[doctor_eval]

GPT wrapper products are the equivalent of static corporate HTML pages from the 90s. We build them because we are the early adopters of a brand new technology and we’re working out how it works.

I’m working with such a company and yes, the first product is a (very nuanced and very domain specific) wrapper around GPT. But as we gain experience, we expect to develop far more complex and interesting products. But we gotta start somewhere.

2 years ago, nobody even knew about ChatGPT. We are at the very start of this wave and we’re just still plucking the low hanging fruit. The fact that GPT wrappers are useful speaks directly to the potential of the technology.

Contrast this with crypto, which wasn’t even capable of solving the problems it was supposed to solve, and where losses incurred by things like smart contracts were almost inevitable. The products being built with AI are real products that real people are paying for. The difference couldn’t be more stark.

[vineyardmike]

> 2 years ago, nobody even knew about ChatGPT

So chatGPT isn’t 2 years old, but i recently discovered that if you search HN for GPT-2, you’ll discover years of people discussing it, below hype levels. You’ll find “did GPT2 write this” type comments that we see today with 3,4. You’ll see people train it against their texts to talk to themselves. A lot of the ChatGPT induced hype hypotheticals were already done.

[doctor_eval]

> A lot of the ChatGPT induced hype hypotheticals were already done

I really disagree with this.

The more broadly useful and available this technology becomes, the more interesting and unexpected uses will be discovered for it. The people I'm working with now are not remotely software people but they are generating real value from GPT in ways I would never have imagined. I look at what they're doing and I think to myself - a seasoned software engineer - OMG that's incredible, I would never have thought to use it that way.

That's why I say that GPT4 is the 56K modem of AI. Until now it's just been largely software geeks. But now that it's getting out into the broader world, people are coming up with novel ways to use it that are unexpected and occasionally ingenious. Ways to help people that most software engineers wouldn't have the domain experience to think of.

And they're just getting started.