27 ms·

Please don't mention AI again

• iainctduncan 2y ago
  A lot of this is on point. I work in tech diligence, talking to companies raising money. The amount of pointless AI hand waving is unreal, and the majority have not ever tested their disaster recovery plan.
• javier123454321 2y ago
  This is how I feel. GPT and similar LLMs demoes extremely well, but collapses as soon as its put through any kind of real world problem. However, we absolutely are living through press release driven business administration, so it's likely that the realistic approach will be discarded for things that are sexier for the media. Companies will pay for this.
• scottmcdot 2y ago
  Nikhil is the Hambini of the AI industry.
• JSDevOps 2y ago
  https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/sc-dv-cleared-head-of-knowledge-information-management-ai-foi-gdpr-outside-ir35-at-methods-3955305930/?utm_campaign=google_jobs_apply&utm_source=google_jobs_apply&utm_medium=organic&originalSubdomain=uk https://www.linkedin.com/jobs/view/sc-dv-cleared-head-of-kno... Don't know what to do with AI, Ah fuck it let's just shove it with FOI and GDPR
• deleted 2y ago
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• johnea 2y ago
  Wow! This article sure has had a roller coaster ride 8-/ While the title seems to express a widespread annoyance at the overwhelming prevalence of this subject in the tech news, the body of the article then goes on dedicate itself to the exact topic the title claims it doesn't want to hear about. I for one really do wish someone/something would piledrive this topic, but this article was just more of the same tripe...
• mikewarot 2y ago
  >That is to say, it turns out that the core competency of smiling and promising people things that you can't actually deliver is highly transferable. There's a lot of value in this statement, regardless of how you feel about AI, etc. We really should fully fund the FTC and anyone else who can help fill the cells in "Thought Leader Jail".
• Bendy 2y ago
  The author’s Australian so I couldn’t help but read it in the voice of Robert Hughes, to narrate this new shock of the new. “‘This is the real thing, this deserves respect!’. It isn’t and it doesn’t, and no one cares.”
• rldjbpin 2y ago
  um, excuse you, it is all about ANI/AGI/ASI now! /s on a serious note, to me this field was already in quagmire of bs marketing the moment they named it "AI" almost a decade ago. in retrospect, seems like naming it "data science" was the move that started it all. but then political sciences get away with it, but i should not be picking multiple battles at the same time. lowkey grifting has been part of the r&d space in the corporate world from as long as i can see. but lately i am afraid that the bubble will ruin it for all of us.
• mattkenefick 2y ago
  Woof. Lots of strong opinions and misinformation in this thread. backs away slowly
• mrjin 2y ago
  What is AI? Artificial? Yes. Intelligence? Hell NO!!
• Slava_Propanei 2y ago
  [dead]
• deleted 2y ago
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• danielovichdk 2y ago
  Thank you!
• tuatoru 2y ago
  If anyone wants to know the definition of "trenchant", read this blog post.
• JSDevOps 2y ago
  Brilliant
• angrydingo 2y ago
  good stuff
• yawpitch 2y ago
  > so I'm going to choose to take that personally and point out that using the word AI as some roundabout way to sell the labor of people that look like me to foreign governments is fucked up, you're an unethical monster, and that if you continue to try { thisBullshit(); } you are going to catch (theseHands) And (theseFeets) in (yourNutz). > I'm going to ask ChatGPT how to prepare a garotte and then I am going to strangle you with it, and you will simply have to pray that I roll the 10% chance that it freaks out and tells me that a garotte should consist entirely of paper mache and malice. Sadly it’s got a much greater than 10% chance of getting a garotte wrong.
  • bfuller 2y ago
    A garotte is a device or weapon used for strangulation. It typically consists of a cord or wire, sometimes with handles at each end to provide better grip and leverage. The garotte is used by wrapping it around a person's neck and tightening it, cutting off the air supply and causing asphyxiation. Historically, garottes have been used for execution and assassination due to their silent and deadly nature. In modern contexts, they are often associated with covert or criminal activities. welp
• delichon 2y ago
  No actually it isn't cute to threaten to break their neck if someone mentions a topic you don't like.
  • deleted 2y ago
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  • yifanl 2y ago
    Things would be substantially more productive if boardroom meetings allowed more definitive responses than "We'll circle back to that later". This is the other extreme.
  • stevespang 2y ago
    [dead]
  • fuzzfactor 2y ago
    You're correct. It would be so much bolder and more mature if he threatened to run with scissors or hold his breath until he turned blue ;) He may have some good points but might be more detracting than helping them stick.
    • nonplus 2y ago
      Some of us won't ever know about his good points since we tuned out (left his web a page) due to the authors juvenile tone.
  • remoquete 2y ago
    I hear you, the tone might be too much to some. But it's also part of what makes it so fresh and almost a McSweeney's article.
  • busterarm 2y ago
    As opposed to the rampant _passive aggression_ that permeates every discussion and meeting of every workplace. This entire comments section is exemplary of the industry at large. We're doing fucking _engineering work_ "professionally" and the bitching is 50:1 on his tone versus his actual ideas. The entire professional class has been brought to its knees by a culture that demands we tiptoe around everyone's insecurities.
• deleted 2y ago
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• shrimp_emoji 2y ago
  Lol he fell for the data science meme
• foundart 2y ago
  Interesting analysis wrapped in satire
• theletterf 2y ago
  Tone aside, the post contains some hard truths. I'm curious to see what the HN audience think of the point the author makes.
  • varelse 2y ago
    [dead]
  • marssaxman 2y ago
    I love his point and I love his exuberantly colorful tone.
  • thrillgore 2y ago
    The audience isn't getting to see it because it's getting flagged as it shows up.
    • dang 2y ago
      We know organic interest when we see it, so I merged all the comments into this one (the first) and re-upped it. Meta explanations here if it's the kind of thing you like: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40734677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40734677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40734700 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40734700
      • mikewarot 2y ago
        I skipped over the blog post and thread several times here, as the shortened title didn't really sound appealing. It's only after I read it via twitter that I dug back in to see the thread. I agree that this might be seen as "outrage porn"... but who really doesn't love a good rant? It's good to discharge the thundercloud of disquiet through at least one good thread, such as this one. As for me, and my perspective, I took the Stanford AI course back when it showed up here, and others... just to learn the mechanics of it, and it's fascinating. The hype cycle on this though, is off the charts. I came to see if there were any others who wanted to get actual legislation to passed to help set up "Thought Leader Jail". ;-)
• Tiberium 2y ago
  > I myself have formal training as a data scientist, going so far as to dominate a competitive machine learning event at one of Australia's top universities and writing a Master's thesis where I wrote all my own libraries from scratch. I'm not God's gift to the field, but I am clearly better than most of my competition - that is, practitioners who haven't put in the reps to build their own C libraries in a cave with scraps, but can read textbooks and use libraries written by elite institutions. I really didn't have any illusions on the article after reading this - apparently the author believes that anyone who hasn't written a C library is below him. And also, this author is known to make articles that are full of ranting and have rage titles, for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34968457 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34968457
  • anigbrowl 2y ago
    It worked for DHH. The substance is significantly better than I expected from the opener.
