Hustle bros are jumping on the AI bandwagon

That's not drop shipping though.

Perhaps. Indeed it is true that my career is not threatened (as I would not want to work an organization that would fall for such a thing as this), but the thin plexiglass wall that it puts up is certainly real. People have their expectations, perhaps more than you might imagine here.

I put up the results for toy comedy prompt generation in a server that I quite like and got downvoted to oblivion (and it started a debate... unfortunately I think?) because it was using AI, because of course of some of the cultural associations with AI in some circles.

For me as well, it's given people an automatic "super smarty-pants person, I could never understand that" impression of me from the get-go by default or some other kind of impression that oftentimes drives a barrier in between people. In fact, my life has improved significantly by _not_ telling people what I do for work or by using a ton of indirection about what it is. A very significant social improvement -- people can more or less just take me as I am without that background perception running, thank goodness. It's pretty darn tangible in some circumstances too. It's much like the reverse racism that happens sometimes when one travels from a more "revered" country to another. Sure, one could "technically" get over that gap, but it's always there, and the emotions underneath still lie under the surface.

Another thing for example could be used to demonstrate that point is that I'm transgender (non-binary, to be specific). Before I knew I was trans (and even today, to a smaller degree), I'd feel extremely uncomfortable talking to a transgender person, even if on the outside I was very polite and kind. Of course, every person is a person regardless of their eyesight, hair, or gender, etc. And many people realize this in time. I've had a couple friends realize this a bit with me in my belief, and others vice versa to a degree as well I believe.

I hope that helps elucidate the problem. Where true technical skills are needed and the company is a good estimator of skill and usefulness -- sure, someone faking it in a sense is a good food-dye/food-colorant-like test of what my future would/will be like at the company with a string of incoming other coworkers. But there will almost always be places that sense and filter that technical skill well.

But where connection is concerned, they do and will have far-reaching consequences. Just look at StabilityAI, for example. A rapid growing startup with the mantle of appearing as an open-source, almost charitable non-profit initiative. But of course they're making the Faustian bargains for personal profit and growth at the expense of an industry -- and is interestingly enough why I got downvoted heavily in that one server earlier. It's also why I did not begin working with them in their infancy, though there a few other reasons of things not smelling alright within the organization that led me to that belief.

I hope that clarifies the issue somewhat further, I very very very much appreciate your comment and thank you for commenting very much.

They're not trying to make something you want, they're trying to make something you'll buy.

that's why it's a scam. I think the original thing was that audible would give bonuses for publishing books (it's mentioned in the video, but it's been a couple weeks since I watched it), so you would basically just make shitty books to get bonuses. of course this no longer works, and now there's also much more competition, so your crappy grift books aren't actually going to get you any meaningful amount of money, but the point is just to sell people a grift they can do that seems like it could work

HN is already way larger than that. There is nobody on HN who knows everybody else either by nickname or IRL or any combination. It's 'mostly anonymous' with 'mostly people I don't know or recognize at all'.

HN is only this way because of a focus on moderation to keep the place of going off the rails. HN itself has one of the best moderators I've seen that's been able to keep out of petty arguments that tend to infect and ruin forums. It's not something easily scalable at all.

Part of the problem with being on a site like HN is we see everyone here bitching and groaning about how much 'big web' sucks and how we should get away with it, while missing that most of us here are also visiting that same big web with a few billion other people every day. I'll believe twitter/FB/etc is dying when I watch them turn off their servers for the last time.

  Everyone will sit under their own vine
      and under their own fig tree,
  and no one will make them afraid,
      for the Lord Almighty has spoken.

Micah 4:4

I guess next comes 'how will you maintain low scale'.

We've got to see the large scale problems in the last decade, but I think a lot of people either forgot, or were not alive for the small scale problems that existed back in the days of BBS's and early websites. The biggest issue with with most small communities is they tend to die quickly unless they have some unique bonding factor. For example a local RC car racing group. But that isn't generally interesting over a wide range of topics outside a few topics. So now you're looking at building multiple communities and managing them. But you'll find most people won't manage that well and they'll tend to gravitate to a few busier larger communities. But then those larger communities will grow much like the seed of a star via gravity, someone will know someone else that invites them and suddenly you'll have your own little facebook/twatter rife with all the same problems and split views on what is acceptable.

