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Comment by mrcwinn | Hacker News Reader

Let's entertain a completely imagined, made up thought experiment.

Imagine a revolutionary technology comes out that has the potential to increase quality of life, longevity and health, productivity and the standard of living, or lead to never before seen economic prosperity, discover new science, explain things about the universe, or simply give lonely people a positive outlet.

Miraculously, this technology is free to use, available to anyone with an internet connection.

But there was one catch: during its release, an error was made on a chart.

Where should this community focus its attention?

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Let's ignore for the moment that we're talking about a word generator that relies on an infinite amount of pirated data input to "learn" anything. Let's also ignore that the primary goal of "AGI" for the people pushing it is to replace workers en masse and to enrich themselves, and not any naive notion of progress or whatever.

So this miraculous technology that can do everything, cure diseases, reverse human aging, absolve us of our sins etc. can't accurately make a bar chart? Something kids learn in 5th grade mathematics? (At least I did, mileage might vary there)

> But there was one catch: during its release, an error was made on a chart.

that should be a tell that other things may be rigged to look better than they are

At least you're truthful when you say it's completely made up.

Here is the corrected version:

But there was one catch: during its release, an error was made on a chart. It turns out that it did not lead to the massively over exaggerated benefits that were promised and that it merely represents a minor incremental improvement over its predecessor and that it will be overshadowed in a matter of months by another release from a competitor.

Where should this community focus its attention?

When such technology comes out, we'll find out.

After all of this hype this is the best they can do? This is the forefront company (arguable) of the forefront tech and no one can review slides before being shipped out? I think the reason why this has resonated with people is that it gives a "vibe" of not giving a shit, they'll ship whatever next slop generator they want and they expect people to gladly lap it up. Either that or they're using their own dog food and the result is this mess. Do the stats even matter anymore? Is that what they're banking on?

There is a correlation between good communication and good outcomes. This is bad communication from the people that could maybe get us good outcomes.

We're not talking about said hypothetical technology. We're talking about LLMs.

> Miraculously, this technology is free to use, available to anyone with an internet connection.

If something is free but not open source, you are the product.

First, it is LLMs. Second, we can focus on both the technology and the error.

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