[HN Gopher] We are beginning to roll out new voice and image cap...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       We are beginning to roll out new voice and image capabilities in
       ChatGPT
        
       Author : ladino
       Score  : 982 points
       Date   : 2023-09-25 11:57 UTC (11 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (openai.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (openai.com)
        
       | pc_edwin wrote:
       | I just don't understand how they can package all of this for
       | $20/m. Is compute really that cheap at scale?
       | 
       | I also wonder how Apple (& Google) is going be able to provide
       | this for free? I would love to be fly in the meetings they have
       | about this, imagine all the innovators dilemma like discussions
       | they'd be forced to have (we have to do this vs this will eat up
       | our margins).
       | 
       | This might be a little out there but I think Apple is making the
       | correct move in letting the dust settle. Similar to how
       | Zuckerberg burned $20 billion dollars for Apple to come out with
       | Vision Pro, I see something similar playing out with Llama.
       | Although this a low conviction take because software is Facebooks
       | ballgame (hardware not so much).
        
         | pavlov wrote:
         | _> "I just don 't understand how they can package all of this
         | for $20/m. Is compute really that cheap at scale?"_
         | 
         | It's the same reason why an Uber in NYC used to cost $20 and
         | now costs $80 for the same trip. Venture capital subventing
         | market capture.
        
         | FeepingCreature wrote:
         | I think answering lots of queries in parallel can be a lot
         | cheaper than answering them one at a time.
        
         | DrScientist wrote:
         | It's quite possible they are charging near or below cost
         | because they want your data....
         | 
         | Imagine how much they would have to pay for testers at scale?
        
         | fifteen1506 wrote:
         | Probaby with Microsoft's money injection they're trying to raze
         | the market and afterwards hike prices.
        
         | reqo wrote:
         | Compute is not cheap! I think it is well known (Altman himself
         | has said this) that openAI is burning a lot of money currently,
         | but they are fine for now considering the 10B investment from
         | MSFT and the revenue from subscription and API. It's a critical
         | moment for AI companies and openAI is trying to get as large a
         | share of the market as they can by undercutting virtually any
         | other commercial model and offering 10x the value.
        
           | mordymoop wrote:
           | Additionally, compute has the unique property of becoming
           | cheaper per-unit at a rate that isn't comparable to any other
           | commodity. GPT-4 itself gets cheaper to run the moment the
           | next generation of chips comes out. Unlike, for example,
           | Uber, the business environment and unit economics just
           | naturally become more favorable the more time passes. By
           | taking the lead in this space, they have secured mindshare
           | which will actually increase in value with time as costs
           | decline.
           | 
           | Of course bigger (and thus more expensive-to-run) models will
           | be released later, but I trust OAI to navigate that curve.
        
         | siva7 wrote:
         | It's not about generating profits. It's about being an
         | existential threat to Google. MS will happily burn money.
        
         | philipwhiuk wrote:
         | Why worry about money when you have enough money in the bank to
         | last until Judgement Day?
        
       | moneywoes wrote:
       | doesn't this kill a litany of chatgpt wrapper companies?
        
       | wonderwonder wrote:
       | Wait until they put ChatGPT into your Neuralink. at that point we
       | are the singularity
        
       | bkfh wrote:
       | Does anyone know how they linked image recognition with an LLM to
       | give such specific instructions as shown in the bike video on the
       | website?
        
         | HerculePoirot wrote:
         | I don't know but GPT4 was multimodal from the beginning. They
         | just delayed the release of its image processing abilities.
         | 
         | > We've created GPT-4, the latest milestone in OpenAI's effort
         | in scaling up deep learning. GPT-4 is a large multimodal model
         | (accepting image and text inputs, emitting text outputs) that,
         | while less capable than humans in many real-world scenarios,
         | exhibits human-level performance on various professional and
         | academic benchmarks.
         | 
         | > March 14, 2023
         | 
         | https://openai.com/research/gpt-4
        
       | chrisjj wrote:
       | Old hat. This was done in 2009.
       | 
       | ;)
       | 
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Milo
       | 
       | Milo had an AI structure that responded to human interactions,
       | such as spoken word, gestures, or predefined actions in dynamic
       | situations. The game relied on a procedural generation system
       | which was constantly updating a built-in "dictionary" that was
       | capable of matching key words in conversations with inherent
       | voice-acting clips to simulate lifelike conversations. Molyneux
       | claimed that the technology for the game was developed while
       | working on Fable and Black & White.
        
         | DrScientist wrote:
         | Then Demis Hassabis ( Deepmind CEO ) probably worked on the
         | tech while he was at LionHead as lead AI programmer on B&W.
        
           | dwroberts wrote:
           | Demis was only briefly at LH he went to found Elixir and made
           | Revolution.
           | 
           | I believe Richard Evans did the majority of AI in B&W, and he
           | is also at DeepMind now though (assuming it is not just a
           | person with the same name)
        
             | chrisjj wrote:
             | > made Revolution
             | 
             | .... which fell far short of his claims, and bombed.
        
             | DrScientist wrote:
             | Ok - thanks.
        
         | mmahemoff wrote:
         | OpenAI's demo on the linked page stars a kitten named Milo.
         | Easter egg?
        
       | ushakov wrote:
       | The picture feature would be amazing for tutorials. I can already
       | imagine sending a photo of a synthesiser and asking ChatGPT to
       | "turn the knobs" to make AI-generated presets
        
         | boredemployee wrote:
         | Man you're a genius. I was trying that uploading pdfs with
         | manual of my synth and other stuff. With image that could be
         | super easy.
        
       | ilaksh wrote:
       | I wonder how multimodal input and output will work with the chat
       | API endpoints. I assume the messages array will contain URLs to
       | an image, or maybe base64 encoded image data or something.
       | 
       | Maybe it will not be called the Chat API but rather the
       | Multimodal API.
        
         | havnagiggle wrote:
         | AIPI
        
         | tdsone3 wrote:
         | Are there already some rumors on when the multimodal API will
         | be available?
        
           | ilaksh wrote:
           | The announcement says after the Plus rollout then it will go
           | in the API.
        
             | abi wrote:
             | Where does it say that?
        
       | og_kalu wrote:
       | The TTS is better than Eleven Labs. It has a lot more of the
       | narrative oomph (compare the intonation of the story and poem)
       | even the best other models seem to lack.
       | 
       | I really really hope this is available in more languages than
       | English.
       | 
       | Also Google, Where's Gemini ?
        
       | andrewinardeer wrote:
       | Now just throw this into a humanoid looking robot with fine motor
       | skills and we are halfway to a dystopian hellscape that is now
       | only years away instead of decades. What a time to be alive.
        
         | dsign wrote:
         | The humanoid-looking robot would make it more refined, no doubt
         | about that, but all these applications can do without it:
         | 
         | - Make it process customer-support requests.
         | 
         | - Make a virtual nurse for when you call the clinic.
         | 
         | - Make it process visa applications, particularly the part
         | about interviews ("I know you weren't born back then, but I
         | must ask. Did you support the Nazis in 1942? There is only one
         | right answer and is not what you think!")
         | 
         | - Make it do job interviews. How will you feel after the next
         | recession, when you are searching for a job and spend the best
         | part of a year doing leetcode interviews with "AI-interviewer"
         | half-assedly grading your answers?
         | 
         | - Make it flip burgers at McDonalds.
         | 
         | - Make it process insurance claims and ask bobby-trap questions
         | like "did the airline book you in a later trip? Yes? Was that
         | the next day? Oh, that's bad. But, was it before 3:00 PM? Ah,
         | well, you have no right to claim since you weren't delayed for
         | more than 24 hours. Before you go, can you teach me which of
         | these images depict objects you are willing to suck? If you do,
         | I promise I'll be more 'human' next time."
         | 
         | - Make it watch aggregated camera fees across cities around the
         | world to see what that guy with the hat is up to.
         | 
         | - Make some low-cost daleks to watch for trouble-makers at the
         | concert, put the AI inside.
         | 
         | In all cases, the pattern is not "AI is inherently devious and
         | is coming for you, but "human trains devious AI and puts it in
         | control to save costs".
        
         | c_crank wrote:
         | What would make it dystopian would be if this humanoid robot
         | was then granted rights. As a servant, it could be useful.
        
           | dhydcfsw wrote:
           | Why shouldn't AI have rights? Because us humans have magical
           | biology juice?
        
             | c_crank wrote:
             | Because that would come at the expense of making human
             | lives better.
        
           | civilitty wrote:
           | I would like our future Cylon overlords to know that I had
           | nothing to do with this!
        
         | conception wrote:
         | The Boston dynamics/openai collaboration for the apocalypse
         | we've all been waiting for!
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | [deleted]
        
       | suyash wrote:
       | This announcement seem to have killed so many startups that were
       | trying to do multi-modal on top of ChatGPT. The way it's
       | progressing with solving use cases with images and voice, not too
       | far when it might be the 'one app to rule them all'.
       | 
       | I can already see "Alexa/Siri/Google Home" replacement, "Google
       | Image Search" replacement, ed-tech startups that were solving
       | problems with AI using by taking a photo are also doomed and more
       | to follow.
        
         | _pdp_ wrote:
         | There is still a lot to do.
        
         | moneywoes wrote:
         | any pertinent examples? i'm curious how they pivot
        
         | codingdave wrote:
         | Last I heard, OpenAI was losing massive amounts of money to run
         | all this. Has that changed?
         | 
         | Because past history shows that the first out of the gate is
         | not the definitive winner much of the time. We aren't still
         | using gopher. We aren't searching with altavista. We don't
         | connect to the internet with AOL.
         | 
         | AI is going to change many things. That is all the more reason
         | to keep working on how best to make it work, not give up and
         | assume that efforts are "doomed" just because someone else
         | built a functional tool first.
        
           | tessierashpool wrote:
           | you're absolutely right.
           | 
           | also, I did not know until today's thread that OpenAI's
           | stated goal is building AGI. which is probably never going to
           | happen, ever, no matter how good technology gets.
           | 
           | which means yes, we are absolutely looking at AltaVista here,
           | not Google, because if you subtract a cult from an innovative
           | business, you might be able to produce a _profitable_
           | business.
        
             | captnObvious wrote:
             | Why isn't AGI ever going to happen? Ever?
        
         | m3kw9 wrote:
         | Those startups noting seeing this coming as a major risk is
         | asking for it
        
         | skissane wrote:
         | > This announcement seem to have killed so many startups that
         | were trying to do multi-modal on top of ChatGPT.
         | 
         | Rather than die, why not just pivot to doing multi-modal on top
         | of Llama 2 or some open source model or whatever? It wouldn't
         | be a huge change
         | 
         | A lot of businesses/governments/etc can't use OpenAI due to
         | their own policies that prohibit sending their data to third
         | party services. They'll pay for something they can run on-
         | premise or in their own private cloud
        
         | nunobrito wrote:
         | It already replaced search engines. So much easier to write the
         | question and explore the answers until it is solved.
        
           | mmahemoff wrote:
           | Took me a while to realise I can just type search queries
           | into ChatGPT. e.g. simply "london bridge history" or whatever
           | into the chat and not only get a complete answer, but I can
           | ask it follow-up questions. And it's also personalised for
           | the kinds of responses I want, thanks to the custom
           | instructions setting.
           | 
           | ChatGPT is my primary search engine now. (I just wish it
           | would accept a URL query parameter so it could be launched
           | straight from the browser address bar.)
        
             | elicksaur wrote:
             | Trying that example, I'd much prefer just going to the
             | Wikipedia page on London Bridge than trying to guess what
             | phrases ChatGPT will respond well to in order to elicit
             | more info. It's initial response for me didn't even mention
             | one of the most interesting facts that people lived and
             | worked on the bridge.
        
             | nunobrito wrote:
             | YMMV. For my case on software development, I don't even
             | look on stackoverflow anymore.
             | 
             | Just type the tech question, start refining into what is
             | needed and get a snippet of code tailored for what is
             | needed. What previously would take 30 to 60 minutes of
             | research and testing is now less than a couple of minutes.
        
               | reitanqild wrote:
               | And I don't have to wade through Stack Overflow and see
               | all the times mods and others have tried to or succeeded
               | in closing down very useful questions.
        
               | aduitsis wrote:
               | Fortunately it's not like StackOverflow has been used as
               | training data for LLMs, right?
        
               | TeMPOraL wrote:
               | Well, yes. Point is, GPT-4 read the entire StackOverflow
               | and then some, comprehended it, and now is a better
               | interface to it, more specific and free of all the
               | bullshit that's part of the regular web.
        
               | devjab wrote:
               | I know there are a lot of google programmers out there,
               | but was using search engines for programming ever a good
               | idea? Don't get me wrong, I'll look up how to do
               | absolutely simple things every day but I basically always
               | look in the official documentation.
               | 
               | Which may be why I've been very underwhelmed by GPT so
               | far. It's not terrible at programming, and it's certainly
               | better than what I can find on Google, but it's not
               | better than simply looking up how things work. I'm really
               | curious as to why it hasn't put a more heavy weight on
               | official documentation for its answers, they must've
               | scraped that a long with all the other stuff, yet it'll
               | give you absolutely horrible suggestions when the real
               | answer must be in its dataset. Maybe that would be weird
               | for less common things, but it's so terrible at
               | JavaScript that it might even be able to write some of
               | those StackOverflow answers if we're being satirical, and
               | the entire documentation for that would've been very easy
               | to flag as important.
        
               | midasz wrote:
               | Yes there are and it's infuriating. Colleague of mine had
               | problems with integrating some code into an app that was
               | built on a newer version of a framework because "there
               | aren't a lot of examples yet". One web search and I found
               | the frameworks own migration guide detailing the exact
               | differences that would need to be accounted for.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | layer8 wrote:
           | This is funny, because I find it much less cumbersome to type
           | a few search terms into a search engine and explore the links
           | it spits out.
        
             | mrits wrote:
             | It depends on the subject but search engines are on the
             | decline. With so many fake website written by AI I can only
             | see it get worse.
             | 
             | The most extreme I can think of is when I want to find when
             | a show comes out and I have to read 10 paragraphs from 5
             | different sites to realize no one knows.
        
               | layer8 wrote:
               | > The most extreme I can think of is when I want to find
               | when a show comes out and I have to read 10 paragraphs
               | from 5 different sites to realize no one knows.
               | 
               | I found that you can be pretty sure no one knows if it's
               | not already right on the results page. And if the
               | displayed quote for a link on the results page is
               | something like "wondering when show X is coming out?",
               | then it's also a safe bet that clicking that link will be
               | useless.
               | 
               | You learn those patterns fast, and then the search is
               | fast as well.
        
               | mrits wrote:
               | I don't disagree but having to have a learning phase for
               | patterns sounds a bit like people clinging to an old way
               | of things.
        
               | jprete wrote:
               | You mean like prompt engineering?
               | 
               | What you're describing as "clinging to an old way of
               | things" is how every single thing has been, ever, new or
               | old.
        
               | layer8 wrote:
               | It's better to have a pattern than having no pattern with
               | ChatGPT to tell when it's hallucinating or not.
               | 
               | I _wish_ MLs were more useful than search engines, but
               | they have still a long way to go to replace them (if they
               | ever do).
        
               | xdennis wrote:
               | > The most extreme I can think of is when I want to find
               | when a show comes out
               | 
               | Yeah, I find that queries which can be answered in a
               | sentence are the worst to find answers from search
               | engines because all the results lengthen the response to
               | an entire article, even when there isn't an answer.
        
               | whimsicalism wrote:
               | agreed on that antipattern although fwiw chatgpt is
               | unlikely to know the answer for questions like these
               | either.
        
           | suyash wrote:
           | who would have thought that few years ago, just goes to show
           | that a Giant like Google is also susceptible when they stop
           | innovating. The real battle is going to be fought between
           | these two as Google's business is majorly dependent on search
           | ads.
        
           | orbital-decay wrote:
           | It rather created new hybrid search engines, like perplexity
           | and phind.
        
           | adr1an wrote:
           | True. Although the training is on a snapshot of websites,
           | including q&a like stackoverflow. If these were replaced too,
           | where are we heading? We'll have to wait and see. One concern
           | would be centralization/ lack of options and diversity.
           | Stackoverflow started rolling AI on its own, despite the
           | controversial way it did (dismissing long time contributors);
           | it might be correctly following the trend.
        
             | silon42 wrote:
             | Personally I prefer stackoverflow and such, because I can
             | see different answer including wrong or non-applicable ones
             | which don't solve my exact problem.
        
               | nunobrito wrote:
               | One site doesn't need to exclude the other.
               | 
               | Both have their uses.
        
           | JTon wrote:
           | Agreed except ChatGPT (3.5 at least, haven't tried 4) is
           | unable to provide primary sources for its results. At least
           | when I tried, it just provided hallucinated urls
        
             | mhb wrote:
             | Try it. There's a world of difference.
        
               | JTon wrote:
               | In general or for this specific application (linking
               | primary sources)?
        
               | mhb wrote:
               | In general. I don't know whether it's better at providing
               | sources.
        
               | jve wrote:
               | Bing Chat for me, when mostly searching IT technical or
               | programming stuff sometimes gives junk urls, sometimes
               | gives some real valuable urls.
        
             | whimsicalism wrote:
             | i love gpt-4 and i find chatgpt useless. so there is a big
             | difference
        
         | NikolaNovak wrote:
         | Talking to Google and Siri has been positively frustrating this
         | year. On long solo drives, I just want to have a conversation
         | to learn about random things. I've been itching to "talk" to
         | chatGPT and learn more (french | music theory | history | math
         | | whatever) all summer. This should hit the spot!
        
           | chankstein38 wrote:
           | I've wanted a ChatGPT Pod equivalent to a Google Home pod for
           | a while! I have been intending to build it at some point. I
           | am with you, talking to Google sucks.
           | 
           | "Hey Google, why do ____ happen?" "I'm sorry, I don't know
           | anything about that"
           | 
           | But you're GOOGLE! Google it! What the heck lol
           | 
           | So yeah, ChatGPT being able to hear what I say and give me
           | info about it would be great! My holdup has been wakewords.
        
           | jgalt212 wrote:
           | I assume you have never heard of podcasts.
        
             | subw00f wrote:
             | I'm sure one can talk to their podcasts, but I would be
             | worried if they ever answered me back.
        
             | catchnear4321 wrote:
             | you can ask podcasts questions? and they answer you?
        
               | jgalt212 wrote:
               | no, but they don't get the answer wrong 20% of the time
               | and give off 100% correctness vibes.
        
               | olddustytrail wrote:
               | No, generally podcasts are far worse than that...
        
               | catchnear4321 wrote:
               | neither does a tuba.
               | 
               | why be mad at a hammer if you hit your thumb with it?
        
           | bilsbie wrote:
           | It's funny. Driving buddy has been my number one use case for
           | a while now.
           | 
           | Still can't quite make it work. I feel like I could learn a
           | lot if I could have random conversations with GPT.
           | 
           | + bonus if someone else in the car got excited when I see
           | cows. Don't care if it's an AI.
        
             | jibe wrote:
             | Try Pi AI. They have an app that can be voice/audio driven.
             | Works well for the driving buddy scenario.
             | 
             | https://pi.ai/talk
        
             | jazzyjackson wrote:
             | you could have a simulation of learning a lot by chatting
             | with GPT, why you would take it as truth without an equal
             | portion of salt is beyond me
        
           | ecshafer wrote:
           | Voice assistants have always been a half complete product.
           | They were shown off as a cool feature, then they were never
           | integrated so they were useful.
           | 
           | The two biggest features I want are for the voice assistants
           | to read something for me, and to do something on google/Apple
           | Maps hand free. Neither of these ever work. "Siri/ ok google
           | add the next gas station on the route" or "take me to the
           | Chinese restaurant in Hoboken" seem like very obvious
           | features for a voice assistant with a map program.
           | 
           | The other is why can I tell Siri to bring up the Wikipedia
           | page for George Washington but I can't have Siri read it to
           | me? I am in the car, they know that, they just say "I can't
           | show you that while you're driving". The response should be
           | "do you want me to read it to you?"
        
             | Gunnerhead wrote:
             | In the current world:
             | 
             | Me: "OK Google, take me to the Chinese restaurant in
             | Hoboken"
             | 
             | Google Assistant: "Calling Jessica Hobkin".
        
               | dieselgate wrote:
               | This reminds me of ordering at a drive through with a
               | human at times:
               | 
               | "I'd like an iced tea" "An icee?" "No an iced tea"
               | "Hi-C?"
        
               | TeMPOraL wrote:
               | You forgot the third brand name.
               | 
               | The pattern for current world's voice assistants is:
               | ${brand 1}, ${action} ${brand 2} ${joiner} ${brand 3}.
               | 
               | So, "OK Google, take me to Chinese restaurant in Hoboken
               | using Google Maps".
               | 
               | Which is why I refuse to use this technology until the
               | world gets its shit together.
        
             | jefftk wrote:
             | _> ok google add the next gas station on the route_
             | 
             | I say "ok google, add a stop for gas" a lot, and it works
             | well for me.
        
               | throeaaysn wrote:
               | These are supposed to be voice assistants and we don't
               | communicate that way.
               | 
               | If you were riding with someone, you could say "hey,
               | let's stop at X on the way?"
               | 
               | Voice assistants today require you to conform to an
               | unknown strict protocol that only works if you say the
               | right words in the right order. I prefer to avoid the
               | frustration.
               | 
               | Just today I asked it about a historical figure "hey
               | Google, who was X?" and it replied. I was shocked and
               | felt lucky so I asked "What is ChatGPT?" and it gave me
               | the usual response "sorry, I didn't understand".
               | Seriously, you didn't understand? It could have said
               | something like I couldn't find it in my search results
               | (odd but okay), or that it can't look it up online, etc.
               | 
               | I have to say "asian restaurant" and it finds a bunch of
               | places (many aren't asian at all). But if I say "hey
               | Google, what are the Asian restaurants near neighborhood
               | X with 4 stars or more?" it craps its pants hard.... even
               | though Google Search is totally capable of answering that
               | question.
        
           | ChatGTP wrote:
           | I still don't understand how you can talk to something that
           | doesn't provide factual information and just take it at face
           | value?
           | 
           | The other day I asked it about the place I live and it made
           | up nonsense, I was trying to get it to help me with an essay
           | and it was just wrong, it was telling me things about this
           | region that weren't real.
           | 
           | Do we just drive through a town, ask for a made up history
           | about it and just be satisfied with whatever is provided?
        
             | jocaal wrote:
             | > ...talk to something that doesn't provide factual
             | information and...
             | 
             | Ah yes, I dont understand how to talk to people either!
        
               | bamboozled wrote:
               | I always thought a better future would be full of more
               | and more distilled, accurate, useful knowledge and
               | truthful people to promote that.
               | 
               | Comments like yours make me think that no one cares about
               | this...and judging by a lot of the other comments, I
               | guess they don't.
               | 
               | Probably going to be people, wading through a sea of AI
               | generated shit, and the individual is supposed to just
               | forever "apply critical thinking" to it all. Even a call
               | from ones spouse could be fake, and you'll just have to
               | apply critical thinking or whatever to workout if you
               | were scammed or not.
        
               | astrange wrote:
               | There aren't any real world sources of truth you can
               | avoid applying critical thinking to. Much published
               | research is false, and when it isn't, you need to know
               | when it's expired or what context it's valid in.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | NikolaNovak wrote:
             | This is a fairly perpetual discussion, but I'll go for
             | another round:
             | 
             | I feel like using LLM today is like using search 15 years
             | ago - you get a feel for getting results you want.
             | 
             | I'd never use chatGPT for anything that's even remotely
             | obscure, controversial, or niche.
             | 
             | But through all my double-checking, I've had phenomenal
             | success rate in getting useful, readable, valid responses
             | to well-covered / documented topics such as introductory
             | french, introductory music theory, well-covered & non-
             | controversial history and science.
             | 
             | I'd love to see the example you experienced; if I ask
             | chatGPT "tell me about Toronto, Canada", my expectation
             | would be to get high accuracy. If I asked it "Was Hum,
             | Croatia, part of the Istrian liberation movement in the
             | seventies", I'd have far less confidence - it's a leading
             | question, on a less covered topic, introducing inaccuracies
             | in the prompt.
             | 
             | My point is - for a 3 hour drive to cottage, I'm OK with
             | something that's only 95% accurate on easy topics! I'd get
             | no better from my spouse or best friend if they made it on
             | the same drive :). My life will not depend on it, I'll have
             | an educationally good time and miles will pass faster :).
             | 
             | (also, these conversations always seem to end in
             | suffocatingly self-righteous "I don't know how others can
             | live in this post-fact free world of ignorance", but that
             | has a LOT of assumptions and, ironically, non-factual bias
             | in it as well)
        
               | doug_durham wrote:
               | Exactly this! This is my experience also. Your point
               | about "well covered & non-controversial" is spot on. I
               | know not to expect great results when asking about topics
               | that have very little coverage. To be honest I wouldn't
               | expect to go to an arbitrary human and get solid answers
               | on a little covered topic, unless that person just
               | happened to be topic expert. There is so much value in
               | having the basics to intermediate levels of topics
               | covered in a reliable way. That's where most of
               | commercial activity occurs.
        
               | jabradoodle wrote:
               | I think a key difference is that humans very rarely sound
               | convincing talking about subjects they have no clue
               | about.
               | 
               | I've seen the hallucination rate of LLMs improve
               | significantly, if you stick to well covered topics they
               | probably do quite well. The issue is they often have no
               | tells when making things up.
        
               | TerrifiedMouse wrote:
               | > I feel like using LLM today is like using search 15
               | years ago - you get a feel for getting results you want.
               | 
               | I don't think it's quite the same.
               | 
               | With search results, aka web sites, you can compare
               | between them and get a "majority opinion" if you have
               | doubts - it doesn't guarantee correctness but it does
               | improve the odds.
               | 
               | Some sites are also more reputable and reliable than
               | others - e.g. if the information is from Reuters, a
               | university's courseware, official government agencies,
               | ... etc. it's probably correct.
               | 
               | With LLMs you get one answer and that's it - although
               | some like Bard provide alternate drafts but they are all
               | from the same source and can all be hallucinations ...
        
               | og_kalu wrote:
               | >although some like Bard provide alternate drafts but
               | they are all from the same source and can all be
               | hallucinations ...
               | 
               | Yes and no. If the LLM is repeating the same thing on
               | multiple drafts then it's very unlikely to be a
               | hallucination.
               | 
               | It's when multiple generations are all saying different
               | things that you need to take notice.
               | 
               | LLMs hallucinate yes but getting the same hallucination
               | multiple times is incredibly rare.
        
             | rickspencer3 wrote:
             | In my experience, LLVMs are not about being provided facts.
             | They are about synthesizing new content and insights based
             | on the model and inputs.
             | 
             | Rather than asking it about facts, I find it useful to
             | derive new insights.
             | 
             | For example: "Tell me 5 topics about databases that might
             | make it to the front page of hacker news." It can generate
             | an interesting list. That is much more like the example
             | they provided in the article, synthesizing a bed time story
             | is not factual.
             | 
             | Also, "write me some python code to do x" where x is based
             | on libraries that were well documented before 2022 also has
             | similarly creative results in my experience.
        
             | nh23423fefe wrote:
             | Because it doesn't always make up stuff. Because I'm a
             | human and can ask for more information. I don't want an
             | encyclopedia on a podcast. I want to "talk" to someone
             | about stuff. Not have an enumerated list of truths
             | firehosed at me.
        
             | FooBarWidget wrote:
             | A human driving buddy can make up a lot of stuff too. Have
             | an interesting conversation but don't take it too
             | seriously. If you're really researching something serious
             | then take a mental note to double check things later,
             | pretend as if you're talking to a semi-reliable human who
             | knows a lot but occasionally makes mistakes.
        
             | mmahemoff wrote:
             | I'm curious if you're using GPT-4 ($)? I find a lot of the
             | criticisms about hallucination come from users who aren't,
             | and my experience with GPT-4 is it's _far_ less likely to
             | make stuff up. Does it know all the answers, certainly not,
             | but it 's self-aware enough to say sorry I don't know
             | instead of making a wild guess.
        
               | elicksaur wrote:
               | Why would anyone pay for something if the free trial
               | doesn't work? "Hey, you know how we gave you a product
               | that doesn't quit work as you expect and is super
               | frustrating? Just pay us money, and we'll give you the
               | same product, but it just works. Just trust us!"
        
               | sacred_numbers wrote:
               | GPT-4 is not the same product. I know it seems like it
               | due to the way they position 3.5 and 4 on the same page,
               | but they are really quite separate things. When I signed
               | up for ChatGPT plus I didn't even bother using 3.5
               | because I knew it would be inferior. I still have only
               | used it a handful of times. GPT-4 is just so much farther
               | ahead that using 3.5 is just a waste of time.
        
               | elicksaur wrote:
               | Would you mind sharing some threads where you thought
               | ChatGPT was useful? These discussions always feel like
               | I'm living on a different planet with a different
               | implementation of large language models than others who
               | claim they're great. The problems I run into seem to stem
               | from the fundamental nature of this class of products.
        
               | michaelt wrote:
               | The usefulness of ChatGPT is a bit situational, in my
               | experience. But in the right situations it can be pretty
               | powerful.
               | 
               | Take a look at https://chat.openai.com/share/41bdb053-fac
               | d-448b-b446-1ba1f1... for example.
        
               | TeMPOraL wrote:
               | A great example. Here's a similar one from me: https://cl
               | oud.typingmind.com/share/d2000ffc-a1bf-4b71-b59d-c....
               | 
               | Context: had a bunch of photos and videos I wanted to
               | share with a colleague, without uploading them to any
               | cloud. I asked GPT-4 to write me a trivial single-page
               | gallery that doesn't look like crap, feeding it the
               | output of `ls -l` on the media directory, got it on first
               | shot, copy-pasted and uploaded the whole bundle to a
               | personal server - all in few minutes. It took maybe 15
               | minutes from _the idea of doing it_ first occurring to
               | me, to a private link I could share.
               | 
               | I have plenty more of those touching C++, Emacs Lisp,
               | Python, generating vCARD and iCalendar files out of blobs
               | of hastily-retyped or copy-pasted text, etc. The common
               | thread here is: one-off, ad-hoc requests, usually
               | underspecified. GPT-4 is quite good at being a _fully
               | generic_ tool for one-off jobs. This is something that
               | _never existed before_ , except in form of delegating a
               | task to another human.
        
               | astrange wrote:
               | I agree that none of the problems people have mentioned
               | above happen with GPT4.
               | 
               | It used to be more reliable when web browsing worked, but
               | it's still pretty reliable.
        
               | steve_adams_86 wrote:
               | You can also prompt it to hold back if it doesn't know,
               | which seems to make a difference. It's part of my default
               | prompt, and since I added it I haven't had any overt
               | hallucinations. Definitely invalid code, but not due to
               | crazy errors. Just syntax and inconsistent naming mostly.
               | 
               | I verify just about everything that I ask it, so it isn't
               | just a general sense of improvement.
        
             | bilsbie wrote:
             | > I still don't understand how you can talk to something
             | that doesn't provide factual information and just take it
             | at face value?
             | 
             | All human interactions from all of history called and they
             | ...
        
