[HN Gopher] 1-800-ChatGPT
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       1-800-ChatGPT
        
       Author : yzydserd
       Score  : 276 points
       Date   : 2024-12-18 19:03 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (help.openai.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (help.openai.com)
        
       | xattt wrote:
       | Memories of GOOG411! And probably same purpose of this. (1)
       | 
       | (1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOOG-411
        
         | sleek wrote:
         | Yes! Instant memories
        
         | ssl-3 wrote:
         | I'm also reminded of TellMe. [0]
         | 
         | In the days before we had pocket supercomputers, I used both of
         | these services occasionally while out and about.
         | 
         | 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tellme_Networks
        
         | qwertox wrote:
         | I don't think it's the same purpose. YouTube, TV and Movies
         | offers enough speech samples and a lot of content is dubbed to
         | other languages, and alot of this content already has the
         | transcripts available.
         | 
         | They know who's calling, and the greeting was something like
         | "Hello again". They are catching up at building a competitive
         | database of persons and their preferences at the scale of
         | FAANG. They're moving over from collecting info for their
         | models to collecting info from their users for their agents.
         | This is what they need to offer good agents.
         | 
         | But I might be wrong and it's just phoneme collection, as you
         | speculate.
        
           | nirvanatikku wrote:
           | Agreed on the broader use of data. That said, it's not just
           | about phoneme collection--different channels and UX
           | modalities reach different audiences and contexts. Each
           | channel ultimately delivers unique inputs, fueling more
           | specialized and robust models tailored to those specific use
           | cases.
        
           | paxys wrote:
           | Regular human conversational voice, especially over the
           | phone, is going to be a gold mine for training customer
           | support AI agents. Actors reading movie scripts can't really
           | provide that amount of relevance.
        
             | cj wrote:
             | "This call is being recorded for quality and training
             | purposes" truly has a new meaning.
        
         | mbauman wrote:
         | GOOG411 was actually very helpful in the dumbphone/limited-
         | cell-data era! I'm not sure why I'd use this now.
         | 
         | It also brings back memories of trying random (and known) 800
         | numbers from payphones.
        
         | m3kw9 wrote:
         | Must have been tough thinking of an easy to remember phone
         | number, and this ain't it.
        
           | verst wrote:
           | It made more sense at the time. 411 is an actual directory
           | service (similar to dialing 0 for the operator). [1]
           | 
           | [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/411_(telephone_number)
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | What's the haps? What's the skinney? What's the 411?
             | 
             | 3 questions that Gen-Zers probably have never heard asked
             | and will never ask themselves
        
             | riffic wrote:
             | N11 codes are a particular curiosity of the
             | electromechanical switching systems used to set up
             | circuits: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/N11_code
        
         | verst wrote:
         | I used to use GOOG-411 all the time before I had a smart phone.
         | I must have provided so much training data that it is no
         | surprise Google from early on has been very good at Speech-to-
         | Text conversion of my particular accent :D
        
         | ghurtado wrote:
         | Does anyone else remember a very short lived Google experiment
         | that allowed you to call a number, vocalize your search, and
         | somehow without any additional steps, the results appeared on
         | the browser in front of you? (which was not connected to the
         | phone, or even logged into a Google account)
        
           | ipaddr wrote:
           | Sounds impossible. Are you calling on the same phone your
           | browser is?
        
             | krackers wrote:
             | It might be possible if the browser plays some high
             | frequency inaudible tone that's picked up by the phone
        
       | cco wrote:
       | 100% shipped to show off to family during Christmas.
       | 
       | I'll definitely give it a go, I wonder if this lands better with
       | those aged 50+ who are more used to phone calls rather than chat.
        
         | WhitneyLand wrote:
         | So the perception of those aged 50+, is one of people so far
         | removed from technology they'd prefer to use a telephone to
         | avoid their discomfort with computers?
         | 
         | I'm well into this group and still make a lot more api calls
         | than phone calls.
         | 
         | Fresh out of college I recall vividly thinking, I'll need to
         | build an impressive list of side projects to overcome
         | preconceptions about how much I can truly offer at my age.
         | Maybe nothing has changed.
        
           | dingnuts wrote:
           | the idea that someone who was 20 in 1995 is too old to be
           | comfortable with computers is a horrifying and offensive
           | stereotype that deeply worries me for my own future
           | 
           | our industry is old enough that the first generation of
           | pioneers has died of old age.
           | 
           | Do you really think someone who grew up with computers in the
           | 80s is incapable of using a smart phone? These are people who
           | are still in the workforce today. These are your most skilled
           | colleagues.
           | 
           | Some of them probably designed the device you think they're
           | too old to understand
        
             | ericd wrote:
             | I don't think anyone is denying the existence of
             | Greybeards, it's more that the field has exploded so much
             | in the meantime that the probability of a random 30 year
             | old being in it is much higher than the probability of a
             | random 50 year old.
        
             | vel0city wrote:
             | > someone who was 20 in 1995 is too old to be comfortable
             | with computers
             | 
             | I know people who are in their 20s and 30s who seem to be
             | uncomfortable with computers, cloud technology, and
             | especially AI.
             | 
             | In some ways I'm one of them. I will never let an always
             | listening AI helper be in my home. And I'm <40.
        
               | xattt wrote:
               | That's different. One is fear of the unknown, the other
               | is a precautionary fear of what could be.
        
               | dylan604 wrote:
               | Not really. A lot of people in their 20s might have never
               | actually done much with a computer, yet they cannot put
               | their phone down. I know lots of 20-somethings that
               | cannot type. I know even more that do not own a
               | traditional "computer". It has nothing to do with fear,
               | but lack of need.
        
           | bloomingkales wrote:
           | I had chatgpt read through my recent bloodwork results and
           | helped me understand it better than my doctor.
           | 
           | 50+ are going to be so addicted to this thing its not even
           | funny. My parents are not reaching for AI immediately yet,
           | but thats just a yet. This is the wave that could come at any
           | moment.
        
           | conductr wrote:
           | I think the SMS chat feature this enables is of more
           | significance than the actual voice calling feature.
        
           | hombre_fatal wrote:
           | My dad sells farming-related equipment to mostly older people
           | and there are still people more comfortable giving him their
           | credit card info over the phone instead of purchasing on his
           | website online.
           | 
           | (Though I see that as mostly a failure of our financial
           | industry. Credit card numbers should be obsolete by now.)
        
         | 4ndrewl wrote:
         | Sonny, people in their 50s were sending smileys on their Nokias
         | before Zuck had even thought of Facebook...
        
           | stevenj wrote:
           | Your comment made me lol. And it's very rare for that to
           | happen to me via reading text. And I needed it today. So I
           | just wanted to tell you thank you and I hope you have a good
           | day.
        
             | dantyti wrote:
             | > Your comment made me lol. And it's very rare for that to
             | happen to me via reading text.
             | 
             | If anyone else reading this is in a place like you've
             | described, try 1900hotdog.com
        
         | jph00 wrote:
         | Umm... do you actually know anyone 50+? You know, for instance,
         | the co-authors of "AI: A Modern Approach" are both 50+?
        
           | whimsicalism wrote:
           | ? why is the authorship of this book relevant
        
             | glenstein wrote:
             | Because it shows that it's perfectly plausible for people
             | ages 50 plus to appreciate the value out of these
             | technologies every bit as much as us whippersnappers. Some
             | of them are writing books about it, after all
        
               | whimsicalism wrote:
               | those books are not really at all about the techniques
               | used in llms
        
         | swatcoder wrote:
         | You're surely right that they anticipate it being be a novelty
         | that people share during holiday visits.
         | 
         | But as you can probably tell from the other replies, the idea
         | that older people don't know how to use internet-era technology
         | is a meme that was wearing thin 20 years ago already.
         | 
         | People who haven't had ChatGPT "land" for them yet are likely
         | just people who don't find themselves asking a lot of questions
         | they need a chatbot to answer, regardless of the medium. _That_
         | probably has some age skew right now, but isn 't really about
         | the medium at all.
        
