5 ms·

Aside from the hilarious "250,000+ toppings" error, these summaries seem... fine? I would be unsurprised to learn that a human came up with them, even. Seems

by kelnos 6mo ago

Aside from the hilarious "250,000+ toppings" error, these summaries seem... fine? I would be unsurprised to learn that a human came up with them, even. Seems like pretty common/standard marketing copy.

sd9 6mo ago
Maybe each one is fine in isolation - what doesn’t come across from the sample is that every single one is practically the same. If you have Uber Eats, open up the app and look through the summaries for a bunch of restaurants and you’ll see what I mean. And besides that, this just feels like something nobody asked for that probably doesn’t sell more food compared to, for example, more pictures.
- yorwba 6mo ago
  Don't worry, they'll also use AI to add more pictures, which will all look strangely similar while bearing at best passing resemblance to anything you might actually receive after placing an order.
- recursivecaveat 6mo ago
  It seems to have been at least slightly improved, but youtube video summaries suffered from this to an almost comical degree not long ago. The AI voice is already pretty recognizable and stilted, then you constrain it to avoid saying anything negative or spoilery about the video, and (presumably) don't let it remember past output. No surprise its extremely repetitive. For humans you're at least getting different people's voices, on different days, who remember that they just wrote about how the last one was a "unique look highlighting the importance of design".
- nradov 6mo ago
  Most restaurant food is all the same though because they buy everything from Sysco.
  - malfist 6mo ago
    That's like saying most home cooking in the country is the same because everything comes from Walmart/Kroger/Meijer.
    - nradov 6mo ago
      No, you're missing the point. A lot of casual restaurants aren't even really cooking any more. They just heat up prepared food purchased from Sysco. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/restaurant-consolidation-loss-local-identity/ https://www.thenation.com/article/society/restaurant-consoli...
      - UncleMeat 6mo ago
        "A lot of" and "most" are different things. Yes, a lot of places are not making their own jalepeno poppers. There's still plenty of stuff being made from raw ingredients all over the place.
temp8830 6mo ago
But why does Uber need to spend 3.4B on injecting a useless blob of text between me and an overpriced burger delivered by a struggling illegal immigrant in a smoke-belching jalopy? I know the counter-argument. "This will increase sales". You know what else would increase sales? Spending the 3.4B to replace the above with a uniformed delivery service similar to UPS. That job could pay benefits.
- rchaud 6mo ago
  For the same reason the shoe industry spends billions sponsoring athletes and sports teams to hawk their gear. It's to build layer upon layer of abstractions to move the conversation away from how the sausage is made, and towards something that could justify their own bloated salaries, like promoting "sporting excellence" or "tech innovation".
- raincole 6mo ago
  > But why does Uber need to spend 3.4B on injecting a useless blob of text They didn't. 3.4B was their total R&B cost. Don't blame AI for your human hallucination.
  - temp8830 6mo ago
    Why does a fast food delivery service need a research arm in the first place? It's not exactly rocket surgery.
    - nradov 6mo ago
      In most large tech companies the senior leaders want to run some vanity projects so having a research arm makes that possible. They can screw around without impacting product teams.
    - malfist 6mo ago
      R&D is literally what built uber and uber eats. Research to determine the product and _development_ to build it.
  - 6mo ago
onraglanroad 6mo ago
That's not an error, it's what 5 Guys advertise. It's the number of combinations for their toppings.
- idontwantthis 6mo ago
  Shouldn’t it be a lot more? Around 20 toppings in any combination and count would be 20! + 19! + 18! … no?
  - drivebyhooting 6mo ago
    2^20 Does order of toppings matter?
    - jcgrillo 6mo ago
      yes, only a monster would put the pickles underneath the tomato
- autoexec 6mo ago
  That sounds like an error to me. "Number of toppings" is not the same as "Number of possible combinations of toppings".
mcmcmc 6mo ago
I think that's exactly the point. It's the distillation of the most common marketing copy possible, and when that tone is applied everywhere it becomes very same-y, like those cookie cutter neighborhoods where every house is the exact same. Which to some extent defeats the purpose of marketing as it doesn't stand out at all, just sanitized sameness. It's boring and a bit creepy.
array_key_first 6mo ago
Right, it seems just like a marketing blip, which is bad, because marketing isn't meant to be informative, it's meant to be manipulative. If we're using AI and we're still getting the gobbley gook nothing burger marketing word soup, then what are we doing here? No, not everything IS rich and authentic. And no, it's not awaiting me!
ajkjk 6mo ago
they make me feel embarrassed to be human
CJefferson 6mo ago
So, I've just read a few dozen student reports, which I'm 95% sure were mostly generated by AI. The problem isn't one page of one report. It's not even one whole report. But, the more you read, the more irritating it gets. It's hard not to notice the AIisms, and once you know them, it gets really obvious. And I know some people will say 'Oh, I say X', for any particular X, but the thing that people don't do is use some same construction at least twice a page, every page, forever. Now, I can imagine there ends up being a bit of a battle, where AIs try to learn to write 'less AI', but for now, it's very obvious if you read enough AI generated stuff.
- gruez 6mo ago
  >It's hard not to notice the AIisms, and once you know them, it gets really obvious. Maybe I haven't read enough uber eats descriptions to notice, but at least from the sampling above it doesn't seem too obviously AI. There might be a lot of cliche wording, but it's not even clear whether it's worse than human reviews/descriptions.
pllbnk 6mo ago
This looks like a false advertising and in this case they can't blame it on the "human error".

