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6 comments
Rob Ricci

@regehr @dan to be fair (more fair to them than they deserve), the AI summary has to be turned on explicitly as a 'labs' feature, which is probably why you weren't reproducing it - I turned it on in the Google Android app (since I never use that anyway)

Of course to be *actually* fair, these things have been spitting out this junk very publicly for 18 months and they are still bulldozing ahead

John Regehr

@ricci @dan I also don't see the connection between this stuff and $$, except of course the indirect connection of making investors believe they're doing something ahead of the curve, even if the curve is sort of like a sharp curve in a freeway at night

Rob Ricci

@regehr @dan I think it's one of these technologies where there is basically no limit to what people are willing to claim that it can do, or will be able to do imminently, etc. - it just seems like such magic that of course it will eventually be able to do everything. And when the little guys lose all sense of shame in their claims (see: all the small-time grifters moving over from NFTs) in the same space that the big guys think they are supposed to own, well, the big guys either have to tell the truth that the space is actually somewhat limited, or move along with the flow and just lie their own assess off too.

This is why I'm actually taking the trouble to learn some actual stuff about it this summer. Clearly ML and AI are not actually *complete* bullshit, they are actually good at some things. I want to learn what they are actually doing and what is actually good for.

I also think that Google has demonstrably lost the ability to measure the quality of their search results. I am sure that they have plenty of internal metrics that tell them everything is going fine, and yeah people are complaining but people gonna complain. I think that really, internally, they are just organizationally incapable of recognizing how badly they are screwing up right now.

Final point, this is the mother of all tech spaces in which having money helps you consolidate your hold over industries. The big guys here are all rent-seeking, and the only way to be the one getting the rent paid to them instead of paying the rent is to be the one with the datacenters, the GPUs, the big trained models, etc. so this is very much a rich-get-richer situation. They are hoping we are all going to lock ourselves into paying to call their APIs forever.

@regehr @dan I think it's one of these technologies where there is basically no limit to what people are willing to claim that it can do, or will be able to do imminently, etc. - it just seems like such magic that of course it will eventually be able to do everything. And when the little guys lose all sense of shame in their claims (see: all the small-time grifters moving over from NFTs) in the same space that the big guys think they are supposed to own, well, the big guys either have to tell the...

violetmadder

@ricci @regehr @dan

I honestly think it's a weapon. Polluting the internet the way militaries jam radio signals with noise. Digital chaff.

MarkS

@violetmadder @ricci @regehr @dan

I think you might be missing the FEAR driving Google. OpenAI is to Google as Netscape was to Microsoft - a sign that there's is a new technology on the market (ChatGPT) that is about to destroy your money printing machine (Google search).

Microsoft reacted to Netscape by trying to rebuild their operating system around the browser so deeply that they would own the Internet. Google is scrambling to build so much AI into search that a competitor has no chance to get a foothold.

Ben Rosengart

@regehr @ricci @dan The capitalist classes believe that LLMs can replace workers. They have such a collective hard-on for mass layoffs that they can’t seem to process contrary evidence.

I know this sounds stupid as fuck — because it is — but it’s true.

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