[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Are you tired of reading ChatGPT headlines?
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: Are you tired of reading ChatGPT headlines?
I am. Every day, there are countless new articles about ChatGPT
posted on here. Maybe I'm the only one who thinks it's overrated.
Most of the prompt answers are smart sounding bullshit. Maybe
that's why the headlines never stop - the people who like to make
smart sounding bullshit are the ones who love ChatGPT.
Author : 65
Score : 213 points
Date : 2023-02-04 20:23 UTC (2 hours ago)
| causality0 wrote:
| If there's something HN loves more than anything else, it's
| buzzwords. Right now it's ChatGPT, but it was Deep Learning,
| Machine Learning, Blockchain, etc. ChatGPT is almost a welcome
| reprieve from "How to use Machine Learning to wipe your ass
| better" and "Why you should integrate the blockchain when selling
| hookers in Second Life."
| jjdeveloper wrote:
| It's a good thing, I'm seeing less JS frameworks getting created
| now
| ugjka wrote:
| I bet you can ask ChatGPT to code a a JS framework
| warning26 wrote:
| I asked for some names:
|
| _" Naming a framework can be a crucial aspect of its
| success. It's important to choose a name that is memorable,
| catchy, and represents the core values and goals of the
| framework.
|
| Here are a few suggestions:
|
| Prodigy: A framework that aims to make web development simple
| and efficient.
|
| Velocity: A fast-performing framework that emphasizes speed
| and agility.
|
| Eon: A modern and innovative framework that incorporates the
| latest web development trends and technologies.
|
| Apex: A framework that emphasizes scalability and
| reliability, helping developers build robust and scalable
| applications.
|
| Fusion: A framework that seamlessly integrates different
| technologies, tools, and libraries to create a unified and
| seamless development experience."_
|
| I'm looking forward to hiring a prodigy.js expert with 10
| years of prodigy.js experience.
| nathias wrote:
| Of course! I'd be happy to help you write a new JavaScript
| framework. Before we start, I'd like to ask a few questions
| to understand your goals and requirements for this framework:
| ....
| wg0 wrote:
| Hilarious. Made me laugh. I remember there was a time when
| every other article was about VR on poptech websites.
| wolpoli wrote:
| Of course, it's tough to get people to adopt a new JS framework
| if ChatGPT can't emit the code for it. Stack Overflow is so old
| fashioned now.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| I'm more tired of the headlines trying to downplay how amazing it
| is.
| antegamisou wrote:
| Yes. Some have been hyped so much that they make absurd claims
| about establishment of AGI because of it.
|
| It's certainly entertaining, albeit Midjourney is more exciting
| imo, but there are far more challenging problems in the field of
| Computer Science and sciences in general than NLP.
| belfalas wrote:
| Meh. It's a normal part of the hype cycle around a piece of tech
| that is having its big moment on the stage. Some years back the
| HN front page was all Docker all the time.
|
| I think it's actually not a bad thing if there are 'too many'
| posts around a particular piece of tech. If something sticks for
| a while I usually take it as signal to investigate. Other things
| have a brief moment of hype but don't actually stick around too
| long if you watch the ebb and flow.
|
| Instead of getting upset, consider spending less time on here. :)
| DueDilligence wrote:
| .. nope. block)element("*gpt" replace"//_____//"
| LegitShady wrote:
| I dislike the low effort content.
|
| "I asked ChatGPT this question and now its my medium column"
|
| etc etc
|
| It just seems at the moment that most of the content is like
| that.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| I am tired of them and consider them infomercial.
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| I'm pretty tired of seeing the ChatGPT headlines - right up there
| with Harry and Meghan, and Kim and KKKanye.
|
| There is nothing intelligent about ChatGPT, it's just a
| statistical trick, no understanding, no unique ideas. It's this
| years's self driving car.
|
| Speaking of which, I'm been waiting for my self driving car since
| 1982. At this rate better make it a hearse.
| SMAAART wrote:
| I asked ChatGPT to comment on your post, this is what came out:
|
| As an AI language model, I don't have feelings or personal
| opinions. My purpose is to assist and provide information. If
| you're feeling overwhelmed by ChatGPT headlines, perhaps take a
| break and come back later.
| steele wrote:
| Nice try, OpenAI
| osigurdson wrote:
| I love ChatGPT. It does a lot of "dreaming" but it is generally
| helpful. It is a bit like having a friendly know-it-all who has
| read all of StackOverflow but can't remember everything in
| detail.
|
| What problem domain do you use it in that you find underwhelming?
| pdntspa wrote:
| Ask HN: Are you tired of headlines asking if you are tired of
| reading ${POPULAR_THING}
| bananaboy wrote:
| Aside: I dig your username! ;)
| Zetobal wrote:
| I am fine but if I see one more "Let's see what's chatgpt has to
| say about it" comments! I am gonna get this account banned.
| BhavdeepSethi wrote:
| Not really. The more attention it gets, the more incentive to
| make it better.
|
| Unrelated, the irony of this post made me chuckle. By posting
| this, you're adding to the ChatGPT "headlines".
| roryisok wrote:
| I agree, but I'm intrigued by the _patterns_ of headlines.
|
| At first, they were all in the format of "I asked chatGPT to
| write a blog post, here it is" and "I used ChatGPT to talk to my
| mom so I don't have to"
|
| Then it quickly moved onto people pushing out prototypes "Use
| ChatGPT to generate pick-up lines" and "ChatGPT as a therapist"
|
| And now, more recently, it's all about taking down ChatGPT.