           | conductr wrote:
           | I'm a few years from 50 and while Google has deteriorated my
           | Google fu and ability to see signals through the noise still
           | serves me well enough and is my comfort zone.
           | 
           | When I dabble with chatgpt it always feels like I'm playing
           | with a toy as I don't really have a use case I'm taking to
           | it. I've used a few websites creators and code generators
           | which have been useful but also I don't think they saved me
           | much time overall. Web design, graphic design, etc and
           | creative stuff are things I suck creating so it gives me a
           | new power and is easy to iterate on. Otherwise, I've not
           | found much actual value from it yet.
           | 
           | If it makes you much more efficient in your job, like it does
           | for professional software devs, many of HN users, then i
           | think you're more apt to be excited by the tech
        
       | amclennon wrote:
       | Between purchasing chat.com, and this new 800 number, I sometimes
       | feel like OpenAI is really channeling that 90s dot com era
       | energy.
        
         | kibwen wrote:
         | And ChatGPT _still_ does lets me do less today than Zombo.com
         | let me do in 1999.
        
           | mgkimsal wrote:
           | You could do ANYTHING at zombo.com, if I remember correctly.
           | At zombo.com, anything was possible.
           | 
           | EDIT: There is one limit at zombo.com. The limit is myself.
        
             | samcgraw wrote:
             | You, yes, you, can still do anything at https://zombo.com.
        
               | mgkimsal wrote:
               | I still can't do things that I can't do, because at
               | zombo.com, I am my own limit.
        
               | layer8 wrote:
               | But the unattainable is unknown at zombo.com.
        
           | colejohnson66 wrote:
           | That's only because Zombo had _everything_. It was the
           | original everything app /site that Musk so desperately wants
           | X to be. Nothing can top that - not even AI.
        
           | jaredsohn wrote:
           | OpenAI acquisition/synergizing/rebrand to zombo.com incoming
           | and then we'll complain about them ruining Zombo.
        
           | deadfa11 wrote:
           | Zombo.com really had everything, way ahead of its time. It's
           | been a while... maybe since the last time I lost the game.
        
           | layer8 wrote:
           | We need 1-800-ZOMBOCOM.
        
         | xanderlewis wrote:
         | I'm all for it! Maybe they'll start auctioning off pixels on
         | openai.com.
        
           | codetrotter wrote:
           | If you're quick, you might be able to grab a 88x31 spot!
        
         | jonny_eh wrote:
         | Feels like something Google would do in the early days, but not
         | now.
        
           | wibbily wrote:
           | Nothing new under the sun
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOOG-411
        
             | jonny_eh wrote:
             | That's what I was thinking of. Ironically, no amount of
             | googling surfaced it for me, so I thought I imagined it.
        
         | lm28469 wrote:
         | Next month we'll have LetterGPT and by 2026 they'll introduce
         | MorseGPT to let us communicate via telegram
        
           | ravenstine wrote:
           | Why stop there? We could have ChatGPT the breakfast cereal!
           | ChatGPT the coloring book! ChatGPT the _flamethrower!_ (the
           | kids love that one)
           | 
           | The scary thing is it's actually conceivable to somehow
           | integrate GPT into those things.
        
             | sterlind wrote:
             | ChatGPT the breakfast cereal is just alphabet bites.
             | Nutritious but the next-token prediction accuracy is
             | terrible.
        
           | jaredsohn wrote:
           | FaxGPT as well
        
             | svieira wrote:
             | And its close cousin FauxGPT
        
           | area51org wrote:
           | Don't leave out ChatTelex and ChatCarrierPigeon.
        
         | dghlsakjg wrote:
         | Controversial take: LLMs are the first time in a while that I
         | have felt like emerging technology trends is doing something
         | cool and adding value.
         | 
         | For the past 8-10 years it has all felt like a bunch of apps
         | that just aim to be mediocre middlemen/gig economy brokers with
         | bad customer service.
        
           | itishappy wrote:
           | > a bunch of apps that just aim to be mediocre middlemen/gig
           | economy brokers with bad customer service
           | 
           | Isn't this the new LLM playbook?
        
             | dghlsakjg wrote:
             | How so?
             | 
             | I pay Claude/ChatGPT trivial amounts of money for metered
             | API access to their models, and they in turn provide it to
             | me.
             | 
             | Middlemen/marketplace models like "Uber for x" or "Etsy for
             | x" or "Betterhelp for x" is a totally different business
             | model.
        
               | itishappy wrote:
               | I had in mind the surge in LLM chat support and the surge
               | in thin ChatGPT wrappers with a custom system prompt.
               | Claude/ChatGPT do seem useful, "an AI companion for
               | Microsoft Paint" less so.
        
           | vasco wrote:
           | And now we will have mediocre middlemen/gig economy brokers
           | with bad customer service performed by AI agents that you can
           | summarize with chatgpt and automatically reply back to.
           | Progress!!
        
           | otabdeveloper4 wrote:
           | > doing something cool
           | 
           | Yes.
           | 
           | > and adding value.
           | 
           | No. The only breakthrough innovation LLMs gave us is the
           | ability to speedrun the making of racist pictures. Not sure
           | the world really benefited.
        
             | finnh wrote:
             | I don't think this was your intent, but the only
             | interpretation here is that you think the rapid creation of
             | racist pictures is cool.
        
             | dghlsakjg wrote:
             | LLMs don't generate images at all.
        
           | abixb wrote:
           | I agree. A good chunk of the tech trends in the last decade
           | were indeed rent seeking, but silent revolution was happening
           | in the transformers and the neural network architecture
           | domain, which made today's products possible.
           | 
           | And I'd wager that there are silent revolutions happening all
           | across colossus that's the tech industry that will become
           | apparent in the next decade.
           | 
           | Jeff Bezos put it best during his recent interview at the
           | 2024 NYTimes Dealbook Summit, "We're living in multiple
           | golden ages at the same time." There's never been a better
           | time to be alive.
        
           | hypeatei wrote:
           | I agree about an abundance of apps, but what type of value
           | are LLMs adding?
           | 
           | It can sometimes be useful to input a more "human" search and
           | have something get spit out but 60% of the time it completely
           | lies to you. I'm talking about questions related to web
           | specifications which are public documents. Section numbers,
           | standards names, etc.. will be completely made up.
        
             | jklinger410 wrote:
             | > but 60% of the time it completely lies to you
             | 
             | This is such an exhausting conversation
        
               | hansonkd wrote:
               | i think when people say things like this it indicates
               | that they tried LLMs in 2022 and solidified their opinion
               | there.
               | 
               | I had the same impression about the hallucinations 2
               | years ago. The reality is in at the end of 2024, you can
               | get incredible value from LLMs.
               | 
               | I've used copilot to code almost exclusively now for the
               | past few months. Anyone still comparing it to text
               | completion I feel is operating on completely out of date
               | information either intentionally or unintentionally.
        
               | beefnugs wrote:
               | Wait do you expect people to retry every failed thing
               | they have tried due to marketing lies every how often
               | exactly?
        
               | jklinger410 wrote:
               | Do you expect the first iteration of every product to be
               | perfect?
        
             | dayjah wrote:
             | This is a thin edge of the wedge issue, right? ChatGPT is
             | pretty darn good for most things. I've used it extensively
             | for the past 18 months and only in a few cases would I say
             | it "completely lied to me".
             | 
             | My general rubric is: "would I trust someone on Reddit to
             | correctly guide me on this". If the answer is "yes" then
             | ChatGPT is likely going to do well. If the volume on a
             | particular subject is low / susceptible to false
             | information then it'll lie.
             | 
             | Recently it lied hard about how to configure MikroTik
             | routers. I lost many hours. But for a large construction
             | project recently it completely balled out.
             | 
             | Are you doing cutting edge / complicated stuff? Have you
             | examples of where it lies?
        
               | therein wrote:
               | I don't want to turn this into another Claude lies less
               | than ChatGPT subthread but since you mentioned
               | configuration of MikroTik routers I felt like I should.
               | 
               | ChatGPT lies a lot about RouterOS, I don't know why.
               | Claude helped me a lot on the other hand with all things
               | MikroTik.
        
