4 ms·

I feel like the R1 is getting a lot of weird hate here on HN. I get it, it's a bit pretentious and wants to be very Apple-like, yadda yadda. Probably not that m

by dvt 3y ago

I feel like the R1 is getting a lot of weird hate here on HN. I get it, it's a bit pretentious and wants to be very Apple-like, yadda yadda. Probably not that much value generation, it's overpriced, and no one wants to carry another thing in their pocket. And yes, the company will likely go bankrupt (or pivot into something less exciting). It's also all in the cloud (no local inference) so it doesn't really even "do" that much. But seriously: this is (or should be) the future of computing. The fact that things like OS self-organization, system-wide (+cloud) search, basic automation, etc. is so broken on modern operating systems is just plain bizarre. For example, if I wanted to do a simple find-and-replace on my 2021 M1, I'd have to use something like grep (a tool originally written by Ken Thompson in 1973—a half century before my laptop was built) and look up flags and syntax I inevitably constantly forget. We should have been past this at least 15 years ago.

danso 3y ago
> * For example, if I wanted to do a simple find-and-replace on my 2021 M1, I'd have to use something like grep (a tool originally written by Ken Thompson in 1973—a half century before my laptop was built) and look up flags and syntax I inevitably constantly forget. We should have been past this at least 15 years ago.* What does the oldness (and long usefulness) of grep have to do with the problem you described, which is the very hard problem of translating natural human speech into machine commands?
anentropic 3y ago
100% agree all these points!
hkkevinchow 3y ago
I think the hate is that the website and the promotion videos are too advanced to the point where there were no MVPs, progress, or found limitations in between. On the other hand, the terms they used are too strong to be true. Are they building an OS from the ground up, or just calling ChatGPT API to do stuff and calling it an OS? And of course, looking at Linkedin, the founder(s) are NOT convincing either.
andybak 3y ago
The strangest thing about AI is that a lot of it's value comes from the fact that it's better at using the tools that we designed for humans than we are. It's essentially an admission of failure. I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from this observation however.
- hsuduebc2 3y ago
  Every time I need to use google to change settings in app like facebook I constantly wonder about that. Where is my ai assistant when I'm just gonna tell him what I want? Why do I need to end on Reddit through Google when random internet user answers me how to change even the things that should be the most obvious to find?
- joshspankit 3y ago
  > is so broken I would argue that it’s not that we’re bad at using tools that we designed for humans, but more that multiple shifts in the tech world over the last 50 years have intentionally (and unintentionally) broken those tools. AI does not need to use the tools at all, it knows the knowledge that the tools gate-keep and it can write code that does the data manipulation that underlies the most powerful software. It essentially side-steps the whole mess that is the current tech industry (and to be honest a bunch of other industries).
- ssnistfajen 3y ago
  Automated programs are not limited by stamina, attention span, sleep cycles, etc. so I don't think AIs being better at something is necessarily an indicator of failure for humans. Dogs were used to rotate roasting spits in Britain during the Early Modern era: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnspit_dog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnspit_dog Does this mean humans were inferior to dogs at the task? Absolutely not. It was just a more efficient alternative based on what was available to them at that point in time.
- yreg 3y ago
  > It's essentially an admission of failure. I think that was always the dream, even in early 20th century sci-fi. It's not a failure, it is a success. However, in my opinion it's interesting that the dreamers underestimated the difficulty of robotics. Almost everyone thought that the manual jobs will be the first ones to be replaced. Right now it seems the other way around.
mouse_ 3y ago
I legitimately despise the thing.
- andybak 3y ago