| ChatGPT is flawed, ChatGPT can be detected, ChatGPT is a dirty
| liar, or some other library is better than ChatGPT.
| claudiug wrote:
| yes
| docdeek wrote:
| I'm only sick of the op-ed authors who reveal halfway through
| their column that "everything above was written by ChatGPT". It's
| no longer an original angle and seems pretty lazy at this point.
| anileated wrote:
| I don't like seeing _hype_ articles about ChatGPT because I
| believe it is built on illegally monetizing intellectual property
| of others.
|
| Sort of in line with the usual switchbait behavior certain
| companies are well known for, except at a grander scale: first
| compel people to share information openly and publicly, then use
| it against them.
|
| We wouldn't give Google a free pass if it stopped sending us
| traffic and started only showing aggregated information on its
| pages. Heck, there was an outcry when they merely started showing
| questions before search results, even though they actually
| credited the website. Somehow we are fine when OpenAI, the for-
| profit company with antithetical name, and Microsoft, its largest
| partner with which billions it plays, do the same.
| nonbirithm wrote:
| When given a hammer, everything looks like a nail. ChatGPT is a
| really convincing hammer that is still pretty unreliable.
|
| But I'm worried when it gets to the point where a future ChatGPT
| is no longer that unreliable, and then millions of people given
| that hammer will feel justified enough to keep ranting about it
| and injecting it into every random forum thread and comment
| section forever just because it's possible for them to.
|
| Yes, I'm tired of it, because it's not an endgame tool but many
| treat it like it is. And I have a feeling I'm going to get even
| more tired of it the more it improves - that is, the more people
| it's able to convince it's no longer bullshit.
| huqedato wrote:
| The problem is that our CTO, having in mind ChatGPT/GPT-3 is
| thinking to "shrink" our team of 1 leader + 3 senior devs + 19
| junior devs to 1 leader/senior dev + 3 junior devs. The idea
| suggested from above I heard. They really "believe" that the bulk
| of the code can be generated by AI, and the team has only to
| manage the implementaton/integration/holistic view. They will
| make a plan to achieve this by Nov 2023.
|
| I heard this trend is everywhere around at multinational corps in
| our country.
| mjr00 wrote:
| You're either lying or have the dumbest CTO known to humanity.
| huqedato wrote:
| Not lying, my company (ex-bank) has a new CTO with background
| in... agricultural engineering.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| If this is genuine then your CTO has no business being a CTO.
| huqedato wrote:
| 6 months as our CTO. It has only one goal: reduce costs.
| Since he came, he's obsession was that all IT teams under his
| coordination are "too fat". The bad part is the hierarchy
| trusts him (for a reason). It's Balkans here... anything
| goes.
| x86x87 wrote:
| C is CTO is for chatGPT!
| animanoir wrote:
| No.
| beebmam wrote:
| Not really, no. It's an awesome tech.
| nottorp wrote:
| Yes and no. Some are still amusing in a perverted sort of way.
|
| Like CNet generating their articles with ChatGPT... from the few
| times I've read CNet lately, I bet that didn't change their
| article quality one bit. They were blogspam, they stayed
| blogspam.
| supermet wrote:
| [flagged]
| trenning wrote:
| I'm not but I'm also not terminally online. I've only recently
| had time to start playing around with chatgpt myself so I'm still
| enjoying the novelty of it and reading about others use cases and
| experiences.
| frizlab wrote:
| Yes.
| ExtremisAndy wrote:
| I am definitely tired of the topic, but I'll be perfectly honest
| as to the reason why: I am genuinely afraid of its impact on my
| career. My career has been sort of a combination of tech and
| education, and this (admittedly impressive) creation threatens
| both. And more and more of these things will be coming online
| over the coming months and years.
|
| So, every time I see it mentioned I feel depressed and sick on
| the inside.
|
| I will say, however, that so far it has actually enhanced my
| productivity in my current projects, and that's fine. I just
| don't think that its impact will remain so limited for long.
|
| Of all the tech that's been invented, this is the one I fear the
| most in terms of its negative impact on jobs. Hope I'm wrong!
| enneff wrote:
| Don't worry, the models do not show any signs of creativity or
| understanding. Your intellect still has value, and imo this
| technology is not the invention that will eventually devalue
| it. It's kinda like self driving cars. 5-10 years ago we
| assumed we were just a few years away from never having to
| drive ourselves again. Turns out that's way further out than we
| had imagined.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Self driving cars work right now. The problem is the cost of
| failure. If your self driving car works 99% of the time but
| it kills someone every hundredth trip on average, that's
| unusable. If your LLM works 99 out of 100 times, that's
| extremely useful.
| enneff wrote:
| I'm not making a direct comparison in terms of the
| technologies capabilities, but rather the way we
| perceive(d) them from being just a few years away from
| taking over.
| srackey wrote:
| Further out than we imagined? There are several cities with
| operating robotaxies right now. You can buy a Tesla that can
| drive itself (with supervision) _right now_.
|
| We're certainly behind where we expected to be, but the
| future is indeed here!
| lolinder wrote:
| Those robotaxi services are severely limited in scope,
| unprofitable, and still manage to screw things up so badly
| that even SF is getting sick of them:
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/1/29/23576422/san-francisco-
| cr...
| ben_w wrote:
| I certainly hope so self-driving cars are the accurate
| reference class for this, for several reasons.