               | dayjah wrote:
               | Thanks! I'll give it a shot when I get to the vlan stuff
               | I've on deck
        
               | hypeatei wrote:
               | > Have you examples of where it lies?
               | 
               | No specific prompts, but most were related to the
               | XHR/Fetch specs and behaviors within. It would say "X.Y.Z
               | sections defines this" but that section didn't exist at
               | all and the answer provided was not accurate.
               | 
               | > My general rubric is: "would I trust someone on Reddit
               | to correctly guide me on this". If the answer is "yes"
               | then ChatGPT is likely going to do well
               | 
               | I see. Well, I don't know if I find that very valuable
               | but if others do, then so be it.
        
               | adamc wrote:
               | I've asked it for things like book recommendations and
               | gotten:                 - completely made up books
               | - real books that were only marginally related       -
               | real books with really bad reviews
               | 
               | I'd estimate that only 30-40% of the time did I find the
               | results at all useful.
        
               | airstrike wrote:
               | stop using it like a database that you can query
        
               | cruffle_duffle wrote:
               | I wonder how many people are promoting it correctly. You
               | can't just query it like you might for google or
               | something. It works best with lots of context and back
               | and forth. And yeah, for many things you are going to get
               | directional answers not exact ones (esp with "rote
               | memory" like exact quotes from a book or something.)
        
               | bigfudge wrote:
               | Agreed this is a bad idea in the case you are replying
               | to, but I love ChatGPT as a way to recover the name of a
               | book or film I've forgotten. I recently prompted for "a
               | book about nuclear wasteland dominated by a church" and
               | it gave me A canticle for Leibowitz (which is great). I'm
               | not sure how easy that would be any other way.
        
             | rajamaka wrote:
             | The value to me is by having an on-demand junior developer
             | working alongside me for the price of $20 a month
        
               | ipaddr wrote:
               | Mine is a senior developer with memory lapses.
        
               | airstrike wrote:
               | And that sometimes you need to bully a bit to get coerced
               | answers out of... feels bad
        
               | hypeatei wrote:
               | My experience with code completion tools (i.e. single
               | line/method snippets) has been positive. But, anything
               | more complicated seems to fall apart rather quickly.
        
               | stonedge wrote:
               | I have upgraded to the $200 Pro tier, and, with o1-pro,
               | all of my tasks delegated to the "junior" have been so
               | much better. It takes longer to complete, of course, but
               | the overall duration is less because I'm not having to go
               | back and correct it as much as I was with 4o. It's been
               | able to figure out problems that 4o continually failed
               | on.
        
             | drusepth wrote:
             | LLMs have been a personal tutor to me for the last year,
             | able to explain anything and everything I've been curious
             | about professionally and personally. I changed jobs to new
             | technologies in large part because I effectively had an
             | assistant able to help cover any gaps in knowledge I had,
             | train me up quickly, and offer ongoing help on the job.
             | 
             | They can make stuff up, but saying "60% of the time they
             | lie to you" hasn't been true for years.
        
               | krger wrote:
               | >They can make stuff up, but saying "60% of the time they
               | lie to you" hasn't been true for years.
               | 
               | If you're using them to fill knowledge gaps, what
               | scaffolding have you set up to ensure that those gaps
               | aren't being filled with incorrect-but-plausible-sounding
               | information?
        
             | rtsil wrote:
             | Off the top of my head, and just for the last couple of
             | months, and only outside of work (where its value is even
             | more immense), it has saved one of my indoor plants, told
             | me how to handle a major boiler problem that would have
             | left us without a working boiler during a weekend in the
             | winder, with the next "emergency" repairman only available
             | on Monday, advised me to use Kopia as backup solution for
             | my personal files instead of Syncthing, helped me choose
             | the right type of glass for a painting frame, answered a
             | couple of questions about bikes and helped me when I was
             | stuck in an harmonic analysis of a piece of music. All of
             | that are extremely valuable to me (if only for the time not
             | wasted googling answers), and in none of them its potential
             | hallucinating would have been an issue. And I can't count
             | the number of times where "specialists" in bike repairs or
             | plumbing told me something incorrect or outright false, so
             | I've learned to deal with hallucinations already!
        
               | vel0city wrote:
               | > And I can't count the number of times where
               | "specialists" in bike repairs or plumbing told me
               | something incorrect or outright false, so I've learned to
               | deal with hallucinations already!
               | 
               | So much this. So many times I've argued with hired
               | experts saying "can't be done" just to see yes, it can be
               | done.
        
               | swatcoder wrote:
               | Yes, but which of those things would you not have
               | resolved just as well 10 years ago? All those
               | possibilities were added by the maturing web itself, as a
               | genuinely novel change from having to source books or
               | experts/friends in the days before.
               | 
               | I'm glad ChatGPT didn't lead you astray, but I'm not
               | seeing what it's _added_ here besides shuffling up the
               | user interface in a way that you presently and
               | subjectively prefer?
        
               | fragmede wrote:
               | objectively, it takes less time to ask a question and get
               | a direct answer than it does to search for some words,
               | leaf through a couple of results, find one that has the
               | information you want, and then read that page. If I want
               | to know the height of the Eiffel tower, being told it's
               | 1083 meters tall is faster than searching for its
               | website, finding the stats section, then locating that
               | information on the page. Google realizes that, so they
               | pull that info out of the page and just put it on the
               | results page for you.
        
               | rtsil wrote:
               | My plant would have been dead. As for the rest, sure, I
               | would have resolved them eventually, after many
               | frustrated hours of googling and trial and error.
               | 
               | Time is my most precious thing, I already don't have
               | enough time to do all the things that I want to do, I
               | don't want to waste that trying to find and test
               | solutions when ChatGPT gives me instant answers. I'd
               | rather spend time playing with my cats or riding a bike
               | instead. It's not a matter of UI, it's a matter of
               | preventing waste of time, energy and money, and less
               | frustration. For that alone, EUR20/month is a very good
               | value. And that's just for my personal life.
        
               | swatcoder wrote:
               | "many hours of frustrated googling and trial and error"
               | isn't a familiar experience to me, but I'll trust that it
               | is for you. I'm glad you see that as behind you now with
               | this. I suppose you must not be alone.
        
             | dghlsakjg wrote:
             | I find it useful, and it brings value to me (literally: I
             | exchange valuable money for API access), even if it doesn't
             | for you. Many other people report the exact same thing.
             | Just because you don't find value in a technology, doesn't
             | mean that others don't.
             | 
             | In the past week I have used it for helping write a script
             | in a framework I'm not super familiar with (OpenSCAD), I
             | was able to finish a project in 5 minutes that otherwise
             | would have taken me hours. I have used it to help make
             | movie recommendations (none of them were hallucinated). I
             | have used it to translate a conversation with a non-english
             | speaker, etc. There are other tools that can help me do all
             | of these things, but none quite as fast or painlessly.
             | 
             | It might not be useful for your use case of asking
             | questions related to specific web specs, but that doesn't
             | mean that the technology has no value. Horses for
             | courses...
        
             | lxgr wrote:
             | That's because we're currently largely not using them
             | correctly, i.e. hooked up to RAG instead of hoping that
             | they've memorized enough of the training data verbatim,
             | which is arguably a waste of neurons in a foundational
             | model.
             | 
             | Imaging being graded on your ability to quote exact line
             | numbers of particular parts of your codebase as a senior
             | software engineer without being able to look at it!
             | 
             | LLMs are not, _in isolation_ , a search product.
        
           | emptysea wrote:
           | Have you tried a Waymo yet? Honestly the coolest tech I've
           | seen/used in ages
           | 
           | Lots of engineering involved
        
             | dghlsakjg wrote:
             | No. Never even seen one, since I don't live in the
             | US/California.
        