  Based on the keynote or something else?
gyomu 3y ago
> if I wanted to do a simple find-and-replace on my 2021 M1, I'd have to use something like grep (a tool originally written by Ken Thompson in 1973—a half century before my laptop was built) and look up flags and syntax I inevitably constantly forget. We should have been past this at least 15 years ago. Pretty much any text editor worth its salt has find and replace, regex compatible, features. Even the extremely rudimentary TextEdit on your MacBook supports it. The fact that foundational tools like grep still work over half a century later is a feature, not a bug, of our field. How many cloud based services (most if not all of which rely on those foundational half-a-century-old building blocks, by the way) that are pushed to customers today will still be around in half a century?
- dvt 3y ago
  > regex compatible Even a typical Product Manager, let alone a regular layperson, would have no idea where to start with regex, so it's a super weird thing to bring up. Of course grep is a great tool, just how the hammer is a great tool (invented around 3 million years ago); but we've moved past that. You can't use a hammer to do EUV lithography.
  - gyomu 3y ago
    You're right, most people just need basic word search and replace, which pretty much any text editor supports. Supporting regex covers that extra mile that some advanced power users might need, since you were referencing obscure grep flags. What kind of search and replace are you doing that is akin to EUV lithography?
    - matthewfcarlson 3y ago
      A good example of something I was doing today. Taking some text and formatting it as a markdown table with proper spacing. Copilot made it super to highlight the line, type out what I wanted, then kept moving on. Manually it was lots of adding spaces, deleting spaces, and adding |s.
- scrps 3y ago
BoppreH 3y ago
Assistants are cool, but I want better tools. Give me a timeline with all my emails, chats, documents, and pictures shown together. Full text search on my entire browsing history. Exporting my Booking.com search results as a spreadsheet. Controlling my phone from my desktop, and vice versa. As a bonus, those capabilities don't require uploading your data to the cloud or risking LLM hallucinations.
- vineyardmike 3y ago
  > As a bonus, those capabilities don't require uploading your data to the cloud or risking LLM hallucinations. Ignoring that half those services are dependent on the cloud already, this is such a bold and hard problem. A solution would be magical but LLMs are our best chance. Without clearly defined protocols (eg SMTP, CalDav) and a ton of boring to write and use case specific glue code, you’re really dependent on LLMs to make those M*N connections from one service/format to another. An LLM can turn any current or future input format into any current or future output format. That’s really powerful and basically unsolvable at scale with the tools we have now.
  - F7F7F7 3y ago
    And what’s to be said about every large orgs or serious companies TOS against screen scraping data?
    - vineyardmike 3y ago
      If they don't like screen scraping they probably also don't have an API and probably don't have 100 different ways to auto-export data.
- oceanplexian 3y ago
  > Exporting my Booking.com search results as a spreadsheet. Yeah except they actively don’t want you to have access to your data. They want you locked in to their shitty platform. And these companies will actually fight your ability to get data out, like Reddit or Twitter when they shut down their public APIs.
wokwokwok 3y ago
I mean… sure, but wanting something and getting it are different things right? We agree that those things are things we do want, but do you really think we’re getting any of them here? I think it’s reasonably legitimate to go: cool idea, I want it on my phone, as an app. There is no reason for this to be, and indeed, mostly isnt a hardware device; it’s mostly a cloud service with a mystifying and useless custom piece of hardware tacked on the edge. You’re doing on device inference? Cool, sign me up, you have my attention. You have a cloud service for AI integration with existing apps? Mm… like, how is that different from any of the other AI startups? If you differentiator is “my SaaS comes with a plastic box and no subscription fee” you gotta expect people to laugh, it’s a joke.