There are just a number of problems here that seem intractable when you have hundreds of millions/billions of people that want to be online and in communities of one kind or another, but an unending number of social problems that occur when you get large numbers of people gravitating towards interesting things.

That's not exactly a very high bar, the problem is that it probably can also outperform your typical start-up founder and/or their corporate finance flunkies.

Like a drug addict who needs more and more to get the same high.

I mean if we're honest - it reads like a ChatGPT answer that shills itself. haha, but that's what's so crazy we're reaching the point where AI and humans aren't easily distinguishable and eventually impossible. Scary and yet exciting.

I'll be the first to pay tribute to our Skynet overlord.

>and how they only seem to be happening faster and faster.

Eh, isn't that what the technological singularity people would say would happen?

Way back in the day I'd hear people go "oh the internet won't amount to anything, it's just a fad", and while I didn't know what the internet would become, I believed they were totally wrong. The internet was very useful.

Back in the very early days of bitcoin, back when I thought it was potentially useful but that people was highly confused if it was going to escape regulatory issues. When the bitcoin hype cycle started I knew people that knew nothing about blockchain were spouting dumb shit and that it would eventually end in a bust. Now, in my typical fashion I underestimated how dumb people can be on things like this and didn't keep the few bitcoins I had back in the early days and lost access to them missing out on a few hundred thousand dollars at the peak.

When looking at the different GPT-like models coming out I actually see useful products that can be made from technologies like this. For example there is one on the front page called 'universal summarizer' that can take a large body of text and turn it into a small and seemingly accurate summary. That is worth something for sure. The ChatGPT is presenting useful information to some of its users too. The biggest question about it's long term success is cost of operation. If that drops over time then GPT and whatever comes after that will be here to stay no matter what you think about hype cycles.

I just don't see how chatGPT and crypto are at all comparable.

One immediately and obviously has thousands of use cases while one we are still trying to figure out the use case 13 years later.

Give it a few generations and I honestly don't know if I am reading this board anymore as opposed to just discussing things with the AI assistant.

If anything it is exactly why crypto is such bullshit. Something that is revolutionary doesn't need much convincing. If anything chatGPT reminds me of Myspace. All of the sudden everyone is just using it. No need for all kinds of childish and naive readings of Rothbard and Mises to convince people of its utility.

Art, like technology, is not a great business to go into if you expect things to remain as they are.

I don't think the world owes aspiring artists a living.

Yeah, life sucks, i wish we all lived in a star trek world without money, but in the mean time here we are.

Sound (versus performance) being a musician’s principal economy is a modern phenomenon. Born with the phonograph, killed by streaming.

Or the performer is whomever you'd like it to be but some performers cost more than others based on rights? So if you'd like, you can be Rick-rolled by an AI generated dancing penguin in the style of Picasso with anime overtones for one price, but the original or AI up-scales thereof will cost you more (though, obviously, your willingness to accept AI-added background product placement built into the video will effect the cost).

Everything will be AI-generated? Most vocals these days aren't really "human" anyway. Almost all vocals these days are digitally filtered (Autotuned), some singers/songs more than others.

So, yeah, that's the last step: detach the song from the singer, or the music from the musician. I don't like it, but I totally get it. The Gorillaz are pretty music there already. Yeah, they have human performers, but who are they? Where are they? I don't know. And I don't care. But I like it.

Hatsune Miku

If you like eating Big Macs, more power to you.

Personally, I doubt if there will ever be a computer generated song that I will really like. But I also generally don't like popular music either.

Edit: I'm an outlier though. For example, I don't have much respect for someone like Elton John because he doesn't write his own lyrics.

Humanity is much older than these cities.

I think it was easier to be a grifter back in ancient times. Low communication among victims. No photographs to identify you , no permanant records (or at least not like the internet)

I'm sure around 1920 or so you could have said "Computers have never ____" and you could put pretty much anything in that blank.

Now the number of things that fit in that blank has shrunk significantly. If you do not believe the human mind is magic then there is very little that cannot go in that blank.