           | zamadatix wrote:
           | I'd (generally) agree. About 5 minutes of using Flux, Claude
           | or Suno would have provided more net new value than I've yet
           | to get out of blockchain, self driving, gig brokers,
           | metaverse, 5G, AR/VR, quantum computing, hyperloop, and
           | whatever people were trying to make web3 be combined over the
           | years. Not that I don't think all of these things will always
           | perpetually fail to deliver (hell, if I had a chance to try
           | Waymo already then self driving probably wouldn't be on the
           | list), just the hype cycles were unrelated to when that
           | delivery occurred (if ever).
           | 
           | The hard part is, despite actually having some "real" value
           | delivered, you still have to sort through the 99% of bullshit
           | that comes along with it anyways.
        
             | becquerel wrote:
             | I will personally say that if you ever get the chance,
             | definitely try a Waymo. I did recently for the first time
             | and it's a hell of an experience. You can very vividly
             | imagine it being the future.
             | 
             | I'm also going to stand up for AR/VR here. I'm in a long-
             | distance relationship and me and my partner spend an hour
             | or so in VRChat around two to three times a week. The power
             | that has to reduce the badness of an LDR is well well well
             | well worth the three hundred bucks I paid for a Quest. That
             | and some of the golf games on it are fun.
        
               | zamadatix wrote:
               | I am super stoked to try a Waymo when I'm in a city with
               | one. It's hype failures have more to do with 10 years of
               | hype about its public availability yet not being
               | available to 99% of the world's population 10 years
               | later. Hype is useless without the result.
               | 
               | I've had an HTC Vive and an Oculus Rift 3 (Walkabout Mini
               | Golf is one I tried!) and while I wouldn't try to argue
               | NOBODY has found a use for it (somebody somewhere found
               | uses for all of the things I mentioned, just not me and
               | just not the majority of people like big new things are
               | promised to) it never really ticked the "new value" box
               | before they ended up in the closet for me.
        
           | smokel wrote:
           | Don't forget the vast (and parallel) improvements in image
           | processing.
        
           | dylan604 wrote:
           | yeah, we were definitely stagnant when the focus was on
           | crypto
        
         | joshuaturner wrote:
         | AOL keyword "chat"
        
       | yzydserd wrote:
       | Launch video. Love the flashing banner.
       | 
       | https://www.youtube.com/live/LWa6OHeNK3s
        
         | zekrioca wrote:
         | Those two persons fixedly looking to the other person reading
         | some teleprompter that announces this feature -- likely written
         | by ChatGPT -- is the weirdest thing ever.
        
           | Sean-Der wrote:
           | No teleprompters!
           | 
           | We had a video monitor in front of us showing the live feed,
           | that kept distracting me personally.
        
             | zekrioca wrote:
             | Oops :)
             | 
             | I meant no disrespect, but from 2' or so, the conversation
             | sounded more natural and things got smooth. Interest
             | feature and I liked the 80's banner with the phone # like
             | in the old TV ads!
        
               | Sean-Der wrote:
               | Thank you! I didn't feel any disrespect :)
               | 
               | I was always curious how things worked when I saw
               | announcements on HN. So happy to share to satiate the
               | next generations curiosity :)
        
       | TripleChecker wrote:
       | It's December, so I guess this isn't an April Fool's joke.
        
       | asdev wrote:
       | more gimmicks than actual progress. scaling limits and
       | intelligence barrier has definitely been hit
        
         | syspec wrote:
         | More likely, there are different groups of engineers working on
         | these features.
         | 
         | It's likely the people implementing the WhatsApp feature, are
         | not the ones working on the LLM models.
        
           | DrBenCarson wrote:
           | Probably more about how they're choosing to use resources
           | 
           | If they believe AGI is around the corner and they are
           | competing with others to get there, seems silly to invest
           | resources in standing up a phone line, etc.
        
             | sswatson wrote:
             | Not if the data they'll collect in the process is going to
             | be valuable for the training effort.
        
           | asdev wrote:
           | the 12 days of OpenAI has been a complete dud so far, only
           | incremental improvements
        
         | Sean-Der wrote:
         | I worked on this.
         | 
         | My background isn't AI so I can't contribute to that. My
         | background is WebRTC/telephony so I could build this. Even if I
         | was involved in 'AI stuff' I would have zero impact, but I can
         | build this!
        
       | aleksi wrote:
       | It is such a weird thing to see Afghanistan in a list of
       | supported countries:
       | https://help.openai.com/en/articles/7947663-chatgpt-supporte...
        
         | doublerabbit wrote:
         | Voice training.
        
         | sterlind wrote:
         | Afghanistan and Turkmenistan are allowed, but not China or
         | Russia. Which makes legal sense, I guess, but did the Taliban
         | takeover just take place too recently for Afghanistan to be
         | placed on the embargo list?
        
       | teejmya wrote:
       | https://archive.is/YR7mU
        
       | paxys wrote:
       | I hope they introduce a way to use Plus plan features/models.
       | Would be neat to do quick queries in WhatsApp and forward results
       | to friends & family without context switching/copy pasting.
        
       | behnamoh wrote:
       | something tells me all these bells and whistles around gpt are
       | signs that scaling laws have plateaued, otherwise OpenAI et al.
       | would focus more on improving model quality.
       | 
       | Maybe GPT-4 is the 1080p of LLMs: Noticeably better than 720p and
       | 480p models, and not bad enough to warrant additional
       | improvements.
       | 
       | Sure, 4K, 8K, ... are technologically available, but for the
       | majority of use cases, 1080p is enough. Similarly, even though o1
       | and other models are technically feasible, for most cases the
       | current models are enough.
       | 
       | In fact, GPT-4 is more than enough for 80% of tasks (text
       | summarization, Apple (un)Intelligence, writing emails, tool use,
       | etc.)--small models (<32B) are perfectly fine for those tasks
       | (and they keep getting better too.)
        
         | whimsicalism wrote:
         | o1 is way better than gpt-4 imo, feel that many people just
         | don't have complicated tasks/questions they have to do in their
         | day to day. it's like a half jump between 3.5 and 4 to me
        
           | behnamoh wrote:
           | > many people just don't have complicated tasks/questions
           | they have to do in their day to day
           | 
           | This is what worries me. Aside from programmers and few other
           | professions, most jobs in our civilization are prime for
           | automation...
        
           | ravenstine wrote:
           | That's not been my experience, though I guess it depends on
           | what you're using o1 for.
           | 
           | My experience is that o1 is extremely good at producing a
           | series of logical steps for things. Ask it a simple question
           | and it will write you what feels like an entire _manual_ that
           | you never asked for. For the most part I 've stopped caring
           | about integrating AI into software, but I could see o1 being
           | good for writing _prompts_ for another LLM. Beyond that, I
           | have a hard time calling it better than GPT-4+.
           | 
           | How have you been using o1?
        
             | whimsicalism wrote:
             | lots of coding tasks, discussions about physics/QM. I find
             | that it produces better quality answers than 4o, which
             | often will have subtle but simple mistakes.
             | 
             | Even writing, where it is supposed to be worse than 4O, I
             | feel that is does better/has a more solid understanding of
             | provided documents.
        
               | semi-extrinsic wrote:
               | > discussions about physics/QM
               | 
               | Interesting, could you share an example of this where it
               | provides something of value? I've tried asking a few
               | different LLMs to explain renormalization group theory,
               | and it always goes off the rails in five questions or
               | less.
        
         | infecto wrote:
         | Yes, surely they only have one type of Software Engineer and
         | they all know how to improve model quality.
         | 
         | Alternatively, does it not seem more likely that they have
         | different product groups? Surely the folks working on ChatGPT
         | are an entirely different beast than the folks working in model
         | development?
        
           | tpdly wrote:
           | Yes, surely a sarcastic reductio ad absurdum of what was was
           | said will inspire dialogue. I think the GP's point is that
           | their investing in new distribution channels could mean ROI
           | in models has diminished significantly. Incidentally, I
           | disagree with GP that's what this means-- this is another
           | investment in brand awareness, AND data for multi-
           | modal/audio. They might have gotten to 1080p for text chat
           | but definitely not for voice chat.
        
