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Companies aren't worried about "problem solving" they're worried about "using AI". Not long ago I was at a company that was rushing to get their AI "chat with

Companies aren't worried about "problem solving" they're worried about "using AI". Not long ago I was at a company that was rushing to get their AI "chat with our documentation" bot out the door as fast as possible. But prior to AI hype, 'improve documentation search' was not even remotely a priority, or even a concern. It's not like they had an okay chatbot for docs that was previously important but not high enough quality. Why was a documentation chatbot suddenly important? I was talking to a neighbor the other day and he said he was tasked with using AI to help solve scheduling problems in his hospital! This was particularly bizarre, because if "solve scheduling issues" was a real problem, there are plenty of existing approaches to this (and have been for decades) and further more LLMs are not a particularly good way to solve this. There are plenty of tricky NLP problems that AI/LLMs can unblock, and it makes sense that if you've been trying to solve a tricky NLP problem you might think AI can help you. There are numerous old problems I've had that I just couldn't get quite performant enough to work years ago that I would love to revisit with LLMs. Funnily enough, when I chat with former coworkers about progress they've made solving these old problems they tell me leadership isn't interested and instead they're building something like a chatbot for documentation.

dieselgate 3y ago
Really nice to hear someone write this out. I have a similar perspective about how companies are just trying to have _any ol'_ AI offerings for the sake of "not being left behind" or something. But in practice they don't offer much. At work there are meetings promoting AI tooling like "Meet ChatGPT your new best friend" and how to leverage ai tools internally - seems like just another thing to jump onto after NFTs
- travisjungroth 3y ago
  There is a similar thought leader bullshit hype cycle to NFTs. There is also something fundamentally different about LLMs in that they are actually useful. I hosted a “how to use GitHub Copilot” session at work. It was all based on the positive experience of using Copilot to do my normal job. It wasn’t something imagined for someone else or in the future.
  - dieselgate 3y ago
    There was a Copilot session yesterday. I respect your opinion and agree it can be used in a positive manner. Tough to cut through all the b.s. though and I'm incredibly wary
hotnfresh 3y ago
I'm pretty sure every bigco is currently putting a bunch of money (a bunch) into the probably-false promise that putting an LLM in front of their data will finally give their execs the excellent near-real-time insight into their entire business that they've been burning cash trying and failing to achieve since like the 80s. New flavor of the same shit-filled ice cream. Don't matter what flavor it is. There's shit in it. But execs just cannot help themselves. The dream of getting perfect visibility into their whole org from a dashboard (this time, with AI chat prompt!) on their phone, that they can check on a whim from the 14th hole, is just too enticing to let it go as the false promise that it always is. The mind boggles at how much money has been wasted on this kind of garbage over the decades.
balder1991 3y ago
Probably the AI sorting out documentation seems cheaper than the effort it would take previously to improve it.

dieselgate 3y ago

Really nice to hear someone write this out. I have a similar perspective about how companies are just trying to have _any ol'_ AI offerings for the sake of "not being left behind" or something. But in practice they don't offer much. At work there are meetings promoting AI tooling like "Meet ChatGPT your new best friend" and how to leverage ai tools internally - seems like just another thing to jump onto after NFTs

travisjungroth 3y ago
There is a similar thought leader bullshit hype cycle to NFTs. There is also something fundamentally different about LLMs in that they are actually useful. I hosted a “how to use GitHub Copilot” session at work. It was all based on the positive experience of using Copilot to do my normal job. It wasn’t something imagined for someone else or in the future.
- dieselgate 3y ago
  There was a Copilot session yesterday. I respect your opinion and agree it can be used in a positive manner. Tough to cut through all the b.s. though and I'm incredibly wary

hotnfresh 3y ago

I'm pretty sure every bigco is currently putting a bunch of money (a bunch) into the probably-false promise that putting an LLM in front of their data will finally give their execs the excellent near-real-time insight into their entire business that they've been burning cash trying and failing to achieve since like the 80s. New flavor of the same shit-filled ice cream. Don't matter what flavor it is. There's shit in it. But execs just cannot help themselves. The dream of getting perfect visibility into their whole org from a dashboard (this time, with AI chat prompt!) on their phone, that they can check on a whim from the 14th hole, is just too enticing to let it go as the false promise that it always is. The mind boggles at how much money has been wasted on this kind of garbage over the decades.

balder1991 3y ago

Probably the AI sorting out documentation seems cheaper than the effort it would take previously to improve it.