Ok, I have a note (and happy to run the risk of being ‘boo’d’ for making a ‘speach’. There, I feel better now).
It seems to me most of the (current) animosity is very squarely aimed at the large corporations, but comes under the general heading of ‘anti-AI’. I was working in that field in the early ‘90s and it had some interesting applications which we’ve seen deliver some real benefits. The recent avalanche of ‘our LLM can replace everything else you have’ is the problem, not AI. And large groups of people tend to prefer a nice black & white answer not a nuanced conversation. I’m not for a second defending Schmidt on that, but I worry the real important stuff will get lost in the noise.
I think there is no difference between the title AI and the word grift. No matter how magnanimous 1% of the technology is it’s still harmful on the whole.
We’re on the same page about the problem, I think. And as I said in my original comment, there are absolutely reasonable applications for LLMs, they just won’t pay back the investments chucked into the research quick enough. So we get instead our current “AI” moment.
Now, as a counterpoint to your argument about black and white positions — I see a lot of people filling the gray areas with what is essentially whataboutism:
“The next model will be much better”
“People said the same thing about the internet”
“Sure it sucks and make stuff up, but it’s good enough for me”
“You can’t stop progress”…
In that context, I think it’s important to take a black and white stance, staying off that slippery slop(e) of bad faith arguments. “AI” as it is being marketed to us is bullshit, and needs to stop.
But once that bubble is burst (and it will one way or another), research needs to continue in a more focused manner into the fields where LLMs can actually make a positive difference (hint: it’s neither search engines or your operating system).
Of course the AI bubble will pop massively, but LLMs not being useful in search engines or your OS is utterly delusional. Of course, I’m not talking about AI on Winblows, but having a locally running LLM could prove incredibly useful for providing support for Linux box. Please be charitable and assume that I’m talking about a well designed system and not some slop that would even dare suggest running commands in the terminal. If you have the hardware, might as well use it right?
Prompt: How do I reduce input lag in my game?
Response: Disable full screen compositing for full-screen applications via Settings > Display
Yes, I suspect we are. Having said that, LLMs even today are sometimes useful for search—perhaps only because traditional search has become so poor.
Whether they are any use or not is a totally different question to whether they’re worth the money being piled into them though. And that’s my original point really—it’s the behaviour of large corporations that’s more of an issue than some large matrix operations doing clever things with language tokens.
This was a very well-said take. No notes.
Doing my humble, unassisted meatsack best.
Uh-huh. Sounds like something an AI would say. Let’s see what’s really behind that mask…
rips off face Ah-HA!!!
OH, GOD! There’s so much blood! Whyyyy 😭
Adding a gore Art warning
When Scooby Doo went really dark 🤣💀
Got a little Hannah Barbaric
Ok, I have a note (and happy to run the risk of being ‘boo’d’ for making a ‘speach’. There, I feel better now).
It seems to me most of the (current) animosity is very squarely aimed at the large corporations, but comes under the general heading of ‘anti-AI’. I was working in that field in the early ‘90s and it had some interesting applications which we’ve seen deliver some real benefits. The recent avalanche of ‘our LLM can replace everything else you have’ is the problem, not AI. And large groups of people tend to prefer a nice black & white answer not a nuanced conversation. I’m not for a second defending Schmidt on that, but I worry the real important stuff will get lost in the noise.
You are creating a distinction without a difference.
You think there’s no difference between a technology and a corporation pushing a technology?
I think there is no difference between the title AI and the word grift. No matter how magnanimous 1% of the technology is it’s still harmful on the whole.
It’ll be sad and unnecessary if we throw the cancer diagnostics out with the work stealing, resource wasting, slop machine.
It would be a tragedy if we accepted the latter so that we can obtain the former.
We’re on the same page about the problem, I think. And as I said in my original comment, there are absolutely reasonable applications for LLMs, they just won’t pay back the investments chucked into the research quick enough. So we get instead our current “AI” moment.
Now, as a counterpoint to your argument about black and white positions — I see a lot of people filling the gray areas with what is essentially whataboutism:
In that context, I think it’s important to take a black and white stance, staying off that slippery slop(e) of bad faith arguments. “AI” as it is being marketed to us is bullshit, and needs to stop.
But once that bubble is burst (and it will one way or another), research needs to continue in a more focused manner into the fields where LLMs can actually make a positive difference (hint: it’s neither search engines or your operating system).
Those are not “whataboutisms” lol
Of course the AI bubble will pop massively, but LLMs not being useful in search engines or your OS is utterly delusional. Of course, I’m not talking about AI on Winblows, but having a locally running LLM could prove incredibly useful for providing support for Linux box. Please be charitable and assume that I’m talking about a well designed system and not some slop that would even dare suggest running commands in the terminal. If you have the hardware, might as well use it right?
Yes, I suspect we are. Having said that, LLMs even today are sometimes useful for search—perhaps only because traditional search has become so poor.
Whether they are any use or not is a totally different question to whether they’re worth the money being piled into them though. And that’s my original point really—it’s the behaviour of large corporations that’s more of an issue than some large matrix operations doing clever things with language tokens.
Limited models trained on good datasets have limited applications in analysis of similar data.
LLMs are a gigantic soul-sucking scam with no practical usage.
Agreed