As a fervent AI enthusiast, I disagree.
…I’d say it’s 97% hype and marketing.
It’s crazy how much fud is flying around, and legitimately buries good open research. It’s also crazy what these giant corporations are explicitly saying what they’re going to do, and that anyone buys it. TSMC’s allegedly calling Sam Altman a ‘podcast bro’ is spot on, and I’d add “manipulative vampire” to that.
Talk to any long-time resident of localllama and similar “local” AI communities who actually dig into this stuff, and you’ll find immense skepticism, not the crypto-like AI bros like you find on linkedin, twitter and such and blot everything out.
I really want to like AI, I’d love to have an intelligent AI assistant or something, but I just struggle to find any uses for it outside of some really niche cases or for basic brainstorming tasks. Otherwise, it just feels like alot of work for very little benefit or results that I can’t even trust or use.
It’s useful.
I keep Qwen 32B loaded on my desktop pretty much whenever its on, as an (unreliable) assistant to analyze or parse big texts, to do quick chores or write scripts, to bounce ideas off of or even as a offline replacement for google translate (though I specifically use aya 32B for that).
It does “feel” different when the LLM is local, as you can manipulate the prompt syntax so easily, hammer it with multiple requests that come back really fast when it seems to get something wrong, not worry about refusals or data leakage and such.
After getting my head around the basics of the way LLMs work I thought “people rely on this for information?”, the model seems ok for tasks like summarisation though
the model seems ok for tasks like summarisation though
That and retrieval and the business use cases so far, but even then only if the results can be wrong somewhat frequently.
For real. Being a software engineer with basic knowledge in ML, I’m just sick of companies from every industry being so desperate to cling onto the hype train they’re willing to label anything with AI, even if it has little or nothing to do with it, just to boost their stock value. I would be so uncomfortable being an employee having to do this.
TSMC’s allegedly calling Sam Altman a ‘podcast bro’ is spot on, and I’d add “manipulative vampire” to that.
What’s the source for that? It sounds hilarious
When Mr. Altman visited TSMC’s headquarters in Taiwan shortly after he started his fund-raising effort, he told its executives that it would take $7 trillion and many years to build 36 semiconductor plants and additional data centers to fulfill his vision, two people briefed on the conversation said. It was his first visit to one of the multibillion-dollar plants.
TSMC’s executives found the idea so absurd that they took to calling Mr. Altman a “podcasting bro,” one of these people said. Adding just a few more chip-making plants, much less 36, was incredibly risky because of the money involved.
TSMC are probably making more money than anyone in this goldrush by selling the shovels and picks, so if that’s their opinion, I feel people should listen…
There’s little in the AI business plan other than hurling money at it and hoping job losses ensue.
Seriously, I’d love to be enthusiastic about it because it’s genuinely cool what you can do with math.
But the lies that are shoved in our faces are just so fucking much and so fucking egregious that it’s pretty much impossible.
And on top of that LLMs are hugely overshadowing actual interesting approaches for funding.
It’s selling the future, but nobody knows if we can actually get there
It’s selling an anticompetitive dystopia. It’s selling a Facebook monopoly vs selling the Fediverse.
We dont need 7 trillion dollars of datacenters burning the Earth, we need collaborative, open source innovation.
The first part is true … no one cares about the second part of your statement.
Yep the current iteration is. But should we cross the threshold to full AGI… that’s either gonna be awesome or world ending. Not sure which.
Current LLMs cannot be AGI, no matter how big they are. The fundamental architecture just isn’t right.
I know nothing about anything, but I unfoundedly believe we’re still very far away from the computing power required for that. I think we still underestimate the power of biological brains.
Based on what I’ve witnessed so far, people will play with their AGI units for a bit and then put them down to continue scrolling memes.
Which means it is neither awesome, nor world-ending, but just boring/business as usual.
Ya, it’s like machine learning but better. That’s about it IMO.
Edit: As I have to spell it out: as opposed to (machine learning with) neural networks.
I mean… it is machine learning.
It’s also neural networks, and probably some other CS structures.
AI is a category, and even specific implementations tend to use multiple techniques.
Well there is a very specific architecture “rut” the LLMs people use have fallen into, and even small attempts to break out (like with Jamba) don’t seem to get much interest, unfortunately.
Sure, but LLMs aren’t the only AI being used, nor will they eliminate the other forms of AI. As people see issues with the big LLMs, development focus will change to adopt other approaches.
There is real risk that the hype cycle around LLMs will smother other research in the cradle when the bubble pops.
The hyperscalers are dumping tens of billions of dollars into infrastructure investment every single quarter right now on the promise of LLMs. If LLMs don’t turn into something with a tangible ROI, the term AI will become every bit as radioactive to investors in the future as it is lucrative right now.
