5 ms·

> Because somehow LLMs became the next "big thing" that nobody can explain but everyone wants to be involved in. It's like audio streaming, the most ineffective

by pheggs 2y ago

> Because somehow LLMs became the next "big thing" that nobody can explain but everyone wants to be involved in. It's like audio streaming, the most ineffective form of audio distribution, but for a while it seemed like a good idea. I know it's slightly off topic, but could you elaborate on the "audio streaming" part?

surfingdino 2y ago
Sure. Compared to traditional broadcast over airwaves or even a download to a device that can play audio without having to stream it from the server, audio streaming is the least efficient and the least convenient form of audio delivery. When you have a transmitter, people adding a thousand new radio receivers in the area does not increase your cost as a broadcaster, adding a thousand clients requires more bandwidth, and more infrastructure. I never understood why audio streaming became as popular as it did when better forms of distribution were available.
- pheggs 2y ago
  thank you, that makes sense in terms of efficiency! I am not familiar with the subject, but aren't the amount of radio frequencies available rather limited?
  - surfingdino 2y ago
    Yes, that's a different type of limitation imposed on the broadcaster. My point was that AI has not got a business model except capturing whatever value remains after it destroys existing models, just like audio streaming. Recent backlash against Daniel Ek's musing on X and the general behaviour of Spotify towards artists shows signs of reaching the end of the line for this idea. Same fate awaits AI. If you see how little of substance can be found in answers given by AI luminaries in their numerous interviews you can see for yourself that those guys have no idea and no plan. The best antidote for this bullshit is to display the transcripts on YT videos and read what they are saying. It's pure nothing.
    - pheggs 2y ago
      I understand where you are coming from, but I’m not sure I completely agree. Streaming music was popular even before it became legal, so I believe it's largely driven by people's desire to listen to whatever they want, whenever they want. Regarding AI, it’s true that the current results might not always be the highest quality. However, there is no theoretical limit to AI's capabilities as far as I know. With this many people working to improve it, I would personally be surprised if significant advancements aren’t made. Maybe not just next year though... Ultimately, I guess we will have to wait and see. Who knows, maybe you will be right in the end :)
      - FabHK 2y ago
        > Streaming music was popular even before it became legal Downloading music was popular. You download once, you listen many times. On Napster, it could take hours until a song was downloaded. No way you'd delete it and download again next time you want to listen to it.
      - surfingdino 2y ago
        The number of people working on improving AI is relatively small compared to the number of people reselling OpenAI APIs so I don't expect huge improvements in the next 5-10 years. The real value of AI is in ML, but with human supervision and interpretation of results. GenAI is the worst thing that happened to AI, because its coming rejection will reflect badly on the rest of the advances broadly labelled as AI.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- lxgr 2y ago
  But how many people really stream the same content at the exact same time anymore these days? Large sports events are probably the only remaining application where broadcast would still see much advantage over individual streams. In the case of a few simultaneous viewers, unicast can sometimes still use bandwidth more efficiently in case of a(since the transmitter precisely knows the receiver’s SNR and doesn’t need to waste any energy transmitting at the wrong coding rate or the wrong direction/place). That’s how modern 802.11 (Wi-Fi) often does reliable multicast, these days. A seamless transition from unicast to multicast once the critical ratio of listeners per base station is reached would be very cool, but require pretty deep levels of integration between broadcasters and ISPs that are probably not worth it.
  - bobdvb 2y ago
    FYI, I work for a big sports streaming company and we are doing "mABR" or multicast adaptive bitrate with some ISPs because it really is worth it. You get a significant improvement in playback stats and the ISP gets massive traffic offload from their network. We started with one big ISP in Italy, then other ISPs saw what we were doing and asked to join in. That being said, it really is a pain in the arse to build. It's also largely proprietary solutions (yes it's multicast but getting the player to find the content isn't a standard) and it's hard for the ISP to update ALL their routers to support it (even when they want it).
  - seoulmetro 2y ago
    They mean "audio streaming" ala "video streaming" not like audio downloading to your device streaming. The stream means live download not just download through the net. i.e. realtime audio podcasts, etc. I assume*
    - lxgr 2y ago
      I figured, and I mean that too!