by dvt 3y ago

danso 3y ago

> * For example, if I wanted to do a simple find-and-replace on my 2021 M1, I'd have to use something like grep (a tool originally written by Ken Thompson in 1973—a half century before my laptop was built) and look up flags and syntax I inevitably constantly forget. We should have been past this at least 15 years ago.* What does the oldness (and long usefulness) of grep have to do with the problem you described, which is the very hard problem of translating natural human speech into machine commands?

anentropic 3y ago

100% agree all these points!

hkkevinchow 3y ago

I think the hate is that the website and the promotion videos are too advanced to the point where there were no MVPs, progress, or found limitations in between. On the other hand, the terms they used are too strong to be true. Are they building an OS from the ground up, or just calling ChatGPT API to do stuff and calling it an OS? And of course, looking at Linkedin, the founder(s) are NOT convincing either.

andybak 3y ago

The strangest thing about AI is that a lot of it's value comes from the fact that it's better at using the tools that we designed for humans than we are. It's essentially an admission of failure. I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from this observation however.

hsuduebc2 3y ago
Every time I need to use google to change settings in app like facebook I constantly wonder about that. Where is my ai assistant when I'm just gonna tell him what I want? Why do I need to end on Reddit through Google when random internet user answers me how to change even the things that should be the most obvious to find?
joshspankit 3y ago
> is so broken I would argue that it’s not that we’re bad at using tools that we designed for humans, but more that multiple shifts in the tech world over the last 50 years have intentionally (and unintentionally) broken those tools. AI does not need to use the tools at all, it knows the knowledge that the tools gate-keep and it can write code that does the data manipulation that underlies the most powerful software. It essentially side-steps the whole mess that is the current tech industry (and to be honest a bunch of other industries).
ssnistfajen 3y ago
Automated programs are not limited by stamina, attention span, sleep cycles, etc. so I don't think AIs being better at something is necessarily an indicator of failure for humans. Dogs were used to rotate roasting spits in Britain during the Early Modern era: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnspit_dog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnspit_dog Does this mean humans were inferior to dogs at the task? Absolutely not. It was just a more efficient alternative based on what was available to them at that point in time.
yreg 3y ago
> It's essentially an admission of failure. I think that was always the dream, even in early 20th century sci-fi. It's not a failure, it is a success. However, in my opinion it's interesting that the dreamers underestimated the difficulty of robotics. Almost everyone thought that the manual jobs will be the first ones to be replaced. Right now it seems the other way around.

mouse_ 3y ago

I legitimately despise the thing.

andybak 3y ago
Based on the keynote or something else?

gyomu 3y ago

> if I wanted to do a simple find-and-replace on my 2021 M1, I'd have to use something like grep (a tool originally written by Ken Thompson in 1973—a half century before my laptop was built) and look up flags and syntax I inevitably constantly forget. We should have been past this at least 15 years ago. Pretty much any text editor worth its salt has find and replace, regex compatible, features. Even the extremely rudimentary TextEdit on your MacBook supports it. The fact that foundational tools like grep still work over half a century later is a feature, not a bug, of our field. How many cloud based services (most if not all of which rely on those foundational half-a-century-old building blocks, by the way) that are pushed to customers today will still be around in half a century?

dvt 3y ago
> regex compatible Even a typical Product Manager, let alone a regular layperson, would have no idea where to start with regex, so it's a super weird thing to bring up. Of course grep is a great tool, just how the hammer is a great tool (invented around 3 million years ago); but we've moved past that. You can't use a hammer to do EUV lithography.
- gyomu 3y ago
  You're right, most people just need basic word search and replace, which pretty much any text editor supports. Supporting regex covers that extra mile that some advanced power users might need, since you were referencing obscure grep flags. What kind of search and replace are you doing that is akin to EUV lithography?
  - matthewfcarlson 3y ago
    A good example of something I was doing today. Taking some text and formatting it as a markdown table with proper spacing. Copilot made it super to highlight the line, type out what I wanted, then kept moving on. Manually it was lots of adding spaces, deleting spaces, and adding |s.
scrps 3y ago

BoppreH 3y ago

Assistants are cool, but I want better tools. Give me a timeline with all my emails, chats, documents, and pictures shown together. Full text search on my entire browsing history. Exporting my Booking.com search results as a spreadsheet. Controlling my phone from my desktop, and vice versa. As a bonus, those capabilities don't require uploading your data to the cloud or risking LLM hallucinations.

vineyardmike 3y ago
> As a bonus, those capabilities don't require uploading your data to the cloud or risking LLM hallucinations. Ignoring that half those services are dependent on the cloud already, this is such a bold and hard problem. A solution would be magical but LLMs are our best chance. Without clearly defined protocols (eg SMTP, CalDav) and a ton of boring to write and use case specific glue code, you’re really dependent on LLMs to make those M*N connections from one service/format to another. An LLM can turn any current or future input format into any current or future output format. That’s really powerful and basically unsolvable at scale with the tools we have now.
- F7F7F7 3y ago
  And what’s to be said about every large orgs or serious companies TOS against screen scraping data?
  - vineyardmike 3y ago
    If they don't like screen scraping they probably also don't have an API and probably don't have 100 different ways to auto-export data.
oceanplexian 3y ago
> Exporting my Booking.com search results as a spreadsheet. Yeah except they actively don’t want you to have access to your data. They want you locked in to their shitty platform. And these companies will actually fight your ability to get data out, like Reddit or Twitter when they shut down their public APIs.

wokwokwok 3y ago

I mean… sure, but wanting something and getting it are different things right? We agree that those things are things we do want, but do you really think we’re getting any of them here? I think it’s reasonably legitimate to go: cool idea, I want it on my phone, as an app. There is no reason for this to be, and indeed, mostly isnt a hardware device; it’s mostly a cloud service with a mystifying and useless custom piece of hardware tacked on the edge. You’re doing on device inference? Cool, sign me up, you have my attention. You have a cloud service for AI integration with existing apps? Mm… like, how is that different from any of the other AI startups? If you differentiator is “my SaaS comes with a plastic box and no subscription fee” you gotta expect people to laugh, it’s a joke.