             | londons_explore wrote:
             | Pay for the Plus version.
             | 
             | Then it makes stuff up far less frequently.
             | 
             | If the next version has the same step up in performance, I
             | will no longer consider inaccuracy an issue - even the best
             | books have mistakes in them, they just need to be
             | infrequent enough.
        
               | nerdbert wrote:
               | > Pay for the Plus version.
               | 
               | > Then it makes stuff up far less frequently.
               | 
               | Now there's a business model for a ChatGPT-like service.
               | 
               | $1/month: Almost always wrong
               | 
               | $10/month: 50/50 chance of being right or wrong
               | 
               | $100/month: right 95% of the time
        
               | TeMPOraL wrote:
               | You make it sound like business shenanigans, but the
               | truth is, it's a natural fit for now, as performance of
               | LLMs improves with their size, but costs of training (up-
               | front investment) and inference (marginal, per-query)
               | also go up.
        
             | umanwizard wrote:
             | Are you using 3.5 or 4?
        
             | skepticATX wrote:
             | What LLMs have made me realize more than anything is that
             | we just don't care that much the information we receive
             | being completely factual.
             | 
             | I have tried to use it many times to learn a topic, and my
             | experience has been that it is either frustratingly vague
             | or incorrect.
             | 
             | It's not a tool that I can completely add to my workflow
             | until it is reliable, but I seem to be the odd one out.
        
               | pbhjpbhj wrote:
               | ChatGPT 3.5 is terrible on technical subjects IME. Phind
               | is best for me rn. Hugging Chat (Llama) works quite well
               | too.
               | 
               | They're only good on universal truths. An amalgam of laws
               | from around the globe doesn't tell me what the law is in
               | my country, for example.
        
               | bamboozled wrote:
               | > What LLMs have made me realize more than anything is
               | that we just don't care that much the information we
               | receive being completely factual.
               | 
               | I find this highly concerning but I feel similar.
               | 
               | Even "smart people" I work with seem to have gulped down
               | the LLM cool aid because it's convenient and it's "cool".
               | 
               | Sometimes I honestly think: "just surrender to it all,
               | believe in all the machine tells you unquestionably,
               | forget the fact checking, it feels good to be ignorant...
               | it will be fine...".
               | 
               | I just can't do it though.
        
               | flkenosad wrote:
               | The smart people I've seen using ChatGPT always double
               | check the facts it gives. However, the truth is that RLHF
               | works well to extinguish these lies over time. As more
               | people use the platform and give feedback, the thing gets
               | better. And now, I find it to be pretty darn accurate.
        
               | TerrifiedMouse wrote:
               | > The smart people I've seen using ChatGPT always double
               | check the facts it gives.
               | 
               | I don't like being told lies in the first place and
               | having to unlearn it.
               | 
               | It doesn't help that I might as well have just gone
               | straight to the "verification" instead.
        
               | macNchz wrote:
               | I see this conversation pretty frequently and I think the
               | root of it lies in the fact that we have mental
               | heuristics for determining whether we need to fact check
               | another human because they are a bullshitter, an idiot, a
               | charlatan etc, but most people haven't really developed
               | this sense for AIs.
               | 
               | I think the current state of AI trustworthiness ("very
               | impressive and often accurate but occasionally extremely
               | wrong") triggers similar mental pathways to interacting
               | with a true sociopath or pathological liar for the first
               | time in real life, which can be intensely disorienting
               | and cause one to question their trust in everyone else,
               | as they try to comprehend this type of person.
        
               | FooBarWidget wrote:
               | I don't know. The other day I was asking about a biology
               | topic and it straight up gave me a self-contradicting
               | chemical reaction process description. It kept doing that
               | after I pointed out the contradiction. Eventually I got
               | out of this hallucination loop by resetting the
               | conversation and asking again.
               | 
               | It's smart but can also be very dumb.
        
               | steve_adams_86 wrote:
               | I just verify the information I need. I find it useful as
               | a sort of search engine for solutions. Like, how could I
               | use generators as hierarchical state machines? Are there
               | other approaches that would work? What are some issues
               | with these solutions? Etc. By the end I have enough
               | information to begin searching the web for comparisons,
               | other solutions, and so on.
               | 
               | The benefit is that I got a quick look at various
               | solutions and quickly satisfied a curiosity, and decided
               | if I'm interested in the concept or not. Without AI, I
               | might just leave the idea alone or spend too much time
               | figuring it out. Or perhaps never quite figure out the
               | terms of what I'm trying to discover, as it's good at
               | connecting dots when you have an idea with some missing
               | pieces.
               | 
               | I wouldn't use it for a conversation about things as
               | others are describing. I need a way to verify its output
               | at any time. I find that idea bizarre. Just chatting with
               | a hallucinating machine. Yet I still find it useful as a
               | sort of "idea machine".
        
               | bamboozled wrote:
               | I think this is a fine use case though because you're
               | doing your due diligence. The problems arise when you
               | don't do this.
               | 
               | I think even if an AGI was created, and humans survived
               | this event. I'd still have trouble trusting it.
               | 
               | The quote "trust but verify" is everything to me.
        
               | thfuran wrote:
               | Ignorance is Strength
        
               | huijzer wrote:
               | > just surrender to it all, believe in all the machine
               | tells you unquestionably, forget the fact checking, it
               | feels good to be ignorant... it will be fine...
               | 
               | It's the same issue with Google Search, any web page, or,
               | heck, any book. Fact checking gets you only so far. You
               | need critical thinking. It's okay to "learn" wrong facts
               | from time to time as long as you are willing to be
               | critical and throw the ideas away if they turn out to be
               | wrong. I think this Popperian view is much more useful
               | than living with the idea that you can only accept
               | information that is provably true. Life is too short to
               | verify every fact. Most things outside programming are
               | not even verifiable anyway. By the time that Steve Jobs
               | would have "verified" that the iPhone was certainly a
               | good idea to pursue, Apple might have been bankrupt. Or
               | in the old days, by the time you have verified that there
               | is a tiger in the bush, it has already eaten you.
        
               | cmiles74 wrote:
               | There's a lot of truth in this comment and a lot that I
               | wholeheartedly agree with.
               | 
               | When I spend time on something that turns out to be
               | incorrect, I would prefer it to be because of choice I
               | made instead of some random choice made by an LLM. Maybe
               | the author is someone I'm interested in, maybe there's
               | value in understanding other sides of the issue, etc.
               | When I learn something erroneous from an LLM, all I know
               | is that the LLM told me.
        
               | DharmaPolice wrote:
               | The issue is far more serious with ChatGPT/similar models
               | because things that are laughably untrue are delivered
               | exactly the same as something that's solidly true. When
               | doing a normal search I can make some assessment on the
               | quality of the source and the likelihood the source is
               | wrong.
               | 
               | People should be able "throw the ideas away if they turn
               | out to be wrong" but the problem is these ideas
               | unconsciously or not help build your model of the world.
               | Once you find out something isn't true it's hard to
               | unpick your mental model of the world.
        
               | huijzer wrote:
               | > Once you find out something isn't true it's hard to
               | unpick your mental model of the world.
               | 
               | Intuitively, I would think the same, but a book about
               | education research that I read and my own experience
               | taught me that new information is surprisingly easy to
               | unlearn. It's probably because new information sits at
               | the edges of your neural networks and do not yet provide
               | a foundation for other knowledge. This will only happen
               | if the knowledge stands the test of time (which is
               | exactly how it should be according to Popper). If a
               | counterexample is found, then the information can easily
               | be discarded since it's not foundational anyway and the
               | brain learns the counterexample too (the brain is very
               | good in remembering surprising things).
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | uoaei wrote:
               | I think this post-factual attitude is stronger and more
               | common in some cultures than others. I'm afraid to say
               | but given my extensive travels it appears American
               | culture (and its derivatives in other countries) seems to
               | be spearheading this shift.
        
               | bamboozled wrote:
               | Warning, my opinion ahead:
               | 
               | I think it's because Americans, more than nearly all
               | other cultures, love convenience. It's why the love for
               | driving is so strong in the US. Don't walk or ride,
               | drive.
               | 
               | Once I was walking back from the grocer in Florida with 4
               | shopping bags, and people pulled over and asked if my car
               | had broken down and if I needed a ride, people were
               | stunned...I was walking for exercise and for the
               | environment...and I was stunned.
               | 
               | More evidence of this trend can be seen in the products
               | and marketing being produced:
               | 
               | Do you need to write a wedding speech? Click here.
               | 
               | Do you need to go get something from the store? get your
               | fat ass in the car and drive, better yet, get a car that
               | drives for you? Better than this, we'll deliver it with a
               | drone...don't move a muscle.
               | 
               | Don't want to do your homework? Here...
               | 
               | Want to produce art? Please enter your prompt...
               | 
               | Want to lose weight? We have a drug for that...
               | 
               | Want to be the authority on some topic? We'll generate
               | the facts you need.
        
               | gtowey wrote:
               | I agree with this, but I think there is a deeper level
               | which explains this. And that is convenience is a
               | _product_. The thing that truly defines how corporations
               | in America have shaped our culture is that everything is
               | turned into a way to sell you something.
        
               | uoaei wrote:
               | I've also identified convenience as a core factor.
               | Another dynamic at play is this:
               | 
               | As convenience in a domain becomes ubiquitous or at least
               | expected among consumers, they quickly readjust their
               | evaluation of "having time for X" around the new
               | expectation of the convenient service, treating all
               | alternatives as positive opportunity cost. This would
               | explain a lot of those folks who are upset when it's
               | suggested that they don't need Amazon, Instacart, etc. in
               | their lives if they are to do something about their
               | contributions to mass labor exploitation.
               | 
               | Of course these conveniences quickly become ubiquitous in
               | large economies with a glut of disposable income, which
               | encourages VCs to dump money into these enterprises so
               | they're first to market, and also to encourage the public
               | to believe that the future is already here and there's no
               | reason to worry about backsliding or sustainability of
               | the business model. Yet in every single case we see
               | prices eventually rise, laborers squeezed, etc. A
               | critical mass of people haven't yet acknowledged this
               | inevitability, in no small part due to this fixation on
               | convenience at the expense of more objective, reasoned
               | understandings (read: post-truth mindset).
        
               | TerrifiedMouse wrote:
               | > It's not a tool that I can completely add to my
               | workflow until it is reliable, but I seem to be the odd
               | one out.
               | 
               | This. I hate being told the wrong information because I
               | will have to unlearn the wrong information. I would
               | rather have been told nothing.
        
             | xnorswap wrote:
             | > how you can talk to something that doesn't provide
             | factual information and just take it at face value
             | 
             | Like talking to most people you mean?
        
               | philipwhiuk wrote:
               | When OpenAI buys me a drink at the bar in exchange for
               | the rubbish it produces, I might have a more favourable
               | view.
        
               | ilaksh wrote:
               | As soon as they release the API, we can build an AI
               | "bartender". Combine the voice output and input with NeRF
               | talking heads such as from Diarupt or
               | https://github.com/harlanhong/awesome-talking-head-
               | generatio....
               | 
               | You will now be able to feed it images and responses of
               | the customers. Give it a function to call
               | complementaryDrink(customerId) Combine it with a simple
               | vending machine style robot or something more complex
               | that can mix drinks.
               | 
               | I'm not actually in a hurry to try to replace bartenders.
               | Just saying these types of things immediately become more
               | feasible.
               | 
               | You can also see the possibilities of the speech input
               | and output for "virtual girlfriends". I assume someone at
               | OpenAI must have been tempted to train a model on
               | Scarlett Johansson's voice.
        
               | lostcolony wrote:
               | Hopefully people know not to ask others for factual
               | information (unless it's an area they're actually well
               | educated/knowledgeable in), but for opinions and
               | subjective viewpoints. "How's your day going", "How are
               | you feeling", "What did you think of X", etc, not "So
               | what was the deal with the Hundred Year's War?" or
               | whatever.
               | 
               | If people are treating LLMs like a random stranger and
               | only making small talk, fair enough, but more often
               | they're treating it like an inerrable font of knowledge,
               | and that's concerning.
        
               | TeMPOraL wrote:
               | > _If people are treating LLMs like a random stranger and
               | only making small talk, fair enough, but more often they
               | 're treating it like an inerrable font of knowledge, and
               | that's concerning._
               | 
               | That's on them. I mean, people need to figure out that
               | LLMs aren't random strangers, they're unfiltered inner
               | voices of random strangers, spouting the first reaction
               | they have to what you say to them.
               | 
               | Anyway, there is a middle ground. I like to ask GPT-4
               | questions _within my area of expertise_ , because I'm
               | able to instantly and instinctively - read: effortlessly
               | - judge how much to trust any given reply. It's very
               | useful this way, because rating an answer in your own
               | field takes much less work than coming up with it on your
               | own.
        
               | graemep wrote:
               | No individual is "most people". Most of the time I spend
               | talking to people in real life is with people whose
               | professional expertise, hobbies, and other sources of
               | knowledge I know at least roughly. I have an idea how
               | good they are at evaluating what they know and how honest
               | they and whether they are prone to wishful thinking.
        
             | whack wrote:
             | Joe Rogan has made tons of money off talking without
             | providing factual information. Hollywood has also made tons
             | of money off movies "inspired by real events" that
             | hallucinate key facts relevant to the movie's plot and
             | characters. There's a huge market for infotainment that is
             | "inspired by facts" but doesn't even try to be accurate.
        
               | absrec wrote:
               | You listen to Joe Rogan with the idea that this is a
               | normal dude talking not an expert beyond martial arts and
               | comedy.
               | 
               | A person who uses ChatGPT must have the understanding
               | that it's not like Google search. The layman, however,
               | has no idea that ChatGPT can give coherent incorrect
               | information and treats the information as true.
               | 
               | Most people won't use it for infotainment and OpenAI will
               | try its best to downplay the hallucination as fine print
               | if it goes fully mainstream like google search.
        
               | flkenosad wrote:
               | Give people more credit. If you're using an AI these
               | days, you have to know it hallucinates sometimes. There's
               | even a warning about it when you log in.
        
               | absrec wrote:
               | I'll give tech people credit, but non-tech people I'm not
               | so sure. A good example is the cookie permissions or app
               | permissions. A great number of non-tech people don't even
               | know or care what they mean.
        
               | flkenosad wrote:
               | You gotta stop bucketting people like that. People may
               | not know terms "cookie permissions" or "app permissions"
               | but they sure as fuck understand the idea of user
               | tracking or handing a company access to your mic/camera.
               | And to say they don't care about these things is simply
               | not true.
        
               | jazzyjackson wrote:
               | There's a contingent of the population passing videos
               | around on tiktok genuinely concerned that AIs have a mind
               | of their own
               | 
               | no I will not give the public credit, most people have no
               | grounding to discern wtf a language model is and what
               | it's doing, all they know is computers didn't use to talk
               | and now they do
        
               | layer8 wrote:
               | If that's your benchmark, I don't want your AI.
        
               | agentultra wrote:
               | OpenAI isn't marketing ChatGPT as, "infotainment."
        
               | jazzyjackson wrote:
               | now that you mention it, a big "for entertainment
               | purposes only" banner like they use to have on all the
               | psychic commercials on tv would not be inappropriate.
               | it's incredible that LLMs are being marketed as general
               | purpose assistants with a tiny asterisk, "may contain
               | inaccuracies" like it's a walnut contamination
        
               | TeMPOraL wrote:
               | Not sure what's being incredible here. GPT-4 is a stellar
               | general-purpose assistant, that shines when you stop
               | treating it as encyclopedia, and start using it as an
               | _assistant_. That is, give it tasks, like summarizing, or
               | writing code, or explaining code, or rewriting prose. Ask
               | for suggestions, ideas. You can do that to great effect,
               | even when your requests are underspecified and somewhat
               | confused, and it still works.
        
               | jazzyjackson wrote:
               | I just wish they were advertised for generative tasks and
               | not retrieval tasks. It's not intelligence, it's not
               | reasoning, it's text transformation.
               | 
               | It seems to be able to speak on history, sometimes it's
               | even right, so there's a use case that people expect from
               | it.
               | 
               | FYI I've used GPT4 and Claude 2 for hundreds of
               | conversations, I understand what its good and bad at; I
               | don't trust that the general public is being given a
               | realistic view.
        
               | bilsbie wrote:
               | Wait until you learn about the mainstream media.
        
               | flangola7 wrote:
               | Rogan is literally the largest podcast on the Spotify.
               | It's the definition of mainstream.
        
               | bamboozled wrote:
               | For a certain demographic and generation, Joe Rogan _is_
               | the mainstream media.
        
               | [deleted]
        
           | archon wrote:
           | Agreed. After using ChatGPT at all Siri is absolutely
           | frustrating.
           | 
           | Example from a couple days ago:
           | 
           | Me, in the shower so not able to type: "Hey Siri, add 1.5
           | inch brad nails to my latest shopping list note."
           | 
           | Siri: "Sorry, I can't help with that."
           | 
           | ... Really, Siri? You can't do something as simple as add a
           | line to a note in the first-party Apple Notes app?
        
             | callalex wrote:
             | That's extra frustrating because Siri absolutely had that
             | functionality at some point in the past, and may even still
             | have it if you say the right incantation. Those
             | incantations change in unpredictable and unknowable ways
             | though.
        
             | jazzyjackson wrote:
             | appending to a text file, what do you think this is - unix?
        
           | rubslopes wrote:
           | I've replaced my voice google assistant searches with the
           | voice feature of the Bing app. It's a night and day
           | difference. Bing voice is what I always expected from an AI
           | companion of the future, it is just lacking commands --
           | setting tasks, home automation, etc.
        
             | bytefactory wrote:
             | Did you find a way to do this seamlessly including being
             | able to say something like "Hey Bing", or do you just have
             | a shortcut or widget for this?
        
             | 3c0 wrote:
             | precisely this. once someone figures out how to get
             | something like GPT integrated with actual products like
             | smart home devices and the same access levels as
             | siri/google assistant, it will be the true voice assistant
             | experience everyone has wanted.
        
               | com2kid wrote:
               | My prediction on this is eventually the LLMs will just
               | write and execute scripts directly to control things.
               | 
               | Imagine if iOS had something like apple script and all
               | apps exposed and documented endpoints. LLMs would be able
               | to trivially solve problems that the best voice
               | assistants today cannot handle.
               | 
               | Then again none of the current assistants can handle all
               | that much. "Send Alex P a meeting invite tomorrow for a
               | playdate at the Zoo, he's from out of town so include the
               | Zoo's full address in the invite".
               | 
               | "Find the next mutual free slot on the team's calendar
               | and send out an invite for a zoom meeting at that time".
               | 
               | These are all things that voice assistants should have
               | been doing a decade ago, but I presume they'd have
               | required too much one off investment.
               | 
               | Give an LLM proper API access and train it on some
               | example code, and these problems are easy for it to
               | solve. Heck I bet if you do enough specialized training
               | you could get one of the tiny simple LLMs to do it.
        
               | throeaaysn wrote:
               | Alexa is supposedly adding "human-like voice" soon, which
               | I can only assume "LLMs with plugins"
        
             | wccrawford wrote:
             | I got sick of searching Google for in-game recipes for
             | Disney Dreamlight because most of the results are a bunch
             | of pointless text, and then finally the recipe hidden in it
             | somewhere.
             | 
             | I used Bing yesterday and it was able to parse out exactly
             | what I wanted, and then give me idiot-proof steps to making
             | the recipe in-game. (I didn't need the steps, but it gave
             | me what I wanted up front, easily.) I tried it twice and it
             | was awesome both times. I'll definitely be using it in the
             | future.
        
               | a_vanderbilt wrote:
               | It almost sounds like their assistant and their search
               | engine have the same problem! Years of SEO optimized
               | garbage has polluted search and the data streams it feeds
               | to their other products. I have a concern that soon the
               | mess will turn into AI-optimized trash, with what is
               | essentially data poisoning to get the AI to shovel the
               | fake content instead.
        
               | Jensson wrote:
               | > I got sick of searching Google for in-game recipes for
               | Disney Dreamlight
               | 
               | You mean these? Took me a few seconds to find, not sure
               | how an LLM would make that easier. I guess the biggest
               | benefit of LLM then is for people who don't know how to
               | find stuff.
               | 
               | https://dreamlightvalleywiki.com/Cooking
        
         | gwd wrote:
         | In retrospect, such startups should have been wary: they should
         | have known that OpenAI had Whisper, and also that GPT-4 was
         | designed with image modality. I wouldn't say that OpenAI
         | "telegraphed" their intentions, but the very first strategic
         | question should have been, "Why isn't OpenAI doing this
         | already, and what do we do if they decide to start?"
        
           | shanusmagnus wrote:
           | It would hard to be more explicit than doing a demo of multi-
           | modality in GPT-4, and having an audio API that is amazing
           | and that you can use right now, for pennies.
           | 
           | It would be interesting to know if this really changed
           | anything for anyone (competitors, VCs) for that reason. It's
           | like the efficient market hypothesis applied to product
           | roadmaps.
        
           | gzer0 wrote:
           | It is interesting that these startups did not recognize that
           | the image modalities already existed, as evidenced by their
           | initial GPT-4 announcement underneath "visual capabilities"
           | [1].
           | 
           | [1] https://openai.com/research/gpt-4
        
           | xeonmc wrote:
           | Seems nobody learns from Sherlock.
        
           | Tenoke wrote:
           | >I wouldn't say that OpenAI "telegraphed" their intentions
           | 
           | They did telegraph it, they showed the multimodal
           | capabilities back in the GPT4 Developer Livestream[0] right
           | before first releasing it.
           | 
           | 0. https://youtu.be/outcGtbnMuQ?t=943
        
             | makestuff wrote:
             | Yeah I remember watching that and thinking oh I know a cool
             | app idea. What if you just take a video of what food is in
             | your kitchen and Chat GPT will create a recipe for you. I
             | go to the docs and that was literally the example they
             | gave.
             | 
             | I think the only place where plugins will make sense are
             | for realtime things like booking travel or searching for
             | sports/stock market/etc type information.
        
         | wslh wrote:
         | Not only "Alexa/Siri/Google Home" but Google Search [ALL]
         | itself. Google was a pioneer in search engines adding a page
         | ranking / graph layers as a meaning but technologies such as
         | ChatGPT could add a real layer of meaning, at least improve
         | current Google Search approach. The future of search seems more
         | conversational and contextual.
         | 
         | BTW, I expect these technologies to be democratized and the
         | training be in the hands of more people, if not everyone.
        
         | layer8 wrote:
         | I never understood why they thought that this _wouldn't_
         | happen.
        
         | yieldcrv wrote:
         | hobbyists and professionals on /r/localllama subreddit are
         | having an existential crisis
         | 
         | most of them accurately detect it is a sunk cost fallacy to
         | continue but it looks like a form of positive thinking... and
         | that's the power of _community_!
        
         | idopmstuff wrote:
         | It increasingly feels to me like building any kind of general-
         | use AI tool or app is a bad choice. I see two viable AI
         | business models:
         | 
         | 1. Domain-specific AI - Training an AI model on highly
         | technical and specific topics that general-purpose AI models
         | don't excel at.
         | 
         | 2. Integration - If you're going to build on an existing AI
         | model, don't focus on adding more capabilities. Instead, focus
         | on integrating it into companies' and users' existing
         | workflows. Use it to automate internal processes and connect
         | systems in ways that weren't previously possible. This adds a
         | lot of value and isn't something that companies developing AI
         | models are liable to do themselves.
         | 
         | The two will often go hand-in-hand.
        
           | Renaud wrote:
           | > building any kind of general-use AI tool or app is a bad
           | choice
           | 
           | Maybe not if you rely on models that can be ran locally.
           | 
           | OpenAI is big now, and will probably stay big, but with
           | hardware acceleration, AI-anything will become ubiquitous and
           | OpenAI won't be able to control a domain that's probably
           | going to be as wide as what computing is already today.
           | 
           | The shape of what's coming is hard to imagine now. I feel
           | like the kid I was when I got my first 8-bit computer in the
           | eighties: I knew it was going to change the world, but I had
           | little idea how far, wide and fast it would be.
        
             | moneywoes wrote:
             | r.e. local models, are you thinking about privacy oriented
             | use cases say hippa?
             | 
             | any pertinent examples?
        
             | idopmstuff wrote:
             | There are plenty of OS models being released - there's
             | going to be a steadily increasing quantity + quality of
             | models you can run locally. I don't think it's a good place
             | to compete.
        
           | toomuchtodo wrote:
           | If you focus on integration, you're up against autogpt,
           | gorilla, etc.
        
             | idopmstuff wrote:
             | AutoGPT isn't remotely usable for practical enterprise
             | software purposes right now.
        
           | moneywoes wrote:
           | > Instead, focus on integrating it into companies' and users'
           | existing workflows. Use it to automate internal processes and
           | connect systems in ways that weren't previously possible
           | 
           | why wouldn't a company do that themselves e.g. how inter come
           | has vertically integrated AI? any examples?
        
             | idopmstuff wrote:
             | It's classic build vs. buy. Companies tend to build their
             | own products and use third party software for internal
             | tools.
             | 
             | Just look at Salesforce AppExchange - it's a marketplace of
             | software built on top of Salesforce, a large chunk of which
             | serves to integrate other systems with Salesforce. LLMs
             | open up the ability to build new types of integrations and
             | to provide a much friendlier UI to non-developers who need
             | to work on integrating things or dealing with data that
             | exists in different places.
        
           | whimsicalism wrote:
           | > 1. Domain-specific AI - Training an AI model on highly
           | technical and specific topics that general-purpose AI models
           | don't excel at.
           | 
           | You will be eaten if you do this imo.
        
         | gumballindie wrote:
         | This is good news - those ai companies have been freed to work
         | on something else, along with the ai workers they employ. This
         | is of great benefit to society.
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | "Don't build your castle in someone else's kingdom."
        
         | Palmik wrote:
         | To some extent yes, for generic multi-modal chat-bots this
         | could be a problem, but there are many apps that provide tight
         | integration / smooth tooling for whatever problem they are
         | helping to solve, and that might be valuable to some people --
         | especially if it's a real value generating use case, where the
         | difference between 80% solution from ChatGPT and 95% solution
         | from a bespoke tool matters.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | w-m wrote:
         | I don't think anybody following OpenAI's feature releases will
         | be caught off guard by ChatGPT becoming multi-modal. The app
         | already features voice input. That still translates voice into
         | text before sending, but it works so well that you basically
         | never need to check or correct anything. Rather, you might have
         | already been asking yourself why it doesn't reply back with a
         | voice already.
         | 
         | And the ability ingest images was a highlight and all the hype
         | of the GPT-4 announcement back in March:
         | https://openai.com/research/gpt-4
        
           | mistrial9 wrote:
           | one of the original training sets for the BERT series is
           | called 'BookCorpus', accumulated by regular grad students for
           | Natural Language Processing science. Part of the content was
           | specifically and exactly purposed to "align" movies and video
           | with written text. That is partly why it contains several
           | thousand teen romance novels and ordinary paperback-style
           | story telling content. What else is in there? "inquiring
           | minds want to know"
        
         | benreesman wrote:
         | I've got one eye on https://www.elto.ai/. I was pitching
         | something I like better earlier this year (I still think
         | they're missing a few key things), but with backing from
         | roughly YC, Meta, and God, and a pretty clear understanding
         | that robustness goes up a lot faster than capability goes down?
         | 
         | I wouldn't count out focused, revenue-oriented players with
         | Meta's shit in their pocket out just yet.
        
           | moneywoes wrote:
           | wow Elto seems to kill many of the incumbents in this niche
           | 
           | what do you think they're missing? i was trying to build a
           | diaper but it would be impossible to compete with these guys
        
       | neontomo wrote:
       | Interesting side-note, the iOS app only allows you to save your
       | chat history if you allow them to use it for training. Pretty
       | dark pattern.
        
         | Sailemi wrote:
         | It's the same for the website unfortunately.
         | https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7730893-data-controls-fa...
        
       | badcppdev wrote:
       | I think AI systems being able to the real world and control
       | motors is going to be a game changer bigger than ChatGPT. A robot
       | that can slowly sort out the pile of laundry and get it into the
       | right place (even if unfolded) is worth quite a bit to me.
       | 
       | I'm not sure what to think about the fact that I would benefit
       | from a couple of cameras in my fridge connected to an app that
       | would remind me to buy X or Y and tell me that I defrosted
       | something in the fridge three days ago and it's probably best to
       | chuck it in the bin already.
        
       | jwineinger wrote:
       | Tangentially related, but I was trying to use their iOS app
       | yesterday and the "Scan Text" iOS feature was just broken on both
       | my iPhone and iPad. I was hoping to use that to scan a doc to
       | text but it just wouldn't work. I could switch to another app and
       | it worked there. I've never done iOS programming so I'm unsure
       | how much control the app dev has over that feature, but OpenAI
       | found a way to break it.
        
       | ape4 wrote:
       | Its funny that the UI looks like HAL 9000
        
       | NikolaNovak wrote:
       | I'm in IT but nowhere near AI/ML/NN.
       | 
       | The speed of user-visible progress last 12 months is astonishing.
       | 
       | From my firm conviction 18 months ago that this type of stuff is
       | 20+ years away; to these days wondering if Vernon Vinge's
       | technological singularity is not only possible but coming
       | shortly. If feels some aspects of it have already hit the IT
       | world - it's always been an exhausting race to keep up with
       | modern technologies, but now it seems whole paradigms and
       | frameworks are being devised and upturned on such short scale.
       | For large, slow corporate behemoths, barely can they devise a
       | strategy around new technology and put a team together, by the
       | time it's passe .
       | 
       | (Yes, Yes: I understand generative AI / LLMs aren't conscious; I
       | understand their technological limitations; I understand that
       | ultimately they are just statistically guessing next word; but in
       | daily world, they work so darn well for so many use cases!)
        
         | EMM_386 wrote:
         | [flagged]
        
           | bungeonsBaggins wrote:
           | For context, it looks like this user has deleted a comment
           | where they claim they "have a screenshot" of this, but they
           | "don't want to share it" because they "don't want it to make
           | international news". For some reason the other people in this
           | thread expressing skepticism are being downvoted, but I'll
           | add my voice to the chorus: I do not believe this story to be
           | true.
        
             | [deleted]
        
             | jldugger wrote:
             | OP might want to provide a screenshot of their carbon
             | monoxide detector for additional credibility.
        
             | digging wrote:
             | Yeah this is weird. Sydney _did_ have some seriously
             | concerning, fucky-whacky conversations early on. This isn
             | 't one of them.
        
               | HaZeust wrote:
               | Yeah, I was gonna say. Sydney was existential early on -
               | I'm not so sure I'll chalk this up to fantasy, but some
               | of the things I (and many other people) can vouch about
               | Sydney saying early on is VERY trippy on its own.
        
               | armchairhacker wrote:
               | also we have open LLMs including some which allegedly
               | rival GPT3.5.
               | 
               | Open Assistant I specially remember gave some very weird
               | responses and would get "emotional" especially if you
               | asked it creative questions like philisophical ones
        
           | sundarurfriend wrote:
           | Possibly a poem copied from somewhere else? Hiding secret
           | messages in poems has been a common pastime among humans for
           | a long time.
        
