4 ms·

The hype surrounding them is not as a pa and tbh a lot of these use cases already have existing methods that work just fine. There are ways to find key informat

The hype surrounding them is not as a pa and tbh a lot of these use cases already have existing methods that work just fine. There are ways to find key information in files already, and speedy meeting minutes is really just a template away.

rkuodys 1y ago
What I see LLMs at this point is simplified input and output solutions with reduced barriers of entry. So application could become more widespread. Now that I think of it, maybe this AI era is not electricity, but rather GUI - like the time when Jobs(or whoever) figured out and adopted modern GUI on computers allowing more widespread uses of computer
- ktallett 1y ago
  Do they only have reduced barriers of entry if you aren't fussed about the accuracy of the output? If you care that everything works correctly and is factually correct, do you not need the same competency as just doing the task by hand.
- flir 1y ago
  It's a good analogy because the key development does seem to have been the interface. Instead of wrapping it up as a text autocomplete (a la google search), openai wrapped it up as an IM client, and we were off to the races.
Flamentono2 1y ago
Absolutly not true I was not able to get meeting transcription in that quality that cheap ever before. I followed dictation software for over a decade and tx to ML the open source software is suddenly a lot better than ever before. Our internal company search with state of the art search indexes and search software was always shit. Now i ask an agent about a product standard and it just finds it. Image generation never existed before. Building a chatbot in a way that it actually does what you expect and its more complicated than answering the same 10 theoretical features it can do was hard and never really good and it now just works. Im also not aware of any software rewriting or even writing documents for me, structer them etc.
- ktallett 1y ago
  A lot of these issues you have had are simply user error or not using the right tool for the job.
  - StopDisinfo910 1y ago
    Well, LLMs are the right tool for the job. They just work. I mean if you are going to deny their usefulness in the face of plenty of people telling you they actually help, it’s going to be impossible to have a discussion.
    - ktallett 1y ago
      They can be useful, however for admin tasks, there are plenty of valid alternatives that really take no longer time wise so why bother using all that computing power. They don't just work though, they are not fool proof and definitely require double checking.
      - StopDisinfo910 1y ago
        > valid alternatives that really take no longer time wise That’s not my experience. We use them more and more at my job. It was already great for most office tasks including brainstorming simple things but now suppliers are starting to sell us agents which pretty much just work and honestly there are a ton of things for which LLMs seem really suited for. CMDB queries? Annoying SAP requests for which you have to delve through dozens of menus? The stupid interface of my travel management and expense software? Please give me a chatbot for all of that which can actually decipher what I’m trying to do. These are hours of productivity unlocked. We are also starting to deploy more and more RAG on select core business dataset and it’s more useful than even I anticipated and I’m already convinced. You ask, you get a brief answer and the documents back. This used to be either hours of delving through search results or emails with experts. As imperfect as they are now, the potential value of LLMs is already tremendous.
        1y ago
StopDisinfo910 1y ago
Microsoft is absolutely selling them as pa and already selling a lot. I think HNers being mostly software developers live in a bubble when it comes to the reality of what LLMs are actually used for. Speedy minutes are absolutely not a template away. Anyone who ever had to write minutes for a complicated meetings knows it’s hard and requires a lot of back and forth for everyone to agree about what was said and decided. Now you just turn on Copilot and you get both a transcript and an adequate basis for good minutes. Bonus point: it’s made by a machine so no one complains it has bias. Some people here are blind to how useful that is.
- IanCal 1y ago
  There are so many tasks in the world that 1. Involve a computer 2. Do not require incredible intelligence 3. Involve the messiness of the real world enough that you can't write exact code to do it without it being insanely fragile LLMs suddenly start to tackle these, and tackle them kind of all at once. Additionally they are "programmed" in just English and so you don't need a specialist to do something like change the tone of the summary or format, you just write what you want. Assuming the models never get any smarter or even cheaper, and all we get is neater integrations, I still think this is all huge.
  - ktallett 1y ago
    Do you really believe the outlay in terms of computer power is worth it to change the tone of an email? If it never gets better, this is a vast waste of an enormous amount of resources.
    - IanCal 1y ago
      That's not what I've talked about them being for, but regardless it depends on the impact surely. If it can show you how someone may misunderstand your point and either help correct it or just show the problem then yes that can easily be worth spending a few cycles on. The additional energy cost of further back and forths caused by a misunderstanding could very easily be higher. At full whack, my GPU draws something like 10x what my monitor does, so fixing something quickly and automatically can easily use less power than doing it automatically. Again though, that's not at all what I've talked about.

