3 ms·

I’ve been in tech for nearly 20 years and I’ve immersed myself into almost all the hyped up stuff, from 3D printing back in the day to AR/VR to crypto to AI. A

by spaceman_2020 3y ago

I’ve been in tech for nearly 20 years and I’ve immersed myself into almost all the hyped up stuff, from 3D printing back in the day to AR/VR to crypto to AI. AI is the only thing that feels like the real thing. It’s already being used in my work extensively, from coding to content generation. If you’ve found yourself underwhelmed by AI, you’re either not using the latest and greatest stuff, or your problems are too complex for AI to solve - for now.

willsmith72 3y ago
You're exactly right, and I still find myself shocked every week by how little people are making use of it. I think part of the reason is the same as another phenomenon I've seen before. Most people don't want to automate their work. In fact, they don't even want to change their behaviour at all. They have tasks which they are 100% confident and comfortable in, and completing them gives them satisfaction. As long as they can do that and keep their job, they will continue in that manner. As a business owner, it makes me want to pull my hair out. There is so damn much wasted time and energy in this world. But I also can't blame them. They're happy, their boss is happy, the company is happy (for now).
- gitfan86 3y ago
  Yes, I've been surprised by this as well. I expected that an older person who had done the same job for 10 years would be like this. But I'm seeing tech oriented people not want to use it.
  - aptenoforst 3y ago
    This whole conversation is either roleplay or made by AI
    - spaceman_2020 3y ago
      yeah man, there are real people roleplaying to get you to sign up for a $20/month openAI subscription. You really caught onto us.
- spaceman_2020 3y ago
  It legitimately feels like a super power. I run a small D2C brand on the side that's been lagging behind because I need to create fresh creative collateral for it and I've never had to time to get new set of pictures taken. The Midjourney V6 > Magnific pipeline helped me create enough pictures in 3-4 hours of prompting to keep the marketing pipeline filled for the next year. And the quality is so, so good that most of my agency friends say only a handful of people in the state can create anything remotely similar. People will be shocked at the quality of creatives even small brands will be able to put out in the next couple of years. You can have Versace-quality luxury product shots for $20/month in subscriptions.
- matsemann 3y ago
  > As a business owner, it makes me want to pull my hair out. My thought is that it's long since an employee got rewarded based on output or their work done. They (we) get rewarded for having their butt in their seat for 8 hours a day, no matter how they spend that time. If me using AI tools to do my work more efficiently actually meant that I could go home from work two hours earlier, I would be all over it. If using it however means I need to do more stuff and the owner reaps all the rewards.. I'm not gonna bother.
  - willsmith72 3y ago
    > They (we) get rewarded for having their butt in their seat for 8 hours a day, no matter how they spend that time Just depends on where you work. Doesn't part of you want to make the most of your time? Is there nothing more enjoyable or beneficiary you could fill the extra time with, even if it's still "work"? I don't agree you'd be doing "more stuff", it's about getting the same value/productivity out of the same or less input
znpy 3y ago
> or your problems are too complex for AI to solve - for now. i am not very interesting in the current AI wave, but I gave chatgpt a try and asked them to generate some sample code using a specific library. Now, i had read the library docs top to bottom, and the generated code was essentially wrong. The thing that got me, i could definitely think of the specific manpages (or webpages) and samples chatgpt had used/shuffled to generate the code. Needless to say, it shows how it can do a patchwork of text without really understand what's going on: the various pieces of code came from some different sources, were "stitched" together pretty much correctly, but the code was essentially doing the wrong thing. Not sure how i feel about this, honestly
- wenc 3y ago
  Don't let perfection be the enemy of the good. Today ChatGPT might only get you 80% of the way there, but you can still fill in the 20% and still come out ahead. For many of my tasks it's getting me 90% of the way there because there's simply many more code examples and much more documentation in my domain. It still makes mistakes and it's not great at reasoning, but ChatGPT 4 (forget the free tier, always use 4) is at a level that lets me be more productive than if it had not existed. It's really fixed mindset vs growth mindset with respect to technology use. Fixed mindset = this sucks because it doesn't do everything I want. It's dead in the water. Growth mindset = this doesn't yet do everything I want, but I can still use it. Or maybe I'll patiently wait till it becomes something useful. But I'm not going to dismiss it out of hand.
  - spaceman_2020 3y ago
    the fact that you have to append ("always use 4") to any discussion about AI on HackerNews is telling how out of touch this place has become.
    - wenc 3y ago
      Yes. Too many people who have only used the free ChatGPT 3.5 come away thinking, "if this is all there is, I've got nothing to worry about". It's not until they pay for ChatGPT 4.0 and use it for a while that they realize they've been dismissing a straw man all this time. To be fair, ChatGPT 4 isn't available everywhere and $20/mth though cheap to Americans, isn't that affordable to the rest of the world. But it is a vast improvement over 3.5 and actually a game changer for many things. Even a year after its launch, no other LLM has come close: https://huggingface.co/spaces/lmsys/chatbot-arena-leaderboard https://huggingface.co/spaces/lmsys/chatbot-arena-leaderboar...