|
| Among them: I don't think I've _ever_ demonstrated _more_
| creativity than chatGPT, only equalled it; and while it sure
| does make mistakes, when I look back at my old code (or even
| blog posts) I realise I sure did a lot of that too. I 'm
| pretty surprised it's even as capable as it is, given my
| understanding of how it works and what it's "goals" are (the
| task "predicting tokens" doesn't seem like it should be able
| to do this much).
|
| My fear is that the reference class for this is Go, where
| someone writing an AI for the game thought it was a decade
| away from beating humans less than two year before AlphaGo
| beat Lee Sedol: https://www.wired.com/2014/05/the-world-of-
| computer-go/
| wendyshu wrote:
| I would say they show at least "signs" of creativity and
| understanding.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Entrails of birds (used in old civilizations) could show
| <<"signs">> of future events, but that can happen to be
| restricted to the perception of the reader.
| Felmioytfr wrote:
| I can do things as one software engineer what 10 years ago a
| whole team needed.
|
| If chatgpt can do things you would have given an junior or
| assistant and it's now faster to just do it yourself it will
| have an impact and it might raise the bar.
|
| I would neither under or overestimate what it can replace in
| a few years.
|
| And surprisingly a lot of time and energy is used to teach
| people old things just because they also need to learn.
|
| It just might be e easier to teach it once to chatgpt or
| whatever is next, than people.
| smohare wrote:
| [dead]
| enneff wrote:
| ChatGPT can't do the things I coach my junior teammates to
| do, though.
| Felmioytfr wrote:
| Depends on what (I didn't say it will replace everything
| tomorrow) and let's see in a few years.
|
| And at least in my team it definitely feels like I teach
| every new hire/intern/young person the same old things.
|
| I could also just starting to teach an ai those things.
|
| And this multiplies. If everyone of us is only teaching
| the same ai everything once, than this is much more
| effective.
| Existenceblinks wrote:
| What we have been developing are a lot of solid building
| blocks. Protocol, infra, frameworks. Not just some kind of
| heuristic engine.
| sologoub wrote:
| This Gizmodo article is pretty insightful on the complexities
| and use cases: https://gizmodo.com/chatgpt-gizmodo-artificial-
| intelligence-...
|
| The problems have been well documented, and the part where
| model makes up info and presents it as fact is a huge problem.
| Whether it's solvable is up for debate until it is actually
| solved.
|
| What this article has shown is that the automation part can
| work well in somewhat limited circumstances, but in the end it
| is a form of automation and perhaps a novel user interface
| options. It is not creativity, it is not something genuinely
| new. Automation is powerful and it enables productivity goals,
| which is usually profitable.
| Aperocky wrote:
| In tech and don't share your worries. If anything, since
| release it has proven that 1. it does not have ability to
| reason logically creatively. 2. it has strong ability to
| manipulate language to human readable form.
|
| If anything, I would say regular office workers are the most
| threatened, particularly if the jobs revolves around digesting
| and passing information.
| echelon wrote:
| I'm using it to cut my engineering time down. If you're not
| simultaneously elated and threatened, you're sleeping.
|
| The AI wave is going to be bigger than the internet in terms
| of societal impact.
|
| We're watching humanity's swan song in real time.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _swan song_
|
| Swan song that started as the singers started regarding IQs
| of 0 as acceptable actors.
| sublinear wrote:
| I don't understand this perspective at all. The hardest
| parts of software are nailing down requirements, scheduling
| work, and fitting square pegs into round holes for legacy
| systems at a conceptual level.
|
| No offense, but if writing the actual code is the part
| slowing you down there's something very wrong.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Education faces the biggest problems of all. And it's self-
| inflicted. A large portion of what's required of students is
| listening to, regurgitating and producing half-coherent
| bullshit. And so teachers will have a hard verifying homework
| now.
|
| What should happen is teachers and students are required to
| up their skills to the point that student are required to
| produce things better than AI. But the likely result will be
| lots of futile surveillance.
| brap wrote:
| Sure. But will that be the case 5-10 years from now?
|
| As a programmer, I gotta say if you're not at all concerned,
| then either you haven't been paying attention or you're in
| denial. Sooner or later it's coming.
| Aperocky wrote:
| As a programmer that had a year of data scientist under my
| belt, and some level of understanding of the current
| machine learning systems, I'm not worried.
|
| The newer research papers coming out are where I would
| focus if I'm really worried. ChatGPT is really the
| industrial grade implementation of ideas that aren't
| exactly new. And the idea itself (LLM) does not contain
| ability to generate novel logic or solve unlearned
| problems. In fact, I would go further and say that it does
| not see your prompt input as a logical problem, but rather
| a collection of words, and its output involves a
| transformation of words with its extensively training set.
| Which would contain logic that was in the training material
| but itself did not add anything to it, with no guarantee of
| correctness, only training weights.
|
| There are no guarantee that it didn't also train on the
| question part of stackoverflow... and you only get answers
| as good as its training material.
|
| Where I work we attempt to automate away repeatable
| problems with deterministic frameworks, which are imo far
| better. I would agree that ChatGPT will probably improve my
| writing if I were to use it on email and documents, but
| only in language, not in ideas.
| ResearchCode wrote:
| Shouldn't non-programming office workers be more concerned
| is what I'm thinking.
| throwawaycopter wrote:
| > Sure. But will that be the case 5-10 years from now?
|
| Not with language models. A language model can parse
| natural language, and with enough training data, give out
| what it thinks the answer is based on the data it was
| trained with. It is not General AI.