  • acureau 2y ago
    Glad I'm not the only one put off by that. Though it's nice of him to signal so early on that his words aren't worth reading
  • smoothbenny 2y ago
    Maybe I'm misinterpreting but it seems like he considers himself a part of the "practitioners who haven't put in the reps to build their own C libraries in a cave with scraps, but can read textbooks and use libraries written by elite institutions" not above them
    • lolinder 2y ago
      Except for that in the sentence right before that he says that he did write his own C libraries from scratch, which I think means that the only reasonable interpretation of the "practitioners..." clause is that those are the people people that he describes as his "competition" who he is "clearly better than". I'd really like to read it that way, but I'm afraid he actually did come across that arrogant.
• talldayo 2y ago
  This is just what happens, though. We were promised computer proliferation, and got locked-down squares with (barely) free internet access and little else to get excited for besides new ways to serve API requests. The future of programming isn't happening locally. Crypto, AI, shitty short-form entertainment, all of it is dripping from the spigot of an endless content pipeline. Of course people aren't changing the world on their cell-phone, all it's designed to do is sign up for email mailing lists and watch YouTube ads. So I really don't actually know what the OP wants to do, besides brutalize idiots searching for a golden calf to worship. AI will progress regardless of how you gatekeep the public from percieving it, and manipulative thought-leaders will continue to schiester idiots in hopes of turning a quick buck. These cycles will operate independently of one-another, and those overeager idiots will move onto the next fad like Metaverse agriculture or whatever the fuck.
• asveikau 2y ago
  > by 2021 I had realized ... it was also largely fraudulent. Most of the leaders that I was working with clearly had not gotten as far as reading about it for thirty minutes ... Most of the market was simply grifters and incompetents (sometimes both!) leveraging the hype to inflate their headcount so they could get promoted, or be seen as thought leaders. This was true of web tech in the 2000s, social media and mobile apps in the 2010s, crypto, now AI... There's substance behind most of these topics, they're intellectually interesting, useful to people etc., but they tend to be largely grift, hype, office politics, narcissists tryina narcissist.
  • ToucanLoucan 2y ago
    Tech as an industry is addicted to hype bubbles, and addiction in people and in large groups of people fosters bad decision making, skewed priorities, and over the long haul does great harm.
    • asveikau 2y ago
      I feel like a simpler explanation is that the money involved attracts lots of shallow people trying to make a buck, who do not care about the substance or technology.
• bryanrasmussen 2y ago
  this guy keeps threatening violence in his blog posts, has anyone ever had to fight him? How tough is he actually?
  • chibi_giant 2y ago
    No one that has fought him is here to tell the tale.
  • aakresearch 2y ago
    Judging by what he puts in the open in his other articles, an accomplished fencer he is, so there must be a few who had to fight!
  • ludicity 2y ago
    Author here. Someone sent me this comment this morning (along with a note saying: "I am not afraid of you") and it absolutely sent me. Probably because he knows I am of exactly average height and exactly average build, and I quit Muay Thai after one day of getting conditioned against knees-to-the-stomach. But if you don't tell anyone, I won't tell anyone.
    • boffinAudio 2y ago
      I found the perfect use case for AI, it might interest you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40736501 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40736501 Let me know if you need any further help with the subject.
      • jdougan 2y ago
        Too flat.
        • boffinAudio 2y ago
          Fortunately, it was cheap to get a tone modulation, and the results literally made me smile .. I think this is now going to be my new thing to do with articles, since its kind of hilarious to get the human emotions altered while leaving the content relatively intact. (My prompt: "okay, do it again, but this time change the tone to be cheerful and encouraging and not so flat.") Ludicity: Embracing AI Innovations with Caution and Care Published on June 19, 2024 The recent advancements in AI, particularly with developments like GPT-4, are undeniably reshaping our world. These innovations have the potential to eliminate mundane tasks, revolutionize industries, and even pose existential questions about our future. As someone who has formal training as a data scientist, having excelled in a competitive machine learning event at one of Australia's top universities and written a Master's thesis with custom libraries in MATLAB, I have a unique perspective. I may not be the best, but I am certainly experienced and knowledgeable. So, it's with a mix of concern and optimism that I urge caution in our enthusiasm for rolling out AI everywhere. Balancing Enthusiasm with Reality I began my journey as a data scientist in 2019, and by 2021, I realized that while the field is vast and promising, it's also filled with misconceptions and overhype. Many leaders in the industry seemed to push AI initiatives without fully understanding them. The market saw a surge of companies jumping on the AI bandwagon, often without clear use cases, driven by hype rather than genuine need. Despite the financial rewards, I transitioned to data and software engineering. Unlike those who chase trends for short-term gains, professionals like us value job stability, meaningful relationships, and genuine contributions to our field. The transient nature of hype-driven careers contrasts sharply with the steady, rewarding path of continuous learning and improvement. Practical Advice for AI Implementation Instead of blindly adopting AI, focus on the fundamentals. Many companies struggle with basic applications, yet they aim to implement complex AI systems. It's essential to ensure that your organization has the necessary infrastructure, skills, and culture before diving into advanced technologies. For example, many businesses haven't mastered basic IT operations like regular database backups. Improving these fundamental practices will better position your company to leverage AI effectively when it's truly needed. Emphasize collaboration, clear communication, and mutual respect in problem-solving. This approach will yield more reliable and sustainable results than any rushed AI implementation. The Future of AI: Opportunities and Challenges Generative AI, like ChatGPT, has shown remarkable potential, but it's important to distinguish between practical applications and unrealistic expectations. AI can indeed revolutionize industries, but only if used thoughtfully and strategically. If your company has a clear, well-defined use case for AI, by all means, pursue it. However, for many businesses, the priority should be on improving existing operations and culture. AI will naturally integrate into your processes as it becomes relevant and beneficial. Remember, technology should serve to enhance your capabilities, not distract from core objectives. Encouraging Thoughtful AI Adoption Let's approach AI with both enthusiasm and caution. Recognize the incredible potential while also being aware of the limitations and challenges. Embrace AI where it makes sense, but always prioritize the fundamentals of good business practice. In conclusion, the journey with AI is exciting and full of possibilities. By focusing on solid foundations, continuous learning, and thoughtful implementation, we can harness the power of AI to create a brighter future. Let's work together to make sure our advancements are meaningful, sustainable, and truly beneficial. Thank you for reading, and let's continue this conversation with positivity and a shared commitment to excellence! If you have any interesting work or thoughts to share, feel free to reach out at ludicity.hackernews@gmail.com. Stay tuned for more insightful discussions, ambitious projects, and exciting developments in the world of AI and beyond.
• what-the-grump 2y ago
  Would be perfect if the article was written by gpt.
• snazz 2y ago
  If you're interviewing for job at a company you're not familiar with, what are some good heuristics (and/or questions to ask) to politely get a sense of whether it's run by buzzword bingo enthusiasts?
  • __s 2y ago
    If you ask how they handle hard problems they'll tell you about AI solving it soon
  • cfeduke 2y ago
    If its tech and they want a 30-45 minute interview with live coding on something like hackerrank - especially if whatever brain teaser they've chosen has absolutely nothing to do with the field they operate in - I'd put the chances around 80%.
  • kjkjadksj 2y ago
    Easy. Is the interview process a dehumanizing process, or is it not a process at all and you are treated as a potential friend and colleague? Are they trying to sell you on the team and project or are they merely hazing their applicants? That will tell you more than any heuristic about the culture of working at this company.
