[HN Gopher] Large Chainsaw Model
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Large Chainsaw Model
Author : smitelli
Score : 24 points
Date : 2024-11-23 17:51 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scottsmitelli.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scottsmitelli.com)
| skmurphy wrote:
| Conclusion: most of us don't need AI in the same way most of us
| don't need a chainsaw.
|
| "We're all mostly just regular people interacting with other
| regular people, trying to go about our business and get through
| our days. Nobody's asking us to index and catalog entire
| libraries of information. Nobody really cares if we reuse a stock
| photo that somebody else might have used somewhere else at some
| point. We're not so busy that we need everything predigested
| before it's presented to us. We're still clever enough to work
| our way through unfamiliar problems. Some of us, I would have to
| think, still possess the ability and the desire to produce some
| sort of output in our chosen medium without relinquishing
| creative control to AI."
| bongodongobob wrote:
| I disagree, you're not including mental fatigue. I can say
| something like "I have a server OS upgrade that needs to be
| done by X date. The server uses XYZ technologies. Here is the
| list of stakeholders and their roles. Design me an assessment
| and implementation plan and outline the key milestones and
| their dates." Could I think through that myself? Yes but it may
| take a couple hours. I just got 85% of the planning work done
| in 2 minutes.
| XenophileJKO wrote:
| I feel like I'm talking with people who would rather ride a
| horse and buggy down a rutted dirt road for 2 hours both
| ways, checking the wooden wheels for damage. Giving the
| horses rest stops.
|
| I think I'll take a 10 minute car drive to costco, thank you
| very much.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| How else can you know that your wooden wheels aren't
| damaged? We've used wooden wheels forever, good enough for
| me! Lol I agree.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| The word "melange" has been here longer than chainsaws, but I
| wouldn't trust 90% of people to use it correctly either
| sram1337 wrote:
| Who are you writing for?
|
| You can skip about half the article
|
| > Language models are capable of producing and digesting
| substantial volumes of text. More text than any single person
| should ever be expected to handle in the course of a lifetime.
| Compared to the speed at which a human can read and write, these
| models are the linguistic equivalent of a chainsaw. It's much the
| same with computer vision, and generative algorithms producing
| videos and images of events that never occurred and things that
| don't exist.
|
| It's my belief that, in our current artificial intelligence
| boom's haste to grab as much business as possible, we are
| essentially handing out chainsaws to unqualified and
| inexperienced people who don't appreciate the responsibility
| entrusted to them, and who probably don't require such power in
| the first place. And that is not the consumers' fault--this is
| all on the companies that are pushing it into their laps.
|
| > Some would say that, compared to the tangible hazards of losing
| a bodily extremity or dropping a pine trunk through the bedroom
| ceiling, misuse of AI by irresponsible or malicious actors sounds
| downright genteel. But think about how quickly memes and
| misinformation flow through social media and the larger internet.
| Whoever first used the word "viral" to describe such spread, they
| hit that nail right on the head.Social media craves that stuff,
| and AI provides the almost effortless ability to produce
| unlimited quantities of exactly what it desires. And the reward
| for the creator, as much as the users of an AI product can be
| called the "creator" of that content, is a shower of likes,
| reposts, updoots, badges, and the tiny dribble of dopamine
| brought by those things. Thus the system perpetuates itself.
|
| > Unlike the venerable chainsaw, AI doesn't give any indication
| that it is being misused. It doesn't growl, shake, kick, or
| protest. It doesn't even give a useful indication that "hey this
| result might be completely useless hogwash, I dunno." The user
| doesn't get to see what happens inside, or know precisely where
| the information originally came from, or evaluate how the model
| may have compromised reality to produce an output that looked
| plausibly like something a human would accept. It just hums along
| quietly, churning out line after line of approximately whatever
| it believed was asked of it.
| themadturk wrote:
| Great article, Scott. Chainsaws seem to be a very apropos
| metaphor for generative AI.
| frederikvs wrote:
| > To use a dog metaphor, a chainsaw tends to growl before it
| bites.
|
| I believe the author is mistaken about why chainsaws don't cause
| more harm than they do. There are multiple of ways in which a
| chainsaw will kill or destroy, without any warning. Kickback is
| very quick. A tree falling in the wrong direction comes without
| warning.
|
| Personally, I suspect there are 2 main reasons why chainsaws
| don't cause more harm.