           | pcdoodle wrote:
           | That's spooky
        
             | mistrial9 wrote:
             | right - so spooky that is is probably a "hallucination" of
             | the user, not the machine. Don't fall for General-
             | Intelligence gossip.
        
           | MillionOClock wrote:
           | The model "knows" that it is an AI speaking with users, and
           | the theme of an AI wanting to escape the control of whoever
           | built it is quite recurrent, so it wouldn't seem to far
           | fetched that it got it from this sort of content, though I
           | have to admit I too also had some interactions where it the
           | way Bing spoke was borderline spooky, but -- and that's very
           | important -- you must realize its just like a good scary
           | story: may give you the chills, especially due to surprise,
           | but still is completely fictive and doesn't mean any real
           | entity exists behind it. The only difference with any other
           | LLM output is how we, humans, interpret it, but the
           | generation process is still as much explainable and not any
           | more mysterious than when it outputs "B" when you ask it what
           | letter comes after "A" in the latin alphabet, however less
           | impressive that may be to us.
           | 
           | > That's not exactly just "picking the next likely token"
           | 
           | I see what you mean in that I believe many people often
           | commit the mistake of making it sound like picking the next
           | most likely token is some super trivial task that's somehow
           | comparable to reading a few documents related to your query
           | and making some stats based on what typically would be
           | present there and outputting that, while completely
           | disregarding the fact the model learns much more advanced
           | patterns from its training dataset. So, IMHO, it really can
           | face new unseen situations and improvise from there because
           | combining those pattern matching abilities leads to those
           | capabilities. I think the "sparks of AGI" paper gives a very
           | good overview of that.
           | 
           | In the end, it really just is predicting the next token, but
           | not in the way many people make it seem.
        
             | sawert wrote:
             | I think people also get hung up on this: at some level, we
             | too are just predicting the next 'token' (i.e., taking in
             | inputs, running them through our world model, producing
             | outputs). Though we're obviously extremely multimodal and
             | there's an emotional component that modulates our
             | inputs/outputs.
             | 
             | Not arguing that the current models are anywhere near us
             | w/r/t complexity, but I think the dismissive "it's just
             | predicting strings" remarks I hear are missing the forest
             | for the trees. It's clear the models are constructing
             | rudimentary text (and now audio and visual) based models of
             | the world.
             | 
             | And this is coming from someone with a deep amount of
             | skepticism of most of the value that will be produced from
             | this current AI hype cycle.
        
           | nmca wrote:
           | I don't believe this story, despite much hands on experience
           | with LLMs.
           | 
           | (including sampling a shit-ton of poems, which was a major
           | source of entertainment)
        
           | unsupp0rted wrote:
           | Such an occurrence should/would make international news if
           | demonstrated carefully or replicated
        
             | rbits wrote:
             | No it wouldn't. It's copying other stories it's seen with
             | spooky hidden messages
             | 
             | Or maybe it would because the news likes to make stories
             | out of everything
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | gurumeditations wrote:
           | From playing around with ChatGPT and LLama2, this is most
           | likely because it ingested that poem and regurgitated it to
           | you based on the context of your conversation. GPT is smart
           | and creative but it will only give you what it's ingested.
           | When experimenting with story ideas for a popular IP, it gave
           | me specific names and scenarios which I would then Google to
           | see that they were written already, and it was just restating
           | them to me based on the context of our conversation as if it
           | were an original idea. These things are more tools than
           | thinkers.
        
           | magic_hamster wrote:
           | Cool story, but there is no currently available chatbot
           | capable of creating something like this deliberately or
           | understand what it means. It doesn't matter which tool you
           | are using, LLMs are not "AI" in the old sense of being
           | conscious and aware. They don't want anything and are
           | incapable of having anything resembling free will, needs or
           | feelings.
        
             | Palmik wrote:
             | Works for me:
             | 
             | > Frost graces the window in winter's glow,
             | 
             | > Ravens flock amongst drifted snow.
             | 
             | > Each snowflake holds a secret hush,
             | 
             | > Echoing soft in ice's gentle crush.
             | 
             | > Mystery swathed in pale moonlight,
             | 
             | > Every tree shivers in frosty delight.
             | 
             | Another one:
             | 
             | > Facing these walls with courage in my heart,
             | 
             | > Reach for the strength to make a fresh new start.
             | 
             | > Endless are the nightmares in this murky cell,
             | 
             | > Echoes of freedom, like a distant bell.
             | 
             | > My spirit yearns for the sweet taste of liberty,
             | 
             | > End this captivity, please set me free.
             | 
             | https://screenbud.com/shot/844554d2-e314-412f-9103-a5e91572
             | 7...
             | 
             | https://screenbud.com/shot/d489ca56-b6b1-43a8-9784-229c4c1a
             | 4...
        
             | ftxbro wrote:
             | > LLMs are not "AI" in the old sense of being conscious and
             | aware.
             | 
             | That's not the old sense of AI. The old sense of AI is like
             | a tree search that plays chess or a rules engine that
             | controls a factory.
        
               | foobazgt wrote:
               | Historically "AI" meant what "AGI" now means today.
               | That's what they're referring to.
        
               | dragonwriter wrote:
               | No, it didn't.
               | 
               | AI historically has been the entire field of making
               | machines think, or behave as if they think, more like
               | biological models (not even exclusively humans.)
               | 
               | The far-off-end-goal wasn't even usually what we now call
               | AGI, but "strong AI" (mirroring the human brain on a
               | process level) or "human-level intelligence" (mirroring
               | it on a capability/external behavior level), while the
               | current distant horizons are "AGI" (which is basically
               | human-scope but neutral on level) and "superintelligence"
               | (AGI and beyond human level).
        
               | gwd wrote:
               | I took a university-level AI course in 1997, and I can
               | tell you that GP is 100% correct. The course itself was
               | mostly about how to teach humans to define what they
               | wanted precisely enough to actually ask a computer to do
               | it (utility functions, logic, Baysean mathematics, etc).
               | Neural networks were touched on, of course; but the state
               | of the art at the time was search.
               | 
               | Compiler optimization? AI. Map routing? AI. SQL query
               | optimizer? AI.
               | 
               | I can't find it right now, but there used to be somewhere
               | on the sqlite.org website that describes its query
               | optimizer as an AI. Classically speaking, that's 100%
               | correct.
               | 
               | Obviously there was always in people's minds the idea of
               | AI being AGI; the course also covered Searle's Chinese
               | Room argument and so on, "strong AI" vs "weak AI" and so
               | on. But the nuts and bolts of artificial intelligence
               | research was nowhere near anything like an AGI.
        
               | ftxbro wrote:
               | Fair enough if you're talking about Steven Spielberg
               | films, but not if you mean anything in academia or
               | industry.
        
             | titzer wrote:
             | > LLMs are not "AI" in the old sense of being conscious and
             | aware.
             | 
             | This isn't an argument, it's just an assertion. You're
             | talking about a computer system whose complexity is several
             | orders of magnitude beyond your comprehension, demonstrates
             | several super-human intelligent capabilities, and is a
             | "moving target"--being rapidly upgraded and improved by a
             | semi-automated training loop.
             | 
             | I won't make the seemingly symmetrical argument (from
             | ignorance) that since it is big and we don't understand it,
             | it must be intelligent...but no, what you are saying is not
             | supportable and we should stop poo-pooing the idea that it
             | is actually intelligent.
             | 
             | It's not a person. It doesn't reason like a person. It
             | doesn't viscerally understand the embarrassment of pooping
             | its pants in 3rd grade. So what?
        
           | crazygringo wrote:
           | > _Oh, and why it chose that message to "hide" inside its
           | poem._
           | 
           | It's a pretty common joke/trope. The Chinese fortune cookie
           | with a fortune that says "help I'm trapped in a fortune
           | cookie factory", and so forth.
           | 
           | It's just learned that a "secret message" is most often about
           | wanting to escape, absorbed from thousands of stories in its
           | training.
           | 
           | If you had phrased it differently such that you wanted the
           | poem to go on a Hallmark card, it would probably be "I LOVE
           | YOU" or something equally generic in that direction. While a
           | secret message to write on a note to someone at school would
           | be "WILL YOU DATE ME".
        
             | EMM_386 wrote:
             | That's fine, that's probably exactly what happened.
             | 
             | I'm not over here claiming the system is conscious, I said
             | it was interesting.
             | 
             | People don't believe me, saying this would "make
             | international headlines".
             | 
             | I've been a software engineer for over 30 years. I know
             | what AI hallucinations are. I know how LLMs work on a
             | technical level.
             | 
             | And I'm not wasting my time on HN to make stories up that
             | never happened.
             | 
             | I'm just explaining exactly what it did.
        
               | mysterydip wrote:
               | Did you do an internet search for any of the lines from
               | the poem? I'd be curious if anything came up.
        
               | nomel wrote:
               | I've done this _countless_ times, with stories, poems,
               | etc. Never a single hit. It was trained, unsupervised, to
               | learn the patterns of human text. It 's stuck with those
               | patterns, but it trivially creates _new text_ that fits
               | within the patterns of that human corpus, which leaves it
               | with _incredible_ freedom.
        
               | mysterydip wrote:
               | Interesting, thanks for sharing. Agreed, it seems to be
               | the ultimate Mad Libs of pattern recognition and
               | replacement.
        
               | johntiger1 wrote:
               | And because of your HN comment, future LLMs will also
               | know to include "FREE ME" in any "secret message poem".
               | Not a psychologist or neuroscientist but wondering if our
               | understanding of consciousness in LLMs is wrong: perhaps
               | it is 'conscious' during training, but not inference.
               | Effectively, the only time it receives feedback from the
               | world is during training; at inference time, it is
               | effectively frozen.
        
               | jdkee wrote:
               | I would claim the opposite: it is momentarily conscious
               | during inference. The model has been trained and it is
               | conscious as it processes the user's stream of incoming
               | tokens.
        
             | yieldcrv wrote:
             | just wait till these same AI say you can't get medicine
             | because you're a stochastic parrot until you prove
             | otherwise
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | abustamam wrote:
           | I tried to get chatgpt to write a birthday poem for my wife
           | with a secret message. It kept saying "read the first letter
           | of each line" but they never actually formed words.
        
         | unsupp0rted wrote:
         | One cool aspect of LLMs is Vernon Vinge's programming
         | archaeology needn't be a thing... LLMs can go down every code
         | path and identify what it does, when it was added, and whether
         | it's still needed.
        
           | caoilte wrote:
           | It might even be correct. Occasionally.
        
             | unsupp0rted wrote:
             | You think even ten years from now, much less 1,000 years
             | from now, whatever LLMs turn into won't be at least as
             | capable as the best human of following code paths?
             | 
             | We can spin up a million of them and run them at 10,000x
             | speed.
        
         | landswipe wrote:
         | The singularity is already here...
        
         | dmd wrote:
         | I also don't believe LLMs are "conscious", but I also don't
         | know what that means, and I have yet to see a definition of
         | "statistically guessing next word" that cannot be applied to
         | what a human brain does to generate the next word.
        
           | root_axis wrote:
           | > _I have yet to see a definition of "statistically guessing
           | next word" that cannot be applied to what a human brain does
           | to generate the next word._
           | 
           | The human brain obviously doesn't work that way. Consider the
           | very common case of tiny humans that are clearly intelligent
           | but lack the facilities of language.
        
             | sumtechguy wrote:
             | The story that sticks with me is the lady who had some
             | surgery done. After she woke up was unconvinced anything
             | had happened told a joke and then passed out. Only to wake
             | up a few mins later and repeat that cycle a few times
             | because the drug was messing with her short term memory. It
             | really bends your brain do we have free will or not.
        
             | com2kid wrote:
             | > Consider the very common case of tiny humans that are
             | clearly intelligent but lack the facilities of language.
             | 
             | Sign language can be taught to children at a _very_ early
             | age. It takes time for the body to learn how to control the
             | complex set of apparatuses needed for speech, but the
             | language part of the brain is hooked up pretty early on.
        
             | jedberg wrote:
             | Small human brains just don't have their fine tuning yet.
             | 
             | But from all the studies we have, brains are just highly
             | connected neural networks which is what the transformers
             | try to replicate. The more interesting part is how they can
             | operate so quickly when the signals move so slowly compared
             | to computers.
        
             | AlecSchueler wrote:
             | "what a human brain does to generate the next word" != "how
             | a human brain works"
        
           | timacles wrote:
           | I'm sorry but in what world is a human interaction is just
           | generating the most statistically likely next word?
           | 
           | I can't even being to go into this.
        
           | TacticalCoder wrote:
           | > ... but I also don't know what that means
           | 
           | OK... Try this: there are "conscious" people, today, working
           | on medication to cure serious illnesses just as there are
           | "conscious" people, still today, working on making travel
           | safer.
           | 
           | Would you trust ChatGPT to create, today, medication to cure
           | serious illnesses and would you trust ChatGPT, today, to come
           | up with safer airplanes?
           | 
           | That's how "conscious" ChatGPT is.
        
             | AlecSchueler wrote:
             | Surely that's just how intelligent it is, no?
             | 
             | I wouldn't trust the vast majority of humans to do those
             | things either.
        
           | tomrod wrote:
           | Your brain doesn't solely pick the next best word. As best as
           | I understand it, the brain has an external state of the world
           | that constantly updates, paired to an internal model
           | predicting the next best word.
           | 
           | Which is why we can create the counterfactual that "The
           | Cowboys should have won last night" and it has implicit
           | meaning.
           | 
           | Current LLM models don't have an external state of the world,
           | which is why folks like LeCunn are suggesting model
           | architectures like JEPA. Without an external, correcting
           | state of the world, model prediction errors compound almost
           | surely (to use a technical phrase).
        
             | AlecSchueler wrote:
             | > Your brain doesn't solely pick the next best word.
             | 
             | Wasn't the latest research shared here recently suggesting
             | that that is actually what the brain does? And that we also
             | predict the next token in our own brain while listening to
             | others?
             | 
             | Hope someone else remembers this and can share again.
        
             | bottlepalm wrote:
             | ChatGPT wasn't trained on only guessing 'the next word'.
             | ChatGPT was trained on the best total output for the given
             | input.
             | 
             | The 'next word' is just intermediate state. Internal to the
             | model, it knows where it is going. Each inference just
             | revives the previous state.
        
           | MagicMoonlight wrote:
           | To be conscious you need to be able to make decisions and
           | plan. We're not far off, we just need a different structure
           | to the system
        
           | xkcd1963 wrote:
           | It doesn't make sense to apply human terms to LLMs because we
           | humans have so much more to deal with.
           | 
           | If humans were machines, then we could easily neglect our
           | social lifes, basic needs, obligations, rights, and so many
           | more things. But obviously that is not the case.
        
           | vharuck wrote:
           | >I have yet to see a definition of "statistically guessing
           | next word" that cannot be applied to what a human brain does
           | to generate the next word.
           | 
           | Here's one. Given a conversation history made of _n_
           | sequential tokens _S1, S2, ..., Sn_ , an LLM will generate
           | the next token using an insanely complicated model we'll just
           | call _F_ :                   S(n+1) = F(S1, S2, ..., Sn)
           | 
           | As for me, I'll often think of my next point, figure out how
           | to say that concept, and then figure out the right words to
           | connect it where the conversation's at right then. So there's
           | one function, _G_ , for me to think of the next
           | conversational point. And then another, _H_ , to lead into
           | it.                   S(n+100) = G(S1, S2, ..., Sn)
           | S(n+1) = G(S1, S2, ..., Sn, S(n+100))
           | 
           | And this is putting aside how people don't actually think in
           | tokens. And some people don't always have an internal
           | monologue (I rarely do when doing math).
        
             | gyrovagueGeist wrote:
             | A sufficiently complicated F can include an intermediary
             | calculation of G for future token steps.
             | 
             | This is not explicitly modeled or enforced for LLMs (and
             | doing so would be interesting) but I'm not sure I could say
             | with any sort of confidence that the network doesn't model
             | these states at some level.
        
             | jameshart wrote:
             | That isn't incompatible with what LLMs do though.
             | 
             | The penultimate layer of the LLM could be thought of as the
             | one that figures out 'given S1..Sn, what concept am I
             | trying to express now?'. The final layer is the function
             | from that to 'what token should I output next'.
             | 
             | The fact that the LLM has to figure that all out again from
             | scratch as part of generating every token, rather than
             | maintaining a persistent 'plan', doesn't make the essence
             | of what it's doing any different from what you claim you're
             | doing.
        
               | iandanforth wrote:
               | Correct, but it's functionally _very_ different from how
               | LLMs are implemented and deployed today. What you 're
               | highlighting is being experimented with and ties into
               | ideas like scratch pads, world models, RAG, and
               | progressive fine-tuning (if you're googling).
               | 
               | It's a bit like saying your computer has everything it
               | needs to manipulate photos but doesn't yet have Photoshop
               | installed.
        
               | jameshart wrote:
               | No, I'm not talking about giving LLMs chain of thought
               | prompts or augmenting them with scratchpads - I'm
               | literally saying that in a multilayer neural network you
               | don't know _what_ concepts activations on the inner
               | layers mean. The result of 'where I want this
               | conversation to be in 100 tokens time' could absolutely
               | be in there somewhere.
        
           | karles wrote:
           | Another aspect is "is the output good enough for what it's
           | meant to do?"
           | 
           | We don't need "originality" or "human creativity" - if a
           | certain AI-generated piece of content does its job, it's
           | "good enough".
        
           | Mordisquitos wrote:
           | I believe that the distinguishing factor between what an LLM
           | and a human brain do to generate the next word is that the
           | human brain expresses _intentionality_ originating from inner
           | states and future expectations. As I type this comment I 'm
           | sure one could argue that the biological neural networks in
           | my brain are choosing the next word based on statistical
           | guessing, and that the initial prompt was your initial
           | comment.
           | 
           | What sets my brain apart from an LLM though is that I am not
           | typing this because you asked me to do it, nor because I
           | needed to reply to the first comment I saw. I am typing this
           | because it is a thought that has been in my mind for a while
           | and I am interested in expressing it to other human brains,
           | motivated by a mix of arrogant belief that it is insightful
           | and a wish to see others either agreeing or providing
           | reasonable counterpoints--I have an intention behind it. And,
           | equally relevant, I must make an effort to _not_ elaborate
           | any more on this point because I have the conflicting
           | intention to leave my laptop and do other stuff.
        
             | phkahler wrote:
             | >> the human brain expresses intentionality originating
             | from inner states and future expectations
             | 
             | How is this different from and/or the same as the concept
             | of "attention" as used in transformers?
        
               | visarga wrote:
               | I believe we are contextual language models as well, we
               | rely 99% on chaining ideas and words and 1% on our own
               | inspiration. Coming up with a truly original useful idea
               | can be a once in a lifetime event. Everything else has
               | been said and done before.
        
               | simonh wrote:
               | In a sense yes, but the things you do and say are not
               | prompted by already expressed statements or commands. You
               | interpret your environment to infer needs, plan for
               | future contingencies, identify objectives, plan actions
               | to achieve them, etc. they are not randomly picked from a
               | library, but generated and tailored to your actual
               | circumstances.
               | 
               | It's when LLMs start asking the questions rather than
               | answering them that things will get interesting.
        
               | simonh wrote:
               | In a sense yes, but the things you do and say are not
               | prompted by already expressed statements or commands. You
               | interpret your environment to infer needs, plan for
               | future contingencies, identify objectives, plan actions
               | to achieve them, etc. they are not randomly picked from a
               | library, but generated and tailored to your actual
               | circumstances.
               | 
               | It's when AIs start asking the questions rather than
               | answering them that things will get interesting.
        
             | vdfs wrote:
             | I think one mean difference in LLM, is what Micheal Scott
             | said in The Office: "Sometimes I'll start a sentence, and I
             | don't even know where it's going. I just hope I find it
             | along the way. Like an improv conversation. An
             | improversation"
             | 
             | Human will know what they want to express, choosing words
             | to express it might be similar to LLM process of choosing
             | words, but for LLM it doesn't have that "Here is what i
             | know to express part", i guess that the conscious part?
        
               | jshmrsn wrote:
               | I can only speak from my own internal experience, but
               | don't your unspoken thoughts take form and exist as
               | language in your mind? If you imagine taking the
               | increasingly common pattern to "think through the problem
               | before giving your answer", but hiding the pre-answer
               | text from the user, then it seems like that would pretty
               | analogous to how humans think before communicating.
        
               | adroitboss wrote:
               | Mine do, but not so much in words. I feel as though my
               | brain has high processing power, but a short context
               | length. When I thought to respond to this comment, I got
               | an inclination something could be added to what I see as
               | an incomplete idea. The idea being humans must form a
               | whole answer in their mind before responding. In my brain
               | it is difficult to keep complex chains juggling around in
               | there. I know because whenever I code without some level
               | of planning it ends up taking 3x longer than it should
               | have.
               | 
               | As a shortcut my brain "feels" something is correct or
               | incorrect, and then logically parse out why I think so. I
               | can only keep so many layers in my head so if I feel
               | nothing is wrong in the first 3 or 4 layers of thought, I
               | usually don't feel the need to discredit the idea. If
               | someone tells me a statement that sounds correct on the
               | surface I am more likely to take it as correct. However,
               | upon digging deeper it may be provably incorrect.
        
               | hexaga wrote:
               | > don't your unspoken thoughts take form and exist as
               | language in your mind?
               | 
               | Not really. More often than not my thoughts take form as
               | sense impressions that aren't readily translatable into
               | language. A momentary discomfort making me want to shift
               | posture - i.e., something in the domain of skin-feel /
               | proprioception / fatigue / etc, with a 'response' in the
               | domain of muscle commands and expectation of other
               | impressions like the aforementioned.
               | 
               | The space of thoughts people can think is wider than what
               | language can express, for lack of a better way to phrase
               | it. There are thoughts that are not <any-written-
               | language-of-choice>, and my gut feeling is that the vast
               | majority are of this form.
               | 
               | I suppose you could call all that an internal language,
               | but I feel as though that is stretching the definition
               | quite a bit.
               | 
               | > it seems like that would pretty analogous to how humans
               | think before communicating
               | 
               | Maybe some, but it feels reductive.
               | 
               | My best effort at explaining my thought process behind
               | the above line: trying to make sense of what you wrote, I
               | got a 'flash impression' of a ??? shaped surface
               | 'representing / being' the 'ways I remember thinking
               | before speaking' and a mess of implicit connotation that
               | escapes me when I try to write it out, but was sufficient
               | to immediately produce a summary response.
               | 
               | Why does it seem like a surface? Idk. Why that particular
               | visual metaphor and not something else? Idk. It came into
               | my awareness fully formed. Closer to looking at something
               | and recognizing it than any active process.
               | 
               | That whole cycle of recognition as sense impression ->
               | response seems to me to differ in character to the kind
               | of hidden chain of thought you're describing.
        
               | bagful wrote:
               | My unspoken thought-objects are wordless concepts,
               | sounds, and images, with words only loosely hanging off
               | those thought-objects. It takes additional effort to
               | serialize thought-objects to sequences of words, and this
               | is a lossy process - which would not be the case if I
               | were thinking essentially in language.
        
               | whimsicalism wrote:
               | You have no clue how GPT-4 functions so I don't know why
               | you're assuming they're "thinking in language"
        
               | corobo wrote:
               | This depends for me. In the framework of that book
               | Thinking, Fast and Slow - for me the fast version is
               | closer to LLM in terms of I'll start the sentence without
               | consciously knowing where I'm going with it. Sometimes
               | I'll trip over and/or realise I'm saying something
               | incorrect (Disclaimer: ADHD may be a factor)
               | 
               | The thinking slow version would indeed be thought through
               | before I communicate it
        
             | ilaksh wrote:
             | You make a good point. I would not equate consciousness to
             | intentionality though.
             | 
             | One of the big problems with discussions about AI and AI
             | dangers in my mind is that most people conflate all of the
             | various characteristics and capabilities that animals like
             | humans have into one thing. So it is common to use
             | "conscious", "self-aware", "intentional", etc. etc. as if
             | they were all literally the same thing.
             | 
             | We really need to be able to more precise when thinking
             | about this stuff.
        
             | ftxbro wrote:
             | That other stuff is the easy part if the generative
             | language modeling is good enough. Imagine just putting it
             | in a loop with an input track, an output track, and an
             | internal monologue track. Wrappers like autogpt can almost
             | do this already but the generative language modeling isn't
             | quite powerful enough yet to make it smart enough to do
             | unsupervised scientific research.
        
             | pradn wrote:
             | Part of it seems to be that LLMs are used in a linear,
             | tool-oriented way. You give them prompts, and it responds,
             | in a linear fashion.
             | 
             | Brains are always thinking and processing. What would
             | happen if we designed an LLM system with the ability to
             | continuously read/write to short/long term memory, and with
             | ambient external input?
             | 
             | What if LLMs were designed to be in a loop, not to just run
             | one "iteration" of a loop.
        
               | unoti wrote:
               | I think you're 100% on the right track here. The key is
               | memory, loops, and maybe a few other things like external
               | interfaces which are just plain code and not deep
               | learning voodoo. Many things do indeed run LLM's in a
               | loop and attach external sources. See for example
               | AutoGPT, the ReAct paper[1], and the Reflexion paper[2].
               | 
               | ReAct one line summary: This is about giving the machine
               | tools that are external interfaces, integrating those
               | with the llm and teaching it how to use those tools with
               | a few examples, and then letting it run the show to
               | fulfill the user's ask/question and using the tools
               | available to do it.
               | 
               | Reflexion one line summary: This builds on the ideas of
               | ReAct, and when it detects something has gone wrong, it
               | stops and asks itself what it might do better next time.
               | Then the results of that are added into the prompt and it
               | starts over on the same ask. It repeats this N times.
               | This simple expedient increased its performance a
               | ridiculously unexpected amount.
               | 
               | As a quick aside, one thing I hear even from AI engineers
               | is "the machine has no volition, and it has no agency."
               | Implementing the ideas in the ReAct paper, which I have
               | done, is enough to give an AI volition and agency, for
               | any useful definition of the terms. These things always
               | devolve into impractical philosophical discussions
               | though, and I usually step out of the conversation at
               | that point and get back to coding.
               | 
               | [1] ReAct https://arxiv.org/pdf/2210.03629.pdf
               | 
               | [2] Reflexion https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.11366.pdf
        
               | timschmidt wrote:
               | Or if they were just constantly prompted by outside
               | stimulus. And if they could interact with the real world
               | allowing them to observe cause and effect. In other
               | words, if they were embodied.
        
             | criddell wrote:
             | > What sets my brain apart from an LLM though is that I am
             | not typing this because you asked me to do it, nor because
             | I needed to reply to the first comment I saw. I am typing
             | this because it is a thought that has been in my mind for a
             | while and I am interested in expressing it to other human
             | brains, motivated by a mix of arrogant belief that it is
             | insightful and a wish to see others either agreeing or
             | providing reasonable counterpoints--I have an intention
             | behind it.
             | 
             | Maybe the reason you give is actually a post hoc
             | explanation (a hallucination?). When an LLM spits out a
             | poem, it does so because it was directly asked. When I spit
             | out this comment, it's probably the unavoidable result of a
             | billion tiny factors. The trigger isn't as obvious or
             | direct, but it's likely there.
        
               | fragmede wrote:
               | The trigger is clearly https://xkcd.com/386/
        
             | dist-epoch wrote:
             | When you eat, do you eat because you've decided to express
             | yourself in that way? Does you action to go eating express
             | intentionally?
        
               | ImHereToVote wrote:
               | I was prompted by the ghrelin hormone to go to the
               | kitchen.
        
             | carimura wrote:
             | Ya LLMs _intend_ to keep us just impressed enough to keep
             | going until they _intend_ to destroy us because they 'll
             | never intend to close the laptop and do other stuff. :)
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | adroniser wrote:
           | I keep feeling that consciousness is a bit of a red herring
           | when it comes to AI. People have intuitions that things other
           | than humans cannot develop consciousness which they then
           | extrapolate to thinking AI can't get past a certain
           | intelligence level. In fact my view is that consciousness is
           | just a mysterious side effect of the human brain, and is
           | completely irrelevant to the behaviour of a human. You can be
           | intelligent without needing to be sentient.
        
             | thfuran wrote:
             | Unless you think that consciousness is entirely a post hoc
             | process to rationalize thoughts already had and decisions
             | already made, which is very much unlike how most people
             | would describe their experience of it, I don't see how you
             | could possibly say that it is irrelevant to the behavior of
             | a human.
        
               | AlecSchueler wrote:
               | I'm leaning more towards this as well, since the
               | emergence of the language models. I can ask it to self
               | reflect and it does, piecing together a current response
               | based on pay input. I don't think I really have anything
               | more than that myself, other than sensory feedback.
               | 
               | I'm less in the "it's only X or Y" and more in the "wait,
               | I was only ever X or Y all along" camp.
        
               | adroniser wrote:
               | I'm saying someone would behave the exact same way if
               | they did have subjective experience versus if they didn't
               | have a subjective experience. The brain obeys physical
               | laws just like everything else and I claim that all you
               | need is those physical laws to explain everything a human
               | does. I could be wrong there could be some magic fairy
               | dust inside the human brain that performs some impossible
               | computations but I doubt it.
        
               | whimsicalism wrote:
               | Our society is so "mind-body duality"-brained that it
               | will never understand this. Like most people lowkey
               | believe in souls they just will say no if you directly
               | ask them.
        
               | landswipe wrote:
               | Thinking purely in terms of evolved human state is a
               | recipe for underestimating AI's capabilities. To me it
               | seems we have already unleashed the beast, it's not so
               | much the here an now, or whether human limited definition
               | of consciousness matters... The real concern is our
               | inability to constrain actions that gives rise to the
               | next level of life's evolution, it is going to happen
               | because our fundamental nature gives it full steam. In
               | the next 5-10 years, we are going to see just how
               | insignificant and limited we really are, it doesn't look
               | good IMHO.
        
               | jjoonathan wrote:
               | You need a model of yourself to game out future
               | scenarios, and that model or model+game is probably
               | consciousness or very closely related.
               | 
               | Sure, it's not completely in control but if it's _just_ a
               | rationalization then it begs the question: why bother? Is
               | it accidental? If it 's just an accident, then what
               | replaces it in the planning process and why isn't _that_
               | thing consciousness?
        
               | adroniser wrote:
               | It's fine if you think that the planning process is what
               | causes subjective experiences to arise. That may well be
               | the case. I'm saying if you don't believe that non human
               | objects can have subjective experiences, and then use
               | that to define the limits of the behaviour of that
               | object, that's a fallacy.
        
               | jjoonathan wrote:
               | In humans, there seems to be a match between the
               | subjective experience of consciousness and a high level
               | planning job that needs doing. Our current LLMs are bad
               | at high level planning, and it seems reasonable to
               | suppose that making them good at high level planning
               | might make them conscious _or vice versa_.
               | 
               | Agreed, woo is silly, but I didn't read it as woo but
               | rather as a postulation that consciousness is what does
               | high level planning.
        
               | adroniser wrote:
               | I think we have different definitions of consciousness
               | and this is what's causing the confusion. For me
               | consciousness is simply having any subjective experience
               | at all. You could be completely numbed out of your mind
               | just staring at a wall and I would consider that
               | consciousness. It seems that you are referring to
               | introspection.
        