by kelnos 6mo ago

sd9 6mo ago

Maybe each one is fine in isolation - what doesn’t come across from the sample is that every single one is practically the same. If you have Uber Eats, open up the app and look through the summaries for a bunch of restaurants and you’ll see what I mean. And besides that, this just feels like something nobody asked for that probably doesn’t sell more food compared to, for example, more pictures.

yorwba 6mo ago
Don't worry, they'll also use AI to add more pictures, which will all look strangely similar while bearing at best passing resemblance to anything you might actually receive after placing an order.
recursivecaveat 6mo ago
It seems to have been at least slightly improved, but youtube video summaries suffered from this to an almost comical degree not long ago. The AI voice is already pretty recognizable and stilted, then you constrain it to avoid saying anything negative or spoilery about the video, and (presumably) don't let it remember past output. No surprise its extremely repetitive. For humans you're at least getting different people's voices, on different days, who remember that they just wrote about how the last one was a "unique look highlighting the importance of design".
nradov 6mo ago
Most restaurant food is all the same though because they buy everything from Sysco.
- malfist 6mo ago
  That's like saying most home cooking in the country is the same because everything comes from Walmart/Kroger/Meijer.
  - nradov 6mo ago
    No, you're missing the point. A lot of casual restaurants aren't even really cooking any more. They just heat up prepared food purchased from Sysco. https://www.thenation.com/article/society/restaurant-consolidation-loss-local-identity/ https://www.thenation.com/article/society/restaurant-consoli...
    - UncleMeat 6mo ago
      "A lot of" and "most" are different things. Yes, a lot of places are not making their own jalepeno poppers. There's still plenty of stuff being made from raw ingredients all over the place.

temp8830 6mo ago

But why does Uber need to spend 3.4B on injecting a useless blob of text between me and an overpriced burger delivered by a struggling illegal immigrant in a smoke-belching jalopy? I know the counter-argument. "This will increase sales". You know what else would increase sales? Spending the 3.4B to replace the above with a uniformed delivery service similar to UPS. That job could pay benefits.

rchaud 6mo ago
For the same reason the shoe industry spends billions sponsoring athletes and sports teams to hawk their gear. It's to build layer upon layer of abstractions to move the conversation away from how the sausage is made, and towards something that could justify their own bloated salaries, like promoting "sporting excellence" or "tech innovation".
raincole 6mo ago
> But why does Uber need to spend 3.4B on injecting a useless blob of text They didn't. 3.4B was their total R&B cost. Don't blame AI for your human hallucination.
- temp8830 6mo ago
  Why does a fast food delivery service need a research arm in the first place? It's not exactly rocket surgery.
  - nradov 6mo ago
    In most large tech companies the senior leaders want to run some vanity projects so having a research arm makes that possible. They can screw around without impacting product teams.
  - malfist 6mo ago
    R&D is literally what built uber and uber eats. Research to determine the product and _development_ to build it.
- 6mo ago

onraglanroad 6mo ago

That's not an error, it's what 5 Guys advertise. It's the number of combinations for their toppings.

idontwantthis 6mo ago
Shouldn’t it be a lot more? Around 20 toppings in any combination and count would be 20! + 19! + 18! … no?
- drivebyhooting 6mo ago
  2^20 Does order of toppings matter?
  - jcgrillo 6mo ago
    yes, only a monster would put the pickles underneath the tomato
autoexec 6mo ago
That sounds like an error to me. "Number of toppings" is not the same as "Number of possible combinations of toppings".

mcmcmc 6mo ago

I think that's exactly the point. It's the distillation of the most common marketing copy possible, and when that tone is applied everywhere it becomes very same-y, like those cookie cutter neighborhoods where every house is the exact same. Which to some extent defeats the purpose of marketing as it doesn't stand out at all, just sanitized sameness. It's boring and a bit creepy.

array_key_first 6mo ago

Right, it seems just like a marketing blip, which is bad, because marketing isn't meant to be informative, it's meant to be manipulative. If we're using AI and we're still getting the gobbley gook nothing burger marketing word soup, then what are we doing here? No, not everything IS rich and authentic. And no, it's not awaiting me!

ajkjk 6mo ago

they make me feel embarrassed to be human

CJefferson 6mo ago

So, I've just read a few dozen student reports, which I'm 95% sure were mostly generated by AI. The problem isn't one page of one report. It's not even one whole report. But, the more you read, the more irritating it gets. It's hard not to notice the AIisms, and once you know them, it gets really obvious. And I know some people will say 'Oh, I say X', for any particular X, but the thing that people don't do is use some same construction at least twice a page, every page, forever. Now, I can imagine there ends up being a bit of a battle, where AIs try to learn to write 'less AI', but for now, it's very obvious if you read enough AI generated stuff.

gruez 6mo ago
>It's hard not to notice the AIisms, and once you know them, it gets really obvious. Maybe I haven't read enough uber eats descriptions to notice, but at least from the sampling above it doesn't seem too obviously AI. There might be a lot of cliche wording, but it's not even clear whether it's worse than human reviews/descriptions.

pllbnk 6mo ago

This looks like a false advertising and in this case they can't blame it on the "human error".