|
| It cannot reason a solution for a problem that had an
| unknown answer. It won't be able to reflect logically on a
| context to foresee problems within this context. It cannot
| have a meaningful conversation. It won't be able to
| understand that one of the things it "knows" was
| incomplete, untrue, or just plain wrong, and fix itself.
|
| It's a powerful tool, a game-changing tool. Perhaps as
| game-changing as the advent of computers, internet, or
| wireless communication. But it still won't replace humans.
|
| General AI for now is science fiction. Perhaps this is
| unfortunate. I wouldn't mind an AI that can replace humans,
| even if I too am made obsolete with it.
| lolinder wrote:
| Or you have been paying attention, understand the
| technology better than those who buy into the hype, and
| aren't worried because you know that incremental
| improvements to this tech cannot be a serious threat to
| your job security because the _paradigm_ isn 't capable of
| replacing you.
|
| When my job is at risk it will be because we have AGI, not
| a better language model, and at that point _everyone_ is at
| risk. Worrying about job security in the face of AGI is
| like worrying about what you 'll do after your city gets
| nuked: it's unlikely to happen and there's nothing you can
| do if it does.
| thom wrote:
| Yep, I subscribe to this viewpoint. I am not as smart as
| the creators of ChatGPT or whatever is to follow, so
| maybe we'll get lucky that AGI is pretty smart but can't
| improve itself. But I think in the general case, if we
| create AIs that can replace programmers, economic
| concerns aren't going to matter.
| CuriousSkeptic wrote:
| While I share your take on LLMs. I do add on the worry of
| may take a couple of years for the people who pay
| software engineers to figure out that they aren't
| replaceable yet.
| nequo wrote:
| My guess is that this will become a problem roughly around
| the time when automated theorem proving becomes viable.
|
| Until then, language models just regurgitate sentences.
| Anything that relies on the sentences being logically
| coherent cannot rely on these models. This includes
| engineering, finance, and journalism (ideally, although I
| am aware of CNET's experiment).
|
| After then, we salaried humans might be in a pickle.
|
| Edit: sentence.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| Another to consider is that increased programmer
| productivity for simple code may result in just more code.
|
| If any given music synthesizer company could produce it's
| own DAW (digital audio workstation) by employing a single
| programmer or a contractor, the demand for programmers
| could increase.
|
| Just speculating, it's hard to know.
| wendyshu wrote:
| At the moment it's too error-prone to do anything without human
| interaction. Progress has been fast recently but will slow down
| because there's less new data to train on and scaling hardware
| will get too expensive.
| dougmwne wrote:
| I really think that's behind a lot of the negativity I see on
| HN. This tech is threatening, to jobs as we know them and maybe
| eventually to our sense of self. I view it like the
| introduction of computers into the workplace. Many people were
| left behind and made obsolete, never having a chance to be as
| productive as younger colleagues. AI collaboration could be a
| huge force multiplier, but some people, maybe myself included,
| will never get fully on board and will be left in the dust.
| paganel wrote:
| I ignore them all. The bad thing is that I've also started seeing
| them in non-tech focused sub-reddits.
| nathias wrote:
| No, this is the biggest technological breakthrough of our lives,
| for better or for worse.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| I have read this exact sentiment about blockchain and crypto so
| many times in my life.
|
| I lived through the rise of the web, mobile internet, and the
| smartphone so I have my doubts about ChatGPT being the biggest
| technological breakthrough of my life.
|
| Not to mention all of the things outside the realm of computer
| science competing for that title. Fusion power, solar power,
| alternatives to antibiotics, cures for diseases that kill
| millions, etc.
| TillE wrote:
| Yeah seriously, unless you're really young, the internet and
| the smartphone are absolutely seismic cultural shifts that
| changed everyone's lives. Compare 2023 to 1993.
|
| LLMs have a long, long way to go to get anywhere near that.
| All the predictions about replacing jobs are making dubious
| assumptions about radical improvements over the current state
| of the art. Maybe that will happen, maybe it won't.
| consumer451 wrote:
| > LLMs have a long, long way to go to get anywhere near
| that.
|
| The question in my mind is: is the curve just linear or is
| it getting closer to exponential at this point?
| goldsguide wrote:
| It's definitely starting to feel a bit like crypto. The hustlers
| take less and less time to hop onto new trends these days.
| flangola7 wrote:
| There are definitely hustlers on any new social phenomenon, but
| the difference between crypto and LLMs is one of them actually
| serves a useful purpose. I've written regular expressions,
| found hard to spot bugs, and summarized meeting notes using GPT
| in a fraction of the time it would normally take.
|
| That's genuine utility value. The only utility I've ever had
| using crypto is buying mushrooms over the internet. Now with
| them decriminalized in my state and easy 1-2-3 spore kits
| available, I don't even need it for that any more.
| brailsafe wrote:
| No not really. It's fun to learn the limitations, and figure out
| how to exploit its good qualities. It can't be funny, but it can
| describe concepts in different levels of detail
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| if we remove ChatGPT, <existing software> written in rust and "X
| fired Y% of their workforce", there wouldn't be much left.
| gesman wrote:
| I signed up for GPT, asked two questions and this was the end of
| it.
|
| The answers were "...it is not scientifically proven" BS.
|
| Something I already proved with my own life, GPT is not willing
| to answer and risk its good, politically correct name for.
|
| Google is here for stay until people are ready to give up spoon
| fed BS
| yankoff wrote:
| well, what did you ask?