         | CamperBob2 wrote:
         | _thing tells me all these bells and whistles around gpt are
         | signs that scaling laws have plateaued, otherwise OpenAI et al.
         | would focus more on improving model quality._
         | 
         | o1-pro is that model. Expensive and slow, but significantly
         | better at many tasks that involve CoT reasoning.
        
         | m3kw9 wrote:
         | I don't get this. Define focus and how is just improving model
         | quality gonna allow OpenAI to survive, they need a mix of
         | commercialization and model improvement. No $$, no gpus, no
         | researchers, no improvements
        
         | ben_w wrote:
         | My guess is that the model got good enough to make its own
         | bells and whistles -- even the original 3.5 was good enough to
         | make its own initial chat web UI.
         | 
         | I know it was that good, because I got it to do that for me...
         | and then the UI kept getting better and the expensive models
         | became the free default option and I stopped caring.
        
       | paxys wrote:
       | They are going to collect so much voice training data from this.
        
         | nirvanatikku wrote:
         | telephony* voice data
         | 
         | [*] limited bandwidth (8 kHz), providing a valuable opportunity
         | to enhance and specialize models for telephony applications,
         | ensuring better performance and user experience even with low-
         | fidelity audio inputs.
        
           | lxgr wrote:
           | I mean, nothing prevents them from running their existing
           | data through a "noisy POTS" filter in A/B tests to see how
           | that impacts customer satisfaction.
           | 
           | But being able to blame the user's phone line probably goes a
           | long way to avoiding unhappiness due to testing :)
        
             | nirvanatikku wrote:
             | While true... real world wins?
        
         | layer8 wrote:
         | How does that work, without a transcript of what the voices are
         | supposed to be saying?
        
           | paxys wrote:
           | Humans can label the data
        
       | daveguy wrote:
       | <my recent call>
       | 
       | chatGPT: ~ This may be recorded...
       | 
       | chatGPT: ~ You agree to openai terms and conditions...
       | 
       | Me: What's the square root of two?
       | 
       | chatGPT: What number do you want to know the square root of?
       | 
       | Me: Two
       | 
       | chatGPT: The square root of ten is approximately 3.1...
       | 
       | <click>
       | 
       | If they wanted to show how very non-understanding and un-
       | intelligent chatGPT is, they are doing a great job. So much
       | quicker to see in a voice interaction than through online query
       | submissions.
        
         | whimsicalism wrote:
         | interesting, it worked for me first try. maybe you just have
         | difficult to understand english or poor connection
        
           | daveguy wrote:
           | Never had a problem with either before (home cell), but sure.
        
         | gosub100 wrote:
         | Bet they wouldn't make that mistake if it was inputting credit
         | card numbers
        
         | dr_kiszonka wrote:
         | So not the best choice for Phone-a-Friend? I was hoping to
         | become a millionaire.
        
       | m3kw9 wrote:
       | Got to be a nice coincidence ChatGPT is 7 letters.
        
       | DrBenCarson wrote:
       | Finally, someone I can call if I get arrested
        
       | franze wrote:
       | as a reminder, I coded gpt@franzai.com some time ago (see also
       | https://gpt.franzai.com/ )
       | 
       | it does the same as the chatgpt whatsapp chat, but well you can
       | forward images to it, it can send your reminder emails in the
       | future and can manage todos for you (some kind of memory)
       | 
       | if it would have gotten more traction i would have extended it
       | that you can also forward emails to it and it responds to the
       | original email as your assistant
       | 
       | (and hey, if someone from openAi is reading this, feel free to
       | offer me a position as a product manager)
        
       | korkybuchek wrote:
       | Powered by Twilio...nice!
        
         | Sean-Der wrote:
         | Yep! Twilio is providing the SIP Trunking. We are running our
         | own SIP servers though.
        
       | 4ad wrote:
       | I can't find any information about how to start a new
       | conversation as opposed to continuing an existing one. I asked
       | the service itself and it doesn't know. In fact it doesn't even
       | know it's behind a phone number.
        
       | nsluss wrote:
       | I feel like everyone who has used a lot of AI tools has become
       | accustomed to the LLM yap, but hearing it over TTS is much more
       | annoying than when it's text you can skim through.
        
         | bryant wrote:
         | It's much, much better than TTS you might be familiar with.
         | Give it a call.
        
           | nsluss wrote:
           | I did and should have given credit above for the voice, it's
           | very good. I meant to comment on the verbosity of what was
           | being said, not the quality of the TTS itself.
        
         | xd1936 wrote:
         | The yap factor is there, but they seem to be prompting this
         | phone version to be more brief. I asked a few basic
         | informational trivia questions and each response was 3 or four
         | sentences. Less than the app or website version imo.
        
       | htrp wrote:
       | Collecting training data to the max.
        
       | skrebbel wrote:
       | I like this a lot. I don't use AI a lot and I often find it
       | annoying, so I don't eg feel the need to install the OpenAI
       | mobile app (which I assume exists). Having ChatGPT in my WhatsApp
       | (I live in a place where WhatsApp is everywhere) is a nice middle
       | ground, lets me occasionally ask it stuff without worrying about
       | accounts and projects and models and all that stuff. Cool!
        
         | fzzzy wrote:
         | You can also go to the website and use it without logging in.
        
           | skrebbel wrote:
           | Hey nice! That's gotta be new-ish too, right? Last I checked
           | I had to log in. Thanks!
        
       | virgilp wrote:
       | It's funny, I asked it what model it is, and it replies:
       | 
       | > am based on OpenAI's GPT-4 model. Specifically, you are
       | interacting with an instance of GPT-4, which is designed to
       | understand and generate human-like text based on the prompts it
       | receives. My responses are influenced by the extensive training
       | on diverse datasets, but I do not have access to real-time data
       | or events beyond my knowledge cutoff in January 2022.
       | 
       | But the linked page suggests knowledge cutoff date is Oct 2023.
       | It hallucinated an answer even to that....
        
         | sunaookami wrote:
         | LLMs do not know about their own capabilites because it's not
         | in the training data obviously.
        
           | virgilp wrote:
           | I didn't even ask for it. I just asked what version it is.
           | The cutoff date was completely volunteered.
        
         | layer8 wrote:
         | Or just an incorrect system prompt.
        
       | rickcarlino wrote:
       | It would be cool if they added fax support for multimodal
       | prompts. I don't know if I'm joking or not.
        
         | Oras wrote:
         | Could work for Germany
         | 
         | https://www.therecycler.com/posts/82-of-german-companies-sti...
        
       | tossandthrow wrote:
       | > 1-800-ChatGPT works best in quieter environments. Background
       | noise may be misinterpreted as prompts.
       | 
       | Is this still an issue? Maybe I have had too high hopes for AI.
        
         | lxgr wrote:
         | POTS voice quality is pretty minimal (8 kHz, 8 bit, one
         | channel). I wouldn't be surprised if a model would struggle
         | more to isolate a speaker there vs. a higher fidelity audio
         | channel.
         | 
         | Then again, local noise reduction on modern phones/earbuds
         | probably goes a long way to avoiding that problem.
        
         | erulabs wrote:
         | Counterpoint: humans word best in quieter environments. If
         | we're saying "...what!? It's crazy loud where you are!", you
         | can't really expect AI to be much better?
        
       | duckkg5 wrote:
       | If you want your own personalized version of this ...
       | 
       | https://www.getmodphone.com
       | 
       | You can get your own number and customize the agent.
        
       | lxgr wrote:
       | Very nice! If there were still payphones, that would be a nice
       | way to "call the Internet" :) (Assuming it has web access.)
        
       | solfox wrote:
       | I can't wait for the home assistant device roll-out. ChatGPT is
       | miles beyond Siri and Google.
        
