Comment by mkaic | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mkaic | Hacker News Reader

I am an AI researcher, and I wholeheartedly agree with Tom here. I love AI, I love designing and training models and seeing all the amazing things they can do. But I would be lying if I said I wasn't scared. Like Tom, I have no idea where on the sigmoid curve we are, but I personally believe we're very near the beginning. I thought that becoming a practitioner in this field would make me less susceptible to making big, sweeping claims about it, but I've found the opposite to be true—the more I learn, the more I am convinced that AI will change everything in a manner at least as radical as the internet, if not more. In my opinion, society is completely unprepared for this change and for the new ethical dilemmas, challenges, tools, discoveries, and advancements it will enable.

ChatGPT is a proof-of-concept. There are agents far, far more capable than it on their way, and it is impossible to know for sure how they will impact the world at large. We are observing science fiction become science fact and it is really unnerving at times.

Tom is a smart and thoughtful guy, and I think he's right on the money with this video.

Yeah, in 2 years everything's gonna be sooo different. Combine "post-pandemic baby boom" with, economic boom, with new CPU technology, new battery technology, a new unicorn tech company, a new "category making" device format (not a phone, not a tablet, not a watch, no a VR headset--what is it? is it holography? stay tuned)--add all this to AI craziness, and (hopefully, possibly, but sadly seems later) release of suppressed technologies...everything is gonna be soooo different.

There's nothing intelligent in ChatGPT, it's just a text generator on steroids, web spammers have been using this sort of tools for years. It cannot generate new ideas, at the end it just regurgitates content

> It cannot generate new ideas.

I don't find very much substance in this argument, given how impossible it is to consistently define "new" and "idea" in this context. At the end of the day, ChatGPT demonstrates that AI models are making real progress towards convincing mimicry of human behavior. How it does it is of no concern to me, what is concerning is the fact that it does it at all.

it doesn't generate new ideas, it just answers based on statistics, it will be more like a personal search assitant or a tool that helps people finding information

I'm not sure how "It just answers based on statistics" and "generating new ideas" are mutually exclusive. As a physicalist, I'd argue that the human brain "just answers based on statistics" too. It's all just semi-stochastic chains of activations in the end.

Babies learn language by being exposed to many many examples of it, why shouldn't the same work for artificial intelligences? The concept of "new ideas" is also flawed, as nothing is truly new—our actions, feelings, thoughts, desires, and ideas are all recombinations of our experiences. Even the ideas that seem to come out of nowhere must come from somewhere.

i only need to show a toddler what an apple is once, and he will recognize a apple in every color just fine, i dont need to train him with tons of data and error correction, and tell him "use this relu function here and sigmoid here". A toddler can also start questioning why some apples are red and other greens? and he can come with new ideas of his own, can LLM do that? no, because their answers depends on the data they have been trained for.

Im not saying it's not the future, it is, we just need the hardware, once there's a hardware cheap enough that replicates what an human does with his hands, then the days working at a factory will be over. The current AI's are perfect for copycating behavior.

You sound like someone who has either never tried chatgpt, or someone who’s so scared of the consequences that it prefers to put its head in the sand.

«just a text generator on steroid » is meaningless unless you define what « on steroid» means. It might as well describe a novelist’s activity or a programmer.

The ability to understand enough of the relationship between words and their associated concepts in chatgpt is good enough to produce meaningful and sometimes correct answers to a huge number of questions. This is far beyond « random », and can easily be described as an « intelligent » capacity.

has ChatGTP created anything new? something that's is just not rewriting text?

it hepled me write code using a C library , which otherwise is very poorly documented! Well if it quacks and it swims, it is a duck!

The tricky part is you can ask similar questions about the human brain. Are our thoughts, ideas, words, and actions really "new", or just deterministic transformations based on our genetics and sensory input? We don't know exactly how our brains do computation, but it's definitely possible that what looks and feels like creativity to us is really, under the hood, just as statistical and mechanistic as an LLM.

I agree with much of what you said except the use of the word "just".

Chaos theory just happens to be deterministic. And life is most assuredly chaotic. In fact it was equations related to populations of living things that lead to the discovery of chaos theory. (equations wrt the weather also helped) [1]

So I'd make your statement:

Our thoughts, ideas, words, and actions are really really irreducibly new. They are (deterministic-)chaotic transformations based on our genetics and sensory input.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory#Introduction

Why are you fixating on the "creating something new" argument? I can confidently say in 10yrs as a programmer, nothing I've worked on has "created something new" according to your argument.

Every web-app or scientific application I've written is merely "rewriting" and stitching together other techniques, libraries, and patterns. I haven't broken any new ground on data encoders/process handling/data analysis, but my work had value.

In this scenario, if ChatGPT provides enough value to reduce my workload and allow me to allocate my effort elsewhere, why is it not a valuable tool, regardless of whether it "creates anything new"?

This same argument can be made against the concept of an IDE. My IDE doesn't create anything new. I used to use Vim with a number of plugins, a terminal multiplexer, and an auto-completion engine.