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Definitely something racist or otherwise offensive.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| I'm not tired of ChatGPT headlines, but I'm definitely tired of
| the mass of people that think it is way more than what it
| actually is (spitting out text based on statistics).
|
| People see it as the second coming of Christ, as the Google
| killer, as a disruptor of educational systems, etc. when all it
| is is something that's good about making bullshit look legit.
|
| AI has always followed a cycle of hype and then total lack of
| interest when people realize it's empty promises. ChatGPT isn't
| changing that.
| [deleted]
| gus_massa wrote:
| Don't worry. The overload will disappear in a month, and there
| will be only a monthly article when someone discover something
| new. It happens all the time. For example, after Apple Day, the
| front page is all about Apple for a week.
|
| I prefer/recommend not to use the "hide" button too much in the
| front page, but in some case you can use it for a week if the
| ChatGPT posts get too annoying.
| brailsafe wrote:
| Meh, new macbooks got announced a few weeks ago and that was
| buried pretty quickly, even though they're probably the best
| computer you can buy
| siva7 wrote:
| I haven't seen a product more talked about in mass media than
| this one in the last decade. It's safe to assume that this is the
| defining event in the history of AI that changed it all and one
| of the breakthroughs on par with the invention of the internet as
| we know it
| Existenceblinks wrote:
| I reduce twitter time because of it. Also they are here on HN
| posts a lot recently so I seem to spent time less to read HN as
| well.
| sourcecodeplz wrote:
| We're you not here when it first launched? I feel it calmed down
| now and is at acceptable levels.
|
| It's an amazing tool nonetheless.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| No, you are not the only one. And in fact I had the same thought
| that bullshitters might particularly appreciate ChatGPT since it
| does what they do for them. Quite useful in their opinion.
| artyom wrote:
| I think that the ones thinking that ChatGPT can write great prose
| haven't read actual great prose in years
| dougmwne wrote:
| I think you have really come to the wrong conclusion. I don't
| know how much impact this tech will ultimately have, but it is
| extremely capable and surprising. It might not be the same as a
| reliable expert or highly regarded textbook, but it is capable of
| giving a very specific answer to a question you have, like a
| middle of the road private tutor. If you do any kind of writing,
| it can slam through writing blocks. It can pair program like a
| beast. As long as YOU know what you are doing it can accelerate
| you.
|
| Most people are very intimidated by a blank page or empty code
| editor. Most people need a helping hand and someone to help them
| navigate a problem. Most people have a lot of difficulty
| producing individual work on their own.
|
| Think of this like flipping the other end of a ping pong table up
| so you can bounce the ball back. Sure there's no real person
| there, your shots are just being reflected back, but without
| something to bounce against, there's no way you can play solo.
| Maybe that's not you, but it is a lot of people.
|
| These recent AI developments are the discoveries of the decade.
| Let folks have their hype.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| I majored in Cognitive Science back in the early 90's at UCSD.
| I got pretty disillusioned at the combination of barking up the
| wrong tree, model-wise (The Bitter Lesson* had not yet been
| learned) and the just-not-powerful-enough compute we had
| available to truly test more interesting methods. Switched to
| dev work to pay the bills, but always hoped a real breakthrough
| would happen in my lifetime.
|
| The past six months have had me excited about tech for the
| first time decades. I'm just happy to be here, experiencing it.
|
| * http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html
| amelius wrote:
| Don't worry. By the end of this year we are either in the next AI
| winter or we're past the singularity.
| ihatepython wrote:
| Yes, I agree with you. I think this is WAY overrated. I also
| think this is as good as ChatGPT will get, a lot of people seem
| to think it will get better and better.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| >I also think this is as good as ChatGPT will get
|
| You mean that language models will never get better than
| ChatGPT? Or that ChatGPT itself won't be improved.
|
| Because I guess the latter could end up being true if openai
| decides to call whatever user facing tool that GPT-4 powers
| something other than chatgpt.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| ChatGPT might be the next tech gold rush so a lot of people who
| come to Hacker News have a vested interest in hyping it up.
|
| "ChatGPT but for whatever" will probably be the most effective
| way to separate venture capitalists from their money in the near
| future, much like "crypto for whatever" and "Uber but for
| whatever" and "an app but for whatever" in the past.
| JasserInicide wrote:
| Yeah we're in the hype stage right now with it, the
| OpenAIs/WallEs/Midjourneys/etc. There's also a lot of unsavory
| types (i.e. on 4chan) that want it to be something because they
| want to see creative types (e.g. artists) suffer and lose
| gainful employment. There's so many different sides to it, but
| ultimately I think in a year or so hype will settle, headlines
| will fade, and it will begin to settle into niches it excels at
| while ultimately not changing a whole lot in the bigger
| picture.
| worldsavior wrote:
| Yes. We all know the power of ChatGPT, or even GPT-3 itself, and
| how it's impressive and so on. But seriously, it something we all
| anticipated that will happen in the future, and science is
| exponentially becoming better and better. It's the era of AI, I
| get it, but how much can you repeat the same headline?
| [deleted]
| sebastien_b wrote:
| Yes, I'm tired. It's basically become a buzzword about something
| whose capabilities are sounding overblown more and more.
|
| Just waiting on that bubble to burst.
| Kiro wrote:
| Not at all. Imagine being tired of "alien headlines" if aliens
| made contact.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| I like seeing how people use it creatively and see it's
| limitations and what will come next
| thrill wrote:
| Not as tired as I am about the constant complaining about it.