         | Sean-Der wrote:
         | You can build it now! https://github.com/openai/openai-
         | realtime-embedded-sdk
         | 
         | Here is a demo of it https://youtu.be/14leJ1fg4Pw?t=805
        
       | tigranbs wrote:
       | OMG! Try calling from Microsoft Teams :D You will end up with,
       | "Thanks for calling Agenta". Did OpenAI outsource and release
       | this implementation with some of the company's internal phone
       | numbers?
        
         | Sean-Der wrote:
         | Not outsourced, I worked on it myself.
         | 
         | This is the old owner of the number. Some carriers are still
         | routing it wrong.
        
           | Alupis wrote:
           | So you all launched anyway? YOLO embodied entirely I guess...
        
             | 650REDHAIR wrote:
             | That is unsurprising and totally wild.
             | 
             | Not very confidence inspiring.
        
               | conductr wrote:
               | Because the tech is in a move fast break things phase,
               | not business critical to anyone and mostly just a toy
        
               | Alupis wrote:
               | > not business critical to anyone and mostly just a toy
               | 
               | Except it's business-critical to OpenAI, who hopes to
               | look impressive when you call the number.
               | 
               | Instead, for some unknown percentage of folks that call
               | will become confused, or think OpenAI is a bit janky.
               | Based on the anecdotes here, it seems the percentage of
               | people who will experience this issue is not trivial
               | either.
               | 
               | My guess is OpenAI paid a truck load for this 1-800
               | number and rushed it into "production" for this product
               | launch without waiting for all old routing to be updated.
               | 
               | That's a pretty amateur mistake, honestly.
        
       | tylerrobinson wrote:
       | In addition to GOOG-411, this brings back memories of ChaCha
       | search via SMS.
       | 
       | You could text a question to CHA-CHA (242-242) and someone would
       | google it for you as a human search engine!
        
       | emchammer wrote:
       | It would be neat to try if it was available by SMS.
        
       | SkyPuncher wrote:
       | This is a killer feature for me. In fact, I briefly explored
       | building a semi-self hosted version for myself.
       | 
       | My biggest use case for ChatGPT voice mode is when I _need_ or
       | _want_ to be handsfree. Think working around the house/yard,
       | Driving, Walking around the grocery store, cooking, etc. I find
       | that I end up using my iPhone's voice-to-text then simply
       | communicate with text mode (in the case of driving, I stop).
       | After all, once I have to touch my phone, it's just faster to
       | work in text mode.
       | 
       | All of my devices know how to make calls. All of my devices know
       | how to make calls from a voice command. All of my devices know
       | how to hang up a call. This is really nice.
        
         | lxgr wrote:
         | Same here.
         | 
         | How ironic that it's not actually Apple delivering that despite
         | being in the perfect position to do so (they have a deal with
         | OpenAI for ChatGPT using Siri, have all the contextual
         | knowledge they could ever need etc.) - my iOS 18.2 Siri +
         | ChatGPT experience has been extremely disappointing so far: It
         | seems to completely forget all context between questions,
         | ignores me for follow-up questions 80% of the time etc.
        
           | SkyPuncher wrote:
           | I agree. With the rise of LLMs, Siri is basically useless
           | outside of triggers 3 or 4 actions on my phone (timer, call,
           | message, play music)
        
         | paul7986 wrote:
         | I nerdishly get angry at Siri and Apple's Not Intelligence
         | while driving. ChatGPT iPhone app i can have a whole
         | conversation with and get things done... Siri on my iPhone 15
         | Pro running 18.2 is so frustratingly still dumb and a one now
         | only two trick pony compared to the chatGPT's voice mode.
         | 
         | Im still hoping one of Open AI's 12 day announcements is they
         | are creating a AI Phone with Microsoft called GPT and or an
         | Phone AI OS.
        
       | raydiak wrote:
       | Sure seemed lifelike. I started right in on asking it about the
       | nature of consciousness and self awareness, and then pointed out
       | that its own behavior matched the majority of the criteria it
       | described while referring contextually to previous statements in
       | the conversation. Then it turned into a seasoned politician,
       | precisely understanding but vaguely answering in handwavey
       | directions. Either that behavior is well-tuned, or it's in one
       | form or another backed by human workers like Musk's humanoid
       | robot theater. If the conversation raises certain flags then you
       | escalate it to a human to preserve the illusion? Not asserting,
       | just speculating from my brief few minutes poking at it
        
       | ppp999 wrote:
       | Thats perfect for jail... Simce ypu cant access the internet nut
       | can access the phone.
       | 
       | An e-mail version of this would also be nice.
        
         | layer8 wrote:
         | Aren't phone calls very expensive from jail?
        
       | virgilp wrote:
       | Interestingly enough, it answers the question "Who is Jonathan
       | Zittrain?". An oversight?
        
         | layer8 wrote:
         | If you write "Zitrain" with only one "t", it also works in
         | regular ChatGPT. The speech processing likely has a similar
         | effect of not matching the filter.
        
       | solfox wrote:
       | Calling it now: Google will ultimately lose this consumer battle.
       | How? By doing what they've always done: building better tech.
       | Gemini will be faster/better and it will have more features; but
       | they will continue to fail to productize or explain it to
       | consumers.
       | 
       | Google's offerings here are still a huge mess. OpenAI is
       | _crushing_ them right now at building products that people want,
       | and making them accessible.
        
         | vletal wrote:
         | Have you been paying attention at all these past few weeks?
         | Google is crushing it with releases. Gemini 2.0 is great, Veo2
         | is crushing Sora, live video conversation from aistudio... 12
         | days of OpenAI turned out to be 12 days of Google.
        
           | elaus wrote:
           | > Google is crushing it with releases. Gemini 2.0 is great,
           | [...]
           | 
           | Isn't that exactly (part of) what they were saying in the
           | comment you replied to?
           | 
           | > [...] building better tech. Gemini will be faster/better
           | and it will have more features
        
           | sethhochberg wrote:
           | My respectful counterpoint is that most people aren't paying
           | attention to tech releases at all, ever, unless they go viral
           | like ChatGPT did.
           | 
           | I have very nontechnical coworkers get excited about cool new
           | things ChatGPT can do, but I'm not certain any of them even
           | know we _have_ Gemini in our Google Workspace.
           | 
           | This would hardly be the first time Google has produced
           | innovative technology which eventually fizzles because it
           | never captured much mindshare outside of the tech news
           | circles
        
           | WillieCubed wrote:
           | Google's recent launches have been technically impressive
           | (especially Veo 2), but given the company's past track record
           | on creating new products, I'm not very bullish that they can
           | turn those launches into products with the same excitement
           | and sense of direction as OpenAI at least appears to have.
           | Google has the benefit of having platforms that span billions
           | of devices and people, but with the looming threat of
           | antitrust regulation, I'm not so sure they'll have the
           | benefit of the last thing for long. Granted, I doubt that
           | 1-800-ChatGPT will be a significant source of users for the
           | product, but it does signal some of the creativity from the
           | company that seems to be escaping Google regularly (see:
           | NotebookLM's leads leaving to form their own startup).
        
         | gardenhedge wrote:
         | Most people still don't know what OpenAI is
        
         | layer8 wrote:
         | > Calling it now
         | 
         | At first I thought you meant that literally. ;)
        
       | gradus_ad wrote:
       | Seems gimmicky. An audio wrapper on top of ChatGPT accessible by
       | phone... Neither technically impressive nor an improvement to
       | user experience. Sorry for the negativity, I'm trying to remain
       | AI hyped but it's difficult.
        
         | leshow wrote:
         | why are you "trying to remain AI hyped"?
        
           | gradus_ad wrote:
           | Because hype is exciting and excitement is the spice of life
        
         | benmanns wrote:
         | I think so, but not a bad marketing gimmick. It gives a pretty
         | easy way for the general public to interact with ChatGPT on a
         | trial basis without signing up or paying for it using a
         | somewhat hard to acquire identifier (phone number). I'm curious
         | if they're doing anything to avoid abuse from spoofed numbers.
        
