4 ms·

> Phones sucked, pre 3G was slow, there wasn't much you could use them for before app stores and the cameras were potato quality This is a big rewrite of histo

by runako 1y ago

> Phones sucked, pre 3G was slow, there wasn't much you could use them for before app stores and the cameras were potato quality This is a big rewrite of history. Phones took off because before mobile phones the only way to reach a person was to call when they were at home or their office. People were unreachable for timespans that now seem quaint. Texting brought this into async. The "potato" cameras were the advent of people always having a camera with them. People using the Nokia 3210 were very much not anticipating when their phones would get good, they were already a killer app. That they improved was icing on the cake.

ARandumGuy 1y ago
> People using the Nokia 3210 were very much not anticipating when their phones would get good, they were already a killer app. That they improved was icing on the cake. It always bugs me whenever I hear someone defend some new tech (blockchain, LLMs, NFTs) by comparing it with phones or the internet or whatever. People did not need to be convinced to use cell phones or the internet. While there were absolutely some naysayers, the utility and usefulness of these technologies was very obvious by the time they became available to consumers. But also, there's survivorship bias at play here. There are countless promising technologies that never saw widespread adoption. And any given new technology is far more likely to end up as a failure then it is to become "the next iPhone" or "the new internet." In short, you should sell your technology based on what it can do right now, instead of what it might do in the future. If your tech doesn't provide utility right now, then it should be developed for longer before you start charging money for it. And while there's certainly some use for LLMs, a lot of the current use cases being pushed (google "AI overviews", shitty AI art, AIs writing out emails) aren't particularly useful.
- fragmede 1y ago
  The technology to look at is shopping carts. They're obvious to us now, but when they were first introduced, stores hired actors to use them so that real customers would adopt the habit. There are various "killer" apps that are already currently very useful for their users, but they'll take a while to percolate out as people discover them. That you don't agree with what the corpos are pushing is their bad.
  - ARandumGuy 1y ago
    But that's just more cherry-picking. You can always find some past success to push whatever point you're trying to make. But just because shopping carts were a huge hit doesn't mean that whatever you're trying to push will be. For example, it would be wrong for me to say that "hyperloop got a ton of hype and investments, and it failed. Therefore LLMs, which are also getting a ton of hype and investments, will also fail." Hyperloop and LLMs are fundamentally different technologies, and the failure of hyperloop is a poor indicator of whether LLMs will ultimately succeed. Which isn't to say we can't make comparisons to previous successes or failures. But those comparisons shouldn't be your main argument for the viability of a new technology.
    - fragmede 1y ago
      Unfortunately my time machine is in the shop, so I don't know what the future looks like, so looking for comparisons is just my way of looking into the future. My main argument for the viability of the technology is that it's useful today. Even if it doesn't improve from here, my job as a coder has already been changed.
      - bluefirebrand 1y ago
        > Even if it doesn't improve from here, my job as a coder has already been changed. This is so annoying to me. My job as a coder hasn't changed because my responsibilities as a coder hasn't changed Whether or not I beg an LLM to write code for me or write it myself the job is the same. At best there's a new tool to use but the job hasn't changed.
        fragmede 1y ago
        The responsibilities haven't changed, but the amount of time I have to spend reading documentation to regurgitate something that matches the docs in just the right way has plummeted. That wasn't the whole job, no, but that was a component of my job and to pretend otherwise would be dishonest of me. I don't know you so I don't know how much of your job was that aspect. I will be transparent and say that it did add up over a month though. Says more about me and my job than anything else though, I suppose.
- raincole 1y ago
  > People did not need to be convinced to use cell phones or the internet. Plenty of people don't need to be convinced to use LLM either...

by runako 1y ago

ARandumGuy 1y ago

> People using the Nokia 3210 were very much not anticipating when their phones would get good, they were already a killer app. That they improved was icing on the cake. It always bugs me whenever I hear someone defend some new tech (blockchain, LLMs, NFTs) by comparing it with phones or the internet or whatever. People did not need to be convinced to use cell phones or the internet. While there were absolutely some naysayers, the utility and usefulness of these technologies was very obvious by the time they became available to consumers. But also, there's survivorship bias at play here. There are countless promising technologies that never saw widespread adoption. And any given new technology is far more likely to end up as a failure then it is to become "the next iPhone" or "the new internet." In short, you should sell your technology based on what it can do right now, instead of what it might do in the future. If your tech doesn't provide utility right now, then it should be developed for longer before you start charging money for it. And while there's certainly some use for LLMs, a lot of the current use cases being pushed (google "AI overviews", shitty AI art, AIs writing out emails) aren't particularly useful.

fragmede 1y ago
The technology to look at is shopping carts. They're obvious to us now, but when they were first introduced, stores hired actors to use them so that real customers would adopt the habit. There are various "killer" apps that are already currently very useful for their users, but they'll take a while to percolate out as people discover them. That you don't agree with what the corpos are pushing is their bad.
- ARandumGuy 1y ago
  But that's just more cherry-picking. You can always find some past success to push whatever point you're trying to make. But just because shopping carts were a huge hit doesn't mean that whatever you're trying to push will be. For example, it would be wrong for me to say that "hyperloop got a ton of hype and investments, and it failed. Therefore LLMs, which are also getting a ton of hype and investments, will also fail." Hyperloop and LLMs are fundamentally different technologies, and the failure of hyperloop is a poor indicator of whether LLMs will ultimately succeed. Which isn't to say we can't make comparisons to previous successes or failures. But those comparisons shouldn't be your main argument for the viability of a new technology.
  - fragmede 1y ago
    Unfortunately my time machine is in the shop, so I don't know what the future looks like, so looking for comparisons is just my way of looking into the future. My main argument for the viability of the technology is that it's useful today. Even if it doesn't improve from here, my job as a coder has already been changed.
    - bluefirebrand 1y ago
      > Even if it doesn't improve from here, my job as a coder has already been changed. This is so annoying to me. My job as a coder hasn't changed because my responsibilities as a coder hasn't changed Whether or not I beg an LLM to write code for me or write it myself the job is the same. At best there's a new tool to use but the job hasn't changed.
      - fragmede 1y ago
        The responsibilities haven't changed, but the amount of time I have to spend reading documentation to regurgitate something that matches the docs in just the right way has plummeted. That wasn't the whole job, no, but that was a component of my job and to pretend otherwise would be dishonest of me. I don't know you so I don't know how much of your job was that aspect. I will be transparent and say that it did add up over a month though. Says more about me and my job than anything else though, I suppose.
raincole 1y ago
> People did not need to be convinced to use cell phones or the internet. Plenty of people don't need to be convinced to use LLM either...