[kredd]

The problem is, vast majority of smartphone usage is done for entertainment and social networking purposes (IG, TikTok, Twitter, HN, gaming, Netflix and etc.). If you’re mostly scrolling and consuming, I can’t imagine how current AI tooling can help you other than some summarization of texts. Sure, for productivity cases it might be legitimate, but that’s not what supermajority of people use a phone for.

[paul7986]

Im not sure people really know how to use an AI chat bot or understand its a more powerful, quicker and personally more fun way of getting information then just a Google search

Some personal examples of how I find it more useful (love to hear yours) and fun to use....

- Wanted to go on a hike an hour away from where both my friend (lives two hours west of me) and I live. Asked GPT what are some good hikes an hour drive away from both of us to meet & hike. With Google I have to do Many searches where GPT just provides the answer right away.

- I count calories and eat out everyday. GPT knows the calories of everything i eat as I eat at chains mostly (Cava, Panera, Starbucks, Chipolte). I tell it via voice what i just ate for my 1st meal, it calculates my calorie count and later I'll tell it what im having for my 2nd meal. It can also recall my calorie count from days ago. It does all this quickly vs. Google i'd have to do oodles of searches.

Usually Im using GPT the most when driving via voice and unlike Siri, GPT understands me and i can have whole conversations with it to get things done while driving.

[dragonwriter]

> Im not sure people really know how to use an AI chat bot or understand its a more powerful, quicker and personally more fun way of getting information then just a Google search

I can't speak to your personal entertainment experience, but AI chatbots are generally a slower, less accurate way of getting information than a google search. (Though Google polluting search results with a big, often inaccurate, AI result at the top narrows this a bit.)

[paul7986]

If you use it for research where you have to do many google searches vs. just ask one question like hiking question it's much quicker asking one question vs. multiple google searches to get ur answer.

[dragonwriter]

The thing is it isn't reliable enough to rely on the answer from just one question for anything that matters.

[williamcotton]

I don't really understand why it is acceptable to speak for others on this topic. It is fine if it doesn't work well for you. It is also fine if it works well for others.

These blanket statements lead to flame wars.

[dragonwriter]

I would suggest that that would make more sense as a response to the upthread comment: “Im not sure people really know how to use an AI chat bot or understand its a more powerful, quicker and personally more fun way of getting information then just a Google search” than it does to someone explaining why they disagree that the only explanation for people not agreeing with the superiority of AI Chatbots is that they don't know how to use them or understand their innate superiority.

[paul7986]

Sure it does for some...just how another perceives a reply. Im cool with their reply.

For me with the two research examples of using GPT I gave/use it for the information is accurate. My friend and I have driven an hour away (for both) a few times (different spots) and hiked. Same goes for calories GPT has in it's knowledge base for well known chains. If it wasnt a chain restaurant GPT might not have it in it's knowledgebase or possibly have it wrong.

[shadowmanifold]

It is clear to me that people who make these comments, simple don't use the models much.

To say it is faster to get information from Google than the latest update to Sonnet is simply absurd to me.

I might have even agreed a few months ago but certainly not now.

[reaperducer]

All of that sounds like the boring low-hanging life fruit that gets trotted out in videos by companies like Apple and Google as being "revolutionary." It's boring. It's staged. It's the easy stuff. It's well-off 20-somethings solving non-problems for other well-off 20-somethings.

Wake me up when I can say things like…

Hey, Google, are my custom license plates ready for pick up at the tax office?

Hey, Siri, ask my doctor to refill this medicine.

Hey, Alexa, how many charging stations are broken at the gas station on 16th street?

Hey, Google, why is this plant dying?

Hey, Siri, why are there so many people in my neighborhood today?

Hey, Alexa, did anything ever get done about that story in the newspaper from a couple of years ago about the Chinese slave labor being used to grow pot on illegal farms on the Navajo reservation?

"AI" just doesn't have access to the information required to do anything interesting or useful. And because so much of its information comes from the web, which is already so polluted on certain subject (gardening, travel) as to be useless, the AI becomes useless.

