3 ms·
"AI" (or rather language models) will change the world. But in a very different way. They aren't (and won't become) AGI. They aren't (and won't) replace softwar
by choeger 2y ago
"AI" (or rather language models) will change the world. But in a very different way. They aren't (and won't become) AGI. They aren't (and won't) replace software engineers (but maybe help them to write better software, or more realistically churn out even more bad software). And they aren't and won't become ultra-wise oracles that can solve any task you throw at them.
But they are an interface between the real world and computing, because everything in the real world revolves around human language. Here are a few things that are actually solved by now, even if we did not yet fully recognize it:
1. automatic human-human translations
2. collection and annotation of all kinds of real-world data (with the help of image recognition, of course)
3. human-machine communication (not decision-making, mind you.)
The most crucial aspect is that other human-machine interfaces will become less relevant. In particular web pages and mobile apps. They might stay as an attempt to capture attention, but they will become less and less relevant for actual usage. Here are a few services that might get by without a web browser or app soon:
1. online banking
2. delivery services (and others like Uber)
3. small business that basically only need to manage appointments online (doctors, lawyers, car shops)
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- danaris 2y ago"Solved"—so long as you don't mind that unclear and difficult-to-measure percentage of nearly-guaranteed errors—errors which the LLM can never detect or acknowledge, because that would require a level of introspection of which they are fundamentally incapable.
- pjc50 2y ago> Here are a few services that might get by without a web browser or app soon: > 1. online banking ??! You've got a system of unpredictable reliability and you're going to let it handle money? Online banking has always been extremely conservative, sometimes for good reason.
- beretguy 2y agoSome banking still runs on COBOL, probably.
- choeger 2y ago> ??! You've got a system of unpredictable reliability and you're going to let it handle money? Yes. Recall phone banking? I imagine it like that. Potentially via a chat service like Whatsapp or signal. You'd start with simple standard tasks and low limits, if course. But the risk and value can be directly quantified in online banking.
- talldayo 2y agoI remember how phone banking relied on the honesty of individual, accountable employees. How do you hold AI accountable? You give it low limits, write off the mistakes and keep scaling and ignoring failure even at the million-dollar-mistake level? Banks indeed look at things in terms of risk mitigation, but this is silly. You will not see a credible bank incorporate LLM-based features because it is a genuinely enormous attack surface with marginal ROI. Any logical developer would create an ELIZA-style on-rails system instead, and it would never misbehave like ChatGPT.