Viable paths of research will become much harder to fund if investors get burned because the business model they’re funding right now doesn’t solidify beyond “trust us bro.”
the term AI will become every bit as radioactive to investors in the future as it is lucrative right now.
Well you say that, but somehow crypto is still around despite most schemes being (IMO) a much more explicit scam. We have politicans supporting it.
Sure, but those are largely the big tech companies you’re talking about, and research tends to come from universities and private orgs. That funding hasn’t stopped, it just doesn’t get the headlines like massive investments into LLMs currently do. The market goes in cycles, and once it finds something new and promising, it’ll dump money into it until the next hot thing comes along.
There will be massive market consequences if AI fails to deliver on its promises (and I think it will, because the promises are ridiculous), and we get those every so often. If we look back about 25 years, we saw the same thing w/ the dotcom craze, where anything with a website got obscene amounts of funding, even if they didn’t have a viable business model, and we had a massive crash. But important websites survived that bubble bursting, and the market recovered pretty quickly and within a decade we had yet another massive market correction due to another bubble (the housing market, mostly due to corruption in the financial sector).
That’s how the market goes. I think AI will crash, and I think it’ll likely crash in the next 5 years or so, but the underlying technologies will absolutely be a core part of our day-to-day life in the same way the Internet is after the dotcom burst. It’ll also look quite a bit different IMO than what we’re seeing today, and within 10 years of that crash, we’ll likely be beyond where we were just before the crash, at least in terms of overall market capitalization.
It’s a messy cycle, but it seems to work pretty well in aggregate.
That’s like saying breathing is like turning oxygen into carbon dioxide but better…
Oh please. Wait until they release double-sided, double-density 128bit AI quantum blockchain that runs on premises/in the cloud edge hybrid.
It will have revolutionary rock star synergy
The blue sky, out of the box thinking will disrupt the glass ceiling.
I had a professor in college that said when an AI problem is solved, it is no longer AI.
Computers do all sorts of things today that 30 years ago were the stuff of science fiction. Back then many of those things were considered to be in the realm of AI. Now they’re just tools we use without thinking about them.
I’m sitting here using gesture typing on my phone to enter these words. The computer is analyzing my motions and predicting what words I want to type based on a statistical likelihood of what comes next from the group of possible words that my gesture could be. This would have been the realm of AI once, but now it’s just the keyboard app on my phone.
game devs gonna have to use different language to describe what used to be simply called “enemy AI” where exactly zero machine learning is involved
Logic and Path-finding?
Sounds about right. There are some valid and good use cases for “AI”, but the majority is just buzzword marketing.
I have lots of uses for Attack Insects….
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I’m waiting for the part that it gets used for things that are not lazy, manipulative and dishonest. Until then, I’m sitting it out like Linus.
This is where I’m at. The push right now has nft pump and dump energy.
The moment someone says ai to me right now I auto disengage. When the dust settles, I’ll look at it seriously.
And then people will complain about that saying it’s almost all hype and no substance.
Then that one tech bro will keep insisting that lemmy is being unfair to AI and there are so many good use cases.
No one is denying the 10% use cases, we just don’t think it’s special or needs extra attention since those use cases already had other possible algorithmic solutions.
Tech bros need to realize, even if there are some use cases for AI, there has not been any revolution, stop trying to make it happen and enjoy your new slightly better tool in silence.
Hi! It’s me, the guy you discussed this with the other day! The guy that said Lemmy is full of AI wet blankets.
I am 100% with Linus AND would say the 10% good use cases can be transformative.
Since there isn’t any room for nuance on the Internet, my comment seemed to ruffle feathers. There are definitely some folks out there that act like ALL AI is worthless and LLMs specifically have no value. I provided a list of use cases that I use pretty frequently where it can add value. (Then folks started picking it apart with strawmen).
I gotta say though this wave of AI tech feels different. It reminds me of the early days of the web/computing in the late 90s early 2000s. Where it’s fun, exciting, and people are doing all sorts of weird,quirky shit with it, and it’s not even close to perfect. It breaks a lot and has limitations but their is something there. There is a lot of promise.
Like I said else where, it ain’t replacing humans any time soon, we won’t have AGI for decades, and it’s not solving world hunger. That’s all hype bro bullshit. But there is actual value here.
Hi! It’s me, the guy you discussed this with the other day! The guy that said Lemmy is full of AI wet blankets.
Omg you found me in another post. I’m not even mad; I do like how passionate you are about things.
Since there isn’t any room for nuance on the Internet, my comment seemed to ruffle feathers. There are definitely some folks out there that act like ALL AI is worthless and LLMs specifically have no value. I provided a list of use cases that I use pretty frequently where it can add value. (Then folks started picking it apart with strawmen).