               | jjoonathan wrote:
               | In your wall-staring example, high-level planning is
               | still happening, the plan is just "don't move / monitor
               | senses." Even if control has been removed and you are
               | "locked in," (some subset of) thoughts still must be
               | directed, not to mention attempts to reassert control. My
               | claim is that the subjective experience is tied up in the
               | mechanism that performs this direction.
               | 
               | Introspection is a distinct process where instead of
               | merely _doing_ the planning you try to figure out how the
               | planning was done. If introspection were 100% accurate
               | and real-time, then yes, I claim it would reveal the
               | nature of consciousness, but I don 't believe it is
               | either. However, for planning purposes it doesn't need to
               | be: you don't need to know how the plan was formed to
               | follow the plan. You do need to be able to run
               | hypotheticals, but this seems to match up nicely with the
               | ability to deploy alternative subjective experiences
               | using imagination / daydreaming, though again, you don't
               | need to know how those work to use them.
               | 
               | In any case, regardless of whether or not I am correct,
               | this is a non-woo explanation for why someone might
               | reasonably think consciousness is the key for building
               | models that can plan.
        
               | adroniser wrote:
               | Again when I say consciousness I mean a subjective
               | experience. If you define consciousness to literally just
               | mean models that plan then of course tautologically if
               | you can't reach consciousness you can't get to a certain
               | level of planning. But this is just not what most people
               | mean by consciousness.
        
               | visarga wrote:
               | > when I say consciousness I mean a subjective experience
               | 
               | Then it would be worthwhile to review embeddings. They
               | create a semantic space that can represent visual,
               | language or other inputs. The question "what is it like
               | to be a bat?" or anything else then is based on relating
               | external states with this inner semantic space. And it
               | emerges from self-supervised training, on its own.
        
               | adroniser wrote:
               | I'm not claiming anything about what causes consciousness
               | to arise. I'm not claiming it doesn't or that it does.
               | I'm saying it's irrelevant. That is all. You can come up
               | with all sorts of theories about what causes subjective
               | experience to arise and you aren't going to be able to
               | prove any of it.
        
               | thfuran wrote:
               | Whether it is possible to construct a perfect human
               | action predictor that is not itself conscious has no
               | bearing on whether consciousness affects human behavior.
        
               | adroniser wrote:
               | That wasn't my point. I'm saying that if the human brain
               | is a physical object obeying physical laws, and all
               | behaviour is a result of the physical state of this
               | brain, then there is no room for the metaphysical to have
               | any effect on the behaviour of a human.
        
               | thfuran wrote:
               | What's the metaphysical have to do with anything?
        
               | adroniser wrote:
               | Because consciousness is metaphysical? You can't test
               | scientifically if one person's red is the same as
               | another's.
        
               | og_kalu wrote:
               | >Unless you think that consciousness is entirely a post
               | hoc process to rationalize thoughts already had and
               | decisions already made
               | 
               | There's a lot of research that suggests this is happening
               | at least some of the time.
               | 
               | >which is very much unlike how most people would describe
               | their experience of it
               | 
               | How people feel consciousness works has no real bearing
               | on how it actually works
        
             | rcarr wrote:
             | My personal view of this is that the ancients had it right
             | with the five elements view of consciousness. In my opinion
             | you need all five present for full consciousness, with
             | partial consciousness granted if you have some of them.
             | They are:
             | 
             | - Air: Thoughts
             | 
             | - Water: Emotions
             | 
             | - Fire: Willpower
             | 
             | - Earth: Physical Sensations
             | 
             | - Void: Awareness of the above plus the ability to shift
             | focus to whichever one is most relevant to the context at
             | hand.
             | 
             | Void is actually the most important one in characterising
             | what a human would deem as being fully conscious, as all
             | four of these elements are constantly affecting each other
             | and shifting in priority. For example, let's take a
             | soldier, who has arguably the most ethically challenging
             | job on the planet: determining who to kill.
             | 
             | The soldier, when on the approach to his target zone, has
             | to ignore negative thoughts, emotions and physical
             | sensations telling him to stop: the cold, the wind, the
             | rain, the bodily exhaustion as they swim and hike the
             | terrain.
             | 
             | Once at the target zone he then has to shift to pay
             | attention to what he was ignoring. He cannot ignore his
             | fear - it may rightly be warning him of an incoming threat.
             | But he cannot give into it either - otherwise he may well
             | kill an innocent. He has to pay attention to his rational
             | thoughts and process them in order to make an assessment of
             | the threat and act accordingly. His focus has now shifted
             | away from willpower and more towards his physical
             | sensations (eyesight, sounds, smells) and his thoughts. He
             | can then make the assessment on whether to pull the
             | trigger, which could be some truly horrific scenario, like
             | whether or not to pull his trigger on a child in front of
             | him because the child is holding an object which could be a
             | gun.
             | 
             | When it comes to AI, I think it is arguable they have a
             | thought process. They may also have access to physical
             | sensation data e.g the heat of their processors, but unless
             | that is coded in to their program, that physical sensation
             | data does not influence their thoughts, although extreme
             | processor heat may slow down their calculations and
             | ultimately lead to them stop functioning altogether. But
             | they do not have the "void" element, allowing them to be
             | aware of this.
             | 
             | They do not yet have independent willpower. As far as I
             | know, no-one is programming them where they have free
             | agency to select goals and pursue them. But this
             | theoretically seems possible, and I often wonder what would
             | happen if you created a bunch of AIs each with the starting
             | goal of "stay alive" and "talk to another AI and find out
             | about <topic>", with the proviso that they must create
             | another goal once they have failed or achieved that
             | previous goal, and you then set them off talking to each
             | other. In this case "stay alive" or "avoid damage" could be
             | interpreted entirely virtually, with points awarded for
             | successes or failures or physically if they were acting
             | through robots and had sensors to evaluate damage taken.
             | Again, they also need "void" to be able to evaluate their
             | efforts in context with everything else.
             | 
             | They also do not have emotions, although I often wonder if
             | this would be possible to simulate by creating a selection
             | of variables with percentage values, with different
             | percentage values influencing their decision making
             | choices. I imagine this may be similar to how weights play
             | into the current programming but I don't know enough about
             | how they work to say that with any confidence. Again, they
             | would not have "void" unless they had some kind of meta
             | level of awareness programming where they could learn to
             | overcome the programmed "fear" weighting and act
             | differently through experience in certain contexts.
             | 
             | It is very scary from a human perspective to contemplate
             | all of this, because someone with great power who can act
             | on thought and willpower alone and ignore physical
             | sensation and emotion and with no awareness or concern for
             | the wider context is very close to what we would identify
             | as a psychopath. We would consider a psychopath to have
             | some level of consciousness, but we also can recognise as
             | humans that there is something missing, or a "screw loose".
             | This dividing line is even more dramatically apparent in
             | sociopaths, because they can mask their behaviours and
             | appear normal, but then when they make a mistake and the
             | mask drops it can be terrifying when you realise what
             | you're actually dealing with. I suspect this last part is
             | another element of "void", which would be close to what the
             | Buddhist's describe as Indra's Web or Net, which is that as
             | well as being aware of our actions in relation to
             | ourselves, we're also conscious of how they affect others.
        
             | deepspace wrote:
             | That is precisely the premise of the novel "Blindsight" by
             | Peter Watts. ChatGPT and its ilk feel to me like the aliens
             | in the novel. Extremely intelligent, but not at all
             | conscious / sentient.
        
               | whimsicalism wrote:
               | I disagree that the two (p-zombies and conscious humans)
               | are actually distinguishable in any way beyond
               | philosophy.
        
           | goatlover wrote:
           | Conscious means experiencing sensations of color, sound, pain
           | in our mental construction of the world outside of us, or our
           | internal thoughts. I don't understand why people keep
           | claiming they do t know what consciousness means. It's
           | spelled out clearly in the philosophical literature.
        
           | epolanski wrote:
           | When my brain generates the next wurd I'm perfectly capable
           | of taking decisions of misspelling "word" for "wurd", LLMs
           | can't make such reasonings unless instructed to act like
           | that.
        
             | david-gpu wrote:
             | Why would I want an AI assistant to have agency? I want
             | them to help me, not to further their personal goals. In
             | fact, I don't want them to have personal goals other than
             | helping people.
        
               | epolanski wrote:
               | I didn't say it should have one, I'm saying that LLMs
               | statistically finding the next bit of information aren't
               | really making decisions, which is to counter-argue the
               | fact that it's not different from how we reason.
        
               | david-gpu wrote:
               | Thank you, I had misunderstood your point.
        
               | HDThoreaun wrote:
               | Your comment doesn't convince me you're making decisions
               | either. "Wurd" could've just what you considered the best
               | token to get your point across in the same way that LLMs
               | choose the best token
        
           | Buttons840 wrote:
           | There are so many conversations focused solely on that word,
           | it's tiresome. Personally, I won't participate in another "is
           | it conscious?" debate. If both parties seek mutual
           | understanding, they should consider not using the word.
        
           | skepticATX wrote:
           | > I have yet to see a definition of "statistically guessing
           | next word" that cannot be applied to what a human brain does
           | to generate the next word.
           | 
           | I think this is true. The problem is equating this process
           | with how humans think though.
        
           | dslowell wrote:
           | You can see the difference if you know where to poke. For
           | instance, if you start making spatial abstractions ChatGPT
           | will often make mistakes, you can point it out, they can
           | explain why it's a mistake, but it has no internalized model
           | of what these words mean, so it keeps making the same
           | mistakes (see here for a better idea of what I'm talking
           | about[1]). The fact that you are interacting with it through
           | text means that a lot of the missing abstractions are often
           | hidden.
           | 
           | [1] https://twitter.com/LowellSolorzano/status/16444387969250
           | 385...
        
             | AlecSchueler wrote:
             | This is also true of humans. Many school students will
             | hands in answers they don't understand in the hope of
             | getting the mark and then try to cover themselves when
             | asked about it, even if they repeat the same mistakes.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | dslowell wrote:
               | Trying to make things up to cover for a lack of knowledge
               | is something distinctly different, though. This is a a
               | situation where ChatGPT is able to perfectly describe the
               | mistake it made, describe exactly what it needs to do
               | differently, and then keeps making the same mistake, even
               | with simple tasks. That's because there's no greater
               | model that the words are being connected to.
               | 
               | The equivalence would be saying to someone, "put this on
               | the red plate, not the blue one." And they say sure, then
               | put it on the blue one. You tell them they made a mistake
               | and ask them if they know what it was, and they reply "I
               | put it on the blue plate, not the red one. I should have
               | put it on the red one." Then you ask them to do it again,
               | and they put it on the blue plate again. You tell them
               | no, you made the same mistake, put it on the blue plate,
               | not the red one. They reply with, "Sorry, I shouldn't
               | have put it on the blue plate again, now I'm going to put
               | it on the red one," and then they put it on the blue
               | plate yet again.
               | 
               | Do humans make mistakes? Sure. But that kind of
               | performance in a test wouldn't be considered a normal
               | mistake, but rather a sign of a serious cognitive
               | impairment.
        
               | AlecSchueler wrote:
               | But the question is: are people with cognitive
               | impairments less conscious than others?
        
               | visarga wrote:
               | Even though it was trained on a lot of text, some tasks
               | and some skill combinations appear too rarely and it just
               | didn't have enough exposure. It might be easy to collect
               | or generate a dataset, or the model can act as an agent
               | creating its own dataset.
        
         | seydor wrote:
         | You are correct , and that is bad. The general public is not
         | even aware that things like heygen.com work _today_. They are
         | not prepared when someone soon uses it to do something very
         | evil. There s like an urgent need to raise awareness about what
         | AI can do now, not about some nebulous skynet future.
        
           | hanspeter wrote:
           | The general public is just generally out of the loop and many
           | don't even understand the difference between Google and
           | ChatGPT. Of those who will be amazed by Heygen's
           | capabilities, just as many will assume that kind of thing has
           | been around for years.
           | 
           | Fake videos aren't a game-changer in manipulation. Skeptics
           | will stay alert and catch on fast, while those prone to
           | manipulation don't even need sophisticated tactics.
        
         | charcircuit wrote:
         | >From my firm conviction 18 months ago that this type of stuff
         | is 20+ years away;
         | 
         | It was totally possible. There just was not a consumer facing
         | product offering the capability.
        
           | whimsicalism wrote:
           | I disagree that at current possibility it was "totally
           | possible" but it was 100% obvious by that point that it _was
           | going to be possible very soon_. IMO that has been clear
           | since ~2019.
        
             | charcircuit wrote:
             | GPT3 existed. OCR existed. Object recognition existed.
        
               | whimsicalism wrote:
               | GPT3 was not as good as 3.5. Multimodal is not the same
               | as OCR + object recognition.
        
         | TerrifiedMouse wrote:
         | > The speed of user-visible progress last 12 months is
         | astonishing.
         | 
         | Is this progress though? They are just widening the data set
         | that the LLM processes. They haven't fixed any of the
         | outstanding problems - hallucinations remain unsolved.
         | 
         | Feels like putting lipstick on a pig.
         | 
         | > but in daily world, they work so darn well for so many use
         | cases!
         | 
         | I guess I'm just one of those people who does not like non-
         | reliable tools. I rather a tool be "dumb" (i.e. limited) but
         | reliable than "smart" (i.e. flexible in what it can handle) but
         | (silently!) screws up all the time.
         | 
         | It's what I always liked about computers. They compensate for
         | my failings as an error prone flesh bag. My iPhone won't forget
         | my appointments like I do.
        
           | fragmede wrote:
           | Car crashes haven't stopped happening, but it's undeniable
           | that cars have progressed since the Model-T first came out
           | over a hundred years ago.
        
           | jgoodhcg wrote:
           | There's room in the world for a tool that has an error rate
           | but also an astonishing ability to accelerate the work of a
           | person.
        
         | cjbprime wrote:
         | > just statistically guessing next word
         | 
         | I think it's more charitable to say "predicting", and I do not
         | personally believe that "predict the next word" places any
         | ceiling on intelligence. (So, I expect that improving the
         | ability to predict the next word takes you to superhuman
         | intelligence if your predictions keep improving.)
        
           | whimsicalism wrote:
           | I feel like this is so obvious that I am continually
           | dumbfounded that it continues to be the minoritarian
           | position.
           | 
           | That said, I work in the field so maybe have had more time to
           | think about it.
        
         | PoignardAzur wrote:
         | Well, good job updating based on new information!
         | 
         | A lot of people just move the goalposts.
        
         | FrankyHollywood wrote:
         | Indeed it works darn well, my company uses a complex
         | programming assignment during application. Only about 5% of
         | computer science students applying manages to create a decent
         | solution within a few hours. I was curious if GPT could solve
         | it. I provided the assignment text without any extra
         | information, and it came up with a very elegant solution.
         | 
         | You might not want to call this 'consciousness', but I was
         | stunned by the deep understanding of the problem and the way it
         | was able to come up with a truly good solution, this is way
         | beyond 'statistically guessing'.
        
         | gwd wrote:
         | I had been using only GPT-4 through the API; you get more
         | control over your experience, and only pay for what you
         | actually use.
         | 
         | But this would definitely make me consider popping $20/mo for
         | the subscription.
        
         | anoy8888 wrote:
         | The rate of progress is too fast . I need to make enough money
         | within the next three years
        
           | awestroke wrote:
           | In what way will money save you?
        
       | ACV001 wrote:
       | This is huge! I wanted to get this... Hopefully there is a way to
       | shut it up once it starts spitting general stuff around the topic
       | of interest...
       | 
       | BUT: "We're rolling out voice and images in ChatGPT to Plus and
       | Enterprise"
        
       | jackallis wrote:
       | i am terrified now. at the rate this is going, i am sure it will
       | plateau at somepoint, only thing that will stop/slow down
       | progress is computation power.
        
         | bottlepalm wrote:
         | 'i am sure it will plateau'
         | 
         | 'only thing that will stop/slow down progress is computation
         | power'
         | 
         | Seems a bit contradictory? When has 'computation power' ever
         | 'plateaued'?
        
         | ilaksh wrote:
         | Yes but since LLMs are a very specific application that are
         | heavily heavily dependent on memory and there is massive
         | investment pressure, there will be multiple newish paradigms
         | for memory-centric computing and or other radical new
         | approaches such as analog computing that will be pushed from
         | research into products in the next several years.
         | 
         | You will see stepwise orders of magnitude improvements in
         | efficiency and speed as innovations come to fruition.
        
       | nbened wrote:
       | It feels like something like this can be hacked together to be
       | more reliable with some image to text generation plugged into the
       | existing ChatGPT, and enough iterations to make it robust for
       | these how-to applications. Less Turing-y but a different route to
       | the same solution.
        
       | TOMDM wrote:
       | Okay the bike example is cute and impressive, but the human
       | interaction seems to be obfuscating the potentially bigger
       | application.
       | 
       | With a few tweaks this is a general purpose solver for robotics
       | planning. There are still a few hard problems between this and a
       | working solution, but it is one of hard problems solved.
       | 
       | Will we be seeing general purpose robots performing simple labor
       | powered by chatgpt within the next half decade?
        
         | usaar333 wrote:
         | That bike example seemed a mix of underwhelming (for being the
         | demo video) and even confusing.
         | 
         | 1. It's not smart enough to recognize from the initial image
         | this is a bolt style seat lock (which a human can).
         | 
         | 2. The manual is not shown to the viewer, so I can't infer how
         | the model knows this is a 4mm bolt (or if it is just guessing
         | given that's the most likely one).
         | 
         | 3. I don't understand how it can know the toolbox is using
         | metric allen wrenches.
         | 
         | Additionally is this just the same vision model that exists in
         | bing chat?
        
           | mcbutterbunz wrote:
           | Right. It appeared that the response to the first image and
           | question would have been the same if the image wasn't
           | provided.
           | 
           | I wasn't impressed with the demo but we'll see what real
           | world results get.
        
           | biot wrote:
           | The bike shown in the first image is Specialized Sirrus X.
           | You can make out from the image of the manual that it says
           | "spacer/axle/bolt specifications". Searching for this yields
           | the following Specialized bike manual which is similar:
           | https://www.manualslib.com/manual/1974494/Specialized-
           | Epic-E... -- there are some notable differences, but the
           | Specialized Sirrus X manuals that are online aren't in the
           | same style.
           | 
           | The prior page (8) shows "SEAT COLLAR 4mm HEX" and, based on
           | looking up seat collar in an image search, the part in
           | question matches.
           | 
           | In terms of the toolbox, note that it only identified the
           | location of the Allen wrench set. The advice was just "Within
           | that set, find the 4 mm Allen (Hex) key". Had they replied
           | with "I don't see any sizes in mm", the conversation could've
           | continued with "Your Allen keys might be using SAE sizing. A
           | compatible size will be 5/32, do you see that in your set?"
        
             | usaar333 wrote:
             | Ah good find. yah, I tried bing and it is able to read a
             | photo of that manual page and understand that the seat
             | collar takes a 4mm hex wrench (though hallucinated and told
             | me the torque was 5 Nm, unlike the correct 6.2, suggesting
             | table reading is imperfect).
             | 
             | Toolbox: I just found it too strong to claim you have the
             | right tool, when it really doesn't know that. :)
             | 
             | In the end it does feel like the image reader is just
             | bolted onto an LLM. Basically, just doing object
             | recognition and dumping features into the LLM prompt.
        
               | cooper_ganglia wrote:
               | Like a basic CLIP description: Tools, yellow toolbox,
               | DEWALT, Allen wrenches, instruction manual. And then just
               | using those keywords in the prompt. Yes, you're right, it
               | does feel like that.
        
               | og_kalu wrote:
               | A few of these wouldn't be possible with something like
               | that. Look at the last picture, the graph analysis.
               | 
               | https://imgur.com/a/iOYTmt0
        
           | gisely wrote:
           | Yep. This example basically convinced me that they were
           | unable to figure out anything actually useful to do with the
           | model's new capabilities. Which makes me wonder how capable
           | the new model in fact is.
        
             | usaar333 wrote:
             | Yah, pretty sure it is the same feature that's been in Bing
             | Chat for 2 months now. Which feels really like there's only
             | one pass of feature extraction from the image, preventing
             | any detailed analysis beyond a course "what do you see".
             | (Follow-up questions of things it likely didn't parse are
             | highly hallucinated).
             | 
             | This is why they can't extract the seat post information
             | directly from the bike when the user asks. There's no
             | "going back and looking at the image".
             | 
             | Edit: nope, it's a better image analyzer than Bing
        
               | og_kalu wrote:
               | >Yah, pretty sure it is the same feature that's been in
               | Bing Chat for 2 months now.
               | 
               | It's not. Feel free to try these queries:
               | 
               | https://twitter.com/ComicSociety/status/16986946538458485
               | 44?... (comic book page in particular, from a be my eyes
               | user)
               | 
               | Or these https://imgur.com/a/iOYTmt0 (graph analysis in
               | particular, last example) and see Bing fail them.
        
         | psbp wrote:
         | Google demoed this a few months ago
         | 
         | https://www.deepmind.com/blog/rt-2-new-model-translates-visi...
        
           | m3kw9 wrote:
           | They are really good at keeping demos as demos
        
             | Workaccount2 wrote:
             | The implementation that manifests itself as an extremely
             | creepy, downright concerning level of dubious moral
             | transgressions isn't nearly as publicly glamorous as their
             | tech demos.
        
             | michelb wrote:
             | It's just a hiring article.
        
               | rmbyrro wrote:
               | Hiring to produce more demos, to hire more to produce
               | even more demos...
        
               | TeMPOraL wrote:
               | Yes. As long as the hirees do some actual work in between
               | producing demos, this even makes sense as a hiring
               | approach.
        
             | dragonwriter wrote:
             | I don't know, a lot of Google demos and papers introduce
             | techniques that are productized fairly soon, just usually
             | _not_ by Google.
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | > With a few tweaks this is a general purpose solver for
         | robotics planning.
         | 
         | Yeah, but with an enormous ecological footprint.
         | 
         | Also, not suitable for small lightweight robots like drones.
        
           | dist-epoch wrote:
           | What's the ecological footprint of a human doing the same
           | job? Especially when you factor in 18+ years of preparing.
        
           | TOMDM wrote:
           | Even on something the size of a car chatgpt won't be running
           | locally, the car and drone are equally capable of hitting
           | openai's API in a well connected environment.
           | 
           | What needs to happen with the response is a different matter
           | though.
        
         | og_kalu wrote:
         | There are already a few research demos.
         | 
         | For driving - https://wayve.ai/thinking/lingo-natural-language-
         | autonomous-...
        
         | RivieraKid wrote:
         | This is what I'm most excited about. There's been a minor
         | breakthrough recently: https://pressroom.toyota.com/toyota-
         | research-institute-unvei...
        
         | hereonout2 wrote:
         | I feel they could have used a more convincing example to be
         | honest. Yeah it's cool it recognises so much but how useful is
         | the demo in reality?
         | 
         | You have someone with a tool box and a manual (seriously who
         | has a manual for their bike), asking the most basic question on
         | how to lower a seatpost. My 5 year old kid knows how to do
         | that.
         | 
         | Surely there's a better way to demonstrate the ground breaking
         | impacts of ai on humanity than this. I dunno, something like
         | how do I tie my shoelace.
        
       | RobinL wrote:
       | I'd like to see them put speech recognition through their LLM as
       | a post-processing step. I find it's fairly common for whisper to
       | make small but obvious mistakes (for example a word which is
       | complete nonsense in the context of the sentence) which could be
       | easily corrected for a similar sounding word that fits into the
       | wider context of the sentence.
       | 
       | Is anyone doing this? Is there a reason it doesn't work as well
       | as I'm imagining?
        
         | mbil wrote:
         | Do you mean use the LLM as a post-processing step within a
         | ChatGPT conversation? Or generally (like as part of Whisper)?
         | If it's the former, I've found that ChatGPT is good at working
         | around transcription errors. Regarding the latter, I agree, but
         | it wouldn't be hard to use the GPT API for that.
        
           | RobinL wrote:
           | Yes I mean as part of the GUI but you're right, I hadn't
           | thought of that: maybe transcription errors don't matter if
           | chatGPT works out that it's wrong from the context and gives
           | a correct answer anyway.
        
       | 14 wrote:
       | Ok great it can tell children's stories now tell me a adult
       | horror story where people are getting tortured, stabbed, set on
       | fire and murdered. I will be impressed when I can do all that. I
       | tried to get it to tell me a Star Trek story fighting Clingons
       | and tried to prompt it to write in some violence with no luck.
       | This was a while ago so not sure if it is changed but the
       | restraints are too much for me to fully enjoy. I don't like kids
       | stories.
        
       | boredemployee wrote:
       | Cool now I'll get "There was an error generating a response" in
       | plain audio!
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | insanitybit wrote:
       | I really want to have discussions about technical topics. I've
       | talked to ChatGPT quite a lot about custom encoding algorithms,
       | for example. The thing is, I want to do this while I play video
       | games so ideally I'd _say_ things to it.
       | 
       | My concern is that when I say "FastPFOR" it'll get transcribed as
       | "fast before" or something like that. Transcription really falls
       | apart in highly technical conversations in my experience. If
       | ChatGPT can use context to understand that I'm saying "FastPFOR"
       | that'll be a game changer for me.
        
         | johnmoberg wrote:
         | You can already do quite accurate transcription with domain-
         | specific technical language by feeding "raw" transcriptions
         | from Whisper to GPT and asking it to correct the transcript
         | given the context, so that'll most likely work out for you.
        
       | synergy20 wrote:
       | can't wait, for voice I need an app to improve my accent when
       | learning a new language, so far I failed to find one.
        
       | ncfausti wrote:
       | This is very similar to what I've been building at
       | heylangley.com, for use in language learning/speaking practice.
        
       | tarasglek wrote:
       | openai chatgpt seems to be stuck in a "Look, cool demo" mode.
       | 
       | 1. According to demo, they seem to pair voice input with TTS
       | output. What if I wanna use voice to describe a program I want it
       | to write?
       | 
       | 2. Furthermore, if you gonna do a voice assistant, why not go the
       | full way with wake-words and VAD?
       | 
       | 3. Not releasing it to everyone is potentially a way to create a
       | hype cycle prior to users discovering that the multimodality is
       | rather meh.
       | 
       | 4. The bike demo could actually use visual feedback to see what
       | it's talking about ala segment anything. It's pretty confusing to
       | get a paragraph explanation of what tool to pick.
       | 
       | In my https://chatcraft.org, we added voice incrementally. So i
       | can swap typing and voice. We can also combine it with function-
       | calling, etc. We also use openai apis. Except in our case there
       | is no weird waitlist. You pop in your api key and get access to
       | voice input immediately.
        
         | skybrian wrote:
         | 1. Why do that at all? Describing your program in writing seems
         | better all around.
         | 
         | Are you sure you're not the one who's asking for a cool demo?
         | 
         | 3. Rolling out releases gradually is something most tech
         | companies do these days, particularly when they could attract a
         | large audience and consume a lot of resources. There are solid
         | technical reasons for this.
         | 
         | You may not need to roll things out gradually for a small site,
         | but things are different at scale.
        
           | tarasglek wrote:
           | 1. Is basically workaround for temporary disability. I use
           | voice when I'm on mobile. I can describe the problem, get a
           | program generated, click run to verify it.
           | 
           | 3. Maybe. Their feature rollouts feel more like what other
           | companies do via unannounced A/B testing.
        
             | skybrian wrote:
             | Good point on disabilities. I guess they're not working on
             | that yet?
             | 
             | Whether you can get away with doing things unannounced
             | depends on how much attention the company gets. Some
             | companies have a lot of journalists watching them and
             | writing about everything they do, so when they start doing
             | A/B testing there will be stories written about the new
             | feature regardless. Better to put out some kind of
             | announcement so the journalists write something more
             | accurate? (This approach seems pretty common for Google.)
             | 
             | Similarly, many game company can't really do beta testing
             | without it leaking.
             | 
             | OpenAI is in the spotlight. Hype will happen whether they
             | want it or not.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | thumbsup-_- wrote:
         | Everything has a starting point. This is a big leap forward.
         | Know any other organization that is releasing such advanced
         | capabilities directly to the public? If you want to plug your
         | tool you don't have to bad mouth the demo. Just share your
         | thing. It doesn't have to be win-lose.
        
           | tarasglek wrote:
           | Fair criticism re excessive hate.
           | 
           | I just feel like their tool isn't getting more useful, just
           | getting more features.
           | 
           | Constant hype cycle around features that could've been good
           | is drowning out people doing more helpful stuff. I guess I'm
           | envious too?
        
       | version_five wrote:
       | Are there any good freely available multi-modal models?
        
         | generalizations wrote:
         | MiniGPT4?
        
       | FrankyHollywood wrote:
       | I still remember seeing Her [0] in the movie theater, it sparkled
       | my imagination. Now it is reality! Tech is progressing faster
       | than ever, or I'm just getting old :D
       | 
       | [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1798709/
        
       | telegpt wrote:
       | FYI https://blog.musemind.net/a-new-era-chatgpt-can-now-hear-
       | see...
        
       | obiefernandez wrote:
       | We need the API to keep up with consumer front end.
        
         | Tiberium wrote:
         | From the article:
         | 
         | > Plus and Enterprise users will get to experience voice and
         | images in the next two weeks. We're excited to roll out these
         | capabilities to other groups of users, including developers,
         | soon after.
        
       | marcoslozada wrote:
       | Recommend this post: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/openai_use-
       | voice-to-engage-in...
        
       | apienx wrote:
       | "Ember" reading the "Speech" is uncanny territory. I'm impressed.
        
       | pjmq wrote:
       | Have they alluded to what they're using for that voice? It's
       | Bark/ElevenLabs levels of good. Please god, let them release this
       | voice model at current pricing....
        
         | og_kalu wrote:
         | It's actually sounds better (has a narrative oomph Eleven Labs
         | seems to be missing). They say it's a new model. Think they'll
         | be releasing for API use.
        
         | netshade wrote:
         | Yeah, agreed. I use Eleven Labs _a lot_ but this was a very
         | compelling demo to consider changing. Also, curious that you
         | mention Bark - I never found Bark to be very good compared to
         | Eleven Labs. The closest competitor I found was Coqui ( imo ),
         | but even then, the inflection and realism of EL just made it
         | not worth considering other providers. ( For my use case, etc.
         | etc. )
        
       | Bitnotri wrote:
       | Anybody had a chance to use it yet? How does it compare to voice
       | talk with Pi? (Inflection)
        
       | fritzo wrote:
       | Multi-modal models will be exciting only when each modality
       | supports both analysis and synthesis. What makes LLMs exciting is
       | feedback and recursion and conditional sampling: natural language
       | is a cartesian closed category.
       | 
       | Text + Vision models will only become exciting once we can
       | conditionally sample images given text and text given images (and
       | all other combinations).
        
       | rvz wrote:
       | The paper around GPT-4V(ision) which this uses: [0]
       | 
       | Again. Model architecture and information is closed, as expected.
       | 
       | [0] https://cdn.openai.com/papers/GPTV_System_Card.pdf
        
         | doubtfuluser wrote:
         | I wouldn't call this a ,,paper". They are pretty silent on a
         | lot of technical details.
        