• softwaredoug 2y ago
  The jump to AI capabilities from data illiterate leadership is of such a pattern... It reminds me of every past generation of focusing on the technology, not the underlying hard work + literacy needed to make it real. Decades ago I saw this - I worked at a hardware company that tried to suddenly be a software company. Not at all internalizing - at every level - what software actually takes to build well. That leading, managing, executing software can't just be done by applying your institutional hardware knowledge to a different craft. It will at best be a half effort as the software craftspeople find themselves attracted to the places that truly understand and respect their craft. There's a similar thing happening with data literacy where the non data literate hire the data literate, but don't actually internalize those practices or learn from them. They want to continue operating like the always have, but just "plug in AI" (or whatever new thing) without changing fundamentally how they do anything People want to have AI, but those company's leaders struggle with basic understanding of statistical significance, basic fundamentals of experimentation, and thus essentially destroy any culture needed to build the AI-thing.
  • ranger207 2y ago
    Senior management's skill set is fundamentally not technical competence, business competence, financial competence, or even leadership competence. It's politics and social skills (or less charitably, schmoozing). Executives haven't cared about the "how" of anything to do with their business since the last generation of managers from before the cult of the MBA aged out
  • a_bonobo 2y ago
    Do they struggle with the basics, or do they just not care? I'm in a similar situation with my own 'C-suite' and it's impossible to try and make them understand, they just don't care. I can't make them care. It's a clash of cultures, I guess.
    • pushfoo 2y ago
      TL;DR: Yes, and I think that's why some of these comments are so hostile to OP. > it's impossible to try and make them understand, they just don't care. I can't make them care. It's a clash of cultures, I guess. That seems to be what OP's cathartic humor is about. It's also (probably) a deliberate provocation since that sub-culture doesn't deal well with this sort of humor. If that's the case, you can see it working in this thread. Some of the commenters with the clearest C-suite aspirations are reacting with unironic vitriol as if the post is about them personally. I think most of those comments already got flagged, but some seemed genuine in accusing OP of being a dangerously ill menace to society, e.g. "...Is OP threatening us?" In a sense, OP is threatening them, but not with literal violence. He's making fun of their aspirations, and he's doing so with some pretty vicious humor.
• swedonym 2y ago
  Wow, thoroughly entertaining (though slightly deranged) read. Did not expect to see a RA Salvatore reference in this, that brought me back.
  • ggm 2y ago
    I deleted my comment to the author's chutzpah. It had a bit of "IamTheMainCharacter" and "IamAveryStableGenius" qualities. The thing is, I agree with them, even if I want to say "dial the ego down mate" -and after all if you cannot parade your worth on your own blog, where can you? Still. I prefer self-deprecating. Maybe you don't get seniority in his space if you don't sell.
    • aakresearch 2y ago
      May I point you to the "Compliments" section of his blog, in your search for self-deprecating.
      • ggm 2y ago
        Fair. But he's unrepentant. It's like the book author who adds bad review blurb to their book on the basis controversy simply feeds readership. But yes. Clearly self aware. Just doesn't care. Which is fine too: it's his blog.
• CaptainFever 2y ago
  This article makes me want to increase my AI usage hundred-fold.
• patrickrafferty 2y ago
  The commentary on Scale's "2024 AI readiness chart" is so spot on
• rkagerer 2y ago
  Have not read the article. But the title (as phrased here on HN) is exactly how I felt at Google IO this year.
• dieselgate 2y ago
  I probably agree with a lot of the points the author makes but abhor the style and tone this is written in.
  • oofbey 2y ago
    I abhor the style and disagree with most of their comments.
    • dang 2y ago
      You deserve credit for saying that so even-keeledly. Usually people just do the same thing back.
      • highlaif 2y ago
        Did you shadowban me for asking a question about frontpage ranking? That's a bit ridiculous, don't you think?
        • dang 2y ago
          It would indeed be ridiculous; also stupid and counterproductive. Those could be clues to the fact that we didn't do it. Some of your comments are getting killed by software filters. Those are tuned more strictly for new accounts, for reasons which aren't hard to figure out. I don't think any mods even saw your comments (before now)
          • highlaif 2y ago
            Well, thank you software filters. Are you sure they're working correctly because all my comments except my first are getting killed. What did I do? This is no fun.
      • pushfoo 2y ago
        TL;DR: Do you have a stance on HN's change in culture? It seems like HN comments are shifting from technical focus toward: * Early Reddit's low-effort but tame "snark" * Aggressively moralizing posts dismissing sardonic criticism as dangerous mental illness I haven't seen much of OP's style lately, especially since n-gate[1] went inactive. I'm wondering whether that's a bad thing. Although the tone is hostile on the surface, there's usually some aspiration toward competence associated with it. [1]: http://n-gate.com/ http://n-gate.com/
• pech0rin 2y ago
  Author makes good points but suffers from “i am genius and you are an idiot” syndrome which makes it seem mostly the ranting of an asshole vs a coherent article about the state of AI.
  • bongodongobob 2y ago
    Especially since most "data scientists" turn spreadsheets into reports for the C suite, I'd argue that his entire role fits into the same arguments he makes against AI. Like he says, unless you're doing things on the cutting edge, I don't think most businesses have seen positive outcomes from employing data "scientists" or "engineers". They just take people's excel spreadsheets and make them prettier, taking approximately one quarter to implement each into Power BI. Also being 5 years into his career thinking he actually groks how it all works is adorable. I get the impression he has the idea that work is supposed to be a rewarding passion project rather than getting shit done for your boss. Give me all the cushy bullshit AI projects please. I can play with the toys for 6 months and come back with whatever and it will be perfectly acceptable. Either "this is great, super helpful for the company" or "welp, the tech isn't there yet, but at least we tried". That's called riding the gravy train.
  • aakresearch 2y ago
    I've recently read through many of the author's articles and also through his LinkedIn content, and came to the opposite conclusion. The intentional "In-Your-Face-Trolling" style is intended as a cover for "Impostor Syndrome in Overdrive", which lots of us suffer. Yet he was able to fool so many! Just check the "Compliments" section on his website :) I made the following comment about him in a conversation with a coworker: " The guy who authored the article is mad. Certifiably mad. Just spewing around pure unadulterated truth. (LinkedIn link goes here) What does it tell about me (or anybody) who so far hadn't found anything in his writings to disagree about? " Krazam (search YouTube) is the other example of largely the same. But because it is visual it is a bit more obvious.
    • camillomiller 2y ago
      LOL nah, mate’s just Australian
• jauntywundrkind 2y ago
  Already [flagged] [dead] at least 8 times, as linked by @greyface3- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40733576 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40733576 Which is a pity. The style is excellent & so wonderful, is a critical relief, after suffering through insane out of this world hype-bordering-religion. At least to me; he doesn't read as menacing, he reads as being on a justifiably distraught polemic against total madness that's allowed to pointlessly suck up all the oxygen in the room. We should be flipping our shit (if not each other) that we have to put up with this endless exuberant schucksterism. That robs us of agency & pollutes our noosphere with inauthentic bullshitting.
  • dang 2y ago
    Comments moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40725329 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40725329. Meta explanations here if it's the kind of thing you like: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40734677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40734677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40734700 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40734700
• TZubiri 2y ago
  Someone's angry and resentful at software developers and business people interested in AI. Ok. The author also takes some kind of authority stance as a "data scientist" being uniquely qualified to talk about the subject. The article follows the format of sections with titles as interrupted quotes from people "mentioning AI" and the author shutting them up, let's see what amazing arguments they offer for "not talking about AI" " "III. We've Already Seen Extensive Gains From-" When I was younger, I read R.A Salvatore's classic fantasy novel, The Crystal Shard. There is a scene in it where the young protagonist, Wulfgar, challenges a barbarian chieftain.... " Just at a glance, we have business people on one side talking about income and how to increase it. On the other we have an enraged nerd talking about his favourite high-fantasy fake world. Gee, I wonder whose side I should be on, is this an ad for AI hype? " Well this is me. Begging you. To stop lying. I don't want to crush your skull, I really don't. But I will if you make me." ... Is OP threatening us? I say this unironically now OP, this sounds like schizophrenic, I won't suggest you "take your meds", but at least consult a psychiatrist if you haven't already.
