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To be fair, humans make mistakes at an incredible rate. Even the ones who make life or death decisions. AI right now ain't no god, but the gap between AI mista

To be fair, humans make mistakes at an incredible rate. Even the ones who make life or death decisions. AI right now ain't no god, but the gap between AI mistakes and human mistakes isn't that wide.

ChatGTP 3y ago
It's besides the point, the point is this is an "AI" based product and generally tech is supposed to be an improvement on the status quo, the fact that "x might also have issues or blind spots" isn't really relevant? This argument that "humans are flawed too" is not useful, we know humans are flawed, that's why we want tech to fill those gaps, not flawed / potentially dangerous tech, actual tech like how a plane flies you to your destination 99.9% of the time.
- lolinder 3y ago
  This is an improvement over the status quo—there are several blind people who have commented on this thread saying that they are reluctant to use the human service unless they absolutely have to. Giving them an AI tool that can use in low-stakes situations is a huge improvement over not having a tool at all, and the human service is still there for the high-stakes situations they were already willing to use it for.
  - dmazzoni 3y ago
    Also, there are many low-stakes situations where AI is actually quite a bit better than the average human: 1. Take a photo of a piece of tech: AI can not only describe what's going on but tell you exactly how to fix it (e.g. "it's showing a fatal error. hold down the power button for 10 seconds to reboot it") 2. Take a photo of clothing: AI uses consistent, neutral language to describe garments, while humans would all describe the same item differently based on where they live, their own personal style, their region, etc. 3. Take a photo in a major city or near a famous landmark, AI will recognize it and tell you about your location, whereas a random human has probably never been there before 4. Take a photo of an insurance bill, AI can explain what some of the technical terms mean if you don't understand them 5. Take a photo of a menu, ask it to summarize all of the vegetarian entrees and it will list them in seconds ("one veggie burger, one stir fry with tofu, three sandwiches and all of the salads"); a human might take a minute or two to carefully read the menu and give a much longer answer
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    ...I know. To be fair, humans make mistakes at an incredible rate. Even the ones who make life or death decisions. I'm talking about the constant stating of the obvious, if these models weren't useful we wouldn't deploy them. It's like the whole internet constantly making the statement "cars are better at covering distances in shorter time frames than humans"...we know, that's why we build them and pay a bunch of money for them.
gampleman 3y ago
Indeed, but there is a very different risk profile in this sort of situation. A human might be able to say: "I can't see that label very clearly, but I think it says X...", and the user might make their risk assessment based on that implied (lack of) confidence. This tends to be a weakness in AI solutions, where there isn't often good feedback on the model's own estimate of its error rate. On the plus side, I suppose in this application with the humans there's always a risk of a malicious volunteer outright lying, which presumably isn't a risk with the AI solution.
- dmazzoni 3y ago
  Yeah, but the alternative right now is completely random, unverified, human volunteers with no qualifications and no training. While the vast majority have the best of intentions, some people are just...not that good at helping. I've been playing with Be My AI, it's excellent. It's got a really good prompt that enables it to be really descriptive and helpful with very little hallucination. It's actually a lot better at describing most photos than the average person is. Making the world more accessible to blind people is a big challenge. There are no perfect solutions, but the solutions we do have today are enabling millions of blind people to have full careers and live independently. This is a great improvement. It's not perfect, but neither were the previous technologies that blind people have been using. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
deelowe 3y ago
I don't agree with this comparison. I'm not OK with being forced into the center of the distribution when being compared to the general population. Just because an AI may be better than most humans at most things, this does not extrapolate to it being better than me at some specific task. Additionally, I believe there is a world of difference, ethically speaking, between me causing myself harm due to some mistake I made and a machine causing me harm because of a design flaw.

To be fair, humans make mistakes at an incredible rate. Even the ones who make life or death decisions. AI right now ain't no god, but the gap between AI mistakes and human mistakes isn't that wide.

ChatGTP 3y ago

It's besides the point, the point is this is an "AI" based product and generally tech is supposed to be an improvement on the status quo, the fact that "x might also have issues or blind spots" isn't really relevant? This argument that "humans are flawed too" is not useful, we know humans are flawed, that's why we want tech to fill those gaps, not flawed / potentially dangerous tech, actual tech like how a plane flies you to your destination 99.9% of the time.

lolinder 3y ago
This is an improvement over the status quo—there are several blind people who have commented on this thread saying that they are reluctant to use the human service unless they absolutely have to. Giving them an AI tool that can use in low-stakes situations is a huge improvement over not having a tool at all, and the human service is still there for the high-stakes situations they were already willing to use it for.
- dmazzoni 3y ago
  Also, there are many low-stakes situations where AI is actually quite a bit better than the average human: 1. Take a photo of a piece of tech: AI can not only describe what's going on but tell you exactly how to fix it (e.g. "it's showing a fatal error. hold down the power button for 10 seconds to reboot it") 2. Take a photo of clothing: AI uses consistent, neutral language to describe garments, while humans would all describe the same item differently based on where they live, their own personal style, their region, etc. 3. Take a photo in a major city or near a famous landmark, AI will recognize it and tell you about your location, whereas a random human has probably never been there before 4. Take a photo of an insurance bill, AI can explain what some of the technical terms mean if you don't understand them 5. Take a photo of a menu, ask it to summarize all of the vegetarian entrees and it will list them in seconds ("one veggie burger, one stir fry with tofu, three sandwiches and all of the salads"); a human might take a minute or two to carefully read the menu and give a much longer answer
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  ...I know. To be fair, humans make mistakes at an incredible rate. Even the ones who make life or death decisions. I'm talking about the constant stating of the obvious, if these models weren't useful we wouldn't deploy them. It's like the whole internet constantly making the statement "cars are better at covering distances in shorter time frames than humans"...we know, that's why we build them and pay a bunch of money for them.

gampleman 3y ago

Indeed, but there is a very different risk profile in this sort of situation. A human might be able to say: "I can't see that label very clearly, but I think it says X...", and the user might make their risk assessment based on that implied (lack of) confidence. This tends to be a weakness in AI solutions, where there isn't often good feedback on the model's own estimate of its error rate. On the plus side, I suppose in this application with the humans there's always a risk of a malicious volunteer outright lying, which presumably isn't a risk with the AI solution.

dmazzoni 3y ago
Yeah, but the alternative right now is completely random, unverified, human volunteers with no qualifications and no training. While the vast majority have the best of intentions, some people are just...not that good at helping. I've been playing with Be My AI, it's excellent. It's got a really good prompt that enables it to be really descriptive and helpful with very little hallucination. It's actually a lot better at describing most photos than the average person is. Making the world more accessible to blind people is a big challenge. There are no perfect solutions, but the solutions we do have today are enabling millions of blind people to have full careers and live independently. This is a great improvement. It's not perfect, but neither were the previous technologies that blind people have been using. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

deelowe 3y ago

I don't agree with this comparison. I'm not OK with being forced into the center of the distribution when being compared to the general population. Just because an AI may be better than most humans at most things, this does not extrapolate to it being better than me at some specific task. Additionally, I believe there is a world of difference, ethically speaking, between me causing myself harm due to some mistake I made and a machine causing me harm because of a design flaw.