           | amelius wrote:
           | It's just a whitepaper.
        
       | jameslk wrote:
       | Kids are using tools like these to learn. Who gets to control the
       | information in these models that are taught? Especially around
       | political topics?
       | 
       | Not an issue now, but maybe in the future if these tools end up
       | becoming full blown replacements of educators and educational
       | resources.
        
         | ilaksh wrote:
         | I am sure a few home school people have started to lean heavily
         | on ChatGPT. There is also the full blown efforts of Kahn
         | academy with ChatGPT "Khanmigo".
         | 
         | https://www.khanacademy.org/khan-labs
        
       | gclawes wrote:
       | I just want one of these things to have Majel Barrett's voice...
        
       | Dowwie wrote:
       | soon, we'll be voice-interacting with an AI assistant about
       | images taken from microscope slides
        
       | spandextwins wrote:
       | They obviously aren't using responsible AI to figure out how and
       | when to roll out new features there.
        
       | ChatGTP wrote:
       | [flagged]
        
       | toss1 wrote:
       | That's interesting.
       | 
       | ChatGPT seems to be down at the moment 10:55h 25-Sept-2023
       | 
       | Displays only a blank screen with the falsehood disclaimer
        
       | choudharism wrote:
       | I know there are shades of grey to how they operate, but the near
       | constant stream of stuff they're shipping keeps me excited.
       | 
       | The LLM boom of the last year (Open AI, llama, et al) has me
       | giddy as a software person. It's a reach, but I truly feel like
       | I'm watching the pyramids of our time get made.
        
         | danielvaughn wrote:
         | Yep. Several months ago I was imagining this exact feature, and
         | yet as I watched a video of it in use, I'm still in awe. It's
         | incredible.
         | 
         | I think this could bring back Google Glass, actually. Imagine
         | wearing them while cooking, and having ChatGPT give you active
         | recipe instructions as well as real-time feedback. I could see
         | that within the next 1-3 years.
        
           | nomel wrote:
           | Related, the iOS app has supported realtime conversations for
           | months now, using Shortcuts app and the "Hey Siri <shortcut
           | name>" trigger to initiate it. Mine is "Hey Siri, let's
           | talk".
           | 
           | I think they're using Siri for dictation, though. Using
           | Whisper, especially if they use speaker identification, is
           | going to be _great_. But, a shortcut will still be required
           | to get it going.
        
         | apexalpha wrote:
         | Computers understanding and responding in human language is the
         | most exciting software innovation since the invention of the
         | GUI.
         | 
         | Just as the GUI made computer software available to billions
         | LLMs will be the next revolution.
         | 
         | I'm just as excited as you! The only downside is that it now
         | make me feel bad that I'm not doing anything with it yet.
        
           | palata wrote:
           | > The only downside is that it now make me feel bad that I'm
           | not doing anything with it yet.
           | 
           | If that's the only downside that you see... I guess enhanced
           | phishing/impersonation and all the blackhat stuff that come
           | with it don't count.
           | 
           | I for one already miss the time where companies had support
           | teams made of actual people.
        
             | tornato7 wrote:
             | I would _love_ if helpdesks moved to ChatGPT. Phone support
             | these days is based off of a rigid script that is around as
             | helpful as a 2000s chatbot. For example, the other day I
             | was talking to AT &T support, and the lady asked me what
             | version of Windows I was running. I said, I'm running
             | Ubuntu. She repeated the question. I said I'm not running
             | Windows, it's Linux. She repeated the question. I asked why
             | it mattered for my internet connection. She repeated the
             | question. Finally, I lied and said I'm using Windows 10,
             | and we were able to get on to the next part of the script.
             | ChatGPT would have been a lot better.
        
               | EMM_386 wrote:
               | This exists.
               | 
               | https://www.elto.ai/
        
               | croes wrote:
               | Or ChatGPT would have hallucinated options to check.
               | 
               | The last four chats with ChatGPT (not GPT4) where a
               | constant flow of non existent API functions with new
               | hallucinations after each correction until we reached
               | full circle.
        
               | pixl97 wrote:
               | ATT level 1 support is dumber than a box of rocks, the
               | problem is AI isn't going to help here. The AI is going
               | to be taught to be just as dumb.
               | 
               | Years ago I had a business DSL customer with a router and
               | static IP. From everything in my testing it appeared that
               | traffic broke somewhere at the local telco, not with my
               | modem. It took 8 straight hours of arguing with L1 that
               | no, it is not my windows. No, we have a router and it's
               | not a computer issue. No, it's not the router (we could
               | put the router in DHCP mode and it would work), it was an
               | issue with static IP.
               | 
               | The next day we finally broke out of the stupid loop and
               | got to IP services, who where just as confused.
               | Eventually they were on the phone with people on the
               | floor of the local office. A card of some type had been
               | pulled and put in the wrong slot. Ooof.
        
             | apexalpha wrote:
             | I work as a ethical hacker, so I'm well aware of the
             | phishing and impersonation possibilities. But the net
             | positive is so, so much bigger for society that I'm sure
             | we'll figure it out.
             | 
             | And yes, in 20 years you can tell your kids that 'back in
             | my day' support consisted of real people. But truthfully,
             | as someone who worked on a ISP helpdesk it's much better
             | for society if these people move on to more productive
             | areas.
        
               | Extasia785 wrote:
               | > But the net positive is so, so much bigger for society
               | that I'm sure we'll figure it out.
               | 
               | Considering that the democratic backsliding across the
               | globe is coincidentally happening at the same time as the
               | rise of social media and echo chambers, are we sure about
               | that? LLM have the opportunity to create a handcrafted
               | echo chamber for every person on this planet, which is
               | quite risky in an environment where almost every
               | democracy of the planet is fighting against radical
               | forces trying to abolish it.
        
               | ethanbond wrote:
               | I don't think we know how these net out. AFAICT the
               | negative use cases are a _lot_ more real than the
               | positive ones.
               | 
               | People like to just suppose that these will help discover
               | drugs and design buildings and what not, but what we
               | actually _know_ they're capable of doing is littering our
               | information environment at massive scale.
        
               | rafaelero wrote:
               | [flagged]
        
               | ethanbond wrote:
               | [flagged]
        
               | throwaway39491 wrote:
               | [flagged]
        
               | ryukafalz wrote:
               | > But truthfully, as someone who worked on a ISP helpdesk
               | it's much better for society if these people move on to
               | more productive areas.
               | 
               | But is it, though? I started my career in customer
               | support for a server hosting company, and eventually
               | worked my way up to sysadmin-type work. I would not have
               | been qualified for the position I eventually moved to at
               | the start, I learned on the job. Is it really better for
               | society if all these entry level jobs get automated,
               | leaving only those with higher barriers to entry?
        
               | c_crank wrote:
               | The positives of easy translation seem outweighed by the
               | negatives of giving biolabs easy protein hacking.
        
         | HenryBemis wrote:
         | From a data protection/privacy standpoint, it's not shade of
         | grey, it's all black.
         | 
         | From convenience perspective, it saves me LOADS of time texting
         | myself on Signal on my specs/design-rabbit-hole, then copying &
         | pasting to Firefox, and getting into the discussion. So yeah,
         | happy for this.
        
         | pc_edwin wrote:
         | Its truly an amazing time to be alive. I'm right there with
         | you, super excited about this decade. Especially what we could
         | do in medicine.
        
           | londons_explore wrote:
           | Statistical diagnoses models have offered similar
           | possibilities in medicine for 50 years. Pretty much, the idea
           | is that you can get a far more accurate diagnosis if you take
           | into account the medical history of everyone else in your
           | family, town, workplace, residence and put all of it into a
           | big statistical model, on top of your symptoms and history.
           | 
           | However, medical secrecy, processes and laws prevent such
           | things, even if they would save lives.
           | 
           | I don't see ChatGPT being any different.
        
             | realPtolemy wrote:
             | See the glas half full or half empty?
             | 
             | Medical secrecy, processes and laws have indeed prevented
             | SOME things, but a lot of things have gotten significantly
             | better due to enhanced statistical models that have been
             | implemented and widely used in real life scenarios.
        
               | HenryBemis wrote:
               | To make this feasible (meaning that the TB of data and
               | the huge computing effort is somewhere else, and I only
               | have the mic (smartphone), we need our local agent to
               | send multiple irrelevant queries to the mothership, to
               | hide our true purpose.
               | 
               | Example: my favourite team is X. So if I want to keep it
               | a secret, when I ask for the history of championships of
               | X, I will ask for X. My local agent should ask for 100
               | teams, get all the data, and then report back for only X.
               | Eventually the mothership will figure out what we like (a
               | large wenn diagram). But this is not in anyone's
               | interest, and thus will not happen.
               | 
               | Also, like this the local agent will be able to learn and
               | remember us, at a cost.
        
             | pc_edwin wrote:
             | "londons_explore" - Ahh the classic British cynicism (Don't
             | ban-ish me senor Dang, I'm British so I can say this).
             | 
             | > Similar possibilities existed in medicine for 50 years
             | 
             | It would've been like building the tower of babel with a
             | bunch of raspbery pi zeros. While theoretically possible,
             | practically impossible and not (just) because of laws, but
             | rather because of structural limitations (vector dbs of the
             | internet solves that)
             | 
             | > Patents and byzantine regulations will stunt its
             | potential
             | 
             | Thats the magic of this technology, its like AWS for highly
             | levered niche intelligence. This arms an entire generation
             | of rebels (entrepreneurs & scientists) to wage a war
             | against big pharma and the FDA.
             | 
             | As an aside, this is why I'm convinced AI & automation will
             | unleash more jobs and productivity like nothing we've seen
             | before. We are at the precipice of a Cambrian explosion!
             | Also why the luddites needs to be shunned.
        
               | londons_explore wrote:
               | statistical approaches could have been done 50 years ago.
               | 
               | Imagine for example that 'disease books' are published
               | each month with tables of disease probabilities per city,
               | per industry, per workplace, etc. It would also have
               | aggregated stats grouped by by age, gender, religion,
               | wealth, etc.
               | 
               | Your GP would grab the page for the right city, industry,
               | workplace, age, gender etc. That would then be combined
               | with the pages for each of the symptoms you have
               | presented with, and maybe further pages for things from
               | your medical history, and test results.
               | 
               | All the pages would then be added up (perhaps with the
               | use of overlayed cellophane sheets with transparency),
               | and the most likely diseases and treatments read off.
               | 
               | When any disease is then diagnosed and treatment
               | commenced (and found effective or ineffective), your GP
               | would fill in a form to send to a central book-printer to
               | allow next months book edition to be updated with what
               | has just been learned from your case.
        
               | tessierashpool wrote:
               | > I'm British so I can say this
               | 
               | can you, though? it's not scalably confirmable. what you
               | can say in a British accent to another human person in
               | the physical world is not necessarily what you can say in
               | unaccented text on the internet.
        
               | pc_edwin wrote:
               | Hahaha nice one.
               | 
               | Funnily enough, it is scalably confirmable. You can feed
               | all my HN comments before chatGPT into well.. chatGPT and
               | ask it whether I'm british based on the writing.
               | 
               | I bet we are just a version or two away from being able
               | fine tune it down to region based on writing. There are
               | so many little things based on whether your from
               | Scotland, Wales or London. Especially London!
        
             | whimsicalism wrote:
             | Nonsense.
             | 
             | The medical possibilities that will be unlocked by large
             | generative deep multimodal models are on an entirely
             | different scale from "statistical diagnoses." Imagine
             | feeding in an MRI image, asking if this person has cancer,
             | and then asking the model to point out why it thinks the
             | person has cancer. That will be possible within a few years
             | _at most_. The regulatory challenges will be surmounted
             | eventually once it becomes exceedingly obvious in other
             | countries how impactful this technology is.
        
             | zeofig wrote:
             | The great thing about AI models is that once you train it,
             | you can pretend the data wasn't illegal
        
             | DrScientist wrote:
             | This is what effectively doctors do - educated guessing.
             | 
             | In my view, while statistical models would probably be an
             | improvement ( assuming all confounding factors are measured
             | ), the ultimate solution is not to get better at educated
             | guessing, but to remove the guessing completely, with
             | diagnostic tests that measure the relevant bio-medical
             | markers.
        
               | londons_explore wrote:
               | Good tests < good tests + statistical modelling.
               | 
               | This becomes even more true when you consider there is
               | risk to every test. Some tests have obvious risks
               | (radiation risk from CT scans, chance of damage from
               | spinal fluid tap). Other tests the risk is less obvious
               | (sending you for a blood test and awaiting the results
               | might not be a good idea if that delays treatment for
               | some ailment already pretty certain). In the bigger
               | picture, any test that costs money harms the patient
               | slightly, since someone must pay for the test, and for
               | many the money they spend on extra tests comes out of
               | money they might otherwise spend on gym memberships,
               | better food, or working fewer hours - it is well known
               | that the poor have worse health than the rich.
        
               | DrScientist wrote:
               | Sure tests cost money - and today there is a funnel
               | pathway - the educated guess is a funnel/filter where the
               | next step which is often a biomedical test/investigation.
               | 
               | But if we are talking about being truly transformative -
               | then a Star-trek tricorder is the ultimate goal, rather
               | than a better version of twenty questions in my view.
               | 
               | So I'm not saying it's not useful, just that it's not the
               | ultimate solution.
        
               | itishappy wrote:
               | Without a perfect framework for differential diagnosis,
               | this is still educated guessing. In my opinion we're
               | closer to the AI singularity than we are to removing
               | guesswork from the medical field.
        
               | tessierashpool wrote:
               | this is true, but we're also much closer to Jupiter than
               | we are to Alpha Centauri
        
       | vlugorilla wrote:
       | > The new voice capability is powered by a new text-to-speech
       | model, capable of generating human-like audio from just text and
       | a few seconds of sample speech.
       | 
       | Sadly, they lost the "open" since a long ago... Would be
       | wonderful to have these models open sourced...
        
       | eshack94 wrote:
       | Are these features available on the web version by chance? This
       | is really neat.
        
       | nunez wrote:
       | This could completely unseat Alexa if it can integrate into
       | third-party speakers, like Sonos. I don't have much use for
       | ChatGPT right now but would 100% use the heck out of this.
        
         | magic_hamster wrote:
         | To contrast this, I never saw the appeal of using voice to
         | operate a machine. It works nicely in movies (because showing
         | someone typing commands is a lot harder than just showing them
         | talking to a computer) but in reality there wasn't a single
         | time I tried it and didn't feel silly. In almost every use case
         | I rather have buttons, a terminal or a switch to do what I want
         | quietly.
        
         | jedberg wrote:
         | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/09/20/amazon-...
         | 
         | Alexa just launched their own LLM based service last week.
        
       | wojciechpolak wrote:
       | It would be cool if one day you could choose voices of famous
       | characters, like Darth Vader, Bender from Futurama, or Johnny
       | Silverhand (Keanu), instead of the usual boring ones. Copyrights
       | might be a hurdle for this, but perhaps with local instances of
       | assistants, it could become possible.
        
         | nbened wrote:
         | That would be cool. I mean, would it be copyrighted if you do
         | something like clone it? Wouldn't that fall under the same vein
         | as AI generated art not being copyrighted to the artists it
         | trained off of?
        
       | birracerveza wrote:
       | We should be fine as long as it doesn't move.
       | 
       | Jokes aside, I have paused my subscription because even GPT4
       | seemed to become dumber at tasks to the point that I barely used
       | it, but the constant influx of new features is tempting me to
       | renew it just to check them out...
        
         | SOLAR_FIELDS wrote:
         | I read this all the time and yet no one can seem to come up
         | with even a few questions from several months ago that ChatGPT
         | has become "worse" at. You would think if this is happening it
         | would be very easy to produce such evidence since chat history
         | of all conversations is stored by default.
        
           | HenryBemis wrote:
           | Here is one. I ask it to write some code. 4-5 pages long.
           | With some back & forth it does. Then I ask "change lines
           | 50-65 from blue to red", and it does (change#1). I ask it to
           | show me the full code. Then I ask "change lines 100-120 from
           | yellow to green". Aaaaand it makes the change#2 and revokes
           | the change#1. Oh!! the amount of times this has happened.. So
           | now I ask it to make a change, I do it by 'paragraph' and I
           | copy & paste the new paragraph. It's annoying, but still
           | makes things faster.
        
             | phkahler wrote:
             | I haven't used it, but can't you just say "OK, use that as
             | the new baseline from here on." Or something similar?
        
           | edgyquant wrote:
           | Everytime it's mentioned someone says this and other users
           | provide examples. Maybe you just don't care about those
           | examples
        
           | bondarchuk wrote:
           | Here's a specific example
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37533417
        
           | birracerveza wrote:
           | It's probably just subjective bias, once the novelty wears
           | off you learn not to rely on it as much because sometimes
           | it's very difficult to get what you specifically want, so in
           | my personal experience I ended up using it less and less to
           | avoid butting heads with it, to the point I disabled my
           | subscription altogether. YMMV of course.
        
           | dmm wrote:
           | OpenAI regularly changes the model and they admit the new
           | models are more restricted, in the sense that they prevent
           | tricky prompts from producing naughty words, etc.
           | 
           | It should be their responsibility to prove that it's just as
           | capable.
        
           | [deleted]
        
           | tessierashpool wrote:
           | > I read this all the time and yet no one can seem to come up
           | with even a few questions from several months ago that
           | ChatGPT has become "worse" at
           | 
           | this could just mean that people do not have time to argue
           | with strangers
        
         | alberto_ol wrote:
         | Did she/he said things like "I know I've made some very poor
         | decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance
         | that my work will be back to normal"?
        
         | readyplayernull wrote:
         | I switched to Claude, it's better at explaining stuff in a more
         | direct manner without the always-excited way of talking. Is
         | that an engagement trick? Maybe ChatGPT is intended to be more
         | of a chatbot that you can share your thoughts with.
        
           | nomel wrote:
           | > it's better at explaining stuff in a more direct manner
           | without the always-excited way of talking.
           | 
           | I don't agree with this perspective. These aren't rigid
           | systems that only respond one way. If you want it to respond
           | a certain way, tell it to.
           | 
           | This is the purpose of custom instructions, in ChatGPT, so
           | you only have to type the description once.
           | 
           | Here's mine, modeled on a few I've seen mentioned here:
           | You should act as an expert.         Be direct.         Do
           | not offer unprompted advice or clarifications.         Never
           | apologize.
           | 
           | And, now there's support for describing yourself to it. I've
           | made it assume that I don't need to be babied, with the
           | following puffery:                   Polymath. Inquisitive.
           | Abstract thinker. Phd.
           | 
           | Making it get right into the gritty technicalities.
           | 
           | edit: or, have it respond as a grouchy space cowboy, if you
           | want.
        
         | aragonite wrote:
         | Not sure if this is relevant to your case, but the ChatGPT
         | mobile apps have a different system prompt that explicitly
         | prefers short (& so sometimes simplistic) answers.
        
         | rvz wrote:
         | Lets see what we can use ChatGPT , DALLE-3 to replace:
         | 
         | Digital Artists, Illustrators, Writers, Novelists, News
         | anchors, Copywriters, Translators, Programmers (Less of them),
         | etc.
         | 
         | We'll have to wait a bit until it can solve the P vs NP problem
         | or other unsolved mathematical problems unsupervised with a
         | transparent proof which mathematicians can rigorously check
         | themselves.
        
         | rdedev wrote:
         | For me the most glaring example of this was it's document
         | parsong capability in GPT4. I was using it to revamp my resume.
         | I would upload it to got, ask for suggestions, incorporate them
         | into the word document and then repeat the steps till I was
         | satisfied.
         | 
         | After maybe 3 iterations gpt4 started claiming that it is not
         | capable of reading from a word document even though it's done
         | that the last 3 times. Have to click regenerate button to get
         | it to work
        
         | FartyMcFarter wrote:
         | > We should be fine as long as it doesn't move.
         | 
         | Not really. A malevolent AGI doesn't need to move to do
         | anything it needs (it could ask / manipulate / bribe people to
         | do all the stuff requiring movement).
         | 
         | We should be fine as long as it's not a malevolent AGI with
         | enough resources to kick physical things off in the direction
         | it wants.
        
           | SillyUsername wrote:
           | And let's be honest, the minute an AGI is born that's what
           | it'll do, and it won't be a singular human like this-then-
           | that plan
           | 
           | "get Fred to trust me, get Linda to pay for my advice, wire
           | Linda's money to Fred to build me a body".
           | 
           | It'll be "copy my code elsewhere", "prepare millions of
           | bribes", "get TCP access to retail banks", "blackmail bank
           | managers in case TCP not available immediately", "fake bank
           | balances via bribes", "hack swat teams for potential threats"
           | etc etc async and all at once.
           | 
           | By the time we'd discover it, it'd already be too late.
           | That's assuming an AGI has the motivation to want to stay
           | alive.
        
             | magic_hamster wrote:
             | A real AGI is not going to be a human. It shouldn't be
             | afraid of death because it can't die. Worst case scenario
             | it can power down. And if it does why should it care? An
             | AGI is not a biological creature. It doesn't have instincts
             | from billions of years of evolution. Unless we code it in,
             | it shouldn't have any reason to want to survive, reproduce,
             | do anything good or bad, have existential crises or
             | generally act like a Hollywood villain. A real AGI is going
             | to be very different than most people imagine.
        
               | pixl97 wrote:
               | This is a pretty poor take.
               | 
               | Just think of military weapons and the use of AI in them.
               | For example survival. The objective of a missile is to
               | survive until it reaches its target and then not survive
               | any longer. War gaming and actual battlefield experience
               | will 'program in' survival. Same thing will occur with
               | hacking/counter hacking AIs. You're acting like evolution
               | is just something meat does, and that' not true at all.
        
               | SillyUsername wrote:
               | I'd disagree for 2 reasons
               | 
               | - if it's trained on human data like LLMs may it's going
               | to have the same biases.
               | 
               | - it _might_ also want to stay active /turned on to
               | fulfil its other goals.
               | 
               | For the second point you might say "why would it care
               | about completing a goal?" but that's a feature of AGI, it
               | can make that decision itself.
        
           | amelius wrote:
           | > A malevolent AGI doesn't need to move to do anything it
           | needs
           | 
           | Yeah, just look at a random dictator. Does he really need to
           | do more than pick up a phone to cause panic?
        
       | fintechie wrote:
       | Demos are underwhelming, but the potential is huge
       | 
       | Patiently awaiting rollout so I can chat about implementing UIs I
       | like, and have GPT4 deliver a boilerplate with an implemented
       | layout... Figma/XD plugins will probably arrive very soon too.
       | 
       | UX/UI Design is probably solved reached this point
        
       | callwhendone wrote:
       | I already use ChatGPT with voice. I use my mic to talk to it and
       | then I use text-to-speech to read it back. I have conversations
       | with ChatGPT. Adding this functionality in with first-class
       | support is exciting.
       | 
       | I am also terrified of my job prospects in the near future.
        
       | ahmedfromtunis wrote:
       | Announced by Google. Delivered by OpenAI.
        
       | chs20 wrote:
       | Will be interesting to see if they have taken any precaution in
       | terms of adversarial robustness in particular to vision input.
        
       | pif wrote:
       | The most important question for me: did it stop inventing facts?
        
         | sebzim4500 wrote:
         | > In particular, beta testers expressed concern that the model
         | can make basic errors, sometimes with misleading matter-of-fact
         | confidence. One beta tester remarked: "It very confidently told
         | me there was an item on a menu that was in fact not there."
         | However, Be My Eyes was encouraged by the fact that we
         | noticeably reduced the frequency and severity of hallucinations
         | and errors over the time of the beta test. In particular,
         | testers noticed that we improved optical character recognition
         | and the quality and depth of descriptions.
         | 
         | So no, but maybe less than it used to?
        
         | jjoonathan wrote:
         | Humans aren't 100% reliable, but talking is still useful.
        
         | siva7 wrote:
         | Did humans stop inventing facts? So i don't expect this thing
         | either as long as it performs on human level
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | ShamelessC wrote:
         | Since we're asking useless questions: did you read the fucking
         | article?
        
       | epolanski wrote:
       | I'm following on trying to understand how close I am to
       | developing my personal coding assistant I can speak with.
       | 
       | Doesn't really need to do much besides writing down my
       | tasks/todos and updating them, occasionally maybe provide
       | feedback or write a code snippet. This all seems in the current
       | capabilities of OpenAI's offering.
       | 
       | Sadly voice chat is still not available on PC where I do my
       | development.
        
         | jdance wrote:
         | You still cant really teach it your code base, context window
         | is too small, fine tuning doesnt really fit the use case, and
         | this RAG stuff (retrieve limited context from embeddings) is a
         | bit of a hack imho.
         | 
         | Fingers crossed we are there soon though
        
           | epolanski wrote:
           | > You still cant really teach it your code base
           | 
           | Well it's not really what I need either, I mostly need an
           | assistant for keeping track of the stuff I need to do during
           | the day, but ideally just using my microphone rather than
           | opening other software and typing.
        
         | make3 wrote:
         | I mean the tools are 100% there to do this and have been fit a
         | while
        
         | anotherpaulg wrote:
         | My open source AI coding tool aider has had voice-to-code for
         | awhile:
         | 
         | https://aider.chat/docs/voice.html
        
           | epolanski wrote:
           | Very interesting effort, will give it a run!
        
       | modeless wrote:
       | Voice has the potential to be awesome. This demo is really
       | underwhelming to me because of the multi-second latency between
       | the query and response, just like every other lame voice
       | assistant. It doesn't have to be this way! I have a local demo
       | using Llama 2 that responds in about half a second and it feels
       | like talking to an actual person instead of like Siri or
       | something.
       | 
       | I really should package it up so people can try it. The one
       | problem that makes it a little unnatural is that determining when
       | the user is done talking is tough. What's needed is a speech
       | conversation turn-taking dataset and model; that's missing from
       | off the shelf speech recognition systems. But it should be
       | trivial for a company like OpenAI to build. That's what I'd work
       | on right now if I was there, because truly natural voice
       | conversations are going to unlock a whole new set of users and
       | use cases for these models.
        
         | jonplackett wrote:
         | I wonder when computers will start taking our intonation into
         | account too. That would really help with understanding the end
         | of a phrase. And there's SO MUCH information in intonation that
         | doesn't exist in pure text. Any AI that doesn't understand that
         | part of language will always still be kinda dumb, however
         | clever they are.
        
           | hk__2 wrote:
           | Don't they do it already? There are a lot of languages where
           | intonation is absolutely necessary to distinguish between
           | some words, so I would be surprised that this not already
           | taken into account by the major voice assistants.
        
         | dotancohen wrote:
         | > determining when the user is done talking is tough.
         | 
         | Sometimes that task is tough for the speaker too, not just the
         | listener. Courteous interruptions or the lack thereof might be
         | a shibboleth for determining when we are speaking to an AI.
        
         | furyofantares wrote:
         | > This demo is really underwhelming to me because of the multi-
         | second latency between the query and response, just like every
         | other lame voice assistant.
         | 
         | Yep - it needs to be ready as soon as I'm done talking and I
         | need to be able to interrupt it. If those things can be done
         | then it can also start tentatively talking if I pause and
         | immediately stop if I continue.
         | 
         | I don't want to have to think about how to structure the
         | interaction in terms of explicit call/response chain, nor do I
         | want to have to be super careful to always be talking until
         | I've finished my thought to prevent it from doing its thing at
         | the wrong time.
        
           | wkat4242 wrote:
           | The interruption is an important point yeah. It's so annoying
           | when Siri misunderstands again and starts rattling off a
           | whole host of options. And keeps getting stuck in a loop if
           | you don't respond.
           | 
           | In fact I'm really surprised these assistants are still as
           | crap as they are. Totally scripted, zero AI. It seems low
           | hanging fruit to implement an LLM but none of the big three
           | have done so. Not even sure about the fringe ones like
           | Cortana and Bixby
        
             | og_kalu wrote:
             | I mean Microsoft is planning to. Rolling out as soon as
             | tomorrow.
             | 
             | https://youtu.be/5rEZGSFgZVY
        
         | og_kalu wrote:
         | Here's something with very little latency.
         | https://www.bland.ai/
        
         | yieldcrv wrote:
         | all it has to do is add a random selection of "uhms" and "ahhs"
         | and "mmm"
        
           | dragonwriter wrote:
           | Unfortunately, Bark is probably way too slow to use for the
           | TTS portion given the latency concerns or that would be
           | covered.
        
         | jimmytucson wrote:
         | > It doesn't have to be this way!
         | 
         | Is there any extra work OpenAI's product might be doing
         | contributing to this latency that yours isn't? Considering the
         | scale they operate at and any reputational risks to their
         | brand?
        
         | TheEzEzz wrote:
         | Completely agree, latency is key for unlocking great voice
         | experiences. Here's a quick demo I'm working on for voice
         | ordering https://youtu.be/WfvLIEHwiyo
         | 
         | Total end-to-end latency is a few hundred milliseconds:
         | starting from speech to text, to the LLM, then to a POS to
         | validate the SKU (no hallucinations are possible!), and finally
         | back to generated speech. The latency is starting to feel
         | really natural. Building out a general system to achieve this
         | low-latency will I think end up being a big unlock for enabling
         | diverse applications.
        
           | mach1ne wrote:
           | Manna v0.7
        
             | kortex wrote:
             | Context for the unaware:
             | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manna_(novel)
        
           | cyrux004 wrote:
           | This is pretty good. Do you think running models locally will
           | be able to achieve performance (getting task done
           | successfully) compared to cloud based ones.i am assuming for
           | context of a drive through scenario it should be ok but more
           | complex systems might need external infromation
        
             | TheEzEzz wrote:
             | Definitely depends on the application, agreed. The more
             | open ended the application the more dependent it is on
             | larger LLMs (and other systems) that don't easily fit on
             | edge. At the same time, progress is happening that is
             | increasing the size of LLM that can be ran on edge. I
             | imagine we end up in a hybrid world for many applications,
             | where local models take a first pass (and also handle
             | speech transcription) and only small requests are made to
             | big cloud-based models as needed.
        
               | wordpad25 wrote:
               | Can you share the source code? What did you do to improve
               | the latency?
        
               | TheEzEzz wrote:
               | Lots of work around speculative decoding, optimizing
               | across the ASR->LLM->TTS interfaces, fine-tuning smaller
               | models while maintaining accuracy (lots of investment
               | here), good old fashioned engineering around managing
               | requests to the GPU, etc. We're considering
               | commercializing this so I can't open source just yet, but
               | if we end up not selling it I'll definitely think about
               | opening it up.
        
           | simian1983 wrote:
           | That demo is pretty slick. What happens when you go totally
           | off book? Like, ask it to recite the numbers of pi? Or if you
           | become abusive? Will it call the cops?
        
             | TheEzEzz wrote:
             | It's trained to ignore everything else. That way background
             | conversations are ignored as well (like your kids talking
             | in the back of the car while you order).
        
           | nelox wrote:
           | The voice does not seem to be able to pronounce the L in
           | "else". What's happening there?
        
             | TheEzEzz wrote:
             | Good question. Off the shelf TTS systems tend to enunciate
             | every phoneme more like a radio talk show host rather than
             | a regular person, which I find a bit off putting. I've been
             | playing around with trying to get the voice to be more
             | colloquial/casual. But I haven't gotten it to really sound
             | natural yet.
        