  • __loam 2y ago
    > So business people are seeing increase income related to AI They sure are spending a lot of money on graphics cards!
  • globalnode 2y ago
    oh jeez stop it, its embarrassing.
• llm_trw 2y ago
  >started working as a data scientist in 2019 >Just Use Postgres, You Nerd. You Dweeb. I'm really sick and tired of kids coming in and shitting on what we had to do to search a tb worth of data in 2009 (or 2004). A computer in 2019 (or 2024) has enough power to run postgress queries to extract statistics from columns. Yeah, great. Now try running that stack on an iphone 7 and report your results back. We didn't create all that complexity for shits and giggles, we did it because it was at the edge of what was possible and the companies that got it right made billions.
  • jayd16 2y ago
    > try running that stack on an iphone 7 Why?
    • llm_trw 2y ago
      Because that's the average machine we had to use back then.
      • jayd16 2y ago
        I one of us misinterpreted this part. Isn't the author echoing other people's sentiments here?
        • deleted 2y ago
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  • deleted 2y ago
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• imchillyb 2y ago
  Quite vulgar for a topic that doesn’t require any vulgarity. I was put off by the f bombs.
  • popalchemist 2y ago
    Disgruntled aspy with no social awareness vibes.
    • nrki 2y ago
      Or just Australian.
  • jauntywundrkind 2y ago
    It doesn't require it, but it sure feels good! Mostly the world has to sit back and suffer for this clown car of over enthused business types promising us that their AI will make all our lives better. Mostly the world has to let this weirdly quasi-cultish hype run unchecked. I'm frelling pissed about it. I frelling miss personal computing being an aspiration; I wish we were actually improving systems. Instead we're investing billions to make machines good bullshitters. It's enormously relieving seeing such rancorous disgust on display here.
  • deleted 2y ago
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• infrawhispers 2y ago
  This rings true and is also hilarious. I am tired of the AI hype/grift that seems to pervade the industry - funnily enough some of these same promoters were on the blockchain/crypto hype that was going to revolutionize every industry on earth. There is meat to recent advances in Machine Learning…but the revenue / savings for actual businesses will need to start coming in if this hype is going to be sustainable for the next 16-24 months.
  • moose_man 2y ago
    I feel like OpenAI took this thing out of the oven too soon or packaged in a way which misrepresents its nature. The power of AI isn't to answer your technical support questions or be your AI personal assistant, it's in the manic creativity that convinced people they were talking with a human (albeit a slight unhinged one.) But that energy had to be nerfed for business use cases and in of itself is problematic for monetization. So what we're left with after they've been nerfed is basically an iteration on what we already had, not the world changing technology that we were promised.
    • tavavex 2y ago
      I honestly don't think OpenAI anticipated it becoming as big of a deal, and they had to lean into grandiose expectations once it did become a big deal. They didn't have a grandiose marketing campaign to my memory - the only reason their tech exploded overnight was because it was something that made an average person interested. News of previous GPT versions and primitive image generators were passed around among techy people for years before that point. Maybe there's a threshold of generation quality, at which a user perceives it as something that can rudimentarily "understand" the input, and isn't just a generic chatbot.
• deleted 2y ago
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• exabrial 2y ago
  > There you have it - what are you most interested in, dear leader? Artificial intelligence, the blockchain, or quantum computing?6 They know exactly what their target market is - people who have been given power of other people's money because they've learned how to smile at everything, and know that you can print money by hitching yourself to the next speculative bandwagon. Nailed it.
  • anon291 2y ago
    I don't see how AI, quantum and block chain are at all equivalent. Block chain has no use. AI and quantum hage obvious uses if they work. Quantum is not close to working now. It's where AI was at in the 80s/90s. AI may not be perfect but there is no denying that the GPTs were a dramatic shift.
    • zer00eyz 2y ago
      > GPTs were a dramatic shift IT was a massive leap forward for a 50 year old idea. IF it takes another 50 years to make a leap of equal size, we might get to AGI before the heat death of the the universe. > I don't see how AI, quantum and block chain are at all equivalent. If we shut them off tomorrow what do YOU need to replace in your life without them?
      • anon291 2y ago
        > If we shut them off tomorrow what do YOU need to replace in your life without them? A translator and editor would be nice? I use GPT to give feedback on my writing. It works well, especially suggesting other ways to word things. This is something I didn't even know I needed. There are all kinds of other uses. It has offered advice to me on programming language design, approaches to math proofs, etc. Again, I don't NEED these things, but yes it makes it a lot easier to have that there. Just like I don't NEED google. I could scan through hundreds of thousands of websites or hire someone else to do it. But it's just easier to do that myself.
    • financltravsty 2y ago
      Blockchain is used as a stand-in financial system for those who don't or can't use the incumbent ones (for banking, commerce, gambling, and so on). AI is nowhere close to delivering on its promises. But it's pretty useful for many tasks. Quantum computers are vaporware. Quantum sensors are already here and game-changing. But just like AI, has failed to live up to hype. --- Crypto is already here and makes good on its promises: decentralized finance. Full disclosure: I do not own any crypto besides negligible sums in forgotten wallets.
• blast 2y ago
  I swear this particular rant style is derived from earlier writers who I've read, probably many times, but don't remember. It feels completely familiar, way more so than someone who started working in 2019 could possibly have invented ex nihilo. They're good it though! And somebody has to keep the traditions going.
  • meanmrmustard92 2y ago
    This is just conversational australian english
  • xwolfi 2y ago
    Ed Zitron maybe ? Writes on crypto, AI, musk the same way.
  • p1necone 2y ago
    It feels a little bit like a James Mickens rant, but not as funny (not a jab at the author of this, James Mickens is just really funny).
    • qrohlf 2y ago
      Definitely reminded me of the classic Mickens usenix login;logout columns! Just overall a very engaging communication style for adding some entertainment value to what might otherwise be pretty dry to read in one sitting.
  • busterarm 2y ago
    A little bit of Maddox, a little bit of BOFH.
  • fenomas 2y ago
    I get what you mean but I have to disagree about this one being good. Epic rants are fun when there's a cold hard point being made, and the author uses the rant format to make the point irrefutably clear and drive it cruelly home. Here, if you strip away the guff about how smart the author is and how badly he wants to beat up people who disagree, I have no idea what he's trying to say. The rest reads like "these companies who want to use AI are bad, and instead of using AI they should try not being bad", and such. Ok?
• rKarpinski 2y ago
  > Please don't mention AI again Editorialized & not the title of the post.
  • dang 2y ago
    You're right, but "I Will Fucking Piledrive You If You Mention AI Again" is definitely linkbait, so we had to change it by the site guideline "Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html I confess to being a bit self-indulgent in coming up with the edit—I thought it would be hilarious to flip it to something meek and passive aggressive. Normally when we edit a title according to that guideline, we search earnestly for a representative and neutral phrase from the article itself. In this case "earnest' and "neutral" aren't much of a fit so I felt it more in the authorial spirit to troll a little.