| maptime wrote:
| I feel like it will always get traction as it preys on the
| underlying fear of job security of Devs
|
| I have genuinely found it incredible in certain situations. I
| don't feel like I am getting as much value from it as others
| might be so for the moment I like the discussion
| brailsafe wrote:
| Well, it also preys on the fear of writing emails and docs, and
| might help devs do more dev stuff if they want, so there's that
| jareklupinski wrote:
| in a way, we've been reading chatGPT headlines for years
|
| every moderately large news organization has been using A/B
| testing for over a decade to choose how to present the headline,
| with sometimes tens or hundred of possibilities being quickly
| swapped out/tested as people click, training "models" for
| presenting the most catchy headlines
|
| now we just have a 'confidence percentage' before actually
| publishing
| bobleeswagger wrote:
| I think ChatGPT is controversial because, like other past
| controversial technologies, we don't know whether it will be good
| or bad for society on the whole.
|
| If you don't notice how much money-momentum is behind it, you're
| burying your head in the sand. I think it's an interesting time
| because we are seeing how the market squeezes value out of
| emerging technology.
| huijzer wrote:
| Have you ever in your life seen the release of a tool that can
| save about 30 minutes per day from most office jobs and possibly
| more in the future? I haven't and never expected I would.
| modriano wrote:
| I'm old enough to remember when Zoom started saving me and all
| of my coworkers 60 to 90 minutes per day.
| wilsonnb3 wrote:
| Google search?
|
| Dropbox/google drive/etc?
|
| Git maybe, although obviously not for all office jobs.
|
| GPS navigation?
|
| Keurigs and instant pots?
|
| I strayed a bit from "office jobs" but yes I have lived through
| a number of things that save 30 minutes a day for a lot of
| people.
| danabrams wrote:
| Is remote work a tool? It saved me waaaay more than 30 minutes
| a day. And those were unpaid hours too.
| sanitycheck wrote:
| I'm not pro or anti this, just mildly interested. So, how can
| it save 30 mins per day from most office jobs?
|
| I get how it could replace certain jobs almost entirely, if
| those jobs involve churning out a lot of bullshit text. For
| anything that actually matters, checking/fixing ChatGPT output
| is going to take roughly as long as doing the research/writing
| oneself to begin with.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _I get how it could replace certain jobs almost entirely,
| if those jobs involve churning out a lot of bullshit text_
|
| Poster's name of 'sanitycheck' happily checks.
| amelius wrote:
| > I'm not pro or anti this, just mildly interested. So, how
| can it save 30 mins per day from most office jobs?
|
| It could help write emails faster, especially ones that
| require a lot of care. Or summarize meeting notes.
| yaky wrote:
| I get what you're saying, but _who_ is saving time here? If I
| spend one minute to have ChatGPT write a message to someone
| else (a real person), that someone else has to spend more time
| reading my email than I spent writing it. This adds a
| superfluous layer over what otherwise should have been direct
| and clear communication. (a.k.a "meeting that should have been
| an email" scenario)
| Karunamon wrote:
| Not even a little bit. We've only scratched the surface of what
| tech like this can do.
|
| There are some tropes that need to go away, though. Most of them
| some form of lame middlebrow dismissal.
|
| - "It doesn't actually _understand_ ": nobody outside of a small
| niche cares how the sausage is made, you are not making a
| substantive observation that hasn't already been made by 100,000
| other people.
|
| - "Most of the answers are bullshit": factually incorrect and the
| growing sidebar of my chat history with it can prove as much.
|
| - "Okay if not bullshit then so riddled with errors as to not
| save any time or be useful" see above.
|
| I would suggest that people who have such a hard time with
| content they are not personally interested in to make use of the
| hide button rather than spewing hate all over every related
| thread.
| siva7 wrote:
| I believe that OpenAI has the potential to become the next Google
| if management doesn't fuck it up
| tester756 wrote:
| I'm more likely to believe that MS manages to make Bing viable
| competitor via OpenAI's tech
| eachro wrote:
| No. This is a paradigm changing technology - the kind that
| happens once every 10 years or so. ChatGPT is going to change the
| entire landscape of knowledge work over the next few years and
| I'd rather be up to date with the advances even if it does mean
| I'll have to click the "More" button at the bottom of the page to
| see non-ChatGPT HN posts.
| joering2 wrote:
| Strongly disagree. I think its fame will die out once people
| will get tired of reading articles written by soulless machine
| or being tricked into something that turned out to be GPT-made.
| That's why even tho Picasso paintings are awesome, 99.9% of
| population does not have a printout of Mona Lisa hanging on
| their wall.
|
| There has never been technology that blew up like "chatGPT"
| before that made a real impact on society. That's why my take
| is its all a scam. Youtube "chatGPT" you will see how everyone
| and their dog are making $50,000 a month passive income using
| GPT. Of course they will tell you all their secrets... as long
| as you watch commercials attached to their videos.
| [deleted]
| bburnett44 wrote:
| Picasso didn't paint the Mona Lisa... did you fact check w
| chatgpt
| uh_uh wrote:
| Are you debating that ChatGPT allows things that previously
| were impossible or whether these things are useful?
| [deleted]
| eachro wrote:
| Incredibly short sighted perspective.
|
| Chatgpt-backed tools will become the norm in the same way
| that every knowledge worker uses Google on a daily basis
| today. Note that I did not say that people will use it to
| replace search - search is but a small bit of how it can be
| used.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| I hope you're joking.
|
| GPT-3 has been available for more than a year and there has
| been no large scale impact at all.
|
| The few AI generated articles are easy to spot and full of
| mistakes.
|
| ChatGPT is great at one thing: rambling.
| burlesona wrote:
| The post titles are a bit repetitive, but I find the conversation
| with HN folks dissecting the applicability and limitations of
| LLMs pretty interesting.
