[kiratp]

So much negativity.

I’m just excited that our industry is lead by optimists and our culture enables our corporations to invest huge sums into taking us forward technologically.

Meta could have just done a stock buyback but instead they made a computer that can talk, see, solve problems and paint virtual things into the real world in front of your eyes!

I commend them on attempting a live demo.

[wolvesechoes]

> I’m just excited that our industry is lead by optimists and our culture enables our corporations to invest huge sums into taking us forward technologically.

I am always baffled that people can be that naive.

[lioeters]

It's a weird way to put it too, "our industry" and "our culture" enables "our corporations". They're not "our" corporations as a society, why should we be excited about their investments.

There's a cognitive dissonance between talking about capitalist entities that supposedly drive social and technological progress, and the repeated use of the collective "our" and "us". Corporations are not altruistic optimists aiming to better our lives.

[ares623]

He's the CEO of a multi-billion dollar corporation, promising technology that puts the livelihoods of millions of people at risk. He deserves every bit of scrutiny he gets.

[8note]

> that puts the livelihoods of millions of people at risk.

what livelihood are these glasses putting at risk?

[ares623]

I was referring to AI/LLMs in general.

[bamboozled]

Do you think his algorithms have kind of, you know, sewed the seeds of hatred and rage through our society?

Do you think all the lies an misinformation his products help spread kind of...get people elected who take away the aid which millions of women and children rely on?

Not blaming him for it all, we all play our part, but the guy has definitely contributed negatively to society overall and if he is smart enough to know this, but he cannot turn off the profit making machine he created so we all suffer for that.

The parent said alluded to the dangers of AI, well the algorithms that are making us hate each other and become paranoid are that AI.

[johnfn]

Yes, the mocking, gleeful negativity really does make me concerned that this place is becoming Reddit. The fact that the highest upvoted post on this thread is just a link to Reddit isn't doing much to help me feel better. And I've been here for at least a decade, so I don't think this is the noob illusion.

[rsynnott]

But, I mean… it’s just not good. There is no real way to spin this as anything better than embarrassing.

[johnfn]

But why even have a conversation at all? Who cares if Zuckerberg has a demo that goes awry? Does that satisfy your intellectual curiosity somehow? It certainly doesn't satisfy mine.

[foldr]

Most of the discussion here is about (i) what might have gone wrong, technically, and (ii) what this says about the ROI that Facebook and other US tech giants are getting on their AI projects.

I agree that one demo gone awry does not mean much in itself, but the comments here do rise above the level of Nelson Muntz.

[rsynnott]

I mean, I think it is notable that a massive tech company is blowing tens to hundreds of billions on this complete nonsense.

[Karrot_Kream]

A topic that's notable but has little to discuss can get a lot of upvotes. A lot of the best stuff on this site has exactly that: lots of upvotes, little commentary, because the thing itself is notable. That's definitely not what happens on Meta threads. They usually get lots of votes then lets of repetitive spam-like comments about how ethically bankrupt Zuck or Meta or social media or algorithms or whatever are. A new comment on the behavior would be interesting, but most of the comments are basically just spam. I could probably get an LLM to generate most of them with ease. Perhaps the worst part is, even if there is novel analysis it's buried under an avalanche of "Zuck will grind you to dust" or whatever that gets repeated over and over again.

For a while that was okay, this kind of stuff was just contained in those threads. But it's started leaking out everywhere. Just spam like comments tangentially related to the topic that just bash a big company. That's the lowering of SNR that I find grating.

[rsynnott]

Oh, no, is someone being mean to the big company? :(

This is absolutely notable, and everyone should be concerned about it. Not so much the potential fakery, but the extreme deficiency of the actual product, which has had the GDP of a small country squandered on it. Like, there is a problem here, and it will have real-world fallout once the wheels fall off.

[kilroy123]

I've been here for over a decade. It has become very reddit like in the past few years.

I want to get into YC just to use and browse Bookface instead.

[hu3]

The signal to noise ratio certainly became worse.

You'll see the same folks spamming their hatred towards tesla/microsoft/meta/google over and over with zero substance other than sentimental blabbering.

[apwell23]

I"ve not seen that honestly. I think you are looking for it satisfy your internal narrative you've created.

[johnfn]

You haven't seen people, on this site, hating on Tesla?

[apwell23]

i haven't seen 'spamming'

[throwawayoldie]

It's a different world than it was ten years ago. Among the ways it's different are people are far more skeptical of billionaires, Big Tech, and capitalism generally. They're willing to cut them much less slack. This is one of the few ways that the world of today is better than the world of ten years ago.

[lefstathiou]

Bots bots bots... tearing down our stars is good business for a variety of vested interests. Don't let the bastards grind you down.

[wewtyflakes]

We are not bots, we just loathe historically bad-faith actors and especially with the current climate, we will take the opportunity of harmless schadenfreude where we can get it.

[WD-42]

Oh please. This isn't like the old iPhone days where new features and amazing tech were revealed during live demos. Failure was acceptable then because what we were being shown was new and pushing the envelope.

Meta and friends have been selling us AI for a couple years now, shoving it everywhere they can and promising us it's going to revolutionize the workforce and world, replace jobs, etc. But it fails to put together a steak sauce recipe. The disconnect is why so many people are mocking this. It's not comparable.

[dkjaudyeqooe]

All you're doing here is associating your hopes and dreams with grifters and charlatans.

They should be mocked and called out, it might leave room for actual innovators who aren't glossy incompetents and bullshitters.

[qmmmur]

But that’s the thing… it’s not a live demo…

[kiratp]

I see no evidence of that. It seems like they tried to put the AI “on rails” with predefined steps and things went wrong.

[throwuxiytayq]

So there was no AI. I know there’s a lot of confusion regarding the exact definition of AI these days, but I’m pretty sure we can this one time all agree that an “on rails” scenario ain’t it. Therefore, whatever it is that they were doing out there, they weren’t demoing their AI product. You could even say it wasn’t a live demo of the product.

[kiratp]

You can put the AI on rails by just prompting by it. The latest models are very steerable.

System prompt: “stick to steps 1-n. Step 1 is…”

I can say confidently because our company does this. And we have F500 customers in production.

[throwawayoldie]

And a Fortune 500 company has never done anything stupid.