What you’re talking about is polarization and yeah, it’s a big issue.
This is a good example, I never did any strawman nor disagree with the fact that it can be useful in some shape or form. I was trying to say its value is much much lower than what people claim to be.
But that’s the issue with polarization, me saying there is much less value can be interpreted as absolute zero, and I apologize for contributing to the polarization.
What happened to Linus? He looks so old now…
If you find out what happened, let me know, because I think it’s happening to me too.
He got old.
Not especially old, though; he looks like a 54yo dev. Reminds me of my uncles when they were 54yo devs.
As a 46 year old dev I’m starting to look that way too.
I guess having 3 kids will do that to you.
That, and developing software for 30+ years.
That and leading an open source project for 30 years.
THE open source project.
Whether you’re leading a project or not, time will have pretty much the same impact. He’s in his mid-50s, and he looks pretty good for that age.
[citation needed]/s
Oxidative stress is a bitch
What happened to he is happening now to you.
he aged
Source?
It’s like he aged 10 years in the past 2 years… damn
People age. You don’t look the same as in 2010 either, I know that without having any idea what you look like.
He has a real Michael McKean vibe
Time
Wow, yeah that’s a big difference from how I remember him
Seems generous, might be more like 5% reality.
Yep, as Sturgeon’s law says.
Just like Furbys
Honestly, he’s wrong though.
I know tons of full stack developers who use AI to GREATLY speed up their workflow. I’ve used AI image generators to put something I wanted into the concept stage before I paid an artist to do the work with the revisions I wanted that I couldn’t get AI to produce properly.
And first and foremost, they’re a great use in surfacing information that is discussed and available, but might be buried with no SEO behind it to surface it. They are terrible at deducing things themselves, because they can’t ‘think’, or coming up with solutions that others haven’t already - but so long as people are aware of those limitations, then they’re a pretty good tool to have.
It’s a reactionary opinion when people jump to the ‘but they’re stealing art!’ – isn’t your brain also stealing art when it’s inspired by others art? Artists don’t just POOF, and have the capability to be artists. They learn slowly over time, using others as inspiration or as training to improve. That’s all stable diffusors do - just a lot faster.
I know tons of full stack developers who use AI to GREATLY speed up their workflow.
https://www.cio.com/article/3540579/devs-gaining-little-if-anything-from-ai-coding-assistants.html
How dare you bring sources into this opinion!
How’s he wrong?
Did you actually listen to what he said or are you just reading the headline and making it fit another narrative to respond to?
Because he also said he thinks it’s going to change the world, he just hates the marketing BS that’s overhyping it.
Probably because, as anyone who’s actually used AI knows, it has some core weaknesses. But the marketers are happy to
gloss over thatlie and just say that it will be able to do nearly anything.He said it’s interesting, but to give it five years to see how it’s actually useful, which is probably the most sane take you can have about AI imo.
It will be interesting when the bubble pops, because that’s probably when we’ll see the useful things it is actually good at
But, it also means we get Sam Altman as the next Elon Musk if he cashes in before the pop. And whatever other tech bros do the same. More filthy-rich men with the emotional maturity of a 12 year old.
Summarizing documents, writing documents you don’t want to (within reason), and… whatever the hell Neuro-sama is doing on Vedal’s channel, are like the only ones i’ve found so far that kind of work. And I guess image generation.
It’s amazingly good at moderating user content to flag for moderator review. Existing text analysis completely falls down beyond keyword filtering tbh.
It’s really good at sentiment analysis. Which is great for things like user reviews. The Amazon ai notes on products are actually brilliant at summarizing the pros and cons of a product. I work for a holiday let company and we experimented with using it to find customers we need to follow up with and the results were amazing.
It smashes other automated translating services as well.
I use it a lot as a programmer to very quickly learn new topics. Also as an interactive docs that you can ask follow up questions to. I can pick up a new language as I go much faster than with traditional resources.
It’s honestly a complete game changer.
The one place where I sincerely hope it takes root and succeeds is in medicine. Having better drugs, helping to identify potential problems or diseases, identifying health patterns (all with human review and proper trials, naturally)…
It’s not even close to the magical AGI that tech bros are promising, but it is good at digesting data, and science and medicine are full of that. Plus, given how overworked doctors and nurses can be, having a preliminary analysis from a computer that doesn’t get tired or overworked seems like it would probably help with accurate diagnosis.
It’s honestly a complete game changer.
It is, both in good and bad ways. The problem, as Linus and others here are pointing out, is that marketing pushes the good and downplays/ignores the bad, so there’s going to be a rough adjustment period as people eventually see through the BS and find the issues, and the longer that takes, the harder things will crash.