    • rKarpinski 2y ago
      Ah didn't realize you modified it. That makes sense. Since the original author submitted I thought it was misleading.
    • loeg 2y ago
      How did you decide that the original title is linkbait?
      • dang 2y ago
        I decided it by spontaneous reflex. But we can unpack it reflectively like this: > I Will Ok in principle but already pattern matches to dodginess > Fucking That's a noise amplifier—can be ok if the rest of the title is whimsical, but in most cases it's just ponderous > Piledrive Wtf? that's extremely aggressive. "I will do to you what professional wrestlers do to those whom they are violently defeating, except without the training not be terminally injured by it" Hot language like that may be ok if it gets balanced by other things (but in this case there are no other things) > You "You" is a linkbait trope. In this case it doubles down on the aggression—not just "i will piledrive" but "I will piledrive you". What did you have to do with it? > If You Mention The superfluous you again, plus the word "mention"—what's wrong with mentioning things? This is a rhetorical trcik to drive up the menace: "don't you dare mention $thing you piece of shit" > AI The commonest hot topic du jour. Ok, but there'd better be something substantive to balance the buzzword. Is there? > Again Rhetorical escalation. You are mentioning Ai AGAIN? I will fucking piledrive you. Conclusion: not a word in that title isn't linkbait. Take it all out and you end up with the empty string.
• lucubratory 2y ago
  Deleted because it was unnecessarily inflammatory.
  • tymscar 2y ago
    Funny how those academics and professionals like François Chollet and Yann LeCun are on the skeptic side, and a vast number of vocal proponents are old NFT pushers.
    • lucubratory 2y ago
      Or Geoffrey Hinton, or Ilya Sutskever, or Yoshua Bengio, oh look those are already the three most cited researchers in deep learning. François and LeCunn shouldn't be categorised together anyway, François is a reasonable person and LeCunn was the second-best head of AI at Meta until the best head of AI at Meta used theories Yann LeCunn has railed against for years to release some of the best AI research Meta has ever released only to get replaced as head by Yann because Yann was better at corporate politics.
• keiferski 2y ago
  One thing I’ve noticed with the AI topic is how there is no discussion on how the name of a thing ends up shaping how we think about it. There is very obviously a marketing phenomenon happening now where “AI” is being added to the name of every product. Not because it’s actually AI in any rigorous or historical sense of the word, but because it’s trendy and helps you get investment dollars. I think one of the results of this is that the concept of AI itself increasingly becomes more muddled until it becomes indistinguishable from a word like “technology” and therefore useless for describing a particular phenomenon. You can already see this with the usage of “AGI” and “super intelligence” which from the definitions I’ve been reading, are not the same thing at all. AGI is/was supposed to be about achieving results of the average human being, not about a sci-fi AI god, and yet it seems like everyone is using them interchangeably. It’s very sloppy thinking. Instead I think the term AI is going to slowly become less marketing trendy, and will fade out over time, as all trendy marketing terms do. What will be left are actually useful enhancements to specific use cases - most of which will probably be referred to by a word other than AI.
  • jszymborski 2y ago
    I say LLM when Im talking about LLMs, I say Generative ML when I'm talking about Generative ML, and I say ML when I'm talking about everything else. I don't know what AI is, and nobody else does, that's why they're selling you it.
  • RaftPeople 2y ago
    Typically at this point in the hype cycle a new term emerges so companies can differentiate their hype from the pack. Next up: Synthetic Consciousness, "SC" Prediction: We will see this press release within 24 months: "Introducing the Acme Juice Squeezer with full Synthetic Consciousness ("SC"). It will not only squeeze your juice in the morning but will help you gently transition into the working day with an empathetic personality that is both supportive and a little spunky! Sold exclusively at these fine stores..."
    • lproven 2y ago
      « A new generation of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation robots and computers, with the new GPP feature.” “GPP feature?” said Arthur. “What's that?” “Oh, it says Genuine People Personalities.” “Oh,” said Arthur, “sounds ghastly.” A voice behind them said, “It is.” The voice was low and hopeless and accompanied by a slight clanking sound. They span round and saw an abject steel man standing hunched in the doorway. “What?” they said. “Ghastly,” continued Marvin, “it all is. Absolutely ghastly. Just don't even talk about it. Look at this door,” he said, stepping through it. The irony circuits cut into his voice modulator as he mimicked the style of the sales brochure. “All the doors in this spaceship have a cheerful and sunny disposition. It is their pleasure to open for you, and their satisfaction to close again with the knowledge of a job well done.” »
• habosa 2y ago
  This post has an unnecessarily aggressive style but has some very good points about the technology hype cycle we're in. Companies are desperate to use "AI" for the sake of using it, and that's likely not a good thing. I remember ~6 years ago wondering if I was going to be able to remain relevant as a software engineer if I didn't learn about neural networks and get good with TensorFlow. Everyone seemed to be trying to learn this skill at the same time and every app was jamming in some ML-powered feature. I'm glad I skipped that hype train, turns out only a minority of programmers really need to do that stuff and the rest of us can keep on doing what we were doing before. In the same way, I think LLMs are massively powerful but also not something we all need to jump into so breathlessly.
  • johnnyanmac 2y ago
    I empathize with it, but ultimately it's fruitless. This happens with every big tech hype. They very much want people to keep talking about it. It's part of the marketing, and tech puts a lotta money into marketing. But that's all it is, hype. It'll die down like web3, Big Data, cloud, mobile, etc. It'll probably help out some tooling but it's not taking our jobs for decades (it will inevitably cost some jobs from executives who don't know better and ignore their talent, though. The truly sad part).
    • zer00eyz 2y ago
      Go back further: At a point in time the database was a bleeding edge technology. Ingres (Postgres)... (the ofspring of Stonebreaker), Oracle, ... Db2? MSSQL? (Heavily used but not common)... So many failed DB's along the way, people keep trying to make "new ones" and they seem to fade off. When was the last time you heard someone starting a new project with Mongo, or Hadoop? Postgres and Maria are the go to for a reason.
      • threatofrain 2y ago
        Mongo is still very big, including for greenfield.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• lordofmoria 2y ago
  Even if it’s meant as tongue-in-cheek, it comes off as dismissive and carries a certain smugness that I find particularly irritating. And the smugness feels especially unfounded because the author clearly has decided to double down on their views even though it’s not at all evident that they’ve taken the time to interact with the tech as an end user (which millions upon millions have, last time I checked). They’ve just not gotten it, or: yes, it is you, not me. This is just another form of rote, unthinking (anti) hype. It reminds me of the smugness that Balmer had towards the iPhone.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  • zer00eyz 2y ago
    > Even if it’s meant as tongue-in-cheek, It is not this. There is actual anger there, he's pointing out WHY he's pissed. > it’s not at all evident that they’ve taken the time to interact with the tech as an end user (which millions upon millions have, last time I checked) He covers this point, in depth in the article. From a few angles.
