andallthat
@andallthat@lemmy.world
- Comment on AI is rotting your brain and making you stupid 6 days ago:
I agree. I was almost skipping it because of the title, but the article is nuanced and has some very good reflections on topics other that AI. Everything we find a shortcut for is a tradeoff. The article mentions cars to get to the grocery store. There are advantages in walking that we give up when always using a car. Are cars in general a stupid and useless technology? No, but we need to be aware of where the tradeoffs are. And eventually most of these tradeoffs are economic in nature.
By industrializing the production of carpets we might have lost some of our collective ability to produce those hand-made masterpieces of old, but we get to buy ok-looking carpets for cheap.
By reducing and industrializing the production of text content, our mastery of language is declining, but we get to read a lot of not-very-good content for free. This pre-dates AI btw, as can be seen by standardized tests in schools everywhere.
The new thing about GenAI, though is that it upends the promise that technology was going to do the grueling, boring work for us and free up time for us to do the creative things that give us joy. I feel the roles have reversed: even when I have to write an email or a piece of coding, AI does the creative piece and I’m the glorified proofreader and corrector.
- Comment on AI is rotting your brain and making you stupid 6 days ago:
cover letters, meeting notes, some process documentation: the stuff that for some reason “needs” to be done, usually written by people who don’t want to write it for people who don’t want to read it. That’s all perfect for GenAI.
- Comment on Duolingo CEO says AI is a better teacher than humans—but schools will exist ‘because you still need childcare’ 1 week ago:
In other news: AI is a better human than Duolingo CEO
- Comment on The Collapse of GPT: Will future artificial intelligence systems perform increasingly poorly due to AI-generated material in their training data? 2 weeks ago:
Look up stuff where? Some things are verifiable more or less directly: the Moon is not 80% made of cheese,adding glue to pizza is not healthy, the average human hand does not have seven fingers. A “reasoning” model might do better with those than current LLMs.
But for a lot of our knowledge, verifying means “I say X because here are two reputable sources that say X”. For that, having AI-generated text creeping up everywhere (including peer-reviewed scientific papers, that tend to be considered reputable) is blurring the line between truth and “hallucination” for both LLMs and humans
- Comment on The Collapse of GPT: Will future artificial intelligence systems perform increasingly poorly due to AI-generated material in their training data? 2 weeks ago:
Basically, model collapse happens when the training data no longer matches real-world data
I’m more concerned about LLMs collaping of the whole idea of “real-world”.
I’m not a machine intelligence expert but I do get the basic concept of training a model and then evaluating its output against real data. But the whole thing rests on the idea that you have a model trained with relatively small samples of the real world and a big, clearly distinct “real world” to check the model’s performance.
If LLMs have already ingested basically the entire information in the “real world” and their output is so pervasive that you can’t easily tell what’s true and what’s AI-generated slop “how do we train our models now” is not my main concern.
As an example, take the judges who found made-up cases because lawyers used an LLM. What happens if made-up cases are referenced in several other places, including some legal textbooks used in Law Schools? Don’t they become part of the “real world”?
- Comment on Algorithm based on LLMs doubles lossless data compression rates 2 weeks ago:
I tried reading the paper. There is a free preprint version on arxiv. The article linked by OP also links the code they used and the data they tried compressing, in the end.
While most of the theory is above my head, the basic intuition is that compression improves if you have some level of “understanding” or higher-level context of the data you are compressing. And LLMs are generally better at doing that than numeric algorithms.
As an example if you recognize a sequence of letters as the first chapter of the book Moby-Dick you’ll probably transmit that information more efficiently than a compression algorithm. “The first chapter of Moby-Dick”; there … I just did it.
- Comment on Google might replace the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button with AI Mode 3 weeks ago:
Especially right now, I’m feeling lots of things but “lucky” ain’t one…
- Comment on China has introduced a drone that flies like a bird. The new invention could turn the drone industry upside down 3 weeks ago:
These are more realistic. I hear they can form a flock and shit all over you. Scary stuff!