There are plenty of good uses of modern AI approaches, they’re just far fewer than the ones being marketed these days.
Which is how new technologies tend to go see what sticks after exploring what is possible. So it shouldn’t be surprising that ai is goong through the motions, but it is getting annoying how fast it is ruining functioning systems by being jammed in with no guardrails.
Speaking as someone who worked on AI, and is a fervent (local) AI enthusiast… it’s 90% marketing and hype, at least.
These things are tools, they spit out tons of garbage, they basically can’t be used for anything where the output could likely be confidently wrong, and the way they’re trained is still morally dubious at best. And the corporate API business model of “stifle innovation so we can hold our monopoly then squeeze users” is hellish.
As you pointed out, generative AI is a fantastic tool, but it is a TOOL, that needs some massive changes and improvements, wrapped up in hype that gives it a bad name… I drank some of the kool-aid too when llama 1 came out, but you have to look at the market and see how much fud and nonsense is flying around.
As another (local) AI enthusiast I think the point where AI goes from “great” to “just hype” is when it’s expected to generate the correct response, image, etc on the first try.
For example, telling an AI to generate a dozen images from a prompt then picking a good one or re-working the prompt a few times to get what you want. That works fantastically well 90% of the time (assuming you’re generating something it has been trained on).
Expecting AI to respond with the correct answer when given a query > 50% of the time or expecting it not to get it dangerously wing? Hype. 100% hype.
It’ll be a number of years before AI is trustworthy enough not to hallucinate bullshit or generate the exact image you want on the first try.
Its great at brainstorming, fiction making, a unreliable intern-like but very fast assistant and so on… but none of that is very profitbable.
Hence you get OpenAI and such trying to sell it as an omiscient chatbot and (most profitably) an employee replacement.
ah yes it’s reactionary to checks notes not support the righteous biggest bubble since dotcom era
you okay out there bud?
You might want to look up the definition of reactionary. Because that’s…exactly what it means. To oppose reform/advancements.
You okay there bud?
In political science, a reactionary or a reactionist is a person who holds political views that favor a return to the status quo ante—the previous political state of society—which the person believes possessed positive characteristics that are absent from contemporary society.
Congratulations – Currently you and 18 others are not smarter than an average high schooler.
Opposing actual fraud isn’t what reactionary means.
You’ve got a pretty high bar of proof for proving “actual fraud”…
You can’t provably say that this is a “bubble” as claimed. The tools do what they purport to do. Where’s the fraud?
It’s not remotely within the realm of plausibility that Sam Altman genuinely believes any of the horseshit he spews. (And that’s ignoring that they gained their funding by lying about the core intent of their organization by pretending to be serving the public interest and not profiteering.)
It’s not remotely within the realm of plausibility that Sam Altman genuinely believes any of the horseshit he spews.
Welcome to earth. That’s basically every business ever, and you’ll quite literally never be able to prove that in court; which is the litmus test for this claim.
Let me guess. Dumped by an art girl and anxious about the $600 you invested?
If you are just blatantly copying art, well yeah you’re stealing it.
AI can give me a blueprint for my logic. Then I, as a developer, make the code run. Cuts my scripting time in half.
Rofl. As a developer of nearly 20 years, lol.
I used copilot until finally getting fed up last week and turning it off. It was a net negative to my productivity.
Sure, when you’re doing repetitive operations that are mostly copy paste and changing names, it’s pretty decent. It can save dozens of seconds, maybe even a minute or two. That’s great and a welcome assist, even if I have to correct minor things around 50% of the time.
But when an error slips through and I end up spending 20 minutes tracking down the problem later, all that saved time vanishes.
And then the other times where my IDE is frozen because the plugin is stuck in some loop and eating every last resource and I spend the next 20 minutes cursing and killing processes, manually looking for recent updates that hadn’t yet triggered update notifications, etc… well, now we’re in the red, AND I’m pissed off.
So no, AI is not some huge boon to developer productivity. Maybe it’s more useful to junior developers in the short term, but I have definitely dealt with more than a few problems that seem to derive from juniors taking AI answers and not understanding the details enough to catch the problems it introduced. And if juniors frequently rely on AI without gaining deep understanding, we’re going to have worse and worse engineers as a result.
So basically just like linux. Except linux has no marketing…So 10% reality, and 90% uhhhhhhhhhh…
You’re aware Linux basically runs the Internet, right?
What
Some Linux bad Windows good troll
Did I fall into a 1999 Slashdot comment section somehow?
So basically just like linux. Except linux has no marketing
Except for the most popular OS on the Internet, of course.
That says more about your ignorance than anything about AI or Linux.
Never heard of Android I guess?
90% angry nerds fighting each other over what answer is “right”
