4 ms·

Slack AI

32 points by mvdtnz 2y ago

cedws 2y ago
How far off are we from the Trough of Disillusionment again? When this bubble pops it's going to be rough.
- sadops 2y ago
  Look on the bright side: they'll be practically giving those GPUs away.
- Kiro 2y ago
  The fact that everyone is so certain makes me think the analysis is incorrect. Especially when it's coming from the HN crowd which is notoriously bad at predicting things.
raviisoccupied 2y ago
Slack must be happy that AI + LLMs came at a moment where the novelty of their product seemed to be wearing off, and similarly to how people now think about email, Slack seems to (sadly, in my opinion) be gaining a reputation as a place for noise, busywork, and distraction. AI can solve those problems (a second time, as Slack was designed to make workplace communication more efficient).
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- sadops 2y ago
  Slack was designed to get a fat return for the VCs that funded it. By that measure, it was a success.
phildenhoff 2y ago
Is this the beginning of the end of Slack? Unrelated: I forgot Slack was owned by Salesforce, who also own Heroku. Why am I still using Slack?
- mistrial9 2y ago
  .. because it is a mass illusion that you have individual choices in the matter. Companies and some govt agencies are required to have a monitored, logged and legally responsive chat provider. You are not asked if you want to use Slack, you are required to use Slack. hint- expect much more of that
  - beardedwizard 2y ago
    Expect much more of it from who? What are you suggesting changed? Among all the spying enterprise apps, why slack? Afaik, engineers brought slack into many companies and pushed back on alternatives like teams.
    - doix 2y ago
      Engineers brought slack into companies because it was like IRC but non-tech folk could use it. Teams didn't exist when slack became "cool". It was Lync or Skype for Business, or something along those lines. The timeline and the rebranding is a bit blurry, but they were truly awful compared to Slack. Slack stopped being cool (for me) when they killed the IRC bridge. After that it became just another enterprise tool that was doomed to be hated.
      - viraptor 2y ago
        There should be Hipchat in the timeline and many xmpp deployments.
        drcongo 2y ago
        Hipchat was great. Native app too.
    - mistrial9 2y ago
      here in the San Francisco Bay Area, USA .. this is what I have seen myself.. Teams has taken a new front-position in this category yes
morkalork 2y ago
Man, it has got to suck being a fresh out of school CS grad. Not only is the industry fucked, if you get a job, you may well be fully remote and WFH which already kills social connections in the crib. Now add slack AI to the mix and you've got the Black Mirror-esque nightmare of: Has your manager really read your message? Have they ever read any? Or is everything you say just being shouted into an abyss, with only an LLM distorted echo being heard.
- ivanjermakov 2y ago
  Isn't it responsibility of a manager to treat employees well? Careless manager wouldn't read their messages regardless LLM or not.
  - kcplate 2y ago
    Umm… “well” is kind of subjective. A manager’s responsibility is to make his employees productive for the organization.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- surgical_fire 2y ago
  > if you get a job, you may well be fully remote and WFH I envy the fresh graduates of today, not having to put up to office bullshit for almost 2 decades like I did.
sciolist 2y ago
Even if AI tools (e.g. search or summarization) aren't perfect, neither are our current manual methods. Right now I feel there's a strong negative sentiment towards mistakes made by LLMs vs humans - when/if that sentiment fades, it'll be interesting to see how much work can be delegated to LLMs.
- threeseed 2y ago
  The difference is in how you make mistakes. Humans have the ability to explain the thought process that led to the mistake, can provide confidence intervals, can learn from the mistake and can maintain a coherent position over time. And right now the only work being delegate to LLMs are those where mistakes are tolerable e.g. copywriting, customer service.
- Bilal_io 2y ago
  Human mistakes are learning opportunities. An LLM doesn't learn from its mistakes.
pfych 2y ago
I wonder how long it will be until we hear about a company accidentally doing something because the Slack AI summary / AI search incorrectly paraphrased a request. I really wish AI companies would call hallucinations what they really are - Mistakes. Using wishy-washy words like that make non-techy people trust outputs of LLMs much much more than they should. "Oh it just hallucinated - how silly!" instead of "It got it wrong - we should be more careful". Can be scary hearing how much trust the average joe puts into LLM outputs...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- 39896880 2y ago
  I actually think "hallucination" sounds worse than "mistake." A hallucination is a fundamental break from the shared reality.
  - madeofpalk 2y ago
    The problem is that everything from an LLM is a hallucination, because LLMs don't have a reality. LLM's inventing new text is the whole point of them. It's just that sometimes they invent text that's also wrong.
    - MostlyStable 2y ago
      This is simply false. LLMs have a world model. Is it perfect? Obviously not. But neither is yours. Saying that "everything" from an LLM is a hallucination, to whatever extent it can be said to be true is overly broad to the point of being useless. It is very possible to learn which kinds of things LLMs are likely to be correct at and which kinds of things they are likely to be wrong about. Neither of those categories is going to be perfect, but, again, neither will it be for any particular human. I mostly agree that current LLMs should not be used in any kind of a critical role that does not have a human constantly checking it. And even with a human, probably not, because humans are lazy, and are likely to stop checking. But they can be very useful if one takes the time to learn what kinds of outputs they usually give. The problem with the vast majority of articles on them is that they usually go in one of two directions: Look at this amazing task that an LLM did really well or Look at this incredibly basic task that an LLM did very poorly. Both of those ignore the totality that LLMs are shockingly, amazingly, good at certain kinds of tasks and also shockingly, embarrassingly bad at other kinds of tasks. If one can learn to recognize which is which, one can get a lot of value and, if one is careful, avoid the pitfalls.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
bluelightning2k 2y ago
I find that landing page over-produced and trying too hard to the extent that I literally couldn't read it. 2000s era pop-up vibes.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
cj 2y ago
I’ve been using this for a couple months now. Honestly it’s the kind of thing that’s cool the first time you use it, then I forgot it existed and now it’s nothing more than 1 more notification to clear out every day. The “Recap” feature has potential but I honestly feel like it creates more noise. In most cases (for me) it’s easier to just skim the channel than to read a summary. The “ask questions in search” sounded cool, but after a few lackluster attempts at using it I forgot the feature existed. As the Slack, Google Workspace, and Notion admin at our company, I bought the AI license add-ons for each product (plus ChatGPT) which comes to about $80/person/month. My thinking is I’ll give our team access to everything bleeding edge for 12 months, then actually ask people what value they get from it and decide whether to scale the licenses back. I have a feeling many other companies buy these add-ons with a similar mindset.
- legostormtroopr 2y ago
  That seems like a really backwards approach - if you give it to users, they will probably have one or two use cases they infrequently use that will make them reluctant to give it up. If there isn't a clear need, why sign up at all?
- hi_hi 2y ago
  I'd suggest a slight change in strategy. After 12 months, don't ask people. Just start gradually taking things away. Those that contact you to ask why it's missing are the ones who probably find it useful. The scream test works everytime, in 80% of scenarios...
madeofpalk 2y ago
Hmm. None of these features seem to be particularly useful. If a channel has so many unread messages that you need a summary of it, maybe try just not. I don't want a daily round-up from multiple channels - I want Slack to just show me messages from multiple low-volume channels in a single view.
- mvdtnz 2y ago
  > If a channel has so many unread messages that you need a summary of it, maybe try just not. "Try just not" what? I can't tell my colleagues to stop communicating.
  - madeofpalk 2y ago
    I think it's useful to properly interrogate how much discussion is actually important and worth reading, rather than continiously piling on additional tools.
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Related: Slack AI Training with Customer Data https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40383978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40383978