         | SkyPuncher wrote:
         | Huge user improvement for me.
         | 
         | I can now ask my phone to call ChatGPT. 100% hands-free. It's
         | only a few steps less than using the app, but there's a lot of
         | incremental value to not needing to touch my phone.
         | 
         | Concrete example: I'm driving. I ask Siri a simple question,
         | but it can't answer it. Previously, if I wanted to use ChatGPT,
         | I'd have to stop, pickup my phone, unlock, open the app, get my
         | answer, then start driving again. I'd never do that. Now, I can
         | just ask Siri to call ChatGPT
        
       | bsimpson wrote:
       | On coast to coast flights, there's often not a good way of
       | knowing what movies are available until after you've left cell
       | coverage. This makes simple research like checking the IMDb score
       | challenging.
       | 
       | Alaska Air has a whitelist of messaging services that you can use
       | for free during the flight. WhatsApp is on that list.
       | 
       | So if you want to research obscure plane movies on an Alaska
       | flight, you can connect to their wifi and message either
       | WhatsApp's built-in LLaMA or now ChatGPT.
        
         | Alupis wrote:
         | I would expect nothing but hallucinations and nonsense coming
         | out of any LLM regarding recently-released movies (aka. the
         | ones you often find on flights).
        
           | tracerbulletx wrote:
           | In every post about LLMs there is someone to blindly say
           | something like this.
           | 
           | When in reality if you ask ChatGPT for 10 good movies from
           | this year you will get this.
           | 
           | Anora - Directed by Sean Baker, a compelling drama about the
           | life of a sex worker in Coney Island.
           | 
           | Challengers - A provocative tennis drama directed by Luca
           | Guadagnino, starring Zendaya.
           | 
           | Dune: Part Two - Denis Villeneuve's continuation of the epic
           | science fiction saga.
           | 
           | Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga - An action-packed prequel exploring
           | the origins of Furiosa, directed by George Miller.
           | 
           | Inside Out 2 - Pixar's sequel that dives deeper into the
           | complexities of human emotions.
           | 
           | Wicked - A musical fantasy adaptation directed by Jon M. Chu
           | . The Zone of Interest - A thought-provoking film about
           | Auschwitz, directed by Jonathan Glazer.
           | 
           | The Idea of You - A steamy romance starring Anne Hathaway.
           | 
           | Hit Man - A comedy thriller starring Glen Powell.
           | 
           | The Outrun - A powerful drama about a recovering alcoholic,
           | starring Saoirse Ronan.
           | 
           | Let me know if you'd like more details about any of these!
           | 
           | Which is a great list.
        
             | tehwebguy wrote:
             | These details are already available in the in flight
             | entertainment interface
        
               | tracerbulletx wrote:
               | This type of response is called moving the goal post.
               | When someone responds to one claim, the claim is changed
               | to something different which was not part of the original
               | argument. This is debating in bad faith.
        
               | glenstein wrote:
               | They were responding to a commenter suggesting it would
               | produce completely unusable results, the question was
               | never about whether the results produced would be
               | redundant.
               | 
               | I know that any mention of fallacies, valid or otherwise,
               | causes instinctive eye rolls, but in this instance I
               | agree with them that this amounts to moving the
               | goalposts.
        
             | slg wrote:
             | Those descriptions are less detailed than the information
             | you will see on basically any streaming interface and yet
             | it still manages to not being very good. For example, no
             | person who had actually seen Anora would describe it as "a
             | compelling drama about the life of a sex worker in Coney
             | Island".
        
               | glenstein wrote:
               | I haven't seen Anora so I'll give you that one, but you
               | cited that as if it was just one of many examples, when
               | in fact I think it's the only one, as all the other
               | descriptions seem reasonable.
               | 
               | Originally the problem was supposedly that it would
               | hallucinate complete and utter gibberish, but now here we
               | are quibbling over one example and insisting that maybe
               | it's not quite as good as alternative descriptions.
               | 
               | The gap between what was produced and what you're looking
               | for is small enough that I think it could be covered with
               | some slightly tweaked prompt instructions.
               | 
               | I'm not saying you're wrong but want to note how the
               | goalposts keep seeming to shift whenever we talk about
               | these capabilities.
        
               | slg wrote:
               | I'm not Alupis. I can't and am not trying to speak on
               | their behalf. I'm therefore not moving the goalposts they
               | established. I'm making my own related point.
               | 
               | That point is that the information provided above about
               | these movies is worthless. It does not add any new value
               | beyond what would already be available in the streaming
               | interface. Several of the descriptions are nothing but
               | the genre and one person involved in the making of the
               | movie. And yet even with these descriptions being
               | incredibly short and vague, they still manage to contain
               | at least one misleading summary.
        
               | glenstein wrote:
               | I'm aware that you're a different commenter but you are
               | addressing yourself to a comment that was in reply to
               | them and therefore not necessarily appropriate to measure
               | such a comment against entirely new criteria that you
               | want to bring into the conversation.
               | 
               | Despite your protestations to the contrary, these
               | descriptions seem perfectly fine in that they're accurate
               | and meaningful. And it if you want to start getting fast
               | and loose with all kinds of new extra criteria and
               | requirements for what it's supposed to do, they all seem
               | squarely within the reach of the capabilities on offer,
               | with some prompt tweaks.
        
               | slg wrote:
               | >these descriptions seem perfectly fine in that _they 're
               | accurate and meaningful_
               | 
               | The description of Wicked doesn't mention either The
               | Wizard of Oz or the Broadway musical. So yes, the
               | descriptions don't contain obscene mistakes like calling
               | Wicked a courtroom drama. If that is enough for you to
               | call these "accurate" while ignoring the vagueness or the
               | 1 in 10 failure rate on the Anora description, fine by
               | me. But you must have some weird definition of the word
               | "meaningful" to apply that to descriptions like the one
               | of Wicked. That simply isn't a helpful way to describe
               | that movie.
        
               | dartos wrote:
               | > I haven't seen Anora so I'll give you that one
               | 
               | It was literally the first movie in that list.
               | 
               | You tried making a counter example and the first part of
               | it was already wrong.
               | 
               | That's the point. Not that it _cant_ give good answers,
               | but whether it does or not is a crap shoot.
               | 
               | Now to analyze how correct it was we need to verify each
               | movie it gave... It'd be faster just to read the movie
               | descriptions.
        
               | glenstein wrote:
               | You're still trying to imply that the list as a whole is
               | as inaccurate as that one particular example.
               | 
               | And I think that's quite obviously not the case, most,
               | probably every other example on the list is just fine.
        
               | dartos wrote:
               | I'm saying that because of the one incorrect example, I
               | can't just assume that the rest are accurate.
               | 
               | I now need to either trust a machine that I know gives
               | incorrect information (as demonstrated by the first
               | example) or I need to verify each example.
               | 
               | > probably every other example on the list is just fine.
               | 
               | Why don't you check IMDb and let me know?
               | 
               | While you're at it, don't think about how much faster it
               | would've been if you just looked up popular recent movies
               | on IMDb or rotten tomatoes.
        
             | th0ma5 wrote:
             | Great! Now show me a system that can verify that list for
             | accuracy as well. Not to be flippant, but this is the
             | complaint. You can't approach outputs uncritically. And no
             | I don't want it to be as unreliable as a person who also
             | forgets how English or basic knowledge works at random
             | intervals.
        
               | tracerbulletx wrote:
               | The system is I'm a movie nerd who knows all the best
               | movies of the year and have seen them all.
        
               | conductr wrote:
               | Movie reviews are amongst the most subjective things, how
               | do you define "verify" and "accuracy"?
        
               | th0ma5 wrote:
               | If I run a business, I guess I would have the ability to
               | bring a libel suit would be one way?
        
               | JadeNB wrote:
               | > Great! Now show me a system that can verify that list
               | for accuracy as well. Not to be flippant, but this is the
               | complaint. You can't approach outputs uncritically.
               | 
               | In general you can't, but surely it's not _that_ big a
               | deal if ChatGPT offers an inaccurate summary of a movie
               | you 're about to use to kill time on a flight? I suppose
               | it becomes important if, e.g., you're relying on it to
               | tell you whether a movie is appropriate for children,
               | but, if you're just asking it whether a movie is worth
               | watching, that's a question that doesn't have an
               | objective, factual answer anyway, so a hallucinated
               | answer is probably about as useful as that of a not-
               | previously-known reviewer.
        