| acheron wrote:
| It's way better than the constant headlines about Twitter drama.
| Agingcoder wrote:
| No - to many people chatgGPT is science fiction come true. And
| for older folks in our (technical) world, it is, too.
|
| I understand it's 'just' a language model, but it doesn't matter
| - that's not how it's perceived, and it is actually rather
| impressive anyway.
|
| What you're seeing is just a manifestation of a rather major
| (sociological) event, and while I understand that the amount of
| hype is a bit over the top, to a large extent it makes sense.
| edfletcher_t137 wrote:
| > What you're seeing is just a manifestation of a rather major
| (sociological) event, and while I understand that the amount of
| hype is a bit over the top, to a large extent it makes sense.
|
| This hyperbole is exactly why people like OP are getting sick
| of the headlines. It _may_ be a major event sure, but only
| hindsight will be able to say that for certain. It _may_ be
| another novel gimmick though, and this pronunciation will seem
| ridiculous in a year or two if that 's the case. It's just too
| early to tell.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| I agree, and one more thing is that it _is_ useful.
|
| If somebody thinks it's just a bullshit generator and 100
| million people using it after 2 months are wrong, the problem
| is with the person who didn't put in the effort to learn to use
| it effectively.
| CharlesW wrote:
| > _If somebody thinks it 's just a bullshit generator and 100
| million people using it after 2 months are wrong, the problem
| is with the person who didn't put in the effort to learn to
| use it effectively._
|
| Alternative explanation: Most people are happy to generate
| bullshit, and love that they now have a way to do it with
| zero effort. Bullshit copy, bullshit art, bullshit code --
| the sky's the limit!
| uh_uh wrote:
| Why is the code bullshit? It routinely helps me with
| repetitive stuff.
| xigoi wrote:
| If your code is repetitive, you should deal with that by
| abstracting it, not by using a probabilistic black box to
| generate more.
| mech422 wrote:
| Which, if my experience with users is anything to go by, will
| be 99% of the users. Even worse is people asking it about
| subjects they have no domain expertise in and having to
| wonder (or worse just assume) its correct. At the very least,
| it should give some easily understood indication of
| 'confidence'.
|
| edit: I get very strong flashbacks to when wikipedia was new
| and people had to learn the hardway it wasn't always
| correct/up-to-date/etc.
| silversmith wrote:
| The thing is, it's always confident. It gave you the
| highest confidence answer, out of many high confidence
| answers. Low confidence would imply the model has not seen
| the particular words before. A Markov chain does not suffer
| from imposter syndrome.
| mech422 wrote:
| Heh - I say the thing is to get the general public to
| realize that, and not assume "computers are always right"
| ? (eg, I don't think the problem is with chatGPT being
| 'wrong' - I think the problems start when people assume
| its right...)
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Do you consider yourself in the 99% or you're as confident
| in yourself as ChatGPT to be in the 1% smartest people in
| the world?
| mech422 wrote:
| Depends on the domain I'm asking it about? I have things
| I'm good at, and things I suck at.
| lolinder wrote:
| > I understand it's 'just' a language model, but it doesn't
| matter - that's not how it's perceived
|
| For me, this is what gets exhausting. It _is_ an impressive
| language model, and it _is_ going to change a lot of things,
| but it isn 't the Apocalypse and it isn't the Messiah. On HN I
| expect a certain level of technical understanding that is
| weirdly absent on this topic.
|
| An example: every time the question of accuracy comes up people
| seriously suggest that you just need to prompt it for its
| sources. Or we just need to improve the training data. There's
| no recognition that there are tasks that a language model is
| just fundamentally unsuitable for.
| dougmwne wrote:
| > There's no recognition that there are tasks that a language
| model is just fundamentally unsuitable for.
|
| I'm really not sure where you get that from. I think the best
| we can say is that they are currently unsuitable. Yes, today
| the applications are limited, but you can't blame people for
| projecting this incredible progress into the future a bit and
| seeing glimpses of how much this could change work and
| productivity. Insider reports are surfacing that both Google
| and Microsoft will be adding LLM outputs to their search
| engine result pages. Seems like a big deal to me considering
| transformers are only about 4 years old.
| lolinder wrote:
| > Insider reports are surfacing that both Google and
| Microsoft will be adding LLM outputs to their search engine
| result pages.
|
| Of course they are--they'd be incredibly stupid _not_ to
| ride the hype wave while it lasts. A business choosing to
| take advantage of current trends is not evidence that those
| trends are founded in anything substantial.
| throwawaycopter wrote:
| When all you have is a hammer, all problems look like nails?
|
| I'm genuinely impressed about ChatGPT, and have been thinking
| about many times in the past when having such a tool at hand
| would have been massively helpful. Natural Language
| Processing is a damn hard problem, and ChatGPT seems to be a
| huge advancement in that regard.
|
| But I actually laugh at all the people that think that this
| will replace humans in any meaningful capacity. If your job
| is only giving known answers to known problems, then you have
| something to fear. Otherwise this will only be a powerful
| productivity tool.
|
| A Language Model will replace software developers much like
| Excel replaced accountants.