willsmith72 3y ago

You're exactly right, and I still find myself shocked every week by how little people are making use of it. I think part of the reason is the same as another phenomenon I've seen before. Most people don't want to automate their work. In fact, they don't even want to change their behaviour at all. They have tasks which they are 100% confident and comfortable in, and completing them gives them satisfaction. As long as they can do that and keep their job, they will continue in that manner. As a business owner, it makes me want to pull my hair out. There is so damn much wasted time and energy in this world. But I also can't blame them. They're happy, their boss is happy, the company is happy (for now).

gitfan86 3y ago
Yes, I've been surprised by this as well. I expected that an older person who had done the same job for 10 years would be like this. But I'm seeing tech oriented people not want to use it.
- aptenoforst 3y ago
  This whole conversation is either roleplay or made by AI
  - spaceman_2020 3y ago
    yeah man, there are real people roleplaying to get you to sign up for a $20/month openAI subscription. You really caught onto us.
spaceman_2020 3y ago
It legitimately feels like a super power. I run a small D2C brand on the side that's been lagging behind because I need to create fresh creative collateral for it and I've never had to time to get new set of pictures taken. The Midjourney V6 > Magnific pipeline helped me create enough pictures in 3-4 hours of prompting to keep the marketing pipeline filled for the next year. And the quality is so, so good that most of my agency friends say only a handful of people in the state can create anything remotely similar. People will be shocked at the quality of creatives even small brands will be able to put out in the next couple of years. You can have Versace-quality luxury product shots for $20/month in subscriptions.
matsemann 3y ago
> As a business owner, it makes me want to pull my hair out. My thought is that it's long since an employee got rewarded based on output or their work done. They (we) get rewarded for having their butt in their seat for 8 hours a day, no matter how they spend that time. If me using AI tools to do my work more efficiently actually meant that I could go home from work two hours earlier, I would be all over it. If using it however means I need to do more stuff and the owner reaps all the rewards.. I'm not gonna bother.
- willsmith72 3y ago
  > They (we) get rewarded for having their butt in their seat for 8 hours a day, no matter how they spend that time Just depends on where you work. Doesn't part of you want to make the most of your time? Is there nothing more enjoyable or beneficiary you could fill the extra time with, even if it's still "work"? I don't agree you'd be doing "more stuff", it's about getting the same value/productivity out of the same or less input

znpy 3y ago

> or your problems are too complex for AI to solve - for now. i am not very interesting in the current AI wave, but I gave chatgpt a try and asked them to generate some sample code using a specific library. Now, i had read the library docs top to bottom, and the generated code was essentially wrong. The thing that got me, i could definitely think of the specific manpages (or webpages) and samples chatgpt had used/shuffled to generate the code. Needless to say, it shows how it can do a patchwork of text without really understand what's going on: the various pieces of code came from some different sources, were "stitched" together pretty much correctly, but the code was essentially doing the wrong thing. Not sure how i feel about this, honestly

wenc 3y ago
Don't let perfection be the enemy of the good. Today ChatGPT might only get you 80% of the way there, but you can still fill in the 20% and still come out ahead. For many of my tasks it's getting me 90% of the way there because there's simply many more code examples and much more documentation in my domain. It still makes mistakes and it's not great at reasoning, but ChatGPT 4 (forget the free tier, always use 4) is at a level that lets me be more productive than if it had not existed. It's really fixed mindset vs growth mindset with respect to technology use. Fixed mindset = this sucks because it doesn't do everything I want. It's dead in the water. Growth mindset = this doesn't yet do everything I want, but I can still use it. Or maybe I'll patiently wait till it becomes something useful. But I'm not going to dismiss it out of hand.
- spaceman_2020 3y ago
  the fact that you have to append ("always use 4") to any discussion about AI on HackerNews is telling how out of touch this place has become.
  - wenc 3y ago
    Yes. Too many people who have only used the free ChatGPT 3.5 come away thinking, "if this is all there is, I've got nothing to worry about". It's not until they pay for ChatGPT 4.0 and use it for a while that they realize they've been dismissing a straw man all this time. To be fair, ChatGPT 4 isn't available everywhere and $20/mth though cheap to Americans, isn't that affordable to the rest of the world. But it is a vast improvement over 3.5 and actually a game changer for many things. Even a year after its launch, no other LLM has come close: https://huggingface.co/spaces/lmsys/chatbot-arena-leaderboard https://huggingface.co/spaces/lmsys/chatbot-arena-leaderboar...