74 karma · joined February 27, 2021
having gotten over the learning curve, i definitely prefer it over conventional keyboards, but would i recommend it to 99.9% of people? no. people who use these kinds of keyboards have either 1. extremely niche problems, or 2. find intrinsic value in novelty, aesthetics, or diy/experimentation
or 4.19 million, if you wanted to spend 2 minutes and look up [the source](https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/poverty-explorer?tab=li...) actually listed in the main article
personally, i tried macOS 2 years ago and got frustrated by all the restrictions and differences from linux. i remember wanting to uninstall the default "chess" program, searching around and learning that i literally couldn't without turning off the default security mode, just because there was an off chance that the chess program contained essential code.
otherwise, yes, you'll continue to be irritated by AI hype, maybe up until the point where our civilization starts going off the rails
i also assume that if you have RSI/carpal tunnel/etc then experimenting with your keyboards switches from negative switching costs to greatly positive
the author claims that visual reasoning will help the model solve this problem, noting that gpt-4o got the question right after making a mistake in the beginning of the response. i asked gpt-4o, claude 3.7, and gemini 2.5 pro experimental, who all answered 100% correctly.
the author also demonstrates trying to do "visual reasoning" with gpt-4o, notes that the model got it wrong, then handwaves it away by saying the model wasn't trained for visual reasoning.
"visual reasoning" is a tweet-worthy thought that the author completely fails to justify
nobody freaks out when humans make mistakes, but we assume our nascent AIs, being machines, should always function correctly all the time
and we are creating such a document now, where "Terr_" plays a fictional character who is skeptical of LLM hype, and "anxoo" roleplays a character who is concerned about the level of AI capabilities.
you protest, "no, i'm a real person with real thoughts! the character is me! the AI 'character' is a a fiction created by an ungodly pile of data and linear algebra!" and i reply, "you are a fiction created by an ungodly mass of neuron activations and hormones and neurotransmitters".
i agree that we cannot know what an LLM is "really thinking", and when people say that the AIs have "learned how to [X]" or have "demonstrated deception" or whatever, there's an inevitable anthropomorphization. i agree that when people talk to chatGPT and it acts "friendly and helpful", that we don't really know whether the AI is friendly and helpful, or whether the "mind" inside is some utterly alien thing.
the point is, none of that matters. if it writes code, it writes code. if it's able to discover new scientific insights, or if it's able to replace the workforce, or if it's able to control and manipulate resources, those are all concrete things it will do in the real world. to assume that it will never get there because it's just playing a fancy language game is completely unwarranted overconfidence.
quitting social media is not, on its own, going to fix your social life. and being on social media can make you more connected, or more miserable. the responsibility is yours
everyone who has ever used stock photography, custom illustrators, and image editing. as AI improves, it will come after all of those industries.
that said, it is not OpenAI's goal to beat shutterstock, nor is it the goal of anthropic or google or meta. their goal is to make god: https://ia.samaltman.com/ . visual perception (and generation) is the near-term step on that path. every discussion of AI that doesn't acknowlege this goal, what all of these billions of dollars are aiming for, is myopic and naive.