Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ceejayoz 604 days ago
> Sorry I just don't live in this world. Everybody and their dog uses LLM.

We do indeed live in very different worlds.

1 comments

Last month the moral panic in the 24 hour mainstream (pretty much every major media outlet in the US) news cycle was the environmental impact of LLM for writing emails, a bottle of water per email, think of the kittens, etc. Not to comment on the merits of this reporting, but among the middle and upper middle class US this is common, mainstream stuff. This is Apple's demographic, we're not talking $100 Android shit phones.
"The media talks about it a lot" is our standard to determine "widely used"?

We had a similar "moral panic" about Satanic child sacrifices in the 1980s. Satanic child sacrifices were not a widespread practice, though.

> Satanic child sacrifices were not a widespread practice, though.

You got me. This isn't debate club. If you want to think Apple's incumbent base isn't heavily using (or actively avoiding) LLMs either ChatGPT and Gemini or the 10k other B2B remixes, you can think that. And for the ones that aren't are they just holding out for Apple's flacid offering?

I don't know what to tell you. I work in midwest academic medicine, not tech, I'm not in the SV bubble. The people that don't use this stuff for either clinical (the only fucking rule I need in ad block seems to be freed.ai) or research work are still very aware of it, they're not waiting for Apple. It isn't a friction issue. People working in management consulting, it is used heavily because there is at least a desire to provide a professional sounding voice to customers. The thing is that in the real world J (the draft email should have said nigga, that would have been funny) knows Walter is still an idiot, yet Walter is still employed so what possible benefit is there to using an LLM. For internal stuff, you know you're not fooling any body, that is often the reason you don't use it. Not because you can't, but because it's pointless.

I don't think Apple is marketing a compelling product with that effort. The people that really want state of the art wordsmithing have had options, and what is Apple giving the naysayers? Is this better than ChatGPT, that example in the ad sure as hell isn't.

Maybe you're right that Apple is really reaching out with a compelling novel email writing product to their base, I'm just not convinced.

I don't use HomeKit as a core, but I use it because it integrates with iDevices. I am very much looking forward to Siri being less of a dumbass. Still think this marketing effort is lame.