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Yep, absolutely with you here. I feel like lately my mantra has become "the metric is usefulness", not just with this, but everything. So many things seem to

Yep, absolutely with you here. I feel like lately my mantra has become "the metric is usefulness", not just with this, but everything. So many things seem to end up in these never-ending debates that boil down to essentially just peoples' differing aesthetics. But to me, I just want to know how useful things are. I see this all over the place now, not just technical things related to my work, but stuff like culture and politics too. Of course, you could say it's still aesthetics, and my aesthetic just happens to be usefulness. And I think that's right!

JuanPosadas 3y ago
> I just want to know how useful things are. LLMs are somewhere between very useful to game-changing for me. But spammers will get far more utility and value out of LLMs than I can.
- sanderjd 3y ago
  I agree! My point is that this is where both the hypers and the dismissers have gotten it wrong for me. So many hypers are just talking about something that isn't what I'm interested in; about whether it's AGI, rather than whether it's useful. And the dismissers are just missing or denying that it is useful, and for me, it definitely is. Both of these groups just seem to be talking past each other and focusing on the wrong metrics, from my perspective.
xpe 3y ago
I agree in some ways. Still, you can’t escape the uncertainty and complexity by seeking ‘usefulness’, at least to the degree that the term is undefined and contingent. Usefulness of LLMs (and whatever we combine with them) depends on research, funding, investment, attention, and applications. People who talk about usefulness or ethics or politics too often fail to specify key details, such as a time frame and/or discount rate. Not to mention risk preferences.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- esjeon 3y ago
  A lot of people just don't want to spend their attention cycles on something that they don't find useful nor stable right away. There's just absolutely no reason for people to do free labors of figuring out what the thing is really good for nor testing the stuffs for billionaires. Sometimes the winning strategy is simple ignorance.
  - xpe 3y ago
    > There's just absolutely no reason for people to do free labors of figuring out what the thing is really good for nor testing the stuffs for billionaires. This is an unexpectedly emotionally strong response, indicating antipathy towards billionares (presumably related to their wealth, influence, actions, morality, and so on). I'm not following how my relatively milquetoast comment brought about this reaction. Would you like to explain the backstory? There is clearly more to it, and I'd like to hear it. There is also an implied 'thou should not' that I'm getting from the "absolutely no reason to do free labors". That is a very specific and pessimistic framing, which I'll comment on a few paragraphs down. > A lot of people just don't want to spend their attention cycles on something that they don't find useful nor stable right away. To situate the substance of your comment relative to mine: you are suggesting the importance of narrowly-defined, individual-oriented, easy-to-compute usefulness. That is certainly one view. And, yeah, I get it. For most of life's decisions, this is what people do. And for good reason. Let's say for the sake of argument that I share your concerns about powerful forces playing outsized roles. For this paragraph, I'll be a committed socialist. From such a point of view, I will strongly reject claims that one should view usefulness in such a way with just one sentence: It is in one's self-interest to be curious and look beyond one's current frontier. Tools, even those tools created by forces you oppose, can serve your ends. It is better to understand and harness their power. Most, if not all, effective social activists throughout history take a pretty long view. The want change now, but they know they'll have to plan to get there. The ones that don't plan and use the tools at their disposal have a hard time building a movement. Putting aside the political philosophy now... Remember, we're talking about the development of technology that, at the very least, creates the illusion of intelligent textual communication. That's no small thing. It doesn't matter if you think it is overhyped or not, it is an unmistakable force. The rate of change in unprecedented. This isn't anything like most 'typical' questions or decisions we face in life. Even from an individual point of view, learning how to best take advantage of AI can be an important time saver or for many in our field, a competitive advantage. So, reverting to a mindless form of usefulness isn't in our self-interest. Anyhow, for what it is worth, this line of discussion is quite different from my point, which was largely epistemological, pointing out that the word 'usefulness' is hardly operational unless specified. I would also add an opinion: using the term when communicating with others pretty often invites misunderstanding, because statistically, the word has become quite comfortable. This combination of comfort despite inherent ambiguity is a recipe for comically predictable misunderstanding.

JuanPosadas 3y ago

> I just want to know how useful things are. LLMs are somewhere between very useful to game-changing for me. But spammers will get far more utility and value out of LLMs than I can.

sanderjd 3y ago
I agree! My point is that this is where both the hypers and the dismissers have gotten it wrong for me. So many hypers are just talking about something that isn't what I'm interested in; about whether it's AGI, rather than whether it's useful. And the dismissers are just missing or denying that it is useful, and for me, it definitely is. Both of these groups just seem to be talking past each other and focusing on the wrong metrics, from my perspective.

xpe 3y ago

I agree in some ways. Still, you can’t escape the uncertainty and complexity by seeking ‘usefulness’, at least to the degree that the term is undefined and contingent. Usefulness of LLMs (and whatever we combine with them) depends on research, funding, investment, attention, and applications. People who talk about usefulness or ethics or politics too often fail to specify key details, such as a time frame and/or discount rate. Not to mention risk preferences.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
esjeon 3y ago
A lot of people just don't want to spend their attention cycles on something that they don't find useful nor stable right away. There's just absolutely no reason for people to do free labors of figuring out what the thing is really good for nor testing the stuffs for billionaires. Sometimes the winning strategy is simple ignorance.
- xpe 3y ago
  > There's just absolutely no reason for people to do free labors of figuring out what the thing is really good for nor testing the stuffs for billionaires. This is an unexpectedly emotionally strong response, indicating antipathy towards billionares (presumably related to their wealth, influence, actions, morality, and so on). I'm not following how my relatively milquetoast comment brought about this reaction. Would you like to explain the backstory? There is clearly more to it, and I'd like to hear it. There is also an implied 'thou should not' that I'm getting from the "absolutely no reason to do free labors". That is a very specific and pessimistic framing, which I'll comment on a few paragraphs down. > A lot of people just don't want to spend their attention cycles on something that they don't find useful nor stable right away. To situate the substance of your comment relative to mine: you are suggesting the importance of narrowly-defined, individual-oriented, easy-to-compute usefulness. That is certainly one view. And, yeah, I get it. For most of life's decisions, this is what people do. And for good reason. Let's say for the sake of argument that I share your concerns about powerful forces playing outsized roles. For this paragraph, I'll be a committed socialist. From such a point of view, I will strongly reject claims that one should view usefulness in such a way with just one sentence: It is in one's self-interest to be curious and look beyond one's current frontier. Tools, even those tools created by forces you oppose, can serve your ends. It is better to understand and harness their power. Most, if not all, effective social activists throughout history take a pretty long view. The want change now, but they know they'll have to plan to get there. The ones that don't plan and use the tools at their disposal have a hard time building a movement. Putting aside the political philosophy now... Remember, we're talking about the development of technology that, at the very least, creates the illusion of intelligent textual communication. That's no small thing. It doesn't matter if you think it is overhyped or not, it is an unmistakable force. The rate of change in unprecedented. This isn't anything like most 'typical' questions or decisions we face in life. Even from an individual point of view, learning how to best take advantage of AI can be an important time saver or for many in our field, a competitive advantage. So, reverting to a mindless form of usefulness isn't in our self-interest. Anyhow, for what it is worth, this line of discussion is quite different from my point, which was largely epistemological, pointing out that the word 'usefulness' is hardly operational unless specified. I would also add an opinion: using the term when communicating with others pretty often invites misunderstanding, because statistically, the word has become quite comfortable. This combination of comfort despite inherent ambiguity is a recipe for comically predictable misunderstanding.