• lmm 2y ago
  > In the case that the technology continues to make incremental gains like this, your company does not need generative AI for the sake of it. You will know exactly why you need it if you do, indeed, need it. An example of something that has actually benefited me is that I keep track of my life administration via Todoist, and Todoist has a feature that allows you to convert filters on your tasks from natural language into their in-house filtering language. Tremendous! It saved me learning a system that I'll use once every five years. I was actually happy about this, and it's a real edge over other applications. But if you don't have a use case then having this sort of broad capability is not actually very useful. The only thing you should be doing is improving your operations and culture, and that will give you the ability to use AI if it ever becomes relevant. Everyone is talking about Retrieval Augmented Generation, but most companies don't actually have any internal documentation worth retrieving. Fix. Your. Shit. This is purely wishful thinking. We're good at making rigorous well-organised stuff and we hope that will somehow continue to be a useful skill. But actually there's no evidence that a half-baked bullshit generator isn't going to outperform carefully written documentation, to the point that carefully writing documentation becomes a waste of resources. > I swear to God, I am going to study, write, network, and otherwise apply force to the problem until those resources are going to a place where they'll accomplish something for society instead of some grinning clown's wallet. Bet. Go on, actually have a go at doing this. You'll find it's much harder than you think and what looks like success will usually turn out to be actively counterproductive.
  • kjkjadksj 2y ago
    If you write the documentation as you write the code its not very time consuming since you kind of have to write up good notes anyhow to roadmap what the heck you are doing next. One issue is people are lazy and often code first, document later, which becomes a slog for a bad end product that chatgpt might outperform.
• globalnode 2y ago
  it is refreshing, whether you agree 100% or not, the runaway hype of AI entraps many. edit: those knocking his style i think may miss the point that hes acting. its a show. noone is like that. (i hope)
• blast 2y ago
  > you do not need AI for anything I'd so have preferred this to be true, and to ignore the AI thing (mainly to avoid any effort to change any of my habits in any way). But as an end user I can say that this is wrong. I definitely need LLMs for one critical thing: search that works. Google has become clogged with outright spam and endless layers of indirection (useless sites that point to things that point to things that point to things, never getting me to the information that actually fucking matters), but I can ask the best LLMs queries like "what's the abc that does xyz in the context of ijk" and get meaningful answers. It only works well when the subject has a lot of "coverage" (a lot of well-trodden ground, nothing cutting-edge) but that's 80% of what I need. I still have to check that the LLM found a real needle in the haystack rather than making up a bullshit one. (Ironically, Google works great for that once you know what the candidate needle actually is—it just sucks at finding any needle, even a hallucinated one, in the first place.) For shortest path from question to answer, LLMs are state of the art right now. They're not only kicking Google's ass, they're the first major improvement in search since Google showed up 20+ years ago. Therefore I think this author is high on his own fumes. It reminds me of the dotcom period: yeah there was endless stupid hype and cringey grifters and yeah there were excellent rants about how stupid and craven it all was—but the internet really did change everything in the end. The ranters were right about most of the battles but ended up wrong about the war, and in retrospect don't look smart at all.
  • Always42 2y ago
    This it's incredible if you keep in mind it's just gonna find the most "common" words that come alongside your query in some jobbled together answer
    • tavavex 2y ago
      Machine learning isn't just a word frequency machine. If that's all it was, we'd have this technology decades ago.
      • blast 2y ago
        I'm really wondering about this. Is it just "recycling things people have said before", or is it genuinely generative? "Recycling things people have said before" is basically search, and that is hugely valuable and quite enough for me. If it's genuinely generative, that's a cosmic leap beyond search. My guess is that it's not genuinely generative, but rather that the long tail of "everything that everyone has said before" is so vast as that it feels like magic when it's retrieved. But LLMs have shocked me enough on the search front that I'm no longer smugly confident about this.
• AIorNot 2y ago
  So what about: 1. vector search 2. RAG pipelines with your data 3. Semantic, image, video, object, detection 4. Robotics 5. Code generation /Review 6. AI language translation 7. AI research agents 8. ChatGPT Clickbaity article aside there’s tons of legitimate uses of LLMs for corporations of all sizes Now blockchain on the other hand…
  • zer00eyz 2y ago
    >> RAG pipelines with your data FTA "Everyone is talking about Retrieval Augmented Generation, but most companies don't actually have any internal documentation worth retrieving. Fix. Your. Shit." > 5. Code generation /Review FTA "If another stupid motherfucker asks me to try and implement LLM-based code review to "raise standards" instead of actually teaching people a shred of discipline, I am going to study enough judo to throw them into the goddamn sun. I cannot emphasize this enough. You either need to be on the absolute cutting-edge and producing novel research, or you should be doing exactly what you were doing five years ago with minor concessions to incorporating LLMs. Anything in the middle ground does not make any sense unless you actually work in the rare field where your industry is being totally disrupted right now." The man trots out his bonified's at the start and in the article. He's inside and backing up that rage.
    • xarope 2y ago
      "Everyone is talking about Retrieval Augmented Generation, but most companies don't actually have any internal documentation worth retrieving. Fix. Your. Shit." I read up about Copilot as part of some internal research, and absolutely the first things to do for Copilot (I'll copy-paste just the line-item headings from the section entitled "Prepare your data for Copilot for M365 searches") is: - Clean out redundant, outdated, and trivial (ROT) content. - Organize content into logical folders and sites. - Tag files with keywords. - Standardize file names. - Consolidate multiple versions. - Promote data hygiene habits. Sigh. If I could do all this at an organizational level, I wouldn't need copilot at all.
    • AIorNot 2y ago
      What the hell does that mean fix your docs?? - companies have tons of document libraries and documentation that need sifting through and are generating more content regularly and => RAG and vector search is game changer with real value there Eg we implemented RAG + vector search at a manufacturing company and it changed their workflows entirely And to coding with LLMs, Say what you will about AI coding but code review/linting and LLM created unit tests are as itself game changing as IDE intellisense this value is worth at least one junior developer on the team - that’s 70k yearly salary alone benefit
• senectus1 2y ago
  While i agree with what he's said, its really a very violent read, I wish it wasnt so. Also, I attend an online Microsoft meeting every week where they inform the attending community about all the new changes and technology coming from MS. I'm utterly sick and tired of hearing about "AI" and Co-Pilot from them. every. signle. meeting. is 90% AI/Co-pilot. I'm over it. I'm burnt out on it as a product.
• terminatornet 2y ago
  i agree with all of the points just wish it wasn't couched in a "maddox / best page in the universe" writing style, circa 2007. can't be writing like that in 2024
• ChicagoMan 2y ago
  Done right, the rant is mostly a style of expression easily adapted to making clear contrasts. If you can make it work, I say go for it.
• 23david 2y ago
  Awesome. Best rant I’ve read since Zed Shaw’s “Rails is a Ghetto” back in 2008.
• RickyS 2y ago
  What a shit blog in general.
• vundercind 2y ago
  > How stupid do you have to be to believe that only 8% of companies have seen failed AI projects? That’s because most of them are still in progress. Enterprise moves slow and only started on this recently. They still think it’s going great because they’re riding the high of imagination.
  • whoknowsidont 2y ago
    >That’s because most of them are still in progress. What? You know AI has been around since before ChatGPT.
    • vundercind 2y ago
      The number of projects increased a lot since that started getting big press, though. It kicked off a much bigger craze than before.
  • Barrin92 2y ago
    No, it's because the numbers are made the f** up. That same chart, as the author notes also points out that allegedly a third of companies have outsourced "strategic decision making" to AI. That is so offensive to any person who has a brain that the authors much criticized tone is completely warranted if you have any love for truth at all. I mean, contempt is literally the only sane and appropriate emotional reaction to the amount of lies, and it is intentional lies, that are being marketed to people.
