The thing LLMs can effectively replace is Google search (and other search engines). Microsoft is shoving copilot down your throat because shoving Bing up your ass was harder when it was already full of other shit.
TechTakes
Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.
For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community
No thanks. I’m perfectly capable of coming up with incorrect answers on my own.
you're right tho
Even non tech people I talk to know AI is bad because the companies are pushing it so hard. They intuit that if the product was good, they wouldn't be giving it away, much less begging you to use it.
You're right - and even if the user is not conscious of this observation, many are subconsciously behaving in accordance with it. Having AI shoved into everything is offputting.
One of the mistakes they made with AI was introducing it before it was ready (I’m making a generous assumption by suggesting that “ready” is even possible). It will be extremely difficult for any AI product to shake the reputation that AI is half-baked and makes absurd, nonsensical mistakes.
This is a great example of capitalism working against itself. Investors want a return on their investment now, and advertisers/salespeople made unrealistic claims. AI simply isn’t ready for prime time. Now they’ll be fighting a bad reputation for years. Because of the situation tech companies created for themselves, getting users to trust AI will be an uphill battle.
Apple Intelligence and the first versions of Gemini are the perfect examples of this.
iOS still doesn’t do what was sold in the ads, almost a full year later.
Edit: also things like email summary don’t work, the email categories are awful, notification summaries are straight up unhinged, and I don’t think anyone asked for image playground.
Insert 'Full Self Driving' Here.
Also, outlook's auto alt text function told me that a conveyor belt was a picture of someone's screen today.
capitalism working against itself
More like: capitalism reaching its own logical conclusion
I think people care.
They care so much they actively avoid them.
Oh we care alright. We care about keeping it OUT of our FUCKING LIVES.
AI is going to be this eras Betamax, HD-Dvd, or 3d TV glasses. It doesn't do what was promised and nobody gives a shit.
No, I’m sorry. It is very useful and isn’t going away. This threads is either full of Luddites or disingenuous people.
Betamax had better image and sound, but was limited by running time and then VHS doubled down with even lower quality to increase how many hours would fit on a tape. VHS was simply more convenient without being that much lower quality for normal tape length.
HD-DVD was comparable to BluRay and just happened to lose out because the industry won't allow two similar technologies to exist at the same time.
Neither failed to do what they promised. They were both perfectly fine technologies that lost in a competition that only allows a single winner.
Maybe I'm just getting old, but I honestly can't think of any practical use case for AI in my day-to-day routine.
ML algorithms are just fancy statistics machines, and to that end, I can see plenty of research and industry applications where large datasets need to be assessed (weather, medicine, ...) with human oversight.
But for me in my day to day?
I don't need a statistics bot making decisions for me at work, because if it was that easy I wouldn't be getting paid to do it.
I don't need a giant calculator telling me when to eat or sleep or what game to play.
I don't need a Roomba with a graphics card automatically replying to my text messages.
Handing over my entire life's data just so a ML algorithm might be able to tell me what that one website I visited 3 years ago that sold kangaroo testicles was isn't a filing system. There's nothing I care about losing enough to go the effort of setting up copilot, but not enough to just, you know, bookmark it, or save it with a clear enough file name.
Long rant, but really, what does copilot actually do for me?
They're great for document management. You can let it build indices, locally on your machine with no internet connection. Then when you want to find things you can ask it in human terms. I've got a few gb of documents and finding things is a bitch - I'm actually waiting on the miniforums a1 pro whatever the fuck to be released with an option to buy it without windows (because fuck m$) to do exactly this for our home documents.
How about real-time subtitles on movies in any language you want that are always synced?
VLC is working on that with the use of LLMs
You're thinking too small. AI could automatically dub the entire movie while mimicking the actors voice while simultaneously moving their lips and mouth to form the words correctly.
It would just take your daily home power usage to do a single 2hr movie.
That's not fair! I care! A lot!
Just had to buy a new laptop for new place of employment. It took real time, effort, and care, but I've finally found a recent laptop matching my hardware requirements and sense of aesthetics at a reasonable price, without that hideous copilot button :)
Google, Apple, Microsoft, Nvidia and everyone else is hyping up AI. Consumers are not really seeing much benefit by making everything AI-ified. Executives are raving over it but maybe aren't realize that people outside of the C-suite aren't that excited? Having it shoved in our faces constantly, or crammed in places companies hope they can save money is not helping either.