| Berniek wrote:
| I worked for a while in a fundamental neuroscience research
| environment. Basically there was one supplier of VERY
| expensive equipment in the field. But research groups that
| shelled out lots of money were now restricted to only
| research subjects the machine could do. This actually
| change the focus from fundamental exploration research to
| directed research. I think ChatGPT is the same. It will
| limit what most people believe AI is and what it is used
| for. (On a basic level isn't it just data mining on a grand
| scale?) The fundamental problem of "truth" is not
| considered important in the hype. If it can't deliver
| anything that you know absolutely to be "truth" without
| having to verify it then it is just a shiny new toy. I
| think the headlines and hype are generated to gloss over
| the shortcomings of this field in general. (is it a sign of
| the times whats that other media generated hype that makes
| money ----blockchain?)
| throwawaycopter wrote:
| This is actually an interesting reply, and something I
| did not consider.
|
| To me, the most impressive part of ChatGPT was not that
| it could give _mostly_ correct answers to known problems.
| In a sense, internet search could do it already (just in
| a much more cumbersome way), with similar degrees of
| correctness.
|
| The most impressive part for me was actually how
| seamlessly it parses and produces fluent natural
| language. Text generated by it _reads_ like something a
| human would type.
|
| So far I didn't try to fool it by purposefully asking
| something ambiguous (something that is a characteristic
| of natural languages), or ask about something that has an
| ambiguous answer to see how it handles it, but so far I'm
| impressed.
|
| But I never considered that people may restrict the
| research of AI to language models due to the rampant
| success of this avenue of research. I hope this is not
| the outcome, but I wouldn't be surprised (i.e. the
| success of ChatGPT works as a blackhole for investment in
| the area, with everyone racing to cash in on it).
| tintor wrote:
| "According to the Planet Money podcast, in the US alone,
| there are 400,000 fewer accounting clerks today than in
| 1980, the first full year that VisiCalc went on sale.
|
| But Planet Money also found that there were 600,000 more
| jobs for regular accountants. After all, crunching numbers
| had become cheaper, more versatile, and more powerful, so
| demand went up.
|
| The point is not really whether 600,000 is more than
| 400,000: sometimes automation creates jobs and sometimes it
| destroys them."
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47802280
| throwawaycopter wrote:
| And I still need to hire and accountant to do my taxes
| every year.
|
| Just throwing numbers on a spreadsheet didn't do the
| trick.
| 1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote:
| "An example: every time the question of accuracy comes up
| people seriously suggest that you just need to prompt it for
| its sources."
|
| This is not possible. Of course, someone providing GPT as a
| "service" could provide bogus "sources" for particular output
| and people might take them at face value.
| [deleted]
| ergonaught wrote:
| There are plenty of people who think "it" is overrated. Those
| people are mistaken, but by the time they catch up and say "oh,
| wow, this is a total disaster, how could I have known?" it will
| be too late, but at least they were tired of the headlines.
| yummybear wrote:
| I want to know more actually. I want good use cases for it. For
| me it's like being given google in 1995. How can I use it -
| what's it good for, what's it bad for and how do I formulate good
| queries?
| Apreche wrote:
| On the one hand yes. Enough already.
|
| But on the other hand, no. This is actually a significant
| technological development that has real implications, positive
| and negative, for our entire society. It's not some BS nonsense
| like blockchain. This is almost as big as the rise of
| smartphones. We need to be talking about it.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| That's right, blockchain is there to unchain everyone from the
| banking systems, openAI unchains us all from the need of people
| altogether. Can't wait to get food drone-delivered before I
| even know I'm getting hungry.
| FpUser wrote:
| I treat it the same way as XXX written in ZZZ. Sometimes I read
| it if XXX looks like it may be interesting but mostly I just skip
| it. Hence not really tired as I can always read something else.
| Posts on all kinds of things are plentiful here.
| kybernetyk wrote:
| >the people who like to make smart sounding bullshit
|
| that's most of the ML/AI community
| [deleted]
| SpeedilyDamage wrote:
| I never understand the point of these kinds of submissions. HN
| isn't for you alone, and there's a whole voting system. All
| you're going to get here, at best, are a handful of likeminded
| people who agree with you, reinforcing your bubble even further.
|
| Just vote and move on, hide the submissions if you have to.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Nope. I'm interested to see the ways in which this will change
| our labor market, consumption patterns, and society. I've heard
| from people who are using it in their jobs and I'm curious how I
| could use it too. I'm also interested to know how it will affect
| future generations, and what can be done to prepare students for
| an AI-enabled economy.
| fhd2 wrote:
| I'm also annoyed by the hype. For me, it's a combination of two
| things:
|
| 1. I'm just naturally averse to any sort of hype. Maybe something
| I should talk to a therapist about because it's only rational to
| some degree. I've been building software for decades, and almost
| every hype that came up meant more boring/annoying work for me -
| usually around resolving misconceptions non-technical people get
| from the news. Rewarded only by the grim satisfaction that people
| finally get it a few years delayed ("blockchain technology" is my
| favourite example here).
|
| 2. I can only see the bad LLMs can bring: A further decline of
| quality in a ton of areas, having to deal with worse writing and
| user interfaces in my private life, and worse code and tools in
| my professional life. It's just largely dystopian in my mind, I
| don't see any benefits. Code writing speed is hardly a bottleneck
| for the kind of work I do, I actually find it to be a small,
| particularly satisfying part of it. Is it more fun for a
| violinist to not touch the instrument and instead just tell a
| machine what to play? Certainly not for me. Generating elaborate
| wiki pages and SEO spam? Hell no.
| ENGNR wrote:
| I'm in the ideation phase, working out which applications will
| emerge. Seeing all the headlines of little MVPs that people have
| hacked together once a new tech arrives is what hacker news is
| all about
|
| So no, more crazy MVPs and open source libraries please
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