by pheggs 2y ago

surfingdino 2y ago

Sure. Compared to traditional broadcast over airwaves or even a download to a device that can play audio without having to stream it from the server, audio streaming is the least efficient and the least convenient form of audio delivery. When you have a transmitter, people adding a thousand new radio receivers in the area does not increase your cost as a broadcaster, adding a thousand clients requires more bandwidth, and more infrastructure. I never understood why audio streaming became as popular as it did when better forms of distribution were available.

pheggs 2y ago
thank you, that makes sense in terms of efficiency! I am not familiar with the subject, but aren't the amount of radio frequencies available rather limited?
- surfingdino 2y ago
  Yes, that's a different type of limitation imposed on the broadcaster. My point was that AI has not got a business model except capturing whatever value remains after it destroys existing models, just like audio streaming. Recent backlash against Daniel Ek's musing on X and the general behaviour of Spotify towards artists shows signs of reaching the end of the line for this idea. Same fate awaits AI. If you see how little of substance can be found in answers given by AI luminaries in their numerous interviews you can see for yourself that those guys have no idea and no plan. The best antidote for this bullshit is to display the transcripts on YT videos and read what they are saying. It's pure nothing.
  - pheggs 2y ago
    I understand where you are coming from, but I’m not sure I completely agree. Streaming music was popular even before it became legal, so I believe it's largely driven by people's desire to listen to whatever they want, whenever they want. Regarding AI, it’s true that the current results might not always be the highest quality. However, there is no theoretical limit to AI's capabilities as far as I know. With this many people working to improve it, I would personally be surprised if significant advancements aren’t made. Maybe not just next year though... Ultimately, I guess we will have to wait and see. Who knows, maybe you will be right in the end :)
    - FabHK 2y ago
      > Streaming music was popular even before it became legal Downloading music was popular. You download once, you listen many times. On Napster, it could take hours until a song was downloaded. No way you'd delete it and download again next time you want to listen to it.
    - surfingdino 2y ago
      The number of people working on improving AI is relatively small compared to the number of people reselling OpenAI APIs so I don't expect huge improvements in the next 5-10 years. The real value of AI is in ML, but with human supervision and interpretation of results. GenAI is the worst thing that happened to AI, because its coming rejection will reflect badly on the rest of the advances broadly labelled as AI.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
lxgr 2y ago
But how many people really stream the same content at the exact same time anymore these days? Large sports events are probably the only remaining application where broadcast would still see much advantage over individual streams. In the case of a few simultaneous viewers, unicast can sometimes still use bandwidth more efficiently in case of a(since the transmitter precisely knows the receiver’s SNR and doesn’t need to waste any energy transmitting at the wrong coding rate or the wrong direction/place). That’s how modern 802.11 (Wi-Fi) often does reliable multicast, these days. A seamless transition from unicast to multicast once the critical ratio of listeners per base station is reached would be very cool, but require pretty deep levels of integration between broadcasters and ISPs that are probably not worth it.
- bobdvb 2y ago
  FYI, I work for a big sports streaming company and we are doing "mABR" or multicast adaptive bitrate with some ISPs because it really is worth it. You get a significant improvement in playback stats and the ISP gets massive traffic offload from their network. We started with one big ISP in Italy, then other ISPs saw what we were doing and asked to join in. That being said, it really is a pain in the arse to build. It's also largely proprietary solutions (yes it's multicast but getting the player to find the content isn't a standard) and it's hard for the ISP to update ALL their routers to support it (even when they want it).
- seoulmetro 2y ago
  They mean "audio streaming" ala "video streaming" not like audio downloading to your device streaming. The stream means live download not just download through the net. i.e. realtime audio podcasts, etc. I assume*
  - lxgr 2y ago
    I figured, and I mean that too!