Slack AI

32 points by mvdtnz 2y ago

cedws 2y ago

How far off are we from the Trough of Disillusionment again? When this bubble pops it's going to be rough.

sadops 2y ago
Look on the bright side: they'll be practically giving those GPUs away.
Kiro 2y ago
The fact that everyone is so certain makes me think the analysis is incorrect. Especially when it's coming from the HN crowd which is notoriously bad at predicting things.

raviisoccupied 2y ago

Slack must be happy that AI + LLMs came at a moment where the novelty of their product seemed to be wearing off, and similarly to how people now think about email, Slack seems to (sadly, in my opinion) be gaining a reputation as a place for noise, busywork, and distraction. AI can solve those problems (a second time, as Slack was designed to make workplace communication more efficient).

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
sadops 2y ago
Slack was designed to get a fat return for the VCs that funded it. By that measure, it was a success.

phildenhoff 2y ago

Is this the beginning of the end of Slack? Unrelated: I forgot Slack was owned by Salesforce, who also own Heroku. Why am I still using Slack?

mistrial9 2y ago
.. because it is a mass illusion that you have individual choices in the matter. Companies and some govt agencies are required to have a monitored, logged and legally responsive chat provider. You are not asked if you want to use Slack, you are required to use Slack. hint- expect much more of that
- beardedwizard 2y ago
  Expect much more of it from who? What are you suggesting changed? Among all the spying enterprise apps, why slack? Afaik, engineers brought slack into many companies and pushed back on alternatives like teams.
  - doix 2y ago
    Engineers brought slack into companies because it was like IRC but non-tech folk could use it. Teams didn't exist when slack became "cool". It was Lync or Skype for Business, or something along those lines. The timeline and the rebranding is a bit blurry, but they were truly awful compared to Slack. Slack stopped being cool (for me) when they killed the IRC bridge. After that it became just another enterprise tool that was doomed to be hated.
    - viraptor 2y ago
      There should be Hipchat in the timeline and many xmpp deployments.
      - drcongo 2y ago
        Hipchat was great. Native app too.
  - mistrial9 2y ago
    here in the San Francisco Bay Area, USA .. this is what I have seen myself.. Teams has taken a new front-position in this category yes

morkalork 2y ago

Man, it has got to suck being a fresh out of school CS grad. Not only is the industry fucked, if you get a job, you may well be fully remote and WFH which already kills social connections in the crib. Now add slack AI to the mix and you've got the Black Mirror-esque nightmare of: Has your manager really read your message? Have they ever read any? Or is everything you say just being shouted into an abyss, with only an LLM distorted echo being heard.