[hifromwork]

I see your point, but it's hilarious that I can ask AI "Write a python program that takes an URL parameter, connects over http to that URL, interprets the response as a CSV file and prints a sum of integers in the second column. Use argparse for command line parsing" - pure science fiction a few years ago - and you call this a "boring low-hanging fruit". Truly we humans get used to the good stuff quickly.

[reaperducer]

But still well within the described "well-off 20-somethings solving non-problems for other well-off 20-somethings."

[kredd]

I definitely agree, but again, if you look at the app usage times across every single demographic, those type of use cases are such a minuscule portion that it's just some noise. In my opinion, GPT/AI will cause more changes in workplaces, than in casual consumer spaces.

[mvdtnz]

No, the problem is that "AI" just isn't any good at almost anything.

[kredd]

You can argue that, but there are legitimate "AI" workflows that have already been adapted in workplaces where things function well enough. I'm sure 99% of it is just slop, most companies will fail, but some things will survive, become commoditized and taken for granted in about 5 years.

[rbanffy]

> If you’re mostly scrolling and consuming

Imagine an AI that popped up when you are reading something and warned you that information is false.

For instance, imagine something like https://theconversation.com/can-ai-talk-us-out-of-conspiracy... helping people discern about news and propaganda.

[bradyd]

Why would you trust AI, something that regularly makes stuff up, to be able to accurately determine that?

[notatoad]

the fun thing about the chatbots regularly making stuff up is that they almost always know when they're making stuff up. the hallucination problem isn't a problem of not knowing the facts, it's a problem of not knowing whether you want an accurate answer or a creative answer.

try asking chatGPT to only give you true and accurate answers and not make anything up.

[rbanffy]

I trust a defective AI a lot more than I trust Fox News ;-)

Now, more seriously, it'd need to put together a coherent argument and back it up with reputable sources, as just citing sources is very ineffective. The article I cited gives more details on possible approaches to that.

[jajko]

People eternally hoping that some new trick will finally make the other people understand how their side of the story/argument is one and only truly truthful. I guess this is old as mankind.

With your argument, the problem happens when given person goes to Fox news in the first place. Selection of the source has already been made, with its biases. Not much you can do or expect after this point.

Also, who curates the curator? Again an age old problem with no real, long term working solution in sight. No, you should not expect some statistical model to hold your hand through vast internet, while giving up any form of critical thinking, reasoning, or I guess any cerebral process altogether. Ultimate laziness. Since we know how much money there is in diet fad business, its safe to say this above will find its non-tiny desperate crowd.

[rbanffy]

> their side of the story/argument is one and only truly truthful.

There are no sides in objective reality. You might offer competing hypotheses and evidence for those, but we don’t need to do that to know that climate change is real, that it’s caused by humans, and that vaccines work.

[acdha]

That’d be useful but I’m pretty sure they’d get a massive backlash on Fox News and lawsuits filed alleging “being cancelled” within minutes of that shipping. It’s something we need but our current disinformation problem isn’t an accident but the result of decades of investment.

The less fraught one is warning users that they’re being scammed: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/05/google-wants-ai-to-l...

[rurp]

I can't imagine that working, even if that AI were more reliable than currently possible. Someone who already disbelieves credible reporting and objective sources is not going to be swayed by an AI telling them to disregard their fantastical conspiracy theories. Especially not in a near-future world where everyone is inundated with AI fakery.

That's even without considering the efforts that would be made to undermine any system that showed any effectiveness. A lot of misinformation, probably most of the stuff that gets traction, isn't random, it's serving a purpose and being pushed for that reason.

[ossobuco]

And who's going to teach the AI what's a conspiracy and what's not? Battles have been fought over what narrative certain Wikipedia pages should push; it's pretty hard to find information that can be objectively considered the truth.

[hifromwork]

That sounds like an useful tool for willing users, but if forced that sounds genuinely dystopian. And I'm afraid the people who would benefit the most (conspiracy theorists) wouldn't opt into that.

[rbanffy]

> And I'm afraid the people who would benefit the most (conspiracy theorists) wouldn't opt into that.

It's an unfortunate fact that the people most sick will refuse treatment until it's too late. Seen from the inside, insanity looks like lucidity.