Comment on Barack Obama: “For elevator music, AI is going to work fine. Music like Bob Dylan or Stevie Wonder, that's different”

• lugal@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Tbf everyone is entitled to have an opinion, including Obama

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• HawlSera@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I know this was once said about the automobile, but I am confident in the knowledge that AI is just a passing fad

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  • ricecake@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Why? It’s a tool like any other, and we’re unlikely to stop using it.

    Right now there’s a lot of hype because some tech that made a marked impact of consumers was developed, and that’s likely to ease off a bit, but the actual AI and machine learning technology has been a thing for years before that hype, and will continue after the hype.

    Much like voice driven digital assistants, it’s unlikely to redefine how we interact with technology, but every other way I set a short timer has been obsoleted at this point, and I’m betting that auto complete having insight into what your writing will just be the norm going forward.

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    • HawlSera@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It’s just a Chinese room dude, it doesn’t actually do anything useful

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      • Tranus@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        The Chinese room argument doesn’t have anything to do with usefulness. Its about whether or not a computer that passes the turing test is conscious. Besides, the argument is a ridiculous one to begin with. It assumes that if a subcomponent of a system (ie the human) lacks “understanding”, then the system itself (the human + the room + the program) lacks understanding.

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      • ricecake@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        What?

        At best you’re arguing that because it’s not conscious it’s not useful, which… No.
        My car isn’t conscious and it’s perfectly useful.

        A system that can analyze patterns and either identify instances of the pattern or extrapolate on the pattern is extremely useful. It’s the “hard but boring” part of a lot of human endeavors.

        We’re gonna see it wane as a key marketing point at some point, but it’s been in use for years and it’s gonna keep being in use for a while.

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      • SCB@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        You not having a job where you work at a level to see how useful AI is just means you don’t have a terribly important job.

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• krazzyk@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  What do you do exactly in AI? I’m a software engineer interested in getting involved.

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  • EnderMB@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I work for Amazon as a software engineer, and primarily work on a mixture of LLM’s and compositional models. I work mostly with scientists and legal entities to ensure that we are able to reduce our footprint of invalid data (i.e. anything that includes deleted customer data, anything that is blocked online, things that are blocked in specific countries, etc). It’s basically data prep for training and evaluation, alongside in-model validation for specific patterns that indicate a model contains data it shouldn’t have (and then releasing a model that doesn’t have that data within a tight ETA).

    It can be interesting at times, but the genuinely interesting work seems to happen on the science side of things. They do some cool stuff, but have their own battles to fight.

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    • krazzyk@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That sounds cool, I’ve had roles that were heavy on data cleansing, although never on something so interesting. What languages / frameworks are used for transforming the data, I understand if you can’t go into too much detail.

      I did wonder how much software engineers contribute in the field, it’s the scientists doing the really interesting stuff when it comes to AI? Not surprisingly I guess 😂

      I’m a full stack engineer, I was thinking of getting into contracting, now I’m not so sure, I don’t know enough about AI’s potential coding capabilities to know whether I should be concerned about job security in the short, or long term.

      Getting involved in AI in some capacity seems like a smart move though…

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      • EnderMB@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        We do a lot of orchestration of closed environments, so that we can access critical data without worry of leaks. We use Spark and Scala for most of our applications, with step functions and custom EC2 instances to host our environments. This way, we build verticals that can scale with the amount of data we process.

        If I’m perfectly honest, I don’t know how smart a move it is, considering our org just went through layoffs. We’re popular right now, but who knows how long for.

        It can be interesting at times, but to be honest if I were really interested in it, I would go back and get my PhD so I could actually contribute. Sometimes, it feels like SWE’s are support roles, and science managers only really care that we are unblocking scientists from their work. They rarely give a shit if we release anything cool.

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• Rooskie91@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Absolutely not. We need to learn the difference between intelligence and expertise. Is Obama an intelligent person? Of course. Is he allowed to have and voice an opinion? Does that mean that his opinion is informed by expertise and should dictate peoples actions and therefore the direction of an industry? No.

  This is the same logic that allows right wing ideologues to become legitimate sources of information. A causal interest in a topic is NOT the same as being an industry expert, and the opinions of industry experts should be weighted far heaver that people who “talk nice” and “sound like they know what they’re talking about”.

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  • aesthelete@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    This is the same logic that allows right wing ideologues to become legitimate sources of information. A causal interest in a topic is NOT the same as being an industry expert, and the opinions of industry experts should be weighted far heavier in our minds than people who “sound like they know what they’re talking about”.

    And your logic is the same followed by government agencies when they effectively agree to regulatory capture because all of the industry experts work at this company, so why not just let the company write the rulebook? 🤔

    I personally don’t believe we need experts in every new, emerging type of tech to be the sole voices considered about it because that’s how we largely arrived at the great enshitment we’re already in.

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