation at the beach so this was back in march and I had just received access to gpt4. I had lot of time and I was mostly curious to see if I could use c++ and the recently released whisper.cpp which is pretty solid for transcription s… so I haven’t written c++ for sometime and figured let’s guide gpt 4 to help me write this. It started out giving me the Skelton code. From there it was less about it driving the code and more about it writing the tedious functions. A request handler for parsing form data. After I got the example I could reuse and fit the code into the right places at the end I have a working c++ service wrapping whisper.cpp … I should open source the work but I was blown away that I was able to get this working and still be totally relaxed… occasionally I’d compare my searches in google to my answers from gpt 4 and the difference was me spending 15 - 20 minutes reading through search results vs 5 to 10 minutes… so yeah I’m a crazy ceo who won’t shut up about ai
aiunboxed 3y ago
I think there are broadly two types of people, one who understand LLMs and realise that it is actually going to change the world, others who think it is just a hype like crypto / NFTs/ meta verse. I have friends working in big tech who are completely unaware of how to use GPT - maybe because their work prohibits it and can't appreciate the value.
- qbasic_forever 3y ago
  There's a third person--someone who knows what these tools are and knows their limitations mean they will only be applied successfully to very narrowly scoped problems and domains. I've been in and around the ML space for a couple decades and the hype for LLMs is just plain unhinged and does not match the reality of their applications. There are very few domains that benefit from a better BS generator, which is what these tools are in practice.
  - matthewaveryusa 3y ago
    Im in this camp, my impression is it’s a tool that augments me while working, but it’s something that’s incredibly difficult to reliably use in a service: the sandboxing between user data and instructions is a real problem in langchain/react.

by _jab 3y ago

osigurdson 3y ago

For sure. The argument that there was hype about something in the past, therefore any hype is unwarranted is not a logical conclusion.

williamcotton 3y ago
Not only is it unwarranted it is more obnoxious than some YouTuber making predictions about all lawyers being replaced in the next three years.

uoaei 3y ago

I've yet to see a serious study where there are measured improvements to QoL vis a vis workload, time required, etc. vs accuracy and fallibility issues that have been comprehensively demonstrated with the current crop of LLMs.

extheat 3y ago
I already have a massive improvement in productivity from GitHub Copilot that I don’t find it hard to imagine that fine tuned LLMs will be able to automate the bulk of mundane work in software (maybe even all of it). Programming, and other computer based activities that involve writing are the exact types of things that language models are good at.
oulu2006 3y ago
Luckily, I was just reading such a study a few days ago: https://www.itnews.com.au/news/westpac-sees-46-percent-productivity-gain-from-ai-coding-experiment-596423 https://www.itnews.com.au/news/westpac-sees-46-percent-produ...
feyman_r 3y ago
That’s how folks initially thought of cars too - the accident rates, lack of speed etc. The point is, as a technology, this is going to change the future. It’s a valid point that the current state might be less than what you expect. The only way to improve it is to double down on it. Comparisons to crypto are a bit shallow - except that they both are ‘new’ technologies and need GPUs, there’s not much.
khazhoux 3y ago
You are probably right that in the six months since the release of ChatGPT, we do not have academic surveys of the productivity gains of LLMs in real-world scenarios. But that is hardly the measure of a new technology.
usaar333 3y ago
One was just posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36152510 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36152510

dangwhy 3y ago

> so many normal people use ChatGPT and find it not only interesting but also, critically, useful Is this actually true though. I write code for living and tried to use it many times but it wasn't really that useful to me ( vs google search) Curious to hear ppl who are using it in 'critically useful way' . i am eager to use it my workflows .

somehnguy 3y ago
To your point - I don’t actually know a single ‘normal’ person IRL who uses ChatGPT or any other LLM app in general. The only people I know that have ever even mentioned them are other engineers at my job. Even then it’s more just bragging in passing about getting into the latest beta $whatever or making it generate some outrageous paragraph for 30 seconds of fun.
- gbraad 3y ago
  I have seen several people justifying their use for it to work on that novel they always wanted to write. when challenged on who is actually writing it, they respond with "you need to understand the limitations", and that by itself it "can't write the novel". in short, they mean that ChatGPT only grnerates short passages the size of a few paragraphs. they are therefore just puzzling and joining these short plots together. can't imagine what kind of novel could be resulting from this.
  - qbasic_forever 3y ago
    We are already seeing stories of AI fail too, like this lawyer that tried to use it to write an argument and it invented entire cases which don't exist. The judge is not pleased! https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65735769 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-65735769
taf2 3y ago
I was on vacation at the beach so this was back in march and I had just received access to gpt4. I had lot of time and I was mostly curious to see if I could use c++ and the recently released whisper.cpp which is pretty solid for transcription s… so I haven’t written c++ for sometime and figured let’s guide gpt 4 to help me write this. It started out giving me the Skelton code. From there it was less about it driving the code and more about it writing the tedious functions. A request handler for parsing form data. After I got the example I could reuse and fit the code into the right places at the end I have a working c++ service wrapping whisper.cpp … I should open source the work but I was blown away that I was able to get this working and still be totally relaxed… occasionally I’d compare my searches in google to my answers from gpt 4 and the difference was me spending 15 - 20 minutes reading through search results vs 5 to 10 minutes… so yeah I’m a crazy ceo who won’t shut up about ai

aiunboxed 3y ago

I think there are broadly two types of people, one who understand LLMs and realise that it is actually going to change the world, others who think it is just a hype like crypto / NFTs/ meta verse. I have friends working in big tech who are completely unaware of how to use GPT - maybe because their work prohibits it and can't appreciate the value.

qbasic_forever 3y ago
There's a third person--someone who knows what these tools are and knows their limitations mean they will only be applied successfully to very narrowly scoped problems and domains. I've been in and around the ML space for a couple decades and the hype for LLMs is just plain unhinged and does not match the reality of their applications. There are very few domains that benefit from a better BS generator, which is what these tools are in practice.
- matthewaveryusa 3y ago
  Im in this camp, my impression is it’s a tool that augments me while working, but it’s something that’s incredibly difficult to reliably use in a service: the sandboxing between user data and instructions is a real problem in langchain/react.