Technology

I think AI has mostly been about luring investors into pumping up share prices rather than offering something of genuine value to consumers.

Some people are gonna lose a lot of other people's money over it.

LLMs: using statistics to generate reasonable-sounding wrong answers from bad data.

As I mentioned in another post, about the same topic:

Slapping the words “artificial intelligence” onto your product makes you look like those shady used cars salesmen: in the best hypothesis it’s misleading, in the worst it’s actually true but poorly done.

I have no qualms about AI being used in products. But when you have to tell me that something is "powered by AI" as if that's your main selling point, then you do not have a good product. Tell me what it does, not how it does it.

Hi, I'm annoying and want to be helpful. Am I helpful? If I repeat the same options again when you've told me I'm not helpful, will that be helpful? I won't remember this conversation once it's ended.

Hi, which option have you told me you already don't want would you like?

Sorry, I didn't quite catch that, please rage again.

Market shows that investors are actively turned on by products that use AI

Be me

Early adopter of LLMs ever since a random tryout of Replika blew my mind and I set out to figure what the hell was generating its responses

Learn to fine-tune GPT-2 models and have a blast running 30+ subreddit parody bots on r/SubSimGPT2Interactive, including some that generate weird surreal imagery from post titles using VQGAN+CLIP

Have nagging concerns about the industry that produced these toys, start following Timnit Gebru

Begin to sense that something is going wrong when DALLE-2 comes out, clearly targeted at eliminating creative jobs in the bland corporate illustration market. Later, become more disturbed by Stable Diffusion making this, and many much worse things, possible, at massive scale

Try to do something about it by developing one of the first "AI Art" detection tools, intended for use by moderators of subreddits where such content is unwelcome. Get all of my accounts banned from Reddit immediately thereafter

Am dismayed by the viral release of ChatGPT, essentially the same thing as DALLE-2 but text

Grudgingly attempt to see what the fuss is about and install Github Copilot in VSCode. Waste hours of my time debugging code suggestions that turn out to be wrong in subtle, hard-to-spot ways. Switch to using Bing Copilot for "how-to" questions because at least it cites sources and lets me click through to the StackExchange post where the human provided the explanation I need. Admit the thing can be moderately useful and not just a fun dadaist shitposting machine. Have major FOMO about never capitalizing on my early adopter status in any money-making way

Get pissed off by Microsoft's plans to shove Copilot into every nook and cranny of Windows and Office; casually turn on the Opympics and get bombarded by ads for Gemini and whatever the fuck it is Meta is selling

Start looking for an alternative to Edge despite it being the best-performing web browser by many metrics, as well as despite my history with "AI" and OK-ish experience with Copilot. Horrified to find that Mozilla and Brave are doing the exact same thing

Install Vivaldi, then realize that the Internet it provides access to is dead and enshittified anyway

Daydream about never touching a computer again despite my livelihood depending on it

No shit, because we all see that AI is just technospeak for “harvest all your info”.

They've overhyped the hell out of it and slapped those letters on everything including a lot of half baked ideas. Of course people are tired of it and beginning to associate ai with bad marketing.

This whole situation really does feel dotcommish. I suspect we will soon see an ai crash, then a decade or so later it will be ubiquitous but far less hyped.

This is because AI is usually used to reduce the human cost to the company, and rarely to reduce the human labour for the customer.

That, or mass surveillance.

LLM based AI was a fun toy when it first broke. Everyone was curious and wanted to play with it, which made it seem super popular. Now that the novelty has worn off, most people are bored and unimpressed with it. The problem is that the tech bros invested so much money in it and they are unwilling to take the loss. They are trying to force it so that they can say they didn't waste their money.

If I could have the equivalent of a smart speaker that ran the AI model locally and could interface with other files on the system. I would be interested in buying that.

But I don't need AI in everything in the same way that I don't need Bluetooth in everything. Sometimes a kettle is just a kettle. It is bad enough we're putting screens on fridges.

For the love of god, defund MBAs.

In your own words, tell me why you're calling today.

My medication is in the wrong dosage.

You need to refill your medication is that right?

No, my medication is in the wrong dosage, it's supposed to be tens and it came as 20s.

You need to change the pharmacy where you're picking up your medication?

I need to speak to a human please.

I understand that you want to speak to an agent, is that right?

Yes.

Chorus, 5x. (Please give me your group number, or dial it in at the keypad. For this letter press that number for that letter press this number. No I'm driving, just connect me with an agent so I can verify over the phone)

I'm sorry, I can't verify your identity please collect all your paperwork and try calling again. Click

Why ever would we be mad?