  • arbfay 2y ago
    That is not true unfortunately. ML has been around for decades, DL for more than a decade. In 2019, I had to explain to executives that 95% of AI projects fail (based on some other survey), top 1 reason is bad or missing data and top 2 is misaligned internal processes. I probably still have the slides somewhere. One project I worked on was impossible because the data was so bad that after cleaning, we went from 4M rows to 10k usable rows in 4 languages. We could have salvaged a lot more if we restricted the use case but then the benefits of the projects would be not so interesting anymore. The internal sponsor gave up and understood the problem. Instead, they decided to train everyone on how to improve data entry and quality! In just 6 months I could see the data was getting better indeed. But I had to leave this company, the IT dep was too toxic. So I think the author is right. According to Scale, we'd have gone from 95% failures to 95% successes in just 4-5 years just thanks to LLMs? This is of course ridiculous, knowing the problem was never poor models.
• kmnc 2y ago
  I think the author disproves his point by ridiculing the stupidity of human actors. AI doesn’t need to become much more powerful to displace the idiots in management, product design and marketing. Just wait until the keys are actually handed over. Dismissing things such as Copilot seems crazy to me, give it time. Chatgpt made stackoverflow obsolete overnight. AI isn’t going away anytime soon.
• moose_man 2y ago
  The AI hype happened in close proximity to the decline of the crypto mania and so many mediocre grifters from crypto latched onto AI as a fraud life raft.
• mmorse1217 2y ago
  [dead]
• itkovian_ 2y ago
  Sometimes things really are as significant as they seem.
  • itkovian_ 2y ago
    This person has significantly less ml exp. than I do. I guess it's fine for me to totally dismiss their argument in the same way they dismiss anyone who has less than them.
• cleandreams 2y ago
  I worked for an AI startup that got bought by a big tech company and I've seen the hype up close. In the inner tech circles it's not exactly a big lie. The tech is good enough to make incredible demos but not good enough to generalize into reliable tools. The gulf between demo and useful tool is much wider than we thought.
  • beoberha 2y ago
    I work at Microsoft, though not in AI. This describes Copilot to a T. The demos are spectacular and get you so excited to go use it, but the reality is so underwhelming.
    • moose_man 2y ago
      It's a lot like AR before Vision Pro. The situation for the demo and reality didn't meet. I'm not trying to claim Vision Pro is perfect but it seems to do AR in the real world without the circumstances needing to be absolutely ideal.
      • Animats 2y ago
        The Vision Pro is not doing well. Apple has cancelled the next version.[1] As Carmack says, AR/VR will be a small niche until the headgear gets down to swim goggle size, and will not go mainstream until it gets down to eyeglass size. [1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/shopping/apple-shelves-new-model-of-vision-headset-as-sales-decline-report/ar-BB1oszvS https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/shopping/apple-shelves-n...
        • numpad0 2y ago
          Apple approved ALVR few days ago too, clearly they're having issues at least wrt getting developer attention. 1: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/alvr/id6479728026 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/alvr/id6479728026
        • namaria 2y ago
          I think both hardware and software in AR have to become unobtrusive for people to adopt it. And then it will be a specialized tool for stuff like maintenance. Keeping large amounts of information in context without requiring frequent changes in context. But I also think that the information overload will put a premium on non-AR time. Once it becomes a common work tool, people using it will be very keen to touch grass and watch clouds afterwards. I don't think it will ever become the mainstream everyday carry proponents want it to be. But only time will tell...
• nektro 2y ago
  this is so refreshing to see
• throwaway984393 2y ago
  [dead]
• musebox35 2y ago
  Fun to read. The style of the article reminded me of https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mickens/files/thenightwatch.pdf https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mickens/files/thenightwatc...
• DidYaWipe 2y ago
  At first I was thinking that "AI" is the "HD" or "digital quality" of this decade. But it's a broader fraud than that. It reminds me of this IBM commercial, which made me laugh out loud at the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvDCk3pY4qo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvDCk3pY4qo
• firefoxd 2y ago
  I remember the hype around BigData. I was in those meetings where vendors pitched their product. Our director would asked "Do you do Big Data?" Any vendor who said no was immediately dismissed. I still don't know what the answer to that question was supposed to be. We scraped coupons from our competitors then displayed them on our websites.
• moorow 2y ago
  Probably the most entertaining thing about the article (aside from the article itself) is seeing a comment section full of Americans who have precisely zero understanding of Australian humour or writing style. As a former-PhD-Data-Scientist-who-quit-the-industry-because-it-was-full-of-fraud-and-went-back-into-software-engineering-and-is-now-an-Australian-consulting-to-Americans, this is even more hurty. Someone sent this to me and I thought I'd dreamposted it. Great article, the anecdotes physically pain me in the same way that watching Utopia does.
  • whoknowsidont 2y ago
    It's mainly midwest Americans that like to tone police. People from the east coast, especially northern east coast, read this as comfort literature.
  • WickyNilliams 2y ago
    Similarly, as a Brit, the tone and humour is not unusual at all. Feels like someone blowing off steam down the pub with their mates. It is totally lost on many here, some of whom equivocate the rant with serious threats of violence. Personally I found it very funny and an accurate portayal of industry trends
• jusonchan81 2y ago
  From what I have been seeing there are a few real use cases: 1. Customer service - seems like natural language processing by AI could be a better offering than someone manually trying to resolve problems. I have been in front of many CS agents who couldn't do what I wanted them to do. Untrained CS agents, non native speakers, or people who just don't care enough to help. 2. Internet search - I don't have to search through arbitrary articles and text to get the answer I want. Now its not always accurate or the latest, but still better than scrolling through Google search (feel bad for the publishers and writers though - they aren't getting the same ad views as before and clearly not ideal) 3. Summarizing - AI does a fabulous job here - TLDR and more. 4. Rewriting things to a better tone - AI is going an amazing job here, every time I get stuck on how to write something OpenAI has helped me. Now I don't use the output as it is, but it gives me an idea of how to write my own message. 5. NLP interface to devices / tools = I think this is a really valuable use case. Almost everything I suggested here is pointing to a $20 or a fixed monthly subscription for individual user. I don't know if its an "enterprise" need. Except for the customer service use case.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• Timber-6539 2y ago
  This writeup is pure comedy (both in content and subject matter). Should be recommended reading for all those curious about the AI buzzword.
• zombiwoof 2y ago
  What if we mean “Apple” Intelligence LOL
• DeathArrow 2y ago
  >I assume that anyone who has ever typed in import tensorflow is a scumbag That's true, decent people write import torch.
• d--b 2y ago
  ChatGPT, can you remove the unnecessary violence expressed in this article please? Fucking internet.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• Kiro 2y ago
  I didn't find this article refreshing. If anything, it's just the same dismissive attitude that's dominating this forum, where AI is perceived as the new blockchain. An actually refreshing perspective would be one that's optimistic.
  • andrei_says_ 2y ago
    Is it possible that this forum may be dismissive of the AI bubble because the people on HN tend to have better understanding of the technology, its limitations, and the deceptive narrative around it?
    • Kiro 2y ago
      We like to think we're above everyone else but in reality our technical expertise is mostly irrelevant when evaluating the utility. I've been programming for 20 years and I can't think of a single thing I know that puts me in a better position to predict the future of AI.
      • andrei_says_ 2y ago
        I was not speaking about the future however. And especially not about the distant future. AI is such a wide term that it’s hard to even discuss the topic. It is already used for surveillance and racial profiling (China etc.) and that’s already a disruption in oppression and control. Will likely disrupt driving. Image recognition and generation are clearly influential. Probabilistic text generation tech is making huge promises and getting a lot of investment but application is lacking - seems like a technology of search of application.
