[spacetime_cmplx]

It's far easier to do productive, useful things with AI if you just treat it as a tool, like a chainsaw or a pulley.

Everyone agrees there's a lot of hype right now but no one thinks _they're_ a part of it. You know why? It's because we're told we're on an exponential growth (we are), so everyone is trying to force it. So each time there's a breakthrough, we're desperate for it to be rocketship that takes us there.

It's time to step back and let the exponential thing happen on its own. We didn't get here because people in the 20th century sat down and plotted a way to achieve exponential growth; it just sorta happened.

[vba616]

>It's far easier to do productive, useful things with AI if you just treat it as a tool, like a chainsaw or a pulley.

I am seeing a lot of comments paraphrasing this, without pointing to anything.

A lot of comments also say confidently and repetitively that AI is different from crypto.

The best use case I have found so far for ChatGPT is...editing HN posts. [1] But after being mildly satisfied with it once, it seemed like too much bother to use it regularly. Like being a nobody and getting an autopen [2] to sign for you.

But more than a month ago, there was a "Show HN" by someone who claimed that they had an AI-powered solution to writing SQL. [3] The tagline was literally Never write SQL again. That sure sounds like something that could replace real people's jobs, that could be spun into a multibillion dollar market cap.

I tried it, made an attempt at a constructive comment without being negative, and there was not one response, from the submitter or anyone else.

I could explain in scathing terms how useless it appeared, but anyone capable of understanding what writing code is could read between the lines, and nobody like that engaged, so I let it lie.

What is a reasonable person to think about real applications?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35487015

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopen

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35427229

[iudqnolq]

I've noticed the same thing. So many proponents of AI don't validate their results.

I'm reminded of the Microsoft "make more robust" AI feature in VSCode. Their flagship example screenshot was flat out wrong.

The starting code is an html form with a clear bug. It has an onclick rather than onsubmit handler, which means pressing the enter key won't submit the form properly.

Their advertised fix doesn't address that issue. Instead it adds a CSS vendor prefix. First, manually adding vendor prefixes is almost never the right solution, just have one of the existing tools do that automatically. Second, this specific vendor prefix was only in use for a very short period of time years ago. So almost all users currently use browsers that don't need it, and almost all users of outdated browsers aren't helped by the prefixed version.

And this is a case where Microsoft would have had subject matter experts right down the hall from whomever wrote this announcement. It makes me even more skeptical of applications outside of tech.

[dehrmann]

Generative AI is at the point where it can BS at a college level. This is great for applications where things don't need to be right (disinformation bots, term papers), but doesn't work when there's little room for error (software engineering). It's already being used to write ad copy; I'm waiting for the first lawsuit because of a deceptive ad on Google.

[galleywest200]

I just use it as a super search engine and validate the results myself. Sometimes I only know 1/2 the words I need to find something so I just ask GPT-4 to give me 10 things it could possibly be then I look them up, rather than waste time with pedantry on web forums trying to find the words that way.

I fail to understand why people get so up in arms about how some people find use in these tools. Does not work for your niche? Cool, then just don't use it.

[namaria]

That's how I use it too. You try to search some topics on search engines nowadays, you get a lot of blog drivel with the same cliches all over and very little on the way of factual explanations. You ask ChatGPT and it gives you one to four paragraphs straight to the point. You can query it further and validate what it says with literature or more focused searches.

It feels like I'm getting massively subsidized by the AI hype tho. Even if I were to pay 20 dollars a month for that, it wouldn't come close to covering how much it cost to train and host it.

[zmgsabst]

But we are here because they drove hard for each big breakthrough that would “change the world” — and many did, from mechanization to electrification to digitization. (To say nothing of agriculture, chemistry, and medicine.)

That growth curve doesn’t “just happen”, but is precisely the result of people trying to constantly push for the next Big Thing (TM).