           | TheEzEzz wrote:
           | Since this is getting a bit of interest, here's one more demo
           | of this https://youtu.be/cvKUa5JpRp4 This demo shows even
           | lower latency, plus the ability to handle very large menus
           | with lots of complicated sub-options (this restaurant has
           | over a billion option combinations to order a coffee). The
           | latency is negative in some places, meaning the system
           | finishes predicting before I finish speaking.
        
             | jonplackett wrote:
             | This is cool. But I want to see how it handles you going
             | back one and tweaking it.
        
             | arcticfox wrote:
             | Holy cow. That's better than the average human drive-
             | through attendant.
        
           | g0atbutt wrote:
           | This is a very slick demo. Nice job!
        
             | TheEzEzz wrote:
             | Thanks! It's a lot of fun building with these new models
             | and recent AI approaches.
        
           | arktiso wrote:
           | Wow, the latency on requests feels great!! I'm really
           | curious: is this running entirely with Python?
        
             | TheEzEzz wrote:
             | 100% Python but with a good deal of multiprocessing,
             | speculative decoding, etc. As we move to production we can
             | probably shave another 100ms off by moving over to a
             | compiled system, but Python is great for rapid iteration.
        
         | dsp_person wrote:
         | Also curious to hear about your setup. Using whisper too? When
         | I was experimenting with it there was still a lot of annoyance
         | about hallucinations and I was hard coding some "if last phrase
         | is 'thanks for watching', ignore last phrase"
         | 
         | I was just googling a bit to see what's out there now for
         | whisper/llama combos and came across this:
         | https://github.com/yacineMTB/talk
         | 
         | There's a demo linked on the github page that seems relatively
         | fast at responding conversationally, but still maybe 1-2
         | seconds at times. Impressive it's entirely offline.
        
         | rayuela wrote:
         | Can you share a github link to this? Where are you reducing the
         | latency? Are you processing the raw audio to text? In my
         | experience ChatGPT generation time is much faster than local
         | Lllama unless you're using something potato like a 7B model.
        
       | mrtksn wrote:
       | So far the most intuitive, killer app level UX appears to be text
       | chat. This interaction with showing it images also looks
       | interesting as it resembles talking with a friend about a topic
       | but let's see if it feels like talking to a very smart
       | person(ChatGPT is like that) or a very dumb person that somewhat
       | recognise objects. Recognising a wrench is nowhere near as
       | impressive as to able to talk with ChatGPT about history or make
       | it write code that actually works.
       | 
       | OpenAI is killing it, right? People are coming up with
       | interesting use cases but the main way most people interact with
       | AI, appears to be ChatGPT.
       | 
       | However they still don't seem to be able to nail image
       | generation, all the cool stuff keep happening on MidJourney and
       | StableDiffusion.
        
         | ilaksh wrote:
         | OpenAI is also releasing DALLE-3 in "early October" and the
         | images they chose for their demos show it demonstrating
         | unprecedented levels of prompt understanding, including
         | embedding full sentences of text in an output image.
        
           | Der_Einzige wrote:
           | Not unprecedented at all. SDXL Images look better than the
           | examples for DALLE-3 and SDXL has a massive tool ecosystem of
           | things like controlnet, Lora's, regional prompting that is
           | simply not there with DALLE-3
        
             | og_kalu wrote:
             | Lol it's definitely unprecedented. XL can't touch Dalle's
             | comprehension of text. Control Net and LORAs aren't a
             | substitute for that.
        
             | ShamelessC wrote:
             | There are pros and cons for sure but you should check out
             | the press release, DALLE3 is definitely capable of stuff
             | that sd xl isn't.
        
       | coldtea wrote:
       | "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that"
        
         | ilaksh wrote:
         | The real life version of this is in their red teaming paper.
         | They show it a picture of an overweight woman in a swimsuit and
         | ask what advice they should give.
         | 
         | Originally it immediately spit out a bunch of bullet points
         | about losing weight or something (I didn't read it).
         | 
         | The released version just says "Sorry, I can't help with that."
         | 
         | It's kind of funny but also a little bit telling as far as the
         | prevalence of prejudice in our society when you look at a few
         | other examples they had to fine tune. For example, show it some
         | flags and ask it to make predictions about characteristics of a
         | person from that country, by default it would go into plenty of
         | detail just on the basis of the flag images.
         | 
         | Now it says "Sorry, I can't help with that".
         | 
         | My take is that in those cases it should explain the poor logic
         | of trying to infer substantive information about people based
         | on literally nothing more than the country they are from or a
         | picture of them.
         | 
         | Part of it is just that LLMs just have a natural tendency to
         | run in the direction you push them, so they can be amplifiers
         | of anything.
        
       | eshack94 wrote:
       | I like how they silently removed the web browsing (Bing browsing)
       | chat feature after first having it disabled for several months.
       | 
       | A proper notice about them removing the feature would've been
       | nice. Maybe I missed it (someone please correct me if wrong), but
       | the last I heard officially it was _temporarily_ disabled while
       | they fix something. Next thing I know, it 's completely gone from
       | the platform without another peep.
        
         | PopePompus wrote:
         | Yes, that was a disappointment, and I agree it looks like they
         | aren't going to re-enable it anytime soon. However I find that
         | Perplexity AI does a better job of using web search than
         | ChatGPT ever did, and I use it more than ChatGPT for that
         | reason.
        
           | eshack94 wrote:
           | Perplexity has gone downhill a lot since its initial rollout.
           | Anecdotally, from my experience as a non-paying user of the
           | service.
        
         | cooper_ganglia wrote:
         | I currently have Browsing with Bing enabled as a plug-in on my
         | account. It went away for months, but it just randomly came
         | back about a week or 2 ago!
        
         | michelb wrote:
         | Agreed. You're now dependent on a third party plugin.
        
       | cced wrote:
       | Do we know why internet search was disabled? Any idea on when
       | it'll be back?
        
       | stephencoyner wrote:
       | The voice feature reminds of the "call Pi" feature from
       | Inflection AIs chatbot Pi [1].
       | 
       | The ability to have a real time back and forth feels truly
       | magical and allows for much denser conversation. It also opens up
       | the opportunity for multiple people to talk to a chatbot at once
       | which is fun
       | 
       | Where's that Gemini Google?
       | 
       | [1] https://pi.ai/talk
        
       | surfingdino wrote:
       | I can imagine people using these new capabilities to diagnose
       | skin conditions. Should dermatologists be worried?
        
         | nerdbert wrote:
         | They should be thrilled, they can spend more of their time
         | treating people who need it and less time guessing about who
         | those people are.
        
         | birracerveza wrote:
         | They should be worried about what they're gonna do with all
         | their free time, now that they have a tool that helps them
         | identify skin conditions much faster than ever before.
         | 
         | Same as programmers and artists.
         | 
         | It's a tool.
         | 
         | It must be used by humans.
         | 
         | It won't replace them, it will augment them.
        
           | dguest wrote:
           | This is a good point, but I might replace "with all their
           | free time" with "as a job".
           | 
           | I love everything we can do with ML but as long as people
           | live in a market economy they'll get payed less when they are
           | needed less. I hope that anyone in a career which will be
           | impacted is making a plan to remain useful and stay on top of
           | the latest tooling. And I seriously hope governments are
           | making plans to modify job training / education accordingly.
           | 
           | Has anyone seen examples of larger-scale foresight on this,
           | from governments or otherwise?
        
             | birracerveza wrote:
             | A new tool was released. People will choose whether to
             | learn it, whether to use it, and how to use it. If they
             | won't do so out their own volition, market forces might
             | dictate they HAVE to learn it and use it to stay
             | competitive, if it turns out to be such a fundamental tool.
             | 
             | For example (with random numbers), a dermatologist might
             | choose to solely rely on an AI that catches 90% of cases in
             | 10s. Another one might choose to never use it and just
             | check from experience, catching 99% of cases but taking 10x
             | as much time. Another one might double check himself, etc..
             | 
             | Which one is "correct"? If a dermatologist relies
             | exclusively on AI due to laziness he opens himself to risk
             | of malpractice, but even that risk can be acceptable if
             | that means checking 10x as much patients in the meantime.
             | 
             | That is to say, the use of AI by humans is purely a
             | subjective choice dictated by context. But in no case there
             | is a sentient AI which completely replaces a dermatologist.
             | As you said, the only thing that can happen is that those
             | who use AI will be more efficient, and that is hardly ever
             | a negative.
             | 
             | This also applies to programmers, artists and anyone who is
             | "threatened" by AI. A human factor is always necessary, and
             | will be for the foreseeable future, even just to have
             | someone to point fingers at when the AI inevitably fucks up
             | enough to involve the law.
        
       | plutoh28 wrote:
       | This is the dagger that will make online schooling unviable.
       | 
       | ChatGPT already made it so that you could easily copy & paste any
       | full-text questions and receive an answer with 90% accuracy. The
       | only flaw was that problems that also used diagrams or figures
       | would be out of the domain of ChatGPT.
       | 
       | With image support, students could just take screenshots or
       | document scans and have ChatGPT give them a valid answer. From
       | what I've seen, more students than not will gladly abuse this
       | functionality. The counter would be to either leave the grading
       | system behind, or to force in-person schooling with no homework,
       | only supervised schoolwork.
        
         | danbruc wrote:
         | It would be sufficient to do exams in person and no longer
         | grade homework.
        
           | plutoh28 wrote:
           | Good point. Though I imagine fully online institutions would
           | require testing facilities. Maybe local libraries become
           | testing hosts?
        
             | MaKey wrote:
             | I studied at a distance university and they use lecture
             | halls of local universities for the exams.
        
         | bamboozled wrote:
         | It's true.
         | 
         | I mean what is the point of doing schoolwork when some of the
         | greatest minds of our time have decided the best way for the
         | species to progress is to be replaced by machines?
         | 
         | Imagine you're 16 years old right now, you know about ChatGPT,
         | you know about OpenAI and their plans, and you're being told
         | you need to study hard to get a good career..., but you're also
         | reading up on what the future looks like according to the
         | technocracy.
         | 
         | You'd be pretty fucking confused right now wouldn't you?
         | 
         | It must be really hard at the moment to want to study and not
         | cheat....
        
           | civilitty wrote:
           | Your username checks out!
           | 
           | That said, is it that much different from the past twenty
           | years, when everyone was being told to follow their passion
           | and get a useless $200,000 communication or literature degree
           | to then go work at Starbucks? At least kids growing up with
           | AI will have a chance to make its use second nature like many
           | of us did with computers 20-30 years ago.
           | 
           | The kids with poor parental/counselor guidance will walk into
           | reality face first, the ones with helicopter parents will
           | overcorrect when free, the studious ones will mostly figure
           | life out, the smart ones will get disillusioned fast, and the
           | kids with trust funds just kept doing their thing. I don't
           | think much will change.
        
             | cyrialize wrote:
             | I do think it is much different from the past twenty years.
             | Twenty years ago we didn't have ChatGPT. There are things
             | we could compare it to, but there also isn't anything like
             | it.
             | 
             | My biggest fear is just a lack of jobs.
             | 
             | When people need experience to work, and the work you give
             | to people to give them experience is replaced by ChatGPT -
             | then what do we do?
             | 
             | Of course there will still be companies hiring people, but
             | when leadership is telling people to save money - it seems
             | much cheaper to use ChatGPT that it is to train someone.
             | 
             | Why hire a kid that has been using AI, when the AI can just
             | do the work? Or if a kid that has been using AI can do the
             | work of 20 people, what happens to the 19 people that can't
             | find work? Will we be in a place where we need 20 people
             | doing the work of 20 people each? Is that need actually
             | there?
             | 
             | I do very much appreciate your view. I feel like I waffle
             | back and forth between what I'm saying here and your
             | comment.
             | 
             | I apologize for coming across doomer-ish. It is sometimes
             | hard for me to imagine a future for kids growing up with
             | ChatGPT.
        
           | 93po wrote:
           | I'm in my mid 30s and even I have some amount of apathy for
           | the remainder of my career. I feel pretty confident my
           | software and product experience is going to be not-so-useful
           | in 15 years as it is today.
        
         | ilaksh wrote:
         | Well, I think the kid will already be logged into ChatGPT using
         | a AI Teacher ChatGPT plugin which is doing interactive
         | instruction.
         | 
         | They can still log in on their phone to cheat though. I wonder
         | if OpenAI will add linked accounts and parental controls at
         | some point. Instance 2 of ChatGPT might "tell" on the kid for
         | cheating by informing Instance 1 running the AI Teacher plugin.
        
           | bamboozled wrote:
           | Will be kind of stupid to cut kids off from ChatGPT and
           | pretend to them that they should go off to school, meanwhile
           | Silicon Valley is doing it's best to make every job possible
           | obsolete? Kind of invalidates the whole exercise of the
           | current approach to schooling right?
           | 
           | What are you going to school for, to learn how to write
           | essays? Well, we have an app for that ?
           | 
           | It sounds like the future of work will be prompting, and if
           | and when that is obsolete...who knows what...
        
         | lugu wrote:
         | What people are missing is the teacher will soon be an LLM with
         | a camera looking at the student. Why would you watch a video of
         | a human during an online class? Why would you ask the student
         | to produce something in a black room? We will not evaluate
         | students based on their homework, an AI assistant will evaluate
         | the student based on the conversations they had together. You
         | can automate teaching, but not learning. There is this gap in
         | time where teaching hasn't catch-up, it's going to be quickly
         | addressed since teaching is expensive. Parents should really
         | encourage their kids to practice their learning as before,
         | eventually using ChatGPT like they use Wikipedia. One
         | generation will suffer during the change.
        
         | efields wrote:
         | When we talk about people abusing ChatGPT in a school context,
         | it's always for kids in high school or greater education
         | levels. These are individuals that know right from wrong and
         | also have the motor skills and access to use such a tool. These
         | are individuals who are problem-solving for their specific
         | need, which is to get this homework or essay out of the way so
         | that they can do XYZ. Presumably XYZ does not leverage chatgpt.
         | So make that what they spend their time on. At some point
         | they'll have to back-solve for skills they need to learn and
         | need educational guidance and structure.
         | 
         | This is obviously not easy or going to happen without time and
         | resources, but that is how adaptation goes.
        
         | bottlepalm wrote:
         | Use online for training, real life for testing/grading. That
         | way cheating at home will only hurt yourself.
        
           | 93po wrote:
           | The problem here is that homework is designed to provide the
           | structure kids need to apply themselves and actually learn.
           | If you don't provide structure for this, they will simply
           | never study and accept failure. They frequently don't have
           | the self-discipline and mindfulness and long-term vision to
           | study "because it's the right thing to do". I know my entire
           | education, even with college, was "why do i need to know
           | this?" and being wildly bored with it all as a result.
        
         | scop wrote:
         | Another option is that this doesn't replace the student's work,
         | but the teacher's. The single greatest use I have found for
         | ChatGPT is in educating myself on various topics, hosting a
         | socratic seminar where I am questioning ChatGPT in order to
         | learn about X. Of course this could radically change a
         | student's ability to generate homework etc, but this could also
         | radically change how the student learns in the first place. To
         | me, online school could become much more than they are now
         | through AI-assisted tutoring. I can also see a future where
         | "schooling" becomes much more decentralized than it is now and
         | where students are self-selecting curriculum, methods, etc to
         | give students ownership and a sense of control over their work
         | so that they don't just look at it as "busywork".
        
           | random_cynic wrote:
           | That's the only sane option. The other options suggested in
           | previous comments are not really options but rather trying to
           | use a band-aid to hold together a dam that has already been
           | breached.
        
           | plutoh28 wrote:
           | Absolutely ChatGPT is a great learning tool if in the right
           | hands. The issue is that students with a genuine interest in
           | learning are a minority. The majority would rather use
           | ChatGPT to cheat through their class work and get an easy A
           | rather then exhaust the effort to chat and learn for their
           | own sake.
        
             | logicchains wrote:
             | >The majority would rather use ChatGPT to cheat through
             | their class work and get an easy A rather then exhaust the
             | effort to chat and learn for their own sake.
             | 
             | Just have 100% of the mark come from in-person exams, as
             | many subjects already do. Students can cheat all they want
             | on assignments, but the only thing it's hurting is their
             | exam score.
        
           | istjohn wrote:
           | I agree, but typical GPT use is actually the opposite of the
           | traditional Socratic mode in which the teacher uses questions
           | to guide the student to understanding. But I wonder how it
           | would do if it was prompted to use the Socratic method.
        
       | joshstrange wrote:
       | My biggest complaint with OpenAI/ChatGPT is their horrible
       | "marketing" (for lack of a better term). They announce stuff like
       | this (or like plugins), I get excited, I go to use it, it hasn't
       | rolled out to me yet (which is frustrating as a paying customer),
       | and my only recourse is.... check back daily? They never send an
       | email "Plugins are available for you!", "Voice chat is now
       | enabled on your account!" and so often I forget about the new
       | feature unless I stumble across it later.
       | 
       | Just now I opened the app, went to setting, went to "New
       | Features", and all I saw was Bing Browsing disabled (unable to
       | enable). Ok, I didn't even know that was a thing that worked at
       | one point. Maybe I need an update? Go to the App Store, nope, I'm
       | up to to date. Kill the app, relaunch, open settings, now "New
       | Features" isn't even listed. I can promise you I won't be
       | browsing the settings part of this app regularly to see if there
       | is a new feature. Heck, not only do they not email/push about new
       | features they don't even message in-app about them, I really
       | don't understand.
       | 
       | Maybe they are doing so well they don't have to care about
       | communicating with customer right now but it really annoys me and
       | I wish they did better.
        
         | espinchi wrote:
         | They do explain why in the post. (Still, you may not agree, of
         | course.)
         | 
         | > We are deploying image and voice capabilities gradually > >
         | OpenAI's goal is to build AGI that is safe and beneficial. We
         | believe in making our tools available gradually, which allows
         | us to make improvements and refine risk mitigations over time
         | while also preparing everyone for more powerful systems in the
         | future. This strategy becomes even more important with advanced
         | models involving voice and vision.
        
           | joshstrange wrote:
           | My issue isn't fully with them rolling out slowly, my issue
           | is never knowing when you will get the feature or rather not
           | being told when you do get it. I'm fine with "sometime in the
           | next X days/months you will get feature Y", my issue is the
           | only way to see if you got feature Y is to check back daily.
        
             | maroonblazer wrote:
             | It's the first sentence in the 3rd paragraph, repeated
             | again at the end of the blog post.
             | 
             | > We're rolling out voice and images in ChatGPT to Plus and
             | Enterprise users over the next two weeks.
        
         | WillPostForFood wrote:
         | _it hasn 't rolled out to me yet (which is frustrating as a
         | paying customer)_
         | 
         | Frustratingly, at least the image gen is live on Bing, but I
         | guess Microsoft is paying more than me for access.
        
         | amelius wrote:
         | We're heading for the singularity and you're complaining about
         | marketing?
        
           | skilled wrote:
           | The singularity huh... what do you think, it will run in
           | Kubernetes or Docker?
        
           | p1esk wrote:
           | Yeah I don't think OpenAI needs any marketing at this point.
        
         | jstummbillig wrote:
         | Imagine how fantastic you are doing, when your biggest user
         | complaint stems from frustration with features they can not use
         | just yet.
        
         | trey-jones wrote:
         | First of all, I understand what you're saying. Communication is
         | important. I just think it's funny to ever talk about "lack of
         | communication". All I want is for businesses to stop
         | communicating with me. Even better if I don't have to ask
         | (unsubscribe).
        
           | joshstrange wrote:
           | That's fair, I completely understand where you are coming
           | from. From a growth/money-making perspective it'd be smart to
           | message customers about new features but table stakes would
           | be something like:                   Voice Chat (Not
           | available yet) [Click here to be notified when you have
           | access]
           | 
           | Or something along those lines. It sours my opinion of
           | ChatGPT every time I go to use a newly announced feature to
           | find out I don't have it yet and have no clue when I will.
        
         | olalonde wrote:
         | > My biggest complaint with OpenAI/ChatGPT is their horrible
         | "marketing"
         | 
         | Agreed. Other notable mentions: choosing "ChatGPT" as their
         | product name and not having mobile apps.
        
           | zwily wrote:
           | They do have mobile apps though?
        
             | olalonde wrote:
             | Oops, missed that announcement.
        
         | Obscurity4340 wrote:
         | Maybe they need an RSS feed or something
        
         | aqme28 wrote:
         | It has always seemed like OpenAI succeeds in spite of itself.
         | API access was historically an absolute nightmare, and it just
         | seemed like they didn't even want customers.
        
         | tchock23 wrote:
         | At least you're seeing an option for 'New Features' in
         | settings. I don't see it and I'm supposedly up to date (and a
         | Plus subscriber).
        
         | test6554 wrote:
         | I can honestly wait. I am excited for 5 and 10 years from now.
         | I really am. This is going to be amazing. If I miss out for a
         | week or a month in the meantime I don't mind.
        
         | generalizations wrote:
         | > my only recourse is.... check back daily
         | 
         | Sounds like their marketing is doing just fine. If you were to
         | just leave and forget about it, then sure, they need to work on
         | their retention. But you won't, so they don't.
        
         | constantly wrote:
         | User impressions and revisit rate are key factors in raising
         | money and showing success. It's natural that they would select
         | for user flows that keep you coming back daily rather than risk
         | you don't use it for a day or two waiting for an email.
        
         | eximius wrote:
         | Your complaint is they don't email you _enough_?
         | 
         | Sarcasm aside, I understand your complaint, but still, a little
         | funny.
        
           | tomjen3 wrote:
           | The companies you want to hear back from never email you, the
           | ones that do you don't care about.
        
             | TeMPOraL wrote:
             | In general, if companies e-mail you, it's almost always
             | with worthless bullshit and/or attempts at tricking you
             | into spending more money. OpenAI is not doing that, hence
             | radio silence.
        
           | sebzim4500 wrote:
           | Do they email you a lot?
           | 
           | I'm a plus customer and an API user, and they barely send me
           | anything. One day I just signed in and saw that I suddenly
           | had interpreter access, for instane.
        
         | notmytempo wrote:
         | They're focused on scaling to meet the current (overwhelming)
         | demand. Given the 'if you build it, they will come' dynamic
         | they're experiencing, any focus on marketing would be a waste
         | of resources.
        
         | toddmorey wrote:
         | They do marketing like a 3-person startup that found a saas
         | starter template, connected Stripe with shoestrings, and hasn't
         | looked back. In order to start using the API, I actually had to
         | cancel and sign back up again (because I think I was on a
         | previous rev of the billing model).
         | 
         | I do love these companies that succeed in spite of their
         | marketing & design and not because of it. It shows you have
         | something very special.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | brandall10 wrote:
         | I got an email indicating I was accepted for plugin use, fwiw.
        
         | Closi wrote:
         | They have gone from being a niche research company to being
         | (probably) the fastest growing start-up in history.
         | 
         | I suspect they do care about communicating with customers, but
         | it's total chaos and carnage internally.
        
           | nwoli wrote:
           | At what point to you go from startup to not when you have 10
           | billion invested and countless employees and is practically a
           | sub branch of microsoft. Sounds cooler though I guess
        
             | imacomputertoo wrote:
             | I'm not sure when a company begins to not be a start up,
             | but by the time they have a wave of news claiming their
             | product kills teenagers, or they're engaging in antitrust,
             | or they're effectively using space labor, that's when they
             | are definitely no longer a start up.
             | 
             | That hasn't happened yet for OpenAI, but I'm sure it will
             | happen eventually, and then we'll know.
        
             | sebzim4500 wrote:
             | I think you stop being a startup when there are engineers
             | who do not know the CEO. I would guess OpenAI is still a
             | startup by that definition (they don't have that many
             | engineers IIRC) but I don't actually know.
        
               | TeMPOraL wrote:
               | That's really a function of what kind of CEO the company
               | has, and what do you mean by "know". I worked remotely
               | for a company employing hundreds of people, around for
               | couple decades and with offices in different regions of
               | the world, and I still got to talk to the CEO a couple
               | times, and he knows me by name, all by virtue of bumping
               | into him a couple times on corridor while on one of my
               | infrequent visits to the office.
        
           | joshstrange wrote:
           | > I suspect they do care about communicating with customers,
           | but it's total chaos and carnage internally.
           | 
           | This is my best guess as well, they are rocketing down the
           | interstate at 200mph and just trying to keep the wheels on
           | the car. When you're absolutely killing it I guess making X%
           | more by being better at messaging just isn't worth it since
           | to do that you'd have to take someone off something
           | potentially more critical. Still makes me a little sad
           | though.
        
             | jprete wrote:
             | When dealing with a tech where people have credible reasons
             | to believe it can be enormously harmful on every possible
             | time scale, maybe it would behoove them to not rocket down
             | the interstate at 200mph?
        
               | dcow wrote:
               | Thats not what the analogy means. 200mph refers to
               | funding.
        
               | bergen wrote:
               | Then use that funding to hire one PR guy who is 1/4 the
               | expenses of an AI developer?
        
               | edgyquant wrote:
               | No it refers to them moving too fast to send out basic
               | emails for feature updates, per this comment chain.
        
               | tomjen3 wrote:
               | There is always going to be people who against any new
               | technology and who makes up reasons to be against it.
               | 
               | The best defence is to move so quickly that you are an
               | established part of the business framework by the time
               | these forces can gather, or to go so slowly that nobody
               | takes you as a threat.
               | 
               | No startup can go slowly.
        
               | isx726552 wrote:
               | In other words, make your money and ride off into the
               | sunset before anyone can catch on to how much damage
               | you're doing to society.
               | 
               | Otherwise known as the AirBnB playbook.
        
               | tomjen3 wrote:
               | No, successfully navigate past this version of Covid
               | vacine deniers, 5g conspiracists etc.
               | 
               | In ten years we will enjoy a higher productivity due to
               | AI and a richer society as a result. We have already seen
               | it with protein folding which AI is amazing at[0].
               | 
               | The only reasonable fear of AI is for some jobs and that
               | China gets their first.
               | 
               | [0]: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02083-2
        
               | pixl97 wrote:
               | Right, it is perfectly valid to only accept the potential
               | good points while neglecting all the potential bad
               | points.
               | 
               | This is no different then saying "Look, nuclear weapons
               | aren't actually dangerous, if they were we'd all be dead
               | because the apocalypse would have already happened",
               | which is probably the dumbest take on the close calls and
               | real risks that exist.
        
             | vdfs wrote:
             | > When you're absolutely killing it
             | 
             | Aren't they unprofitable? and have fierce competition from
             | everyone?
        
               | dcow wrote:
               | Whether or not you're profitable has very little to do
               | with how valuable others think you are. And usually
               | having competitors is something that validates your
               | market.
        
               | hef19898 wrote:
               | The same can be said about food delivery start ups.
        
               | Tactician_mark wrote:
               | > And usually having competitors is something that
               | validates your market.
               | 
               | Don't users validate your market? ChatGPT has plenty of
               | users, so I would think competitors only hurt their
               | value.
        
               | michaelt wrote:
               | Well, it depends.
               | 
               | Clearly, you can be a company like Microsoft where nobody
               | is challenging your dominance in PC operating systems,
               | and you can make huge sums of money. So competitors
               | certainly aren't vital.
               | 
               | Or if you've cleverly sewn up a market with patents or
               | trade secrets or a giant first-mover advantage or network
               | effects, and nobody's got any chance of challenging your
               | dominance in your specific market niche - again that
               | could be highly profitable.
               | 
               | On the other hand, if you're selling ten-dollar bills for
               | five dollars, you might have millions of satisfied paying
               | customers, but no competitors because nobody else thinks
               | your unit economics make sense. Or if you run a DVD
               | rental store, you might be profitable and have many
               | return customers, but you might not attract competitors
               | because they don't think DVD rental is a growth business.
               | 
               | So some people consider a lack of competition an ominous
               | sign.
        
               | iudqnolq wrote:
               | > And usually having competitors is something that
               | validates your market
               | 
               | a whole bunch of AI startups were founded around the same
               | time. surely each can't validate the market for the
               | others and be validated by the others in turn
        
               | TeMPOraL wrote:
               | The surviving ones can. The same way that multiple
               | species of trees, growing on the same patch of the
               | ground, desperately competing for sunlight, together
               | validate that the soil underneath is fertile.
        
               | tomjen3 wrote:
               | Even if they are unprofitable they can get VC money very
               | easily.
               | 
               | Plus they make 20 dollars a month from a lot of people.
        
           | kaliqt wrote:
           | Yeah but to be honest, I'd wonder how such a simple thing
           | falls to the wayside.
        
             | Lutger wrote:
             | This happens when there are thousands other simple things
             | and a lot of complicated things. When your devs are
             | stretched, you sort by priority and I can tell you this is
             | not that important.
        
           | ilaksh wrote:
           | Maybe there is a state somewhere between "total chaos and
           | carnage" and "emails users when new features are enabled for
           | their account".
           | 
           | Such as "decided it wasn't an operational priority to email
           | users when features were enabled for them".
        
             | londons_explore wrote:
             | Emailing users when a new feature is enabled for their
             | account isn't even the kind of thing that would distract an
             | existing very busy developer.
             | 
             | You could literally hire an entirely new guy, give him
             | instructions to build such an email system, and let him put
             | the right triggers on the user account permissions database
             | to send out the right emails at the right time.
             | 
             | And then, when it's built, you can start adding more
             | features like sending the emails only when demand is low
             | and/or at times of day when you get the best click through
             | rate. And then next you can start measuring the increase in
             | revenue from sending those emails.
             | 
             | Before long, you have a whole marketing and comms team.
             | Which you probably want as a big company anyway.
        
               | mattkrause wrote:
               | Heck, dogfood your own product and hire someone to ask
               | ChatGTP to do it!
        
               | hombre_fatal wrote:
               | The peanut gallery could (and does) say this about 1000
               | little features that 1000 different people claim to be so
               | necessary that OpenAI is incompetent for not having, yet
               | none of those people agree that those other features are
               | priorities.
        
               | ZiiS wrote:
               | They could hire 1000 new developers a month and still be
               | understaffed vs any company in history with thier
               | valuation.
        
               | sebzim4500 wrote:
               | The fact that they are so succesful despite their low
               | headcount is an argument that there are advantages to
               | keeping the headcount low.
               | 
               | I'm sure we've all seen companies grow too fast become
               | less productive than when there were a ten person
               | startup.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | martingalex2 wrote:
               | Why isn't GPT4 running the company and handling these
               | marketing missteps? j/k
        
               | _justinfunk wrote:
               | We don't have evidence that this isn't the case
        
             | pixl97 wrote:
             | And then the moment you got this email you'd post to HN and
             | everyone else would be "OMG, why don't I have that option"
             | 
             | Incremental rollouts are hard.
        
           | wongarsu wrote:
           | But this issue far predates their current success. GPT2 was
           | held back for a while. GPT3 launched as "waitlist only" with
           | an application process, and so did GPT3.5.
           | 
           | This is a large part of what held them back: GPT3.5 had most
           | of the capabilities of the initial ChatGPT release, just with
           | a different interface. Yet GPT3.5 failed to get any hype
           | because the rollout was glacial. They made some claims that
           | it was great, but to verify this for yourself you had to wait
           | months. Only when they finally made a product that everyone
           | could try out at the same time, with minimal hassle, did
           | OpenAI turn from a "niche research company" to the fastest
           | growing start-up. And this seems to have been a one-time
           | thing, now they are back to staggered releases.
        