- Comment on AI is your money becoming sentient 4 weeks ago:
I think that’s already uncomfortably close to reality.
A fully AI company was already tried as an experiment. There is also a company that appointed an AI CEO but I suspect this one is a publicity stunt.
Right now, various socials are full of AI generated fake engagement, images and videos. Meta is offering AI-powered ads. The obvious question I see asked every time, also here on Lemmy, is: if most of Facebook becomes a zombie world where comments and fake engagement is all LLMs, who would buy those Meta ads? That question was actually what inspired this wildly successful (-27 votes and counting!) showerthought of mine: this fake engagement only makes sense if Meta thinks we’ll give AI more and more agency to choose the products we buy and (eventually) buy them on our behalf. So it’s going to be AI convincing other AIs to buy. Our money becomes sentient, so to speak,
Crazy talk, right? Well…
- Comment on AI is your money becoming sentient 4 weeks ago:
Thanks! I’ll try longer showers.
- Comment on AI is your money becoming sentient 4 weeks ago:
I like the comparison. We used to think of the Economy like this hard-to-control, vital but occasionally dangerous natural force, like Gravity. The showerthought was that with the advent of machine models, money has started becoming sentient and making decisions without us.
- Comment on AI is your money becoming sentient 4 weeks ago:
Fair enough… I meant more in the sense of investment/pension funds. Or the fact that the actual value the bills in our pockets have is driven up or (more frequently) down and probably so does the interest rate of your mortgage or the price of your fuel. And maybe not for you, but the algorithms on social media do have influence on what company you choose for your insurance.
- Submitted 4 weeks ago to showerthoughts@lemmy.world | 10 comments
- Comment on Meta forecasted it would make $1.4T in revenue from generative AI by 2035 4 weeks ago:
“people” buying ads? In 2035? What a delightfully vintage concept!
- Comment on Microsoft CEO says up to 30% of the company's code was written by AI | TechCrunch 4 weeks ago:
Fun fact: Nadella has been replaced with an AI agent a couple of months ago and still nobody has noticed. “Copilot, while I’m away, generate bs on AI adoption and fire a bunch of employees, ok?”
- Comment on Microsoft CEO says up to 30% of the company's code was written by AI | TechCrunch 4 weeks ago:
- Comment on Prompt engineer : The Hottest AI Job of 2023 Is Already Obsolete 5 weeks ago:
prompt engineering does require skills. It’s just that, rightly or not, they are now seen by companies as foundational skills for a lot of jobs and worth investing in training for most employees (rather than hiring a team of prompt specialists).
Like if you work in certain roles you need to have good knowledge of spreadsheet software, you don’t go to your company’s “Excel guru”.
- Comment on The window for a convincing UFO video has closed 1 month ago:
As an alien I would now spend all my time targeting wannabe influencers. Wait until they are alone, get naked and let them take high-quality pictures and videos of my green ass while I dance and play yankee doodle on my harmonica
- Comment on Elon Musk: your new Tesla will drive from the factory floor, to your house 'this year' 1 month ago:
“it drove right through my kitchen wall. And I hadn’t even ordered one!”
- Comment on Unlike in movies, most smart people aren't good in chess. 1 month ago:
Wait, my hand is still on the piece… I… have … not… completed… my… move
- Comment on I feel like if asbestos was banned today there'd be a huge pro-asbestos movement 1 month ago:
worth giving it a try…do NOT, I repeat do NOT spray RFK Jr with DDT every time you see him. I am a liberal and this would really make me cry. Don’t do it!
- Comment on The Fairphone 5 price has been dropped to €499. The phone is designed to be the most advanced environmentally friendly smartphone. 1 month ago:
I like it a lot bit I need two physical SiM slots so it doesn’t work for me, unfortunately. But great idea and love the price drop
- Comment on Zuckerberg’s 2012 email dubbed “smoking gun” at Meta monopoly trial 1 month ago:
Thanks, I understand better now.