      • kelnos 2y ago
        > I've been programming for 20 years and I can't think of a single thing I know that puts me in a better position to predict the future of AI. I don't think that's the argument, though. OP (and many commenters here) are talking about the state of AI tools right now, and how executive/marketing/sales people already either lie about or genuinely (incorrectly) believe fantastical things about current capabilities.
• arbfay 2y ago
  Started a career in ML/AI years before ChatGPT changed everything. At the time, we only used the term AI if we referred more than just machine/deep learning techniques to create models or research something (thinks operations research, Monte Carlo simulations, etc). But it started to change already. I think startups and others will realise to make a product successful, you will need clean data and data engineers, the rest will fill follow. Fundamentals first. All the startups trying to sell "AI" to traditional industries: good luck! I've worked as an AI engineer for a big insurance, contractor with a bank, and oh gosh!
  • alecco 2y ago
    I bet the old guard will refuse to change course and new companies using the new tools will displace the old ones. Like what is happening with online banks and similar. Like what happened with low-cost airlines.
    • varjag 2y ago
      I think new hot upstarts will find that a combination intricate regulation, physical reality and institutional inertia would only allow them to make a tiny dent over years.
    • physicsguy 2y ago
      I actually think the example of banks is a good one, because what's happened in places with a competitive banking landscape is just that the big players have upped their game and the benefit of the challenger banks has diminished, with them struggling to become profitable. Monzo is the biggest new player in the UK and it's not making much of a profit. Revolut doesn't have a banking license because it can't comply with the regulatory requirements. Starling has taken much more of a conservative path and is being led by an ex-Barclays person, but even it is being investigated by the FCA for having poor controls around financial crime. All of those giving loans have unnaceptably high % of defaults from an investor perspective.
      • alecco 2y ago
• mellosouls 2y ago
  The editorialising of the title is amusing. The writer comes across as like a teenager still developing his style.
  • boxed 2y ago
    The writer? Or the person editorializing the headline? :P
    • mellosouls 2y ago
      Yes, the writer :)
• deleted 2y ago
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• timlod 2y ago
  I'm a Data Scientist currently consulting for a project in the Real Estate space (utilizing LLMs). I understand the article is hyperbole for perhaps comedic purposes, and actually do perhaps 80% align with a lot of the authors views, but it's a bit much. There is industry-changing tech which has become available, and many orgs are starting to grasp it. I won't deny that there's probably a large percentage of projects which fall under what the author describes, but these claims are doing a bit of a disservice to the legitimately amazing projects being worked on (and the competent people performing that work).
  • runeks 2y ago
    > I'm a Data Scientist currently consulting for a project in the Real Estate space (utilizing LLMs). Consultants are obviously making huge amounts of money implementing LLMs for companies. The question is whether the company profits from it afterwards.
    • timlod 2y ago
      Time will tell, but I would cautiously say say yes. Note that I don't usually work in that particular space (I prefer simple solutions and don't follow the hype), didn't sell myself using 'AI' (I was referred), and also would always tell a client if I believe there isn't much sense in a particular ask. This particular project really uniquely benefits from this technology and would be much harder, if possible at all, otherwise.
  • lagrange77 2y ago
    Would you recommend to still get into freelance consulting (with a ML background) at this point in time? Or will the very technology you're consulting about, replace you very soon? AutoML, LLMs etc..
    • timlod 2y ago
      I'd say it depends on what your other options are. I don't think the technology will replace me soon, even at the rate I see it improving. At this point it's still a tool we can use to deliver faster, if we use it wisely. Especially about ChatGPT et al. - I use it daily, but having the proper foundation to discern and verify its output shows me that it's still very far from being a competent programmer for any but the 'easy' tasks which have been solved hundreds of times over. Like I hinted, I also view all of this hype sceptically. I dislike the 'we need AI in our org now!' types and am not planning on taking on projects if I don't see their viability. But there's obviously still a lot of demand and people offering services like those in TFA who're just looking to cash in, and that seems to work. If you can find projects you believe you can make a difference in with your background, why not give it a shot?
• arisAlexis 2y ago
  "With God as my witness, you grotesque simpleton, if you don't personally write machine learning systems and you open your mouth about AI one more time, I am going to mail you a brick .." I really dislike articles that have rage against (x) and try to appear smart and with authority to tell you that everyone else is stupid and they know better but deep down they are just anti-everthing because contrarianism is the target here and not AI or anything that any article like this talks about. The idea is to just say "no, it's not like that".
  • whoknowsidont 2y ago
    Strangely, the most boring people are the ones that seem to hate the article.
    • arisAlexis 2y ago
      You mean you prefer haters and jihadists so as not to be bored? Ok for game of thrones
      • whoknowsidont 2y ago
        Jihadists? Haters? Are you stuck in 2005?
        • arisAlexis 2y ago
          Hate is a human emotion and adjective in the English language. What are you talking about? Just trying to make the conversation ridiculous? Sorry for you
          • whoknowsidont 2y ago
            You said "haters" -- it's right there, even unedited. Don't be daft. It's boring.
  • brap 2y ago
    To me it sounds like a typical neckbeard internet power-trip.
• casebash 2y ago
  I'm just going to say it. The author is an idiot who is using insults as a crutch to make his case.
• noisy_boy 2y ago
  > GPT-4 can't even write coherent Elixir, presumably because the dataset was too small to get it to the level that it's at for Python Yes but it does save me a whole bunch of time writing boilerplate command line entries in argparse. I can give it a table definition and ask it to write a bunch of crud methods instantly. I can do all of this myself but why? Of course the stuff it produces doesn't work all the time but then I'm not asking it to write my entire app. I'm asking it to spare me the tedium of iterating over the building blocks so that I can get to the main part - building things.
• physicsguy 2y ago
  Zero interest rates are gone, so dying companies are throwing themselves onto the AI bandwagon as a last ditch attempt to bring in cash and keep going.
• deleted 2y ago
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• JoosToopit 2y ago
  [flagged]
• Yizahi 2y ago
  I'm working at a hardware shop, we are making what is essentially is a special kind of network routers/switches for analog network (DOCSIS). And we also got hit by NN craze, half of automation team is developing an "analyzer" based on some neural network model for our lab tests which classify fails by type. A completely useless activity, because even if that code guesses correctly, we still need to go see logs manually and make a decision manually, one by one. Exactly as if NN didn't exist. But after trying to tell that in team chat I was confronted with doubt and rejection. And so this development continues.
• lemonwaterlime 2y ago
  This article is great use of rhetorical delivery to drive home these messages.
• vfclists 2y ago
  When I asked the innocuous question - https://www.reveddit.com/v/singularity/comments/1bdjf7u/is_the_power_of_ai_companies_basically_their/ https://www.reveddit.com/v/singularity/comments/1bdjf7u/is_t... - The mods deleted the content of the question and the whole question itself. Go figure!! This is the original question ===== Is the power of AI companies basically their ability to outbid for AI accelerator chips? It seems to me that all the hype AI companies are getting is primarily due to the ability to outbid competitors for scarce AI chips, or even design and/or build their own. This also includes their ability to build their own infrastructure around them. IMHO this scarcity is the main source of their high valuations, and it seems that in the long term when chipmaking capacity builds up this advantage will eventually wane. Having the ability to train on information provided by users and customers is also a factor, but that doesn't look like it will last either =====
• alex072711 2y ago
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