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>>Who holds their phone up and takes a photo then wants to know it was a photo of? >>Great for the vision impaired. Yes, this is great for the estimated 285 m

>>Who holds their phone up and takes a photo then wants to know it was a photo of? >>Great for the vision impaired. Yes, this is great for the estimated 285 million vision impaired people around the world[1]. [1] https://www.bemyeyes.com/about https://www.bemyeyes.com/about

wokwokwok 3y ago
Did you read my comment? I literally said that it’s for vision impaired. That’s great. …but it’s niche. I’m sitting on my couch right now and I can think of like 20 things I could chat to chatgpt about. I can see literally nothing in my visual range want to take a photo of and run image analysis over. It’s like Shazam. Yes, it’s useful, but, most of the time, I don’t need it. I would argue this is true for this, for most people, including the significant proportion of people with minor visual impairments (that would, you know, put their glasses on instead).
- Philpax 3y ago
  baffling that you think 3.5% of the world's population is a niche
- bastawhiz 3y ago
  There's enough vision-impaired people in the world to equal the population of Japan, Korea, and Vietnam combined. And beyond those people who would get obvious utility, this is essentially Google Lens on steroids—I simply can't figure how you could call this "niche". Maybe you won't use it multiple times per day, but plenty of people will. Hell, just now I was wondering why the leaves on one of my plants are starting to brown and could have used this.
  - wokwokwok 3y ago
    Many of those people would be adequately served with a pair of glasses. This, wouldn't help them, even if they had both a device capable of using it and the means to pay for it. Even if it could help people, it's an open question if it would be safe, to, for example, use this to scan medication when it is only a probabilistic model that may hallucinate something that isn't actually there. What you're talking about is a speculative use of a service that might one day exist based on this technology. What I am talking about is this actual service.
    - famouswaffles 3y ago
      >What you're talking about is a speculative use of a service that might one day exist based on this technology. It's not a speculative service that might one day happen. Literally it's rolling out right now https://www.bemyeyes.com/blog/announcing-be-my-ai https://www.bemyeyes.com/blog/announcing-be-my-ai
    - bastawhiz 3y ago
      > Many of those people would be adequately served with a pair of glasses. These people are being served by a preview of the service _right now_. > Even if it could help people, it's an open question if it would be safe, to, for example, use this to scan medication when it is only a probabilistic model that may hallucinate something that isn't actually there. Any OCR solution could also make a mistake, like misrecognizing a dosage on a prescription label. > What you're talking about is a speculative use of a service that might one day exist based on this technology. > What I am talking about is this actual service. GPT-4 is six months old. ChatGPT is less than a year old. Why would you benchmark a service by the initial public preview? Of course it's _speculative use_, the damn thing has had its tires kicked for like a day.
- epups 3y ago
  You are thinking too small here. Think about a system that could provide you with sophisticated image analysis to the level of a human expert. Tumor identification, quality control, etc. I don't think we are there quite yet, but this is clear and fast progress on that field.
- digging 3y ago
  > I’m sitting on my couch right now and ... I can see literally nothing in my visual range want to take a photo of and run image analysis over. What if you weren't on your couch? Going outside is not "niche".

wokwokwok 3y ago

Did you read my comment? I literally said that it’s for vision impaired. That’s great. …but it’s niche. I’m sitting on my couch right now and I can think of like 20 things I could chat to chatgpt about. I can see literally nothing in my visual range want to take a photo of and run image analysis over. It’s like Shazam. Yes, it’s useful, but, most of the time, I don’t need it. I would argue this is true for this, for most people, including the significant proportion of people with minor visual impairments (that would, you know, put their glasses on instead).

Philpax 3y ago
baffling that you think 3.5% of the world's population is a niche
bastawhiz 3y ago
There's enough vision-impaired people in the world to equal the population of Japan, Korea, and Vietnam combined. And beyond those people who would get obvious utility, this is essentially Google Lens on steroids—I simply can't figure how you could call this "niche". Maybe you won't use it multiple times per day, but plenty of people will. Hell, just now I was wondering why the leaves on one of my plants are starting to brown and could have used this.
- wokwokwok 3y ago
  Many of those people would be adequately served with a pair of glasses. This, wouldn't help them, even if they had both a device capable of using it and the means to pay for it. Even if it could help people, it's an open question if it would be safe, to, for example, use this to scan medication when it is only a probabilistic model that may hallucinate something that isn't actually there. What you're talking about is a speculative use of a service that might one day exist based on this technology. What I am talking about is this actual service.
  - famouswaffles 3y ago
    >What you're talking about is a speculative use of a service that might one day exist based on this technology. It's not a speculative service that might one day happen. Literally it's rolling out right now https://www.bemyeyes.com/blog/announcing-be-my-ai https://www.bemyeyes.com/blog/announcing-be-my-ai
  - bastawhiz 3y ago
    > Many of those people would be adequately served with a pair of glasses. These people are being served by a preview of the service _right now_. > Even if it could help people, it's an open question if it would be safe, to, for example, use this to scan medication when it is only a probabilistic model that may hallucinate something that isn't actually there. Any OCR solution could also make a mistake, like misrecognizing a dosage on a prescription label. > What you're talking about is a speculative use of a service that might one day exist based on this technology. > What I am talking about is this actual service. GPT-4 is six months old. ChatGPT is less than a year old. Why would you benchmark a service by the initial public preview? Of course it's _speculative use_, the damn thing has had its tires kicked for like a day.
epups 3y ago
You are thinking too small here. Think about a system that could provide you with sophisticated image analysis to the level of a human expert. Tumor identification, quality control, etc. I don't think we are there quite yet, but this is clear and fast progress on that field.
digging 3y ago
> I’m sitting on my couch right now and ... I can see literally nothing in my visual range want to take a photo of and run image analysis over. What if you weren't on your couch? Going outside is not "niche".