rkuodys 1y ago

What I see LLMs at this point is simplified input and output solutions with reduced barriers of entry. So application could become more widespread. Now that I think of it, maybe this AI era is not electricity, but rather GUI - like the time when Jobs(or whoever) figured out and adopted modern GUI on computers allowing more widespread uses of computer

ktallett 1y ago
Do they only have reduced barriers of entry if you aren't fussed about the accuracy of the output? If you care that everything works correctly and is factually correct, do you not need the same competency as just doing the task by hand.
flir 1y ago
It's a good analogy because the key development does seem to have been the interface. Instead of wrapping it up as a text autocomplete (a la google search), openai wrapped it up as an IM client, and we were off to the races.

Flamentono2 1y ago

Absolutly not true I was not able to get meeting transcription in that quality that cheap ever before. I followed dictation software for over a decade and tx to ML the open source software is suddenly a lot better than ever before. Our internal company search with state of the art search indexes and search software was always shit. Now i ask an agent about a product standard and it just finds it. Image generation never existed before. Building a chatbot in a way that it actually does what you expect and its more complicated than answering the same 10 theoretical features it can do was hard and never really good and it now just works. Im also not aware of any software rewriting or even writing documents for me, structer them etc.

ktallett 1y ago
A lot of these issues you have had are simply user error or not using the right tool for the job.
- StopDisinfo910 1y ago
  Well, LLMs are the right tool for the job. They just work. I mean if you are going to deny their usefulness in the face of plenty of people telling you they actually help, it’s going to be impossible to have a discussion.
  - ktallett 1y ago
    They can be useful, however for admin tasks, there are plenty of valid alternatives that really take no longer time wise so why bother using all that computing power. They don't just work though, they are not fool proof and definitely require double checking.
    - StopDisinfo910 1y ago
      > valid alternatives that really take no longer time wise That’s not my experience. We use them more and more at my job. It was already great for most office tasks including brainstorming simple things but now suppliers are starting to sell us agents which pretty much just work and honestly there are a ton of things for which LLMs seem really suited for. CMDB queries? Annoying SAP requests for which you have to delve through dozens of menus? The stupid interface of my travel management and expense software? Please give me a chatbot for all of that which can actually decipher what I’m trying to do. These are hours of productivity unlocked. We are also starting to deploy more and more RAG on select core business dataset and it’s more useful than even I anticipated and I’m already convinced. You ask, you get a brief answer and the documents back. This used to be either hours of delving through search results or emails with experts. As imperfect as they are now, the potential value of LLMs is already tremendous.
      - 1y ago

StopDisinfo910 1y ago

Microsoft is absolutely selling them as pa and already selling a lot. I think HNers being mostly software developers live in a bubble when it comes to the reality of what LLMs are actually used for. Speedy minutes are absolutely not a template away. Anyone who ever had to write minutes for a complicated meetings knows it’s hard and requires a lot of back and forth for everyone to agree about what was said and decided. Now you just turn on Copilot and you get both a transcript and an adequate basis for good minutes. Bonus point: it’s made by a machine so no one complains it has bias. Some people here are blind to how useful that is.

IanCal 1y ago
There are so many tasks in the world that 1. Involve a computer 2. Do not require incredible intelligence 3. Involve the messiness of the real world enough that you can't write exact code to do it without it being insanely fragile LLMs suddenly start to tackle these, and tackle them kind of all at once. Additionally they are "programmed" in just English and so you don't need a specialist to do something like change the tone of the summary or format, you just write what you want. Assuming the models never get any smarter or even cheaper, and all we get is neater integrations, I still think this is all huge.
- ktallett 1y ago
  Do you really believe the outlay in terms of computer power is worth it to change the tone of an email? If it never gets better, this is a vast waste of an enormous amount of resources.
  - IanCal 1y ago
    That's not what I've talked about them being for, but regardless it depends on the impact surely. If it can show you how someone may misunderstand your point and either help correct it or just show the problem then yes that can easily be worth spending a few cycles on. The additional energy cost of further back and forths caused by a misunderstanding could very easily be higher. At full whack, my GPU draws something like 10x what my monitor does, so fixing something quickly and automatically can easily use less power than doing it automatically. Again though, that's not at all what I've talked about.