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Dude on HN was describing the other day how they’re moving to use an AI to generate a list of cars with specific features in their inventory and how this was a
by wredue 3y ago
Dude on HN was describing the other day how they’re moving to use an AI to generate a list of cars with specific features in their inventory and how this was a great part of the AI future.
But as we see frequently even on the most sophisticated AIs, they get shit wrong… a lot.
So this company decided to replace an actually working, guaranteed to produce proper results filtering system with a guaranteed to not produce proper results an unknown amount of the time, and the feeling was that this was good business direction.
People want buzzwords, not working software.
- nerdponx 3y agoPeople don't want buzzwords, people want promotions, bonuses, and recognition. It turns out that producing working software is not the optimal way to obtain those things at a lot of companies.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 3y agoAnd how do you get said promotions, bonuses and recognition? By introducing change. And what change is easiest? One that relies on established ground of buzzwords.
- gAI 3y agoI'm detecting a lack of synergy here.
- hinkley 3y agoWe haven't leveraged those for at least ten years.
- fsckboy 3y agocareful who you make fun of, technical debt is technically leverage
- iso1631 3y agoThe helicopter view says that I need to implement my change and move on before the shit hits the fan. The next person to take over will blame everything on "the previous guy", quite rightly, but I won't care as I'll have taken my promotion and be to busy blaming everything at the new company on the previous guy.
- nradov 3y agoMake sure to leave 3 envelopes for the next guy. https://kevinkruse.com/the-ceo-and-the-three-envelopes/ https://kevinkruse.com/the-ceo-and-the-three-envelopes/
- JimtheCoder 3y agoThe system is neither dynamic nor robust enough...
- whaleofatw2022 3y agoIt's also the investing/partnering side of things too though. Some VCs and the like aren't interested if your company isn't hitting those buzzwords.
- nerdponx 3y agoRight, it's just a means to an end, one of several.
- oceanplexian 3y agoThis is the real “safety” problem with AI. Since it’s so good at generating convincingly wrong answers, eventually we are going to build it into all sorts of mission critical systems and and everything from finance to healthcare will start to accumulate sophisticated, non deterministic failures over time. Like a trojan horse or a perhaps a civilization-level virus.
- mdavidn 3y agoIt's not that dissimilar to the sophisticated, non-deterministic failures already introduce over time by humans.
- 1propionyl 3y agoNo, it is dissimilar. Humans learn over time. Humans have social pressures. Humans have explanatory rather than merely predictive models about what they do. Deviations by humans from expected standard behavior often produce better rather than worse results. The list goes on.
- jrockway 3y agoThe philosophical question is whether "social pressure" and "reward function" are the same thing.
- moqmar 3y agoFor one person, at one point in time, sure, even though it'd be a quite complex one. But with an AI used by a thousand companies to replace one team member each, they're replacing a thousand of different "reward functions" with just one across all of them. A huge advantage of humanity is that we have different people, from different cultural and social backgrounds, all with social and personal norms and values that vary over time for each and every person, and telling an AI "imitate a pirate" or "answer without any biases" is not going to replace that.
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- phh 3y ago> People want buzzwords, not working software. I'm pretty sure this doesn't generalize that well. I would say that people who don't use every day the product they are buying prefer buzzwords, but it's less true for people who actually use it.
- MattGaiser 3y agoFor the purposes of the company selling the software, only the opinions of the people doing the buying would matter.
- MattGaiser 3y agoThe working list probably requires paying someone to keep it up to date. So the company is saving money by not needing that person with something customers may not notice is a degradation, at least not enough to switch companies.
- eastbound 3y agoMy accountant forced AI into software. It literally removes the labels I put and puts bullshit labels instead. I’m part of their largest customers and I have only 300 invoices a year. I’m still stunned how people can mess up like this.
- 6510 3y agoI'm quite surprised how we still don't have fixed quality data formats that anyone can easily transform into every possible thing. Accountants should be analyzing records not maintaining them?
- tenebrisalietum 3y agoWe did have XML but, y'know, Microsoft.
- alfalfasprout 3y agoWhat many people don't seem to want to hear is that most "ML" problems are simple ML problems. LLMs are a neat advancement and a great tool in a variety of applications but for most applications they introduce a great deal of uncertainty and often at significant cost. They're a good complement to great design and infrastructure but you're fooling yourself if you think they're a replacement.
- savrajsingh 3y agoIn the overwhelming majority of companies, I’d venture to say that “AI and ML powered” actually means “sort this list and take the first item.”