ivanjermakov 2y ago
Isn't it responsibility of a manager to treat employees well? Careless manager wouldn't read their messages regardless LLM or not.
- kcplate 2y ago
  Umm… “well” is kind of subjective. A manager’s responsibility is to make his employees productive for the organization.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
surgical_fire 2y ago
> if you get a job, you may well be fully remote and WFH I envy the fresh graduates of today, not having to put up to office bullshit for almost 2 decades like I did.

sciolist 2y ago

Even if AI tools (e.g. search or summarization) aren't perfect, neither are our current manual methods. Right now I feel there's a strong negative sentiment towards mistakes made by LLMs vs humans - when/if that sentiment fades, it'll be interesting to see how much work can be delegated to LLMs.

threeseed 2y ago
The difference is in how you make mistakes. Humans have the ability to explain the thought process that led to the mistake, can provide confidence intervals, can learn from the mistake and can maintain a coherent position over time. And right now the only work being delegate to LLMs are those where mistakes are tolerable e.g. copywriting, customer service.
Bilal_io 2y ago
Human mistakes are learning opportunities. An LLM doesn't learn from its mistakes.

pfych 2y ago

I wonder how long it will be until we hear about a company accidentally doing something because the Slack AI summary / AI search incorrectly paraphrased a request. I really wish AI companies would call hallucinations what they really are - Mistakes. Using wishy-washy words like that make non-techy people trust outputs of LLMs much much more than they should. "Oh it just hallucinated - how silly!" instead of "It got it wrong - we should be more careful". Can be scary hearing how much trust the average joe puts into LLM outputs...

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
39896880 2y ago
I actually think "hallucination" sounds worse than "mistake." A hallucination is a fundamental break from the shared reality.
- madeofpalk 2y ago
  The problem is that everything from an LLM is a hallucination, because LLMs don't have a reality. LLM's inventing new text is the whole point of them. It's just that sometimes they invent text that's also wrong.
  - MostlyStable 2y ago
    This is simply false. LLMs have a world model. Is it perfect? Obviously not. But neither is yours. Saying that "everything" from an LLM is a hallucination, to whatever extent it can be said to be true is overly broad to the point of being useless. It is very possible to learn which kinds of things LLMs are likely to be correct at and which kinds of things they are likely to be wrong about. Neither of those categories is going to be perfect, but, again, neither will it be for any particular human. I mostly agree that current LLMs should not be used in any kind of a critical role that does not have a human constantly checking it. And even with a human, probably not, because humans are lazy, and are likely to stop checking. But they can be very useful if one takes the time to learn what kinds of outputs they usually give. The problem with the vast majority of articles on them is that they usually go in one of two directions: Look at this amazing task that an LLM did really well or Look at this incredibly basic task that an LLM did very poorly. Both of those ignore the totality that LLMs are shockingly, amazingly, good at certain kinds of tasks and also shockingly, embarrassingly bad at other kinds of tasks. If one can learn to recognize which is which, one can get a lot of value and, if one is careful, avoid the pitfalls.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

bluelightning2k 2y ago

I find that landing page over-produced and trying too hard to the extent that I literally couldn't read it. 2000s era pop-up vibes.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

cj 2y ago

I’ve been using this for a couple months now. Honestly it’s the kind of thing that’s cool the first time you use it, then I forgot it existed and now it’s nothing more than 1 more notification to clear out every day. The “Recap” feature has potential but I honestly feel like it creates more noise. In most cases (for me) it’s easier to just skim the channel than to read a summary. The “ask questions in search” sounded cool, but after a few lackluster attempts at using it I forgot the feature existed. As the Slack, Google Workspace, and Notion admin at our company, I bought the AI license add-ons for each product (plus ChatGPT) which comes to about $80/person/month. My thinking is I’ll give our team access to everything bleeding edge for 12 months, then actually ask people what value they get from it and decide whether to scale the licenses back. I have a feeling many other companies buy these add-ons with a similar mindset.

legostormtroopr 2y ago
That seems like a really backwards approach - if you give it to users, they will probably have one or two use cases they infrequently use that will make them reluctant to give it up. If there isn't a clear need, why sign up at all?
hi_hi 2y ago
I'd suggest a slight change in strategy. After 12 months, don't ask people. Just start gradually taking things away. Those that contact you to ask why it's missing are the ones who probably find it useful. The scream test works everytime, in 80% of scenarios...

madeofpalk 2y ago

Hmm. None of these features seem to be particularly useful. If a channel has so many unread messages that you need a summary of it, maybe try just not. I don't want a daily round-up from multiple channels - I want Slack to just show me messages from multiple low-volume channels in a single view.

mvdtnz 2y ago
> If a channel has so many unread messages that you need a summary of it, maybe try just not. "Try just not" what? I can't tell my colleagues to stop communicating.
- madeofpalk 2y ago
  I think it's useful to properly interrogate how much discussion is actually important and worth reading, rather than continiously piling on additional tools.

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

Related: Slack AI Training with Customer Data https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40383978 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40383978