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[-] brucethemoose@lemmy.world 302 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

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.

[-] falkerie71@sh.itjust.works 92 points 4 days ago

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.

[-] Mikelius@lemmy.world 31 points 4 days ago

For sure, it seems like 90% of ai startups are nothing more than front end wrappers for a gpt instance.

[-] dan@upvote.au 21 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

They're all built on top of OpenAI which is very unprofitable at the moment. Feels like the whole industry is built on a shaky foundation.

Putting the entire fate of your company in a different company (OpenAI) is not a great business move. I guess the successful AI startups will eventually transition to self-hosted models like Llama, if they survive that long.

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[-] Blackmist@feddit.uk 27 points 4 days ago

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.

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[-] atk007@lemmy.world 30 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I am thinking of deploying a RAG system to ingest all of Linus's emails, commit messages and pull request comments, and we will have a Linus chatbot.

[-] Hoticeberg@lemmy.world 10 points 3 days ago

Hold on there Satan... let's be reasonable here.

[-] HawlSera@lemm.ee 29 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

The only time I've seen AI work well are for things like game development, mainly the upscaling of textures and filling in missing frames of older games so they can run at higher frames without being choppy. Maybe even have applications for getting more voice acting done... If the SAG and Silicon Valley can find an arrangement for that that works out well for both parties..

If not for that I'd say 10% reality was being.... incredibly favorable to the tech bros

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[-] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 29 points 3 days ago
[-] kent_eh@lemmy.ca 13 points 3 days ago

If anything he's being a bit generous.

[-] Chessmasterrex@lemmy.world 23 points 3 days ago

I play around with the paid version of chatgpt and I still don't have any practical use for it. it's just a toy at this point.

[-] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 18 points 3 days ago

I used chatGPT to help make looking up some syntax on a niche scripting language over the weekend to speed up the time I spent working so I could get back to the weekend.

Then, yesterday, I spent time talking to a colleague who was familiar with the language to find the real syntax because chatGPT just made shit up and doesn't seem to have been accurate about any of the details I asked about.

Though it did help me realize that this whole time when I thought I was frying things, I was often actually steaming them, so I guess it balances out a bit?

[-] ugjka@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago

I use shell_gpt with OpenAI api key so that I don't have to pay a monthly fee for their web interface which is way too expensive. I topped up my account with 5$ back in March and I still haven't use it up. It is OK for getting info about very well established info where doing a web search would be more exhausting than asking chatgpt. But every time I try something more esoteric it will make up shit, like non existent options for CLI tools

[-] farngis_mcgiles@sh.itjust.works 6 points 2 days ago

ugh hallucinating commands is such a pain

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[-] NABDad@lemmy.world 103 points 4 days ago

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.

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[-] ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 63 points 3 days ago

That's about right. I've been using LLMs to automate a lot of cruft work from my dev job daily, it's like having a knowledgeable intern who sometimes impresses you with their knowledge but need a lot of guidance.

[-] eldavi@lemmy.ml 31 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

watch out; i learned the hard way in an interview that i do this so much that i can no longer create terraform & ansible playbooks from scratch.

even a basic api call from scratch was difficult to remember and i'm sure i looked like a hack to them since they treated me as such.

[-] orgrinrt@lemmy.world 19 points 3 days ago

In addition, there have been these studies released (not so sure how well established, so take this with a grain of salt) lately, indicating a correlation with increased perceived efficiency/productivity, but also a strongly linked decrease in actual efficiency/productivity, when using LLMs for dev work.

After some initial excitement, I’ve dialed back using them to zero, and my contributions have been on the increase. I think it just feels good to spitball, which translates to heightened sense of excitement while working. But it’s really just much faster and convenient to do the boring stuff with snippets and templates etc, if not as exciting. We’ve been doing pair programming lately with humans, and while that’s slower and less efficient too, seems to contribute towards rise in quality and less problems in code review later, while also providing the spitballing side. In a much better format, I think, too, though I guess that’s subjective.

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[-] zxqwas@lemmy.world 23 points 3 days ago

Like with any new technology. Remember the blockchain hype a few years back? Give it a few years and we will have a handful of areas where it makes sense and the rest of the hype will die off.

Everyone sane probably realizes this. No one knows for sure exactly where it will succeed so a lot of money and time is being spent on a 10% chance for a huge payout in case they guessed right.

[-] HawlSera@lemm.ee 21 points 3 days ago

There's an area where blockchain makes sense!?!

[-] zxqwas@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Cryptocurrencies can be useful as currencies. Not very useful as investment though.

[-] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 days ago

Git is a sort of proto-blockchain -- well, it's a ledger anyway. It is fairly useful. (Fucking opaque compared to subversion or other centralized systems that didn't have the ledger, but I digress...)

[-] Manmoth@lemmy.ml 7 points 3 days ago

It has some application in technical writing, data transformation and querying/summarization but it is definitely being oversold.

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[-] MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 42 points 3 days ago

I think when the hype dies down in a few years, we'll settle into a couple of useful applications for ML/AI, and a lot will be just thrown out.

I have no idea what will be kept and what will be tossed but I'm betting there will be more tossed than kept.

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[-] NeilBru@lemmy.world 70 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I make DNNs (deep neural networks), the current trend in artificial intelligence modeling, for a living.

Much of my ancillary work consists of deflating tempering the C-suite's hype and expectations of what "AI" solutions can solve or completely automate.

DNN algorithms can be powerful tools and muses in scientific endeavors, engineering, creativity and innovation. They aren't full replacements for the power of the human mind.

I can safely say that many, if not most, of my peers in DNN programming and data science are humble in our approach to developing these systems for deployment.

If anything, studying this field has given me an even more profound respect for the billions of years of evolution required to display the power and subtleties of intelligence as we narrowly understand it in an anthropological, neuro-scientific, and/or historical framework(s).

[-] peopleproblems@lemmy.world 70 points 4 days ago

Yup.

I don't know why. The people marketing it have absolutely no understanding of what they're selling.

Best part is that I get paid if it works as they expect it to and I get paid if I have to decommission or replace it. I'm not the one developing the AI that they're wasting money on, they just demanded I use it.

That's true software engineering folks. Decoupling doesn't just make it easier to program and reuse, it saves your job when you need to retire something later too.

[-] jagged_circle@feddit.nl 35 points 4 days ago

Their goal isn't to make AI.

The goal of both the VCs and the startups is to make money. That's why.

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[-] Revan343@lemmy.ca 24 points 4 days ago

The people marketing it have absolutely no understanding of what they're selling.

Has it ever been any different? Like, I'm not in tech, I build signs for a living, and the people selling our signs have no idea what they're selling.

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[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 18 points 3 days ago

Linus is known for his generosity.

[-] SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee 23 points 3 days ago
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[-] mitrosus@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 3 days ago

True. 10% is very generous.

[-] narc0tic_bird@lemm.ee 72 points 4 days ago

Sounds about right. There are some valid and good use cases for "AI", but the majority is just buzzword marketing.

[-] billwashere@lemmy.world 51 points 4 days ago

I have lots of uses for Attack Insects….

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[-] Buttflapper@lemmy.world 18 points 3 days ago

Copilot by Microsoft is completely and utterly shit but they're already putting it into new PCs. Why?

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[-] Rolder@reddthat.com 46 points 4 days ago

AI as we know it does have its uses, but I would definitely agree that 90% of it is just marketing hype

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[-] TheImpressiveX@lemmy.ml 33 points 4 days ago

What happened to Linus? He looks so old now...

[-] rottingleaf@lemmy.world 14 points 3 days ago

Decided to say something popular after his snafu, I see.

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this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
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