this post was submitted on 27 Sep 2024
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What does it actually promise? AI (namely generative and LLM) is definitely overhyped in my opinion, but admittedly I'm far from an expert. Is what they're promising to deliver not actually doable?
It delivers on what it promises to do for many people who use LLMs. They can be used for coding assistance, Setting up automated customer support, tutoring, processing documents, structuring lots of complex information, a good generally accurate knowledge on many topics, acting as an editor for your writings, lots more too. Its a rapidly advancing pioneer technology like computers were in the 90s so every 6 months to a year is a new breakthrough in over all intelligence or a new ability. Now the new llm models can process images or audio as well as text.
The problem for openAI is they have competitors who will absolutely show up to eat their lunch if they sink as a company. Facebook/Meta with their llama models, Mistral AI with all their models, Alibaba with Qwen. Some other good smaller competiiton too like the openhermes team. All of these big tech companies have open sourced some models so you can tinker and finetune them at home while openai remains closed. Most of them offer their cloud models at very competitive pricing especially mistral.
The people who say AI is a trendy useless fad don't know what they are talking about or are upset at AI. I am a part of the local llm community and have been playing around with open models for months pushing my computers hardware to its limits. Its very cool seeing just how smart they really are, what a computer that simulates human thought processes and knows a little bit of everything can actually do to help me in daily life. Terrence Tao superstar genius mathematician describes the newest high end model from openAI as improving from a "incompentent graduate" to a "mediocre graduate" which essentially means AI are now generally smarter than the average person in many regards. This month several comptetor llm models released which while being much smaller in size also beat that big openai model in many benchmarks. Neural networks are here and they are only going to get better. Were in for a wild ride.
My issue is that I have no reason to think AI will be used to improve my life. All I see is a tool that will rip, rend and tear through the tenuous social fabric we're trying to collectively hold on to.
A tool is a tool. It has no say in how it's used. AI is no different than the computer software you use browse the internet or do other digital task.
When its used badly as an outlet for escapism or substitute for social connection it can lead to bad consequences for your personal life.
When it's used as a tool to help reason through a tough task, or as a step in a creative process, or be of on demand assistance to aid the disabled and neurodivergent, it can improve peoples lives for the better.
Its about how you choose to interact with it in your personal life, and how society, buisnesses and your governing bodies choose to use it in their own processes. And believe me, they will find ways to use it.
I think comparing llms to computers in 90s is accurate. Right now only nerds, professionals, and industry/business/military see their potential. As the tech gets figured out, utility improves, and llm desktops start getting sold as consumer grade appliances the attitude will change maybe?
That is a miopic view. Sure a tool is a tool, if I take a gun and use it to save someone from getting mugged = good if I use it to mug someone = bad
But regardless of the circumstance of use, we can all agree that a gun's only utility is to destroy a living organism.
You know, I know, everyone here knows, AI will only be used to generate as much profit as possible in the shortest amount of time, regardless of the harm it causes. And right now, the big promise of AI is that it will replace costly human employees, that's it, that's all.
Fortunately, it is really bad and unlikely to achieve this goal
A better analogy is search engines. It’s just another tool, but
When I started as a software engineer, my detailed knowledge was most important and my best tool was the manuals. Now my most important tools are search engines and autocomplete: I can work faster with less knowledge of the syntax and my value is the higher level thought about what we need to do. If my company ever allows AI, I fully expect it to be as important a tool as a search engine.
And this is when the cost calculation comes into play. Using a search engine is basically free, using OpenAI for development is tied up with licenses and new hardware.
So the question will be, are you going to improve efficiency to the point where the cost of the license and new hardware is worth the additional efficiency?
Currently my company is more concerned with intellectual privacy, security, liability. Of course that means they’ll only allow ai where they can pay for guarantees, and that brings us back to the cost.