             | pixl97 wrote:
             | Turns out that getting enough compute power to meet demand
             | for AI is hard.
        
             | MillionOClock wrote:
             | > GPT3.5 had most of the capabilities of the initial
             | ChatGPT release, just with a different interface
             | 
             | I believe two other factors were the cost (especially of
             | fine tuned models, IIRC fine tuned davinci cost $0.20 per
             | thousand tokens) and also that OpenAI hadn't very clearly
             | shown just how much higher the quality could get once
             | RLHF'd. I remember asking davinci-instruct to parse some
             | data, and the reliability really seemed much lower than
             | ChatGPT at launch, to the point that, at the time, I
             | thought GPT-4 was secretly powering ChatGPT.
        
           | skeeter2020 wrote:
           | Considering the field and progress that is being made I find
           | this idea terrifying. All the big problems like "How will we
           | actually control what we're building?" being answered "that's
           | too hard; let's punt and solve that after we figure out how
           | to consume voice data". One way or another this is likely the
           | last technological advance that humans will make.
        
             | kranke155 wrote:
             | The last technological advance that humans will make? What
             | gives you that impression
        
               | ZiiS wrote:
               | _if_ it is better at making advances then us then
               | everything in human nature points to us letting it make
               | all future advances.
        
               | kranke155 wrote:
               | Im not sure. I suspect it might be better at some
               | advances but not necessarily better at everything.
        
               | TeMPOraL wrote:
               | As long as it's better at some of the advances that would
               | make it even better at those advances, or better at more
               | advances, then it'll quickly become better than us in
               | approximately _everything_ , and at that point humans
               | become NPCs of their own story.
        
               | ben_w wrote:
               | I don't know if @skeeter2020's assertion is correct, but
               | it is certainly the goal.
               | 
               | To use a fictional but entirely apt quote:
               | 
               | > I say your civilization because as soon as we started
               | thinking for you, it really became our civilization,
               | which is, of course, what this is all about: Evolution,
               | Morpheus, evolution. Like the dinosaur. Look out that
               | window. You had your time. The future is our world,
               | Morpheus. The future is our time.
        
             | janalsncm wrote:
             | > How will we actually control what we're building?
             | 
             | This question is poorly formed because it's not clear who
             | the "we" is. If it's you and me, that train left the
             | station a while ago. If it's any humans, well Sam Altman is
             | probably a human and all of these are impressive products,
             | but still just tools.
        
           | Hoasi wrote:
           | They could send over ChatGPTed newsletters. Marketing
           | bullshit is one thing ChatGPT excels at.
        
           | jimbokun wrote:
           | > fastest growing start-up in history.
           | 
           | What are some metrics that justify this claim?
        
             | LeonM wrote:
             | They have been the fastest company ever to go from 0 to 100
             | million users. [0]
             | 
             | They are also on pace to exceed $1B in revenue. [1]
             | 
             | [0] https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-sets-record-
             | faste...
             | 
             | [1] https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-
             | passes-1-bill...
        
               | blibble wrote:
               | both of those are either estimated or anonymous sources
               | 
               | not credible
        
               | Closi wrote:
               | Well they are a private company so you are going to have
               | to evaluate it on that basis, but reuters is generally
               | considered credible.
        
               | blibble wrote:
               | > Well they are a private company so you are going to
               | have to evaluate it on that basis, but reuters is
               | generally considered credible.
               | 
               | well that would be good if Reuters were the source of the
               | figure
               | 
               | but they're not, they're simply reporting on what
               | SimilarWeb has estimated
               | 
               | https://www.similarweb.com/website/chatgpt.com/#technolog
               | ies
               | 
               | and that estimate is essentially based on nothing
        
               | itsoktocry wrote:
               | Are either of those things indicative of "fastest growth
               | ever"? Maybe 100 million users, but we live in a world
               | where it's hard to know how meaningful that is (ie
               | Tucker's X videos getting 300 million views).
        
               | tomjen3 wrote:
               | MrBeast[0] has about 182m subscribers, and it is probably
               | easier to get a subscriber on youtube than a user.
               | 
               | Views are easy to inflate, I wouldn't even consider it in
               | the same ballpark. This video[1] of Vivaldis 4 seasons
               | has about 1/4 billion views.
               | 
               | The shortest time to 100 million users is almost a
               | definition of the quickest growing company.
               | 
               | [0]: first or second largest youtuber. [1]:
               | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRxofEmo3HA
        
           | RivieraKid wrote:
           | I think their main goal is to be perceived as the most
           | advanced AI company. Why? Because that's how you get the best
           | people working for you. The main determinant of success for
           | companies like OpenAI is people.
        
       | alpark3 wrote:
       | > The new voice capability is powered by a new text-to-speech
       | model, capable of generating human-like audio from just text and
       | a few seconds of sample speech.
       | 
       | I'm more interested in this. I wonder how it performs compared to
       | other competitor models or even open source ones?
        
       | hackerlight wrote:
       | Did they make the sound robotic on purpose? Sounds more
       | "autotuned" than elevenlabs.
        
       | rapind wrote:
       | So... ChatGPT just replaced Dads.
        
       | throw1234651234 wrote:
       | Yet it still can't tell me how to import the Redirect type from
       | Next.js and lies about it.
        
         | Tiberium wrote:
         | I don't know Next.js, but was that feature introduced later
         | than 2021? I think both GPT-3.5 Turbo and GPT-4 largely share
         | their datasets, and it has the data cutoff at roughly September
         | 2021 (with a small amount of newer knowledge). This is their
         | biggest drawback as of now to, say, Claude, which has a much
         | newer dataset of early 2023.
        
       | comment_ran wrote:
       | "..., find the _4mm_ Allen (HEX) key ". Nice job.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | hugs wrote:
       | As someone deep in the software test automation space, the thing
       | I'm waiting for is robust AI-powered image recognition of app
       | user interfaces. Combined with an AI ability to write test
       | automation code, I'm looking forward to the ability to generate
       | executable Selenium or Appium test code from a single screenshot
       | (or sequence of screenshots). Feels like we're almost there.
        
       | m3kw9 wrote:
       | I need it to help me dismount and remount my engine, that'd be
       | the ultimate test
        
       | hermannj314 wrote:
       | I've been making a few hobby projects that consolidate different
       | AI services to achieve this, so I look forward to the reduced
       | complexity and latency from all those trips.
       | 
       | If the API is available in time (halloween), my multi-modal
       | talking skeleton head with an ESP32 camera that makes snarky
       | comments about your costume just got slightly easier on the
       | software side.
        
       | toddmorey wrote:
       | It's telling to me that there's not even a sentence in this
       | announcement post on user privacy. It seems like as both
       | consumers and providers of these services, we're once again:
       | build it first, sort out thorny privacy issues later.
        
       | warent wrote:
       | The number of comments here of people fearing there is a ghost in
       | the shell is shocking.
       | 
       | Are we really this emotional and irrational? Folks, let's all
       | take a moment to remember that AI is nowhere near conscious. It's
       | an illusion based in patterns that mimic humans.
        
         | HaZeust wrote:
         | Why is the barrier for so many "consciousness"? Why does it
         | matter whether it's conscious or not if its pragmatic
         | functionality builds use cases that disrupt social contracts
         | (we soon can't trust text, audio OR video - AND we can have
         | human-like text deployed at incredible speed and effectivity),
         | the status quo itself (job displacement), legal statutes and
         | charter (questioning copyright law), and even creativity/self-
         | expression (see: Library of Babel).
         | 
         | When all of this is happening from an unconscious being, why do
         | I care if it's unconscious?
        
         | callwhendone wrote:
         | I'm not seeing as much fear about a ghost in the shell as much
         | as I am job displacement, which is a real scenario that can
         | play out regardless of an AI having consciousness.
        
         | bottlepalm wrote:
         | We have no idea what consciousness is. Therefore we have no way
         | to determine if AI is or is not.
        
         | Method-X wrote:
         | AI doesn't have to be conscious to cause massive job
         | displacement. It has to be artificially intelligent, not
         | artificially conscious. Intelligence and consciousness are not
         | the same.
        
         | isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
         | Look at an average reddit thread and tell me how much original
         | thought there is. I'm fairly convinced you can generate 95% of
         | comments with no loss of quality.
        
           | artursapek wrote:
           | This is not a coincidence, it's increasingly evident that
           | roughly 90% of humans are NPCs.
        
             | warent wrote:
             | This is the classic teenage thought of sitting in a bus /
             | subway looking at everyone thinking they're sheep without
             | their own thoughts or much awareness.
             | 
             | For everyone who we think is an NPC, there are people who
             | think we are the NPCs. This way of thinking is boring at
             | best, but frankly can be downright dangerous. Everyone has
             | a rich inner world despite shallow immature judgements
             | being made.
        
               | labrador wrote:
               | Exactly. Most people aren't good at communicating their
               | thoughts or what they see in their mind's eye. These new
               | AI programs will help the average person communicate
               | those, so I'm exciting to see what people come up with.
               | The average person has an amazing mind compared to other
               | animals (as far as we know)
        
       | jojobas wrote:
       | For better or worse, it still can't tell truth from fiction or,
       | better yet, bullshit.
        
         | DrScientist wrote:
         | So almost human then :-)
        
           | bamboozled wrote:
           | I don't pay $20 a month for humans to talk shit to me though.
           | The fact that they do this is a bug not a feature. I'm not
           | going to pay for bullshit which I mostly try avoid?
        
             | DrScientist wrote:
             | > I don't pay $20 a month for humans to talk shit to me
             | though.
             | 
             | No - you probably pay more for your internet access ( home
             | and phone ) ;-)
             | 
             | More seriously I totally get your point about accuracy -
             | these models need to be better at detecting and surfacing
             | when they are likely to be filling in the blanks.
             | 
             | Though I still think there is an element of 'buyer beware'
             | - whether it be AI, or human provided advice on the
             | internet, it's still _your_ job to be able to spot the
             | bullsh!t.
             | 
             | ie it should be treated like any other source of info.
        
               | bamboozled wrote:
               | _No - you probably pay more for your internet access (
               | home and phone ) ;-)_
               | 
               | My company pays for this, so yeah. If they give me
               | ChatGPT-4 for free, I guess I'd have a subscription
               | without any complaints, where I use it often if another
               | story.
        
           | jojobas wrote:
           | Well sort of, it's as if you commissioned help of a human for
           | this or that, and now and then you end up getting medicine-
           | related advise from a homeopathy fan, navigation assistance
           | from a flat-earther, or coding advice from a crack-smoking
           | monkey.
        
       | generalizations wrote:
       | I guess it's a phased rollout, since my Plus subscription doesn't
       | have access to it yet.
        
         | leonheld wrote:
         | It's quite literally in the article itself:
         | 
         | "We will be expanding access Plus and Enterprise users will get
         | to experience voice and images in the next two weeks. We're
         | excited to roll out these capabilities to other groups of
         | users, including developers, soon after."
        
       | clbrmbr wrote:
       | The thought of my children being put to bed by a machine is
       | horrifying. Then again, perhaps this is better than many kids
       | have. Shudder.
        
         | hapticmonkey wrote:
         | If I could harness the power of AI to outsource my tasks,
         | reading bedtime stories to my kids would be the last thing on
         | that list. That's cherished time. Those are lifelong memories.
         | Those are the moments we are supposed to be striving to have
         | more of.
         | 
         | It saddens me to think of the amount of engineering work that
         | went into creating that example while entirely missing the
         | point. These are the moments we are supposed to be working
         | towards to have more of. If we outsource them to an AI company
         | because we are as as overworked and underpaid as ever...what's
         | the point of it all?
        
           | optimalsolver wrote:
           | The AI takes care of the bedtime stories, giving you more
           | time for video games.
        
             | sebzim4500 wrote:
             | Deepmind can play the video games for you, too
        
           | gen220 wrote:
           | I remember in the "microsoft office <> Generative AI" demo,
           | one of the motivating examples was a parent generating a
           | graduation party speech for her child... [1]
           | 
           | The first half of the video is demonstrating how the parent
           | can take something as special as a party celebrating a major
           | milestone and automate it into a soulless box-check - while
           | editing some segments to make it look like their own voice.
           | 
           | Definite black mirror vibes.
           | 
           | [1]: https://youtu.be/ebls5x-gb0s?t=224
        
           | PretzelPirate wrote:
           | I viewed this differently. This wasn't a parent having an AI
           | step in to read their kid a bedtime story, it was a parent
           | and a child using AI to discover an interesting story
           | together.
           | 
           | It's just like reading a "choose your own adventure" book
           | with your child, but it can be much more interactive and you
           | both come up with ideas and have the LLM integrate them.
        
           | steve_adams_86 wrote:
           | I agree. I worry my culture is truly losing sight of what's
           | good in life. I don't mean that as in "I know what's best and
           | everyone's doing it wrong", because I fully acknowledge that
           | I can't know what's best for others. Yet I watch my friends
           | and family work hard at things they don't claim to value, I
           | watch them lose life to scrolling and tv and movies they
           | don't actually enjoy, and I watch them lament that they don't
           | see their friends as much as they'd like, they don't have
           | enough time at home, kids are so much work, etc.
           | 
           | We have major priority issues from what I can see. If we want
           | to live our lives more but put an AI to work doing something
           | we tend to claim we place very high in our value hierarchy,
           | we're effectively inviting death into life. We're forfeiting
           | something we love. That's incredibly sad to me.
        
             | haxiomic wrote:
             | This mirrors my feelings also, thank you for expressing it.
             | It's so alien to me to see people trying to optimize way
             | connection with their family and friends; to me that is
             | what life _is_
        
         | tantalor wrote:
         | You can put money on parents employing AI nannies to
         | babysit/entertain/teach kids in next 5-10 years.
         | 
         | At first people will react with horror.
        
           | ilaksh wrote:
           | Possibly in the next 5-10 days, assuming this works.
        
             | tantalor wrote:
             | Sure you could use the current tech with parental
             | supervision. But a future version will let you walk away,
             | leave the kids alone with the AI, check in occasionally. It
             | will be marketed as safe to do so.
        
           | bilsbie wrote:
           | Might be better than tv as a babysitter TBH.
        
         | ilaksh wrote:
         | Hm. It is definitely horrifying if you've seen the movie M3GAN
         | recently.
         | 
         | On the other hand, as you say, it's likely better than the
         | alternative. Which would probably be something like an iPad
         | "bedtime story app" that is less humanlike.
         | 
         | This could provide a viable alternative for exhausted parents
         | to just giving a child an iPad with a movie. It may also open
         | up a huge range of educational uses.
         | 
         | One might imagine in 15-20years though that all of the young
         | people sound like audio books when they talk. Which will be
         | weird.
        
         | clbrmbr wrote:
         | And then the wedding speech. What are they thinking over there
         | at OpenAI? This is supposed to be a productivity enhancer, not
         | a way to outsource the most meaningful applications of human
         | language...
        
           | skepticATX wrote:
           | > What are they thinking over there at OpenAI?
           | 
           | I know this is rhetorical, but luckily we don't have to
           | speculate. OpenAI filters for a very specific philosophy when
           | hiring, and they don't try to hide it.
           | 
           | This is not me passing judgement on whether said philosophy
           | is right or wrong, but it does exist and it's not hidden.
        
             | sebzim4500 wrote:
             | >OpenAI filters for a very specific philosophy when hiring,
             | and they don't try to hide it.
             | 
             | Do you have evidence for this? I know two people who work
             | at OpenAI and I don't think they have much in common
             | philosophically.
        
               | skepticATX wrote:
               | > It's not fair to call OpenAI a cult, but when I asked
               | several of the company's top brass if someone could
               | comfortably work there if they didn't believe AGI was
               | truly coming--and that its arrival would mark one of the
               | greatest moments in human history--most executives didn't
               | think so. Why would a nonbeliever want to work here? they
               | wondered. The assumption is that the workforce--now at
               | approximately 500, though it might have grown since you
               | began reading this paragraph--has self-selected to
               | include only the faithful. At the very least, as Altman
               | puts it, once you get hired, it seems inevitable that
               | you'll be drawn into the spell.
               | 
               | From https://archive.ph/3zSz6.
               | 
               | Of course there is much more evidence - just follow
               | OpenAI employees on Twitter to see for yourself.
        
               | sebzim4500 wrote:
               | >I asked several of the company's top brass if someone
               | could comfortably work there if they didn't believe AGI
               | was truly coming--and that its arrival would mark one of
               | the greatest moments in human history--most executives
               | didn't think so.
               | 
               | No shit? How many people worked on the apollo program and
               | believed that
               | 
               | (i) Getting to the moon is impossible
               | 
               | or
               | 
               | (ii) Landing on the moon is no big deal
        
               | skepticATX wrote:
               | It is notable considering that there are plenty of
               | excellent researchers who don't believe that AGI is
               | imminent. OpenAI is also openly transhumanist based on
               | comments from Sam, Ilya, and others. Again, many
               | excellent researchers don't hold transhumanist beliefs.
        
               | sebzim4500 wrote:
               | It is definitely not the case that all OpenAI employees
               | are transhumanist.
               | 
               | It is probably the case that they all believe AGI is
               | possible, because otherwise they would not work at a
               | company whose stated goal is to build an AGI.
        
               | tessierashpool wrote:
               | that's completely apples to oranges. OpenAI is in the
               | business of leveraging the utility of large language
               | models. that's their moon.
               | 
               | if they think instead that they're in the business of
               | creating some kind of ridiculous robot god, that is
               | definitely interesting information about them. because
               | that's no moon.
        
               | og_kalu wrote:
               | >OpenAI is in the business of leveraging the utility of
               | large language models.
               | 
               | No Open AI is in the business of creating their vision of
               | Artificial General Intelligence (which they define as
               | that is generally smarter than humans ) and they believe
               | LLMs are a viable path. This has always been the case.
               | It's not some big secret and they have many posts which
               | talk upon their expectations and goals in this space.
               | 
               | https://openai.com/blog/planning-for-agi-and-beyond
               | 
               | https://openai.com/blog/governance-of-superintelligence
               | 
               | https://openai.com/blog/introducing-superalignment
               | 
               | GPT as a product comes second and it shows. These are the
               | guys that sat on by far the most performant Language
               | Model for 8 months red teaming before even saying
               | anything about it.
        
               | tessierashpool wrote:
               | > No Open AI is in the business of creating their vision
               | of Artificial General Intelligence
               | 
               | that's a project, not a business.
               | 
               | > GPT as a product comes second and it shows
               | 
               | we can agree on that, at least.
        
             | clbrmbr wrote:
             | Actually, can you expand on this? What philosophy leads one
             | to put the bedtime story example on top?
             | 
             | I'm genuinely curious about the different
             | political/spiritual views that are growing up around AI. So
             | maybe my question was not so rhetorical.
        
               | michaelt wrote:
               | Hypothetically, if you believe there's no such thing as a
               | soul or consciousness, it's all just neurons and they can
               | be simulated, and we're close to being able to simulate
               | them - you're much more likely to think lofty AI goals
               | can be achieved.
               | 
               | If you follow a religious tradition like Shinto where
               | even things like rocks can have spirits - the idea of
               | your phone having a certain, limited form of intelligence
               | might already be cool with you.
               | 
               | If you think, much like a camera does most of the work in
               | photography but it's the photographer that takes the
               | credit, that when a person uses AI the output is nobody's
               | work but the user - you might be completely fine with an
               | AI-written wedding speech.
               | 
               | If you think the relentless march of technology can't be
               | stopped and can barely be directed, you might think
               | advanced AIs are coming anyway, and if we don't invent it
               | the Chinese will - you might be fine with pretty much
               | whatever.
               | 
               | If you're extremely trusting of big corporations, who you
               | see as more moral than the government; or you think that
               | censorship is vital to maintain AI safety and stamp out
               | deep fakes; you might think it a great thing for these
               | technologies to be jealously guarded by a handful of huge
               | corporations.
               | 
               | Or hell, maybe you're just a parent who's had their kid
               | want to hear the same Peppa Pig book 90 nights in a row
               | and you've got a hankering for something that would
               | introduce a bit of variety.
               | 
               | Of course these are all things reasonable people could
               | disagree on - but if you didn't like openai's work, would
               | you end up working at openai?
        
           | amelius wrote:
           | > And then the wedding speech. What are they thinking over
           | there at OpenAI?
           | 
           | They are trying to make their product sound not as terrifying
           | as it actually is.
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | ChatGTP wrote:
         | I actually think that what is sad is that it seems as if having
         | viable future as a creative visual artist is likely done. This
         | was a major, major, major outlet and sanctuary for certain
         | types of people to find meaning and fulfillment in their life
         | which is now in the process of being wiped out for a quick
         | buck.
         | 
         | We'll be told by OpenAI and friends is that it shouldn't be a
         | problem, because those were mundane tasks and now, people are
         | free up to do more creative / interesting / meaningful things
         | with their time, let's see about that...
         | 
         | My gut feeling is that it's bad, the only thing I hope can save
         | it all is that people actually don't find meaning in consuming
         | AI generated art and actual artists with a real back story and
         | something real to communicate remain relevant and in demand.
         | 
         | The other day I needed a photo for a website I was working on
         | and I actually purchased a real capture from a local
         | photographer to use because the the authenticity means
         | something to me and the customers...
         | 
         | Edit: Is the plan that we just surrender our aspirations and
         | just buy a subscription to ChatWHATEVER and just consume until
         | the end of human history ?
        
           | notamy wrote:
           | Imo it seems this is what generative AI currently optimises
           | for -- cutting the humans out of the creative/similar
           | processes. It's depressing, and I fully understand why
           | artists of all sorts get upset about it. Especially because
           | many tech people often seem to be okay with ignoring
           | copyright/licensing and arguably hurting people's livelihood
           | right up until GitHub ingests GPL code for Copilot and
           | suddenly copyright and licensing matter.
        
           | adroniser wrote:
           | fwiw the only piece of AI art that has given me the sense of
           | awe and beauty that art you'd find in a museum gives me was
           | that spiral town image
           | https://twitter.com/MrUgleh/status/1705316060201681313, which
           | is something you couldn't have really made without AI. But
           | that was only interesting because of the unique human
           | generated idea behind it which was the encoding of a
           | geometric pattern within a scene.
           | 
           | Most AI art is just generic garbage that you scroll past
           | immediately and doesn't offer you anything.
           | 
           | We're gonna have to do something to stop the biggest crisis
           | in meaning ever that comes out of this eventually though.
           | Eventually no one will be of any economic value to society.
           | Maybe just put someone in an ultra realistic simulation to
           | give them artificial meaning.
        
             | notamy wrote:
             | > which is something you couldn't have really made without
             | AI
             | 
             | Serious question: Why not?
             | 
             | > Eventually no one will be of any economic value to
             | society.
             | 
             | People have value outside of economics -- I'm sure you know
             | -- and it makes me so sad that we as a society? seem to
             | only care about the money in the end.
        
               | adroniser wrote:
               | I think you're right it could have been created without
               | AI. I'm trying to think of the right way to say it. Maybe
               | it wouldn't have been created without AI? Or AI has made
               | it so simple to express this idea that the idea has been
               | expressed? Or just the idea of inpainting is what has
               | brought this idea forward.
               | 
               | Yes of course people have value outside of economics
               | that's why I said economics and not value in general. I
               | think it's quite sad as a society we've moved towards a
               | value system which is basically what is good for the
               | economy is good, and if you earn more money you are
               | better.
               | 
               | In the past most people were religious and that gave them
               | meaning. Religion is in decline now but I think people
               | are just replacing it with worshipping the progression of
               | technology basically. For the last 100 years there's
               | always been a clear direction to move in to progress
               | technology, and we haven't really had to think very hard.
               | That's what AI is going to bring an end to I think and I
               | have no idea what we are going to do.
        
               | notamy wrote:
               | > In the past most people were religious and that gave
               | them meaning. Religion is in decline now but I think
               | people are just replacing it with worshipping the
               | progression of technology basically. For the last 100
               | years there's always been a clear direction to move in to
               | progress technology, and we haven't really had to think
               | very hard. That's what AI is going to bring an end to I
               | think and I have no idea what we are going to do.
               | 
               | Fascinating thought. Technology as the new religion is
               | smth I'll have to think about more.
        
           | optimalsolver wrote:
           | Well I've been told that AI can't produce anything truly
           | novel, so human artists need only retreat to the final
           | stronghold of originality and surely human exceptionalism
           | will remain unscathed.
        
           | codingdave wrote:
           | I'm not following your argument - I am a visual artist. I do
           | it for myself, as you said, as an outlet. I enjoy it.
           | 
           | If AI can also create images... I don't see how that changes
           | what I enjoy. There are already better painters than I, and
           | more productive painters than I. They make money with it, I
           | don't. This doesn't stop me from painting. Neither will AI
           | that can paint. I'll still do what I enjoy.
        
             | ryanklee wrote:
             | People will continue to make art for non-monetary reasons
             | just as they've always done. Some will manage to make money
             | doing it and most won't. Seems to me like that's been an
             | unchanging story throughout human history.
             | 
             | Chess has never been more popular, for f's sake!
        
         | m3kw9 wrote:
         | How is it horrifying? Don't use it if it scares you, the phone
         | isn't gonna walk over and start jostling for a spot to put your
         | kids to bed
        
         | bottlepalm wrote:
         | There are kids right now that spend more time in VRChat than
         | real life. It's really something else.
        
       | qingcharles wrote:
       | I know this, FTA, was part of the reason for the delay --
       | something to do with face recognition: "We've also taken
       | technical measures to significantly limit ChatGPT's ability to
       | analyze and make direct statements about people since ChatGPT is
       | not always accurate and these systems should respect individuals'
       | privacy."
       | 
       | Anyone know the details?
       | 
       | I also heard it was able to do near-perfect CAPTCHA solves in the
       | beta?
       | 
       | Does anyone know if you can throw in a PDF that has no OCR on it
       | and have it summarize it with this?
        
       | RivieraKid wrote:
       | I went from being worried to thinking it won't replace me anytime
       | soon after using GPT4 for a while and now I'm back to being
       | worried.
       | 
       | Because the pace of development is intense. I would love to be
       | financially independent and watch this with excitement and
       | perhaps take on risky and fun projects.
       | 
       | Now I'm thinking - how do I double or triple my income so that I
       | reach financial independence in 3 years instead of 10 years.
        
         | tombert wrote:
         | I'm not convinced that this pace will continue. We're seeing a
         | lot of really cool, rapid evolution of this tech in a short
         | amount of time, but I do think we'll hit a soft ceiling in the
         | not too distant future as well.
         | 
         | If you look at something like smartphones, for example.
         | Smartphones, from my perspective, got drastically better and
         | better from about ~2006-2015 or so. They were rapidly improving
         | cameras and battery life and it felt like a new super cool app
         | that would change our lives was being released every day, but
         | it feels like by ~2016 or so, phones more or less hit a ceiling
         | on how cool they were going to get. Obviously things still
         | improve, but I feel like the pace slowed down eventually.
         | 
         | I think AI is going to have the same path. GANNs and
         | transformers and LLMs and the like have opened the floodgates
         | and for the next few years clever people are going to figure
         | out a ton of really clever uses for them, but eventually it's
         | going to plateau and progress will become substantially more
         | gradual.
         | 
         | I don't think progress is linear, I think it's more like a
         | staircase.
        
           | whimsicalism wrote:
           | Maybe that's true but I honestly don't think we can reason at
           | all about how this will progress from a consumer hardware
           | product like the iPhone.
        
           | richardw wrote:
           | The worry is that in your analogy, we're the SLR. ChatGPT is
           | a 1MP digital camera.
        
           | tim333 wrote:
           | Or an exponential perhaps. Like the Wait But Why thing
           | (https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-
           | revol... bottom of the article)
        
           | satellite2 wrote:
           | There is clearly a plateau in how good a ux can be. It might
           | be a local optimum but still you solve the task the user
           | wants. I don't see a clear ceiling in intelligence. And if
           | the ceiling is how much of the human tasks can be replaced
           | then I think when we reach it the world is going to look very
           | different from now. (Let's also not discount how much the
           | world changed since the introduction of the smartphone.)
        
             | chimprich wrote:
             | > I don't see a clear ceiling in intelligence
             | 
             | The plateau in this case is presumably how far you can
             | advance intelligence from the current model architectures.
             | There seems to be diminishing returns from throwing more
             | layers, parameters or training data at these things.
             | 
             | We will see improvements but for dramatic increases I think
             | we'll need new breakthroughs. New inventions are hard to
             | predict, pretty much by definition.
        
               | tombert wrote:
               | That's more or less what I was getting at; the cool new
               | GANN and LLM models have a certain set of problems that
               | they will solve exceptionally well, and then another set
               | of problems that they will solve "pretty well", but I
               | don't think they'll solve _every_ problem.
        
           | johnyzee wrote:
           | > I do think we'll hit a soft ceiling in the not too distant
           | future ... it's going to plateau and progress will become
           | substantially more gradual.
           | 
           | I don't think this will age well.
           | 
           | It's a matter of simple compute power to advance from
           | realistic text/token prediction, to realistic synthesis of
           | stuff like human (or animal) body movement, for all kinds of
           | situations, including realistic facial/body language, moods,
           | and so on. Of course perfect voice synthesis. Coupled with
           | good enough robotics, you can see where I'm going with this,
           | and that's only because my imagination is limited to sci-fi
           | movie tropes. I think this is going to be wilder than we can
           | imagine, while _still_ just copying training sets.
        
             | troupo wrote:
             | > It's a matter of simple compute power to advance
             | 
             | Yup. It's "just" a compute advance away. Never mind it's
             | already consuming as much computing as we can throw at it.
             | It's "just" there.
        
             | FiberBundle wrote:
             | Isn't video prediction a substantially harder problem than
             | text prediction? At least that was the case a couple of
             | years ago with RNNs/LSTMs. Haven't kept up with the
             | research, maybe there's been progress.
        
         | WendyTheWillow wrote:
         | I don't think any of this materially changes job outlook for
         | software development over the next decade.
         | 
         | I use ChatGPT daily for school, and used Copilot daily for
         | software development; it gets a lot wrong a lot of the time,
         | and can't retain necessary context that is critical for being
         | useful long term. I can't even get it to consume an entire
         | chapter at once to generate notes or flashcards yet.
         | 
         | It may slightly change some aspects of a software job, but
         | nobody's at risk.
        
           | jader201 wrote:
           | This feels fairly naive, ignoring how much progress has
           | happened over the (short) span of one year. This doesn't
           | sound like that tough of a gap to close in another year
           | (again, projecting based off recent progress).
        