On related note, I wish I had know of the “just because I said it and I did it, didn’t mean I succeeded” line of defense when I was a kid
- Comment on Zuckerberg’s 2012 email dubbed “smoking gun” at Meta monopoly trial 1 month ago:
Meta argued that “the FTC’s case rests almost entirely on emails (many more than a decade old) allegedly expressing competitive concerns” but suggested that this is only “intent” evidence, “without any evidence of anticompetitive effects.”
Not sure I understand the argument. if I write that I’m going to buy another company instead of completing with them, then I go ahead and I do but that exact company, are they arguing that the two things are not necessarily related?
- Comment on Meta’s AI research lab is ‘dying a slow death,’ some insiders say. Meta prefers to call it ‘a new beginning’ 1 month ago:
That’s true but at least one of these things needs to happen:
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the forklift costs billions and consumes tons of energy, but it can lift a whole mountain, which no group of humans can do
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the forklift helps a team of 10 do the work of 50 and, while still relatively expensive, it costs less than the 40 people it’s replacing
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the forklift becomes an inexpensive commodity and it augments human capabilities and creates new possibilities for society as a whole
This is roughly what happened with mainframes to personal computers to mobile devices. LLMs are stuck between 1 and 2, they are not good enough forklifts to lift a mountain and not cheap enough to replace 40 people and save money. There are some hints that they could at one point move to 3 but the large players that could make it happen are starting to be scared by the amount of investment to get there.
On a related note, lot of people are being fooled by this hype machine mixing GenAI with good “old” machine learning and you now read about all these “AI wins” like “student discovers new galaxies with AI” or “scientist discover new medicines with AI” that make it sound like these people just asked ChatGPT “how would you go about discovering a new galaxy?” or “could you make up a new drug for me pretty please?”.
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- Comment on Fintech founder charged with fraud after 'AI' shopping app found to be powered by humans in the Philippines | TechCrunch 1 month ago:
yes, but with at least $100M of additional VC funding
- Comment on Fintech founder charged with fraud after 'AI' shopping app found to be powered by humans in the Philippines | TechCrunch 1 month ago:
“organic AI”
- Comment on EU considers tariffs on digital services Big Tech 1 month ago:
yes, there are clearly unfair trade practices here. EU has been making money for Google and Amazon, but the US are not using our services. I hear the best solution to this are tariffs: EU users have to pay to use gmail until enough US users start using EU email providers and we rebalance the services trade!
- Comment on Stop calling them tech companies: GenAI and SaaS — are they really tech? It’s time to call a spade a spade. 2 months ago:
You make a great point. But just to stay on the example of cars: besides the innovation on EVs, there’s this horrible tendency to consider cars as tablets on wheels, both in the sense that you can forget about repairing them and in the sense that they are now increasingly considered low-margin hardware to run higher margin subscription services (or that the car itself becomes something you pay by use instead of owning). If anything warrants high valuation for a car company it would arguably be the innovation on EVs, rather than the SaaS model.
I hope the idea of Cars as a Service or Car Software As a Service dies before becoming too widespread. But if it doesn’t, maybe car companies wouldn’t become “Tech” companies, just more shitty subscription vendors. And their stock should be valued as such, not for the largely unwanted “Tech innovation”.
- Comment on Stop calling them tech companies: GenAI and SaaS — are they really tech? It’s time to call a spade a spade. 2 months ago:
By that measure shouldn’t Disney be considered a Tech company too? Or I guess banks and insurance companies.
I hadn’t thought of it that way, but maybe the article (at least the small part I can read with no paywall) is on to something, Companies that sell access to technology or rely on technology to sell something else (he does give the example of e-commerce) should not be “Tech” companies.
The part I didn’t get to is where the author draws the line to tell what companies ARE Tech. I guess OpenAI or Google would qualify. They sell services but they are services they invented and made, with considerable researxh and investment. But what about Amazon or Netflix?