Why would <insert IDE of choice> improve my workflow? It doesn't add anything new to my existing workflow. But after migrating to my current IDE, the convenience it brought me was significant, even if it didn't add anything new to my setup.

This seems more than just regurgitating stuff that's already out there.

could you make some that might be useful to aliens

Sure! Here are a few SaaS ideas that might be useful to extraterrestrial beings:

A intergalactic communication platform, allowing aliens from different planets to exchange messages and share information.

A virtual reality platform for exploring other planets and galaxies, providing a way for aliens to experience and study new environments from a safe distance.

A space weather forecasting software, providing up-to-date information on solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and other space weather events that could affect intergalactic travel and communication.

An artificial intelligence-powered resource management system, allowing aliens to optimize resource usage and minimize waste on their home planets.

A platform for remote monitoring and control of extraterrestrial mining operations, including real-time data analysis and reporting.

A language translation software that can translate between different extraterrestrial languages and dialects.

A virtual market place for intergalactic trade, facilitating commerce between different alien species.

These are just a few examples of SaaS ideas that could be of use to extraterrestrial beings. The key is to think about the unique needs and challenges that aliens might face in their everyday lives, and offer solutions that address those needs in innovative and effective ways.

Here's a video on cocktails that it came up with and the resultant taste tests by a master mixologist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=419no81su64

I'm pretty into cocktails and I've never heard of the ones it came up with. Admittedly, the world of cocktails is huge and every single cocktail is 'just a riff' on some other one at the end of the day. In short, these drinks are new.

Futhermore, to me it shows 'learned' innovation on the AI's part. Like, the AI got ~95% of the way there, just what a human would do when trying to create and refine drinks.

yes! It created a valentines poem for my wife, which brought her to tears (success). The poem is uniquely tailored to my wife (new) and something that I would not have been able to do myself.

Does this answer your question?

ChatGPT certainly lowers the bar to generating intelligible content that sounds convincing and authoritative to non-experts. In some cases it even generates correct and insightful information.

The danger of ChatGPT is that it requires little effort to generate massive amounts of content, but much more effort to debunk and fact check. It will become increasingly difficult to separate the signal from the noise as the internet and other places are flooded with auto-generated content.

Personally I'm not concerned about ChatGPT becoming some sort of "intelligent overlord". However I am concerned about how other humans will wield this increasingly powerful tool.

you just have to ask it weird stuff to get stuff that's never be seen before.

I meant that could be used by AI chatbots

Oh, I see! Here are a few SaaS ideas that AI chatbots could use:

A natural language processing (NLP) platform to improve the accuracy and efficiency of chatbot conversations.

A platform for managing and analyzing chatbot data, providing insights into customer interactions and feedback.

A platform for integrating chatbots with multiple messaging channels, including popular social media platforms, messaging apps, and websites.

A platform for building and training custom AI chatbots, allowing businesses to create their own AI-powered customer service and support solutions.

A platform for managing and deploying chatbots at scale, providing tools for monitoring and maintaining multiple chatbots across different channels.

A platform for automating chatbot deployment and updates, simplifying the process of deploying and maintaining chatbots across different channels.

A platform for enhancing the user experience of chatbots, including tools for personalization, gamification, and voice and text-based interactions.

These are just a few examples of the types of SaaS solutions that could be used by AI chatbots to improve their functionality and user experience. By leveraging the latest advances in AI and NLP technology, these solutions could help chatbots better understand and respond to customer needs and preferences.

I wish people would stop spamming threads with AI generated walls of text. Or at least use a pastebin or something so it doesn't take up so much space.

I felt the best way to get my point across was an example. Next time I'll as for like 3 examples or cherry pick a couple of the best. but Still think the output is way more complex than people give it credit for.

could you give me some weird personas that no one has thought to build an app for that I could build an app for

Sure, here are some unique and unusual personas that could serve as inspiration for building new and innovative apps:

Conspiracy theorists - An app that curates a personalized feed of conspiracy theories, and provides tools for users to explore and validate their claims.

Astrology enthusiasts - An app that combines astrological analysis with personalized daily horoscopes and suggestions for self-improvement.

People who love to nap - An app that helps users track their napping habits, suggests optimal napping times based on their sleep patterns, and provides guided meditations and ambient sounds to help them fall asleep faster.

People who are fascinated by death - An app that allows users to explore different cultural beliefs and rituals around death, and provides tools to plan and organize their own end-of-life wishes.

People who are into sensory deprivation - An app that provides a virtual reality experience for users to explore different states of sensory deprivation, such as floating in a sensory deprivation tank or experiencing total darkness.

People who are into near-death experiences - An app that collects and curates personal accounts of near-death experiences, and provides tools for users to reflect on and analyze their own experiences.

People who are into cryonics - An app that provides information and resources about cryonics, and helps users plan and prepare for their own cryopreservation.

I hope these ideas spark your imagination and inspire you to build something new and unique!

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