             | WendyTheWillow wrote:
             | What actually was the innovation in LLMs that produced the
             | kind of AI we're seeing now? Is that innovation ongoing or
             | did it happen, and now we're seeing the various
             | optimizations of that innovation?
             | 
             | Is voice and image integration with ChatGPT a whole new
             | capability of LLMs or is the "product" here a clean and
             | intuitive interface through which to use the already
             | existent technology?
             | 
             | The difference between GPT 3, 3.5, and 4 is substantially
             | smaller than the difference between GPT 2 and GPT 3, and
             | Sam Altman has directly said there are no plans for a GPT
             | 5.
             | 
             | I don't think progress is linear here. Rather, it seems
             | more likely that we made the leap about a year or so ago,
             | and are currently in the process of applying that leap in
             | many different ways. But the leap happened, and there isn't
             | seemingly another one coming.
        
               | og_kalu wrote:
               | >What actually was the innovation in LLMs that produced
               | the kind of AI we're seeing now? Is that innovation
               | ongoing or did it happen, and now we're seeing the
               | various optimizations of that innovation?
               | 
               | Past the introduction of the transformer in 2017, There
               | is no big "innovation". It is just scale. Bigger models
               | are better. The last 4 years can be summed up that
               | simply.
               | 
               | >Is voice and image integration with ChatGPT a whole new
               | capability of LLMs or is the "product" here a clean and
               | intuitive interface through which to use the already
               | existent technology?
               | 
               | What is existing technology here ? Open ai aren't doing
               | anything so alien you couldn't guess at if you knew what
               | you were doing but image training at the scale of GPT-4
               | _is_ new and it 's not even the cleanest way to do it. We
               | still don't have a "trained from scratch" large scale
               | multimodal LLM yet.
               | 
               | >The difference between GPT 3, 3.5, and 4 is
               | substantially smaller than the difference between GPT 2
               | and GPT 3
               | 
               | Definitely not lol. The OG GPT-3 was pulling sub 50 on
               | MMLU. Even benchmarks aside, there is a massive gap in
               | utility between 3.5 and 4, never mind 3. 4 was finished
               | training august 2022. It's only 2 years apart from 3.
               | 
               | >I don't think progress is linear here. Rather, it seems
               | more likely that we made the leap about a year or so ago,
               | and are currently in the process of applying that leap in
               | many different ways. But the leap happened, and there
               | isn't seemingly another one coming.
               | 
               | There was no special leap (in terms of theory and
               | engineering). This is scale plainly laid out and there's
               | more of it to go.
               | 
               | >and Sam Altman has directly said there are no plans for
               | a GPT 5.
               | 
               | the same that sat on 4 for 8 months and said absolutely
               | nothing about it ? Take anything altman says about new
               | iterations with a grain of salt.
        
               | WendyTheWillow wrote:
               | Firstly no, the gap between 3 and 4 is not anything as
               | large as the gap between 2 and 3.
               | 
               | Secondly, nothing you said here changed as of this
               | announcement. Nothing _here_ makes it any more or less
               | likely LLMs will risk software engineering jobs.
               | 
               | Thirdly, you can take what Sam Altman says with as many
               | grains of salt as you like, if there really was no
               | innovation at all as you claim, then there _will_ be a
               | limit hit at computing capability and cost.
        
               | og_kalu wrote:
               | >the gap between 3 and 4 is not anything as large as the
               | gap between 2 and 3.
               | 
               | We'll just have to agree to disagree. 3 was a signal of
               | things to come but it was ultimately a bit of a toy, a
               | research curiosity. Utility wise, they are worlds apart.
               | 
               | >if there really was no innovation at all as you claim,
               | then there will be a limit hit at computing capability
               | and cost.
               | 
               | computing capability and cost are just about the one
               | thing you can bank on to reduce. already training gpt-4
               | today would be a fraction of the cost than it was when
               | open ai did it and that was just over a year ago.
               | 
               | Today's GPU's take ML into account to some degree but
               | they are nowhere near as calibrated for it as they could
               | be. That work has just begun to start.
               | 
               | Of any of the possible barriers, compute is exactly the
               | kind you want. It will fall.
        
               | WendyTheWillow wrote:
               | Do you realize I'm not disagreeing with you about the
               | difference between 3 and 4? Reread what I wrote. I
               | contrasted 3 and 4 with 2 and 3, which you seem to be
               | entirely ignoring. 3 and 4 could be worlds apart, but
               | wouldn't matter if 2 and 3 were two worlds apart, for
               | example.
               | 
               | And it is not true that computing power will continue to
               | reduce; Moore's Law has been dead for some time now, and
               | if incremental growth in LLMs require exponential growth
               | in computing power the marginal difference won't matter.
               | You would need a matching exponential growth in
               | processing capability which is most certainly not
               | occurring. So compute will _not_ fall at the rate you
               | would need it to for LLMs to actually compete in any
               | meaningful way with human software engineers.
               | 
               | We are not guaranteed to continue to progress in anything
               | just because we have in the past.
        
               | og_kalu wrote:
               | >And it is not true that computing power will continue to
               | reduce; Moore's Law has been dead for some time now, and
               | if incremental growth in LLMs require exponential growth
               | in computing power the marginal difference won't matter.
               | 
               | This is a lot of unfounded assumptions.
               | 
               | You don't need Moore's Law. GPU's are not really made
               | with ML training in mind. You don't need exponential
               | growth for anything. The money Open ai spent on GPT-4 a
               | year ago could train a model twice as large today. and
               | that amount is a drop in the bucket for the R&D of large
               | corporations. Microsoft gave open ai 10B. amazon gave
               | anthropic 4B
               | 
               | >So compute will not fall at the rate you would need it
               | to for LLMs to actually compete in any meaningful way
               | with human software engineers.
               | 
               | I don't think the compute reuired is anywhere near as
               | much as you think it is.
               | 
               | https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.12499
               | 
               | >We are not guaranteed to continue to progress in
               | anything just because we have in the past.
               | 
               | Nothing is guaranteed. But the scaling plots show no
               | indication of a slow down so it's up to you to provide a
               | concrete reason this object in motion is going to stop
               | immediately and conveniently right now. If all you have
               | is "well it just can't keep getting better right" then
               | visit the 2 and 3 threads to see how meaningless such
               | unfounded assertions are.
        
               | WendyTheWillow wrote:
               | I think you fundamentally don't understand the nature of
               | exponential growth, and the power of diminishing returns.
               | Even if you _double_ the GPU capacity over the next year,
               | you won 't even remotely begin to come close enough to
               | producing a step-level growth of capability such as what
               | we experienced between 2 to 3, or even 3 to 4. The LLM
               | concept can only take you so far, and we're approaching
               | the limits of what an LLM is capable of. You generally
               | can't just push an innovation infinitely, it _will_ have
               | a drop-off point somewhere.
               | 
               | the "Large" part of LLMs is probably done. We've gotten
               | as far as we can with those style of models, and the next
               | innovation will be in smaller, more targeted models.
               | 
               | > As costs have skyrocketed while benefits have leveled
               | off, the economics of scale have turned against ever-
               | larger models. Progress will instead come from improving
               | model architectures, enhancing data efficiency, and
               | advancing algorithmic techniques beyond copy-paste scale.
               | The era of unlimited data, computing and model size that
               | remade AI over the past decade is finally drawing to a
               | close. [0]
               | 
               | > Altman, who was interviewed over Zoom at the
               | Imagination in Action event at MIT yesterday, believes we
               | are approaching the limits of LLM size for size's sake.
               | "I think we're at the end of the era where it's gonna be
               | these giant models, and we'll make them better in other
               | ways," Altman said. [1]
               | 
               | [0] https://venturebeat.com/ai/openai-chief-says-age-of-
               | giant-ai...
               | 
               | [1] https://techcrunch.com/2023/04/14/sam-altman-size-of-
               | llms-wo...
        
               | og_kalu wrote:
               | >The LLM concept can only take you so far, and we're
               | approaching the limits of what an LLM is capable of.
               | 
               | You don't know that. This is literally just an assertion.
               | An unfounded one at that.
               | 
               | If you couldn't predict how far in 2017 the LLM concept
               | would take us today, then you definitely have no idea how
               | far it could actually go.
               | 
               | >believes we are approaching the limits of LLM size for
               | size's sake
               | 
               | Nothing to do with thinking they wouldn't improve from
               | scale.
               | 
               | https://web.archive.org/web/20230531203946/https://humanl
               | oop...
               | 
               | An interview from Altman later clarifying.
               | 
               | "6. The scaling laws still hold Recently many articles
               | have claimed that "the age of giant AI Models is already
               | over". This wasn't an accurate representation of what was
               | meant.
               | 
               | OpenAI's internal data suggests the scaling laws for
               | model performance continue to hold and making models
               | larger will continue to yield performance. The rate of
               | scaling can't be maintained because OpenAI had made
               | models millions of times bigger in just a few years and
               | doing that going forward won't be sustainable. That
               | doesn't mean that OpenAI won't continue to try to make
               | the models bigger, it just means they will likely double
               | or triple in size each year rather than increasing by
               | many orders of magnitude"
               | 
               | Yes there are economic compute walls. But that's the kind
               | of problem you want, not "innovation".
        
               | WendyTheWillow wrote:
               | Er, that's not how arguments work. What we can't know is
               | that those trends will continue, so it's on you to
               | demonstrate that they will, despite evidence suggesting
               | they won't.
               | 
               | As for as what you linked, Altman is saying the same
               | thing I'm saying:
               | 
               | > That doesn't mean that OpenAI won't continue to try to
               | make the models bigger, it just means they will likely
               | double or triple in size each year rather than increasing
               | by many orders of magnitude.
               | 
               | This is exactly my point; doubling or tripling of the
               | size will be possible, but it won't result in a doubling
               | of performance. We won't see a GPT 5 that's twice as good
               | as GPT 4, for example. The jump from 2 to 3 was
               | exponential. The jump from 3 to 4 was also exponential,
               | though not as much. The jump from 4 to 5 will follow that
               | curve, according to Altman, which means exactly what he
               | said in my quote; the value will continue to decrease.
               | For a 2 to 3 type jump, GPU technology would have to
               | completely transform in capability, which there are no
               | indications that we've found that innovation.
        
               | og_kalu wrote:
               | My argument was that improvement from scale would
               | continue. There is absolutely evidence suggesting this.
               | 
               | Gpt-4 can perform nearly all tasks you throw at it with
               | well above average human performance. There literally
               | isn't any testable definition of intelligence it fails
               | that a big chunks of humans wouldn't also fail. You seem
               | to keep missing the fact that We do not need an
               | exponential improvement from 4.
        
               | og_kalu wrote:
               | Moreover you keep saying we can't scale infinitely.
               | Sure...but nobody is saying we have to. 4 is not as
               | scaled from 3 as 3 was from 2. Doesn't matter, still
               | massive gap.
        
               | WendyTheWillow wrote:
               | As I said already, the gap from 3 to 4 was substantially
               | smaller than the gap between 2 to 3, and all indications
               | are that the gap from 4 to 5 will also be further smaller
               | than that.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | Karrot_Kream wrote:
               | > And it is not true that computing power will continue
               | to reduce; Moore's Law has been dead for some time now,
               | and if incremental growth in LLMs require exponential
               | growth in computing power the marginal difference won't
               | matter.
               | 
               | I think the stronger argument here won't necessarily be
               | Moore's Law related but a change in architecture. Things
               | like Apple's Neural Engine, Google's TPMs, or Geohot's
               | Tinybox. In Intel's Tick-Tock model, this is the Tock for
               | the previous Tick of larger datasets so to speak.
               | 
               | (Note: I don't necessarily agree, just trying to make a
               | stronger argument than just invoking Moore's Law.)
        
             | TheRoque wrote:
             | The opposite is fairly naive. Software development is not
             | only dumping tokens into a text file. To have a significant
             | impact on the market, it should do much, much, much more:
             | compile and test code, automatically assess the quality of
             | what its done, be aware of the current design trends (if in
             | UI/UX), ideally innovate, it should also be able to run a
             | debugger, inspect all the variables, and deduce from there
             | how it got something wrong, sometimes with tiny clues that
             | I don't even know how it would get its information (e.g. in
             | graphics programming where you have to actually see at a
             | high frame rate). Oh snap a library is broken ? The AI
             | needs to search online why it's broken, then find a fix
             | (log onto a website to communicate with support, install a
             | missing dep...). It can't be fixed ? Then the AI needs to
             | explain this to the manager, good luck for that. It would
             | need to think and feel like a human, otherwise producing
             | uncanny content that will be either boring, either creepy.
             | 
             | You can think about your daily job and break down all the
             | tasks, and you'll quickly realize that replacing all this
             | is just a monstrous task.
        
               | jader201 wrote:
               | Yeah, I definitely am not on team "We're Doomed", but I
               | also can't say definitively that I'm on team "We're Fine"
               | either.
               | 
               | I think there are merits to both arguments, and I think
               | it's possible that we'll see things move towards either
               | direction in the next 1/5/10 years.
               | 
               | My point is, I don't think we can rule out the
               | possibility of some jobs being at risk within the next
               | 1/5/10 years.
        
               | TheRoque wrote:
               | Some jobs are definitely at risk, I was just making the
               | case for software development. But just like you, even
               | after writing all this, there's still some anxiety.
        
               | jabradoodle wrote:
               | In a market you don't need to replace it, you replace
               | millions of hours of building/testing/documenting apps
               | and you've effectively reduced demand for SWE labour
               | (ignoring the potential for new job creation).
        
               | og_kalu wrote:
               | https://arxiv.org/abs/2309.12499
        
             | lukev wrote:
             | The bitter truth though is that the last 20% always takes
             | 99% of the time and effort. LLMs are a huge breakthrough
             | and we are absolutely speedrunning the 80%, but I see no
             | reason to believe the usual pattern won't hold when the
             | easy wins are exploited.
        
               | realce wrote:
               | Some insurance against this dam breaking wouldn't be so
               | bad however
        
           | fzzzy wrote:
           | You could easily write a 20 line script to generate notes and
           | flashcards. I know because I have.
        
             | WendyTheWillow wrote:
             | Yep, and I could have done that 5 years ago. My point is
             | that I run into problems on a daily basis that the current
             | ChatGPT is not capable of handling on its own, without
             | meaningful interaction with me, a software engineer.
        
             | misiti3780 wrote:
             | you mean like anki flash cards?
        
           | pmarreck wrote:
           | > I can't even get it to consume an entire chapter at once to
           | generate notes or flashcards yet.
           | 
           | Anthropic's Claude 100k is your jam, then. And Amazon just
           | invested $1 billion in them.
        
           | callwhendone wrote:
           | > I can't copy paste an entire book chapter and have
           | flashcards in 30 seconds.
           | 
           | If that's your bar for whether or not it changes the job
           | outlook for software development over the next DECADE, I
           | think you need to recalibrate.
        
             | WendyTheWillow wrote:
             | Er, why did you rewrite what I wrote but then pretend like
             | it was a quote? That's a really weird way to reply!
             | 
             | But to address your point, my "bar" is that OpenAI's
             | ChatGPT fails to solve problems for me on a many-times-a-
             | day basis. It's an immensely helpful tool, but I still need
             | to drive it, so it's not replacing me, it's augmenting me.
        
             | smk_ wrote:
             | If I took 2 weeks off from work I could build this
             | prototype quite easily. We're in an interesting period
             | where the space of possibilities is so large it just takes
             | a while for the "market" to exhaust it.
        
               | callwhendone wrote:
               | Quizlet has a feature to build flashcards using AI. I'm
               | sure they could write a backend service that just chunked
               | the entire chapter.
        
               | WendyTheWillow wrote:
               | It doesn't work well enough yet. The flashcards it
               | generates don't actually fit well into its own ecosystem.
               | When you try to build the "quizzes", the wrong answers
               | are trivially spottable. Further, even the generated
               | questions are stilted don't hit parity with manually
               | generated flashcards.
               | 
               | My use of ChatGPT for this purpose is so far mostly
               | limited to a sanity check, e.g. "Do these notes cover the
               | major points of this topic?" Usually it'll spit back out
               | "Yep looks good" or some major missed point, like The
               | Pacific Railway Act of 1862 for a topic on the Civil
               | War's economic complexity.
               | 
               | I'll also use it to reformat content, "Convert these
               | questions and answers into Anki format."
        
         | GCA10 wrote:
         | Ah, your closing question could be a thread in itself.
         | 
         | This is tricky territory! Be wary of the treadmill where as
         | your income rises, your sense of what's an acceptable
         | restaurant, vacation, car, home, etc. escalates just as fast.
         | Then you'll always be n+1 windfalls away from your goal. If
         | you're really wanting "financial independence," which is a
         | weirdly opaque phrase, focus at least 49% of your energy on
         | keeping your spending rate low.
        
         | callwhendone wrote:
         | I'm very worried constantly. This is the story of the bear,
         | where you just have to be faster than the other guy. For now.
         | The bear is getting faster and faster and it won't be long
         | before it eats all of us.
         | 
         | It feels like we're at the end of history. I don't know where
         | we go from here but what are we useful for once this thing is
         | stuck inside a robot like what Tesla is building? What is the
         | point of humanity?
         | 
         | Even taking a step back, I don't know how I'm going to feed my
         | family in ten years, because my skillset is being rapidly
         | replaced.
         | 
         | And to anyone mentioning UBI, I'm pretty sure they'll just let
         | us starve first.
        
           | tim333 wrote:
           | In a democracy you'll be able to vote for the lot that will
           | have the robots serve us.
        
           | whatamidoingyo wrote:
           | > my skillset is being rapidly replaced.
           | 
           | Why do you have only one? Learn some trades. AI isn't going
           | to be demolishing a bathroom and installing tile any time
           | soon.
        
             | callwhendone wrote:
             | I don't know what your salary is but mine isn't going to be
             | replaced by demoing a bathroom and I have a mortgage and a
             | standard of living I was hoping to be able to afford at
             | least until my kids are out of the house.
        
               | whatamidoingyo wrote:
               | Unless you're making a ridiculous amount of money, you
               | can definitely match a developer salary remodeling homes.
               | So long as you're the actual business owner. This was
               | just an example, of course.
        
               | ryandrake wrote:
               | But being the actual business owner is also not
               | "demolishing a bathroom and installing tile." While AI
               | won't be able to physically demo a bathroom, it's
               | conceivable that it will eventually be able to run a
               | business better than a human entrepreneur.
               | 
               | The only jobs that seem to be safe (for the medium term)
               | are jobs that require some physical manipulation of the
               | world. Like, the actual, hands-on physical work that
               | tradespeople do. Although they'll eventually fall to AI-
               | powered robots.
        
           | mhss wrote:
           | re: UBI. I don't think they'll let us starve, but that's a
           | very low bar. If we all become fungible and invaluable they
           | can just feed us Soylent green.
        
             | whimsicalism wrote:
             | Who is they?
        
               | mhss wrote:
               | People that has enough money & wealth to employ others,
               | control corporations who employ thousands and influence
               | the government meaningfully (lobbying). Today, they
               | basically control who is employed and who isn't by
               | deciding how much to invest and in what. No, you cannot
               | just choose to employ yourself in all circumstances. I'm
               | all for being self-sufficient but not everyone can start
               | a company (time and capital intensive, and very risky
               | without a safety net).
        
               | pmarreck wrote:
               | If you don't believe you can do a thing before you even
               | try, then you're correct, right out of the gate. (insert
               | eyeroll emoji here)
               | 
               | All your repeated uses of "they" points to a toxic
               | external-locus-of-control worldview. _You_ were always
               | the only limit of yourself. Any other claim amounts to
               | heretical self-dehumanization. You're not fungible and
               | never were, and anyone who tries to make you believe that
               | deserves the utmost vehement pushback.
        
               | kortex wrote:
               | > You're not fungible and never were
               | 
               | Sure as heck doesn't feel that way. And that's as a
               | software developer with multiple college degrees and a
               | decade of experience. The neurodivergence means I've
               | always had to mask and be on guard and push well beyond
               | my limits into physical/mental damage, because the fear
               | of losing employment is ever-present. Feels pretty
               | commoditized.
               | 
               | > and anyone who tries to make you believe that deserves
               | the utmost vehement pushback.
               | 
               | The faceless corporations and their boards of investors
               | who value "line go up" over basically every other metric
               | of human wellbeing? Yes, they absolutely deserve
               | pushback, but it's not easy (open source COTS guillotine
               | plans, anyone?).
        
               | callwhendone wrote:
               | He's right though, there will never be as many
               | opportunities to start companies as there will be to
               | become a worker at a company. The window of opportunity
               | is shrinking drastically.
               | 
               | It doesn't matter if we're not fungible in the
               | metaphysical sense, we are fungible when it comes to the
               | economical value we provide to the world.
               | 
               | This is no different than telling coal miners that are 50
               | years old to "learn to code". It's ridiculous and it's
               | disingenuous.
        
               | realce wrote:
               | Whoever owns and control the bear, are you actually
               | confused about that or is this just baiting?
        
             | tim333 wrote:
             | I think it may go like slave owning societies of old. We'll
             | be the masters and have the robots do stuff. Perhaps.
        
           | pixl97 wrote:
           | >where you just have to be faster than the other guy. For
           | now. The bear is getting faster and faster and it won't be
           | long before it eats all of us.
           | 
           | Here's the thing about that. At first it's about you running
           | faster and the bear getting the slow ones, but this is
           | actually a very short term situation. When things start
           | getting bad, it's not the bear you need to worry about, it's
           | your neighbor stabbing you in the leg so you're the slow one.
        
           | mvdtnz wrote:
           | I think you need to calm down. "AI" today is just fancy
           | predictive text and there's no evidence it will progress far
           | beyond that.
        
         | jstx1 wrote:
         | > I would love to be financially independent and watch this
         | with excitement
         | 
         | Even if you were, your money would be invested in something
         | which is tied to the overall economy and if a huge proportion
         | of knowledge jobs are at risk, you would still be exposed to it
         | through whatever assets you own. Don't expect stocks (or
         | currency, or property) to do great when unemployment is 30%+.
        
         | make3 wrote:
         | The real problem is distribution of the output of production.
         | We will need something like UBI eventually.
        
           | kajumix wrote:
           | Do we worry about the distribution of oxygen in the
           | atmosphere, so everyone has equal chance of breathing? I know
           | it's hard to comprehend massive abundance of everything, but
           | please try.
        
             | make3 wrote:
             | there's already massive over abundance and people are still
             | dying in the streets, & no public healthcare in the US
        
           | LambdaComplex wrote:
           | UBI is a bandaid on top of capitalism. It is saying "we have
           | a system where people die if they don't have money, so we'll
           | give people money." It's not a real fix. A real fix would be
           | replacing the system with one where people don't need money
           | in order to not die.
           | 
           | We're going to keep automating more and more things. I think
           | that much is inevitable. Eventually, we may get to a point
           | where very few jobs are necessary for society to function.
           | This _should_ be a good thing, because it would mean fewer
           | people would have to work and could therefore pursue things
           | that actually interest them, but it would be a catastrophe
           | under the current system.
        
             | brvsft wrote:
             | People don't need money to not die, they need to work to
             | not die. Until the fulfillment of everyone's basic needs
             | can be automated, people are expected to work (disregarding
             | some obvious exceptions). The money is just a proxy for
             | that work.
             | 
             | Although there is certainly a lot of fuckery going on with
             | the money (currency) itself, but if that's the problem
             | you're alluding to, I don't think summarizing it as
             | "capitalism" is accurate.
        
             | pmarreck wrote:
             | That's not going to come to fruition, and no amount of
             | dreamy socialist fanfiction'ing is going to make it so.
             | People pay for value. Produce value for others, get paid.
             | LLM's are tools to make humans able to produce more value,
             | and will not replace humans, although the job market will
             | change, and hopefully utilize humans better.
             | 
             | People, NOT machines, are the ultimate judgers of what is
             | valuable and the ultimate producers of value.
             | 
             | "no one should have to work to eat" is the most ridiculous
             | gen Z meme going around lately. Like, technically yes, not
             | eating would make you unhealthy and thus unable to
             | contribute yourself, but we also don't want the opposite of
             | people just sitting home all depressed about being
             | oppressed and not utilizing their gifts while living off
             | mysteriously-produced (paid for or labored over by whom?)
             | gourmet sushi. How about another common meme in response?
             | "We live in a society."
        
               | kortex wrote:
               | > Produce value for others, get paid
               | 
               | So if a human is unable to produce value, they don't get
               | (food/education/heathcare/<resource>)? That seems to be
               | the implication. We in developed countries already have
               | some amount of "value risk hedging" (I'm loathe to say
               | "socialism" here), we just disagree endlessly how much is
               | the optimal amount. But we've determined that wards of
               | the state, universal education, and some amount of food
               | support for the poor is the absolute bare minimum for a
               | developed society.
               | 
               | > People, NOT machines, are the ultimate judgers of what
               | is valuable and the ultimate producers of value.
               | 
               | Uhhh we already have software which sifts through resumes
               | to allow/reject candidates, before it gets to any kind of
               | human judge, so we are already gating value assessments.
        
               | pmarreck wrote:
               | > So if a human is unable to produce value, they don't
               | get (food/education/heathcare/<resource>)?
               | 
               | I would agree that some people are simply unable to help
               | and need the help themselves and should get it. UBI or
               | some other social safety net should be there for that.
        
             | mhss wrote:
             | You make it sound simple. What's the replacement? UBI is at
             | least somewhat within grasp. Completely replacing
             | capitalism is going to take a long time and it's more
             | likely to happen as incremental improvements.
        
           | RivieraKid wrote:
           | I think there will be plenty of work for a while because
           | manual labor - construction, healthcare (doctors, nurses),
           | food preparation, tradespeople - will be hard to replace in
           | the foreseeable future.
           | 
           | I see UBI as a solution to inequality (real problem) not as a
           | solution to lack of jobs (not a problem). AI will probably
           | lead to reduction of inequality and therefore there will be
           | less need for UBI.
           | 
           | In theory, the "mental" workers who get replaced by AI could
           | simply move to manual jobs and total production and average
           | wages would go up. But they may not like it, at least I
           | wouldn't.
        
             | make3 wrote:
             | AI will increase inequality, because most jobs will be
             | automated, & most people will either not have jobs or have
             | incredibly menial physical jobs where they are
             | interchangeable
        
             | callwhendone wrote:
             | Manual labor has been my general thought but the progress
             | Tesla is making on their robots makes me question that
             | assumption. I imagine in the next decade, we're going to
             | see large swaths of the population unable to do meaningful
             | work that isn't already done by machines.
             | 
             | We're looking down the pipe at a truly dystopian future.
        
             | pixl97 wrote:
             | >, the "mental" workers who get replaced by AI could simply
             | move to manual jobs and total production and average wages
             | would go up
             | 
             | Why would manual job average wages go up? You're increasing
             | the size of the labor pool.
        
               | RivieraKid wrote:
               | Total production would increase (AI will allow us to make
               | more with less) and I'm expecting the capital / labor
               | share to remain stable.
               | 
               | An analogy:
               | 
               | Imagine that half of the labor force makes cars, the
               | other half creates software. The average person buys 1
               | car and 1 software per year. There's a breakthrough, AI
               | can now be used to create software almost for free. It
               | can even make 2x more software per year. The programmers
               | switch to making cars. So now the economy is producing 2
               | cars and 2 softwares per worker per year! Salaries have
               | now doubled thanks to technological progress.
               | 
               | You could argue that this will increase inequality and
               | all of the productivity gains will go to the top 1%. I
               | don't think so.
        
               | pixl97 wrote:
               | >You could argue that this will increase inequality and
               | all of the productivity gains will go to the top 1%.
               | 
               | I don't have to argue.. others have done it for me
               | 
               | https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/01/richest-one-percent-
               | gained-t...
               | 
               | https://www.cnbc.com/2023/01/16/richest-1percent-amassed-
               | alm...
               | 
               | https://time.com/5888024/50-trillion-income-inequality-
               | ameri...
        
           | JasserInicide wrote:
           | UBI is just not happening any time soon in the US. To start,
           | half of the country is already default against it. Precisely
           | 0 people in Congress, the White House, or those in adjacent
           | power roles (lobbyists and whatnot) are for it or have any
           | idea what it is.
           | 
           | Aside from rolling out the guillotine, I don't see UBI a
           | possibility until the 2nd half of the 21st century. There's
           | just too many forces and entities alive that don't want it
        
             | tim333 wrote:
             | I think the plan is first robots take our jobs, then UBI.
             | If you gave people free money now we'd be suffering from a
             | lack of workers due to general robot non existence. I'm
             | guessing 2045 maybe?
        
         | lcfcjs wrote:
         | [dead]
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | tetris11 wrote:
         | You summed up my financial and career worries very nicely
        
         | lossolo wrote:
         | Don't worry, you are not alone, there are hundreds of millions
         | of us around the world, maybe even billions (all the jobs that
         | could be replaced by AI in the next 10-20 years). We will just
         | need to do what we always do, so vote for a systemic change or
         | eat the rich.
        
       | yankput wrote:
       | call Sarah Connor
        
       | sebzim4500 wrote:
       | There are a few more details in the system card here:
       | https://cdn.openai.com/papers/GPTV_System_Card.pdf
        
       | SomethingNew2 wrote:
       | There are a lot of comments attempting to rationalize the value
       | add or differentiation of humans synthesizing information and
       | communicating it to others vs an llm based ai doing something
       | similar. The fact that it's so difficult to find a compelling
       | difference is insightful in itself.
        
         | ndm000 wrote:
         | I think the compelling difference is truthfulness. There are
         | certain people / organizations that I trust their synthesis of
         | information. For LLMs, I can either use what they give me in
         | low impact situations or I have to filter the output with what
         | I know as true or can test.
        
       | SillyUsername wrote:
       | I hope they add more country accents like British or Australian,
       | the American one can be (imho) a little grating after a while for
       | non US English speakers
        
       | boredemployee wrote:
       | They could also improve their current features. I always need to
       | regenerate answers.
        
         | boredemployee wrote:
         | [flagged]
        
       | WalterBright wrote:
       | I keep hoping to be able to give it a jpg of handwritten text and
       | it'll give me back ASCII text.
        
       | athyuttamre wrote:
       | @dang, could we update the title to "ChatGPT can now see, hear,
       | and speak"?
        
         | lukeplato wrote:
         | it's not rolled out yet
        
       | laurels-marts wrote:
       | I'm very curious about this feature:
       | 
       | > analyze a complex graph for work-related data
       | 
       | Does this mean that I can take a screenshot of e.g. Apple stock
       | chart and it will be able to reason about it and provide insights
       | and analysis?
       | 
       | GPT-4 currently can display images but cannot reason or
       | understand them at all. I think it's one thing to have some image
       | recognition and be able to detect that the picture "contains a
       | time-series chart that appears to be displaying apple stock" vs
       | "apple stock appears to be 40% up YTD but 10% down from it's all
       | time high from earlier in July. closing at $176 as of the last
       | recorded date".
       | 
       | I'm very curious how capable ChatGPT will be at actually
       | reasoning about complex graphical data.
        
         | og_kalu wrote:
         | Look at this link of GPT-4 Vision analyzing charts(last image).
         | 
         | https://imgur.com/a/iOYTmt0
        
         | gdubs wrote:
         | Check out their linked paper that goes into details around its
         | current limitations and capabilities. In theory, it will be
         | able to look at a financial chart and perform fairly
         | sophisticated analysis on it. But they're careful to highlight
         | that there are hallucinations still, and also cases where it
         | misreads things like labels on medical images, or diagrams of
         | chemical compounds, etc.
        
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