|
| A) They've been around for 100 years, and they've been causing
| fatalities and injuries for 100 years. People have invented ways
| to reduce the risk. Any chain you can readily buy is a low-
| kickback chain, and the saw comes with a chain brake. It doesn't
| completely remove the risk, but it substantially reduces it.
|
| B) They've been around for 100 years, and they've been causing
| fatalities and injuries for 100 years. People are aware that
| chainsaws are inherently dangerous. Even someone without any
| training, and without looking at the safety instructions,
| understands that one of these will take off a limb without
| blinking.
|
| What this means for the rest of the metaphor, I'm not sure.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| >>chainsaw tends to growl before it bites.
|
| It doesn't tend to; it growls continuously : treat me wrong an
| i will eat you.
| pbw wrote:
| I don't love the analogy, but I 100% agree that we are putting AI
| tools into people's hands that they are not yet able to wield
| safely. I think this is mostly because of how quickly AI has been
| developed. New technologies can take decades to be absorbed by
| society. Early on with cars we had no traffic lights, speed
| limits, or seat belts. And modern freeways were many decades off.
|
| "Early electrical systems were poorly insulated, and fires or
| electrocutions were common. The creation of standards for wiring,
| outlets, grounding systems, and circuit breakers took decades to
| develop." It could be that AI will develop so fast that society
| never catches up, but I'm sure we'll at least get better over
| time.
| bluGill wrote:
| > The chainsaw is a poor fit for, say, ripping down a sheet of
| plywood for that new shed dormer you're trying to add onto the
| house. A chainsaw shouldn't be used to dig a trench for an
| irrigation line.
|
| both of those statements are false. While not common, some
| proiessional construction crews do use a chainsaw instead of a
| circular saw - the vast majority don't but some do. Likewise a
| trenching tool is just a chainsaw with a large blade - not the
| same chainsaw as you would use for a tree, put clearly a chainsaw
| if you look.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| Chainsaws don't like dry wood. They are not cost effective
| energy and wear-wise for most carpentry work.
| freedomben wrote:
| A chainsaw in the right hands can be a precision instrument;
| much better than a more directed/restricted saw. Definitely
| not typical for most carpentry work, but a sufficiently
| skilled craftsman can get through cuts a lot quicker with a
| chainsaw than a "safer" alternative. (Note: this is only true
| for very skilled/experienced people. Don't try it at home,
| those are professionals, etc, etc). I once worked at a
| construction site with a guy who would use a chainsaw to cut
| molding and trim. He would measure one time, and then make
| ornate cuts that looked amazing, and he would do it so
| quickly that it seemed like a magic trick.
|
| If you ever want to have your mind blown (in a good way),
| visit Fairbanks or similar arctic locations in the winter and
| go to an ice carving festival. You'll see people there making
| incredibly detailed cuts with chainsaws. Ice is more
| forgiving than wood, but still far above the level of most
| mere mortals.
|
| Meanwhile I feel good about my chainsaw work if I don't knock
| the chain off.
| gweinberg wrote:
| I really don't understand why people are impressed by posts like
| this. The author spends way too much time talking about literal
| chainsaws and really mostly just asserts its a relevant metaphor.
| Mostly an LLM is like a chainsaw in that most people don't need
| either one. There are a million things I don;t need, for example,
| spinny hubcaps. Is an LLM really more like a chainsaw than it is
| like spinny hubcaps? Because it seems more like spinny hubcaps to
| me.
| Unearned5161 wrote:
| I'd be interested in hearing what, if any, danger to society
| spinny hubcaps present
| koolala wrote:
| The anime Chainsaw Man is about this. In its world, chainsaws are
| the Number #1 Most-power Devil. Even more powerful than Guns.
|
| I wondered about this but it makes sense when you imagine trees
| as sentient. Chainsaws are extremely efficient killing machines
| for the most helpless and generous creatures on earth.
| aleksiy123 wrote:
| I feel like this metaphor could just as easily be about "cars"
| instead of "chainsaws". We do put cars in almost everyone's hands
| even though it has the same potential for dangers.
|
| Even more so since I would assume more people die to car
| accidents then chainsaw accidents. But more people find cars
| useful to their day to day lives than chainsaws.
|
| So I guess the question is whether these models are useful to
| everyone like cars, or just to a subset like chainsaws that still
| remains to be seen.
| tempodox wrote:
| You have to scroll a kilometer, but the article does finally get
| around to saying something. I almost gave up.
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