astronaut_sloth

joined 2 years ago
[–] astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz 16 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

If God's mind were a soup of linear algebra doing stupid number tricks, then sure (with the assumption we're just talking about LLMs).

In reality, no.

Source: I study AI and work on it professionally.

[–] astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz 2 points 5 months ago

100% agreed. It should not be used as a replacement but rather as an augmentation to get the real benefits.

[–] astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz 25 points 5 months ago (26 children)

I study AI, and have developed plenty of software. LLMs are great for using unfamiliar libraries (with the docs open to validate), getting outlines of projects, and bouncing ideas for strategies. They aren't detail oriented enough to write full applications or complicated scripts. In general, I like to think of an LLM as a junior developer to my senior developer. I will give it small, atomized tasks, and I'll give its output a once over to check it with an eye to the details of implementation. It's nice to get the boilerplate out of the way quickly.

Don't get me wrong, LLMs are a huge advancement and unbelievably awesome for what they are. I think that they are one of the most important AI breakthroughs in the past five to ten years. But the AI hype train is misusing them, not understanding their capabilities and limitations, and casting their own wishes and desires onto a pile of linear algebra. Too often a tool (which is one of many) is being conflated with the one and only solution--a silver bullet--and it's not.

This leads to my biggest fear for the AI field of Computer Science: reality won't live up to the hype. When this inevitably happens, companies, CEOs, and normal people will sour on the entire field (which is already happening to some extent among workers). Even good uses of LLMs and other AI/ML use cases will be stopped and real academic research drying up.

[–] astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz 3 points 5 months ago

this “cameras for everything!” idiocy.

That's why I'm so impressed with how well it's actually working. When they get off that really weird self-imposed restriction, it could be an interesting technology.

[–] astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz 14 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Not great performance at all.

That's better than I was expecting to be perfectly honest.

I'm pretty impressed with the technology, but clearly it's not ready for field use.

[–] astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz 4 points 7 months ago

Even beyond that, you'd think that at some point someone would realize that if you have to tell someone you aren't a monster even though you're acting monstrously, you're a monster, regardless of whose orders you're following.

[–] astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

It's also not all-or-none. Someone who otherwise is really interested in learning the material may just skate through using AI in a class that is uninteresting to them but required. Or someone might have life come up with a particularly strict instructor who doesn't accept late work, and using AI is just a means to not fall behind.

The ones who are running everything through an LLM are stupid and ultimately shooting themselves in the foot. The others may just be taking