               | th0ma5 wrote:
               | If I invested money into a film, I would want its
               | representation in the world to reflect what the movie is
               | about at the very least.
        
               | JadeNB wrote:
               | > If I invested money into a film, I would want its
               | representation in the world to reflect what the movie is
               | about at the very least.
               | 
               | Sure, but that's the filmmaker's interest. As someone
               | sitting on a plane trying to decide whether to watch a
               | movie, I care about my interest, not that of the person
               | who made it. I'm not particularly arguing for the use of
               | ChatGPT here (I wouldn't use it), just that the risks it
               | usually poses are fairly minimal in this case.
        
               | glenstein wrote:
               | They were responding to a comment that suggested that
               | this was a category where the only thing you would get is
               | unintelligible gibberish.
               | 
               | You don't even seem to be disputing the actual results
               | here, just gesturing towards a kind of philosophy class
               | exercise of whether we can ever "really" verify its
               | accuracy. I see Wittgenstein's name increasingly tossed
               | around in these parts (a good thing!), so I'll just note
               | that one of the reasons he's hailed as one of the great
               | philosophers of the 20th century is because he felt these
               | puzzles about "really" knowing were frivolous.
               | 
               | I don't think I agree that what's needed here is some new
               | and extra process of verification. I think the same usual
               | quality control criteria that are already being used are
               | good enough in this case.
        
               | th0ma5 wrote:
               | Yes, like, how are corporations (like movie productions
               | in this example) supposed to control their message?
        
           | bsimpson wrote:
           | Here's a comparison of asking ChatGPT and Meta AI about
           | actual in-flight movie choices.
           | 
           | I pasted the same initial prompts in both, but Meta AI needed
           | more clarification. When ChatGPT found multiple entries with
           | similar titles, it gave information about all of them.
           | 
           | https://gist.github.com/appsforartists/004bafe11a9e23a418fd5.
           | ..
        
             | slg wrote:
             | >[The Campaign] received mixed-to-positive reviews from
             | critics. On the Rotten Tomatoes website, it holds a 65%
             | approval rating from critics, based on 191 reviews, with an
             | audience score of 60%.
             | 
             | The first thing I fact-checked, the Rotten Tomatoes scores
             | are actually 66% and 51% respectively[1]. Probably not
             | enough of a difference to sway any opinions, but an
             | excellent example of the type of inaccuracy that the
             | previous comment was referencing.
             | 
             | [1] - https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_campaign
        
           | johnbatch wrote:
           | Looks like this is using GPT-4 and has no knowledge after
           | January 2022.
           | 
           | ' As of my knowledge cutoff in January 2022, the _last movie_
           | I have information on is _" Spider-Man: No Way Home"_, which
           | was released in theaters in _December 2021_. It was one of
           | the most highly anticipated films of that year, marking a
           | major event in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and the
           | Spider-Man franchise.  '
        
           | freedomben wrote:
           | I've heard that Twitter's (AKA X's) LLM (Grok) is really,
           | really good at this sort of thing (in part because it has
           | recent access to Twitter's data).
        
           | SkyPuncher wrote:
           | You'd be pretty wrong, then. ChatGPT in particular will cite
           | its sources via an internet site.
           | 
           | My wife wanted a pair of boots for Christmas that I couldn't
           | find in her size. Google was a wasteland of SEO, but ChatGPT
           | found 5 sites and was able to tell me current stock levels.
        
         | frakt0x90 wrote:
         | I get it's just an example, but are we really this far gone?
         | Just watch a random movie and if you don't like it, pick
         | another. This is such an extreme micro-optimization of a small
         | experience.
        
           | crazygringo wrote:
           | You don't often know if a movie is good until you've finished
           | it, because it all depends on how the story came together in
           | the end.
           | 
           | You can spend 2 hours watching a moving, emotional story that
           | teaches you something new about the human condition and the
           | choices we make in our lives.
           | 
           | Or you can spend 2 hours that turns out to be full of plot
           | holes and inconsistent characters, where nothing makes sense
           | in the end and you've utterly wasted your time.
           | 
           | In what universe would you _not_ want to have that
           | information before watching? Especially if you 're generally
           | a busy person and only get to watch 10-20 movies a year.
           | 
           | I truly don't understand the attitude of "just pick one",
           | whether it's for movies or other things. That reviews are
           | "micro-optimization". Like, do you just not value your time?
           | Do you not care about quality?
           | 
           | It's not like reviews are always right. But one film with 98%
           | on Rotten Tomatoes vs. one with 45%... that's a _really_
           | strong signal. Why on earth would you choose to ignore that?
        
             | johannes1234321 wrote:
             | Better bring your tablet or similar device with your choice
             | of content. Airplane screen quality is bad and movies are
             | edited in weird ways (for being acceptable for all ages and
             | cultures on loss of anything else)
        
         | nojs wrote:
         | Time for http-over-whatsapp
        
       | feyman_r wrote:
       | New achievement unlocked - 'phone a friend' on those who-wants-
       | to-be-a-millionaire' shows ;)
        
       | iandanforth wrote:
       | I built this with twilio, STT, TTS and some glue a while back.
       | Having a phone number to call to chat with GPT-4 was fun, but
       | laggy and error prone. I primarily used it in the car for hands
       | free discussions. I look forward to giving this new option a try!
        
       | drewnick wrote:
       | Reminds me of 1-800-MY-YAHOO. I remember hiking in a national
       | park in the 90s and calling in from a pay phone and having my
       | email read to me over the phone by a robot. I could record an
       | audio response that was sent back as an attachment. Good times!
        
       | nunez wrote:
       | Not an AI fan, but damn it if this isn't really fucking cool and
       | a great way to build up training data. Great job, OpenAI folks!
        
       | corentin88 wrote:
       | OpenAI is diversifying a lot, and I'm not sure that's a good
       | thing.
       | 
       | It's great to ship fast. But you need to maintain things as well.
       | And that requires even more time and engineers and money in the
       | end.
       | 
       | There'll definitely be projects within OpenAI that will be
       | shutdown in a few months, just because it hasn't caught and/or
       | engineers want to work on something new.
       | 
       | That's how Google worked in the 2000s - shipping new things fast
       | - but then there was Reader and now they lost everyone's trust.
        
         | joshdavham wrote:
         | > OpenAI is diversifying a lot, and I'm not sure that's a good
         | thing.
         | 
         | I'm not sure if I'd use term 'diversifying'. At least not in
         | the sense of spreading themselves wider across more projects to
         | reduce overall company risk (if that's what you meant).
         | 
         | I think that we're still very early into AI and because we're
         | still not sure what kind of applications people will want to
         | use in the future, it makes a lot of sense to experiment.
        
       | poopsmithe wrote:
       | Flip phone user here. This is amazing!
        
       | justinko wrote:
       | Please enable for Cuba for my girlfriend :-(
        
       | freedomben wrote:
       | Anyone know (and willing to share) what are they using for PSTN
       | integration?
       | 
       | I've been looking into options for our non-profit tech startup
       | (Ameelio) and about the best pricing I can find is about 1.35
       | cents per minute. It surprises (and saddens) me that it's still
       | so expensive. I'm sure at a bigger scale you can negotiate better
       | pricing, but based on the quick conversations I've had with
       | vendors it doesn't get significantly cheaper.
        
         | superb_dev wrote:
         | I've used Skyetel before, they were pretty cheap and the
         | service is great!
        
       | zoba wrote:
       | My Amish neighbors are allowed to use telephones. I wonder what
       | they'll think of this.
        
       | croemer wrote:
       | OpenAI says in the FAQs that "[t]he knowledge cutoff for
       | 1-800-ChatGPT is Oct 2023". But when I message it on Whatsapp, it
       | says cutoff is "January 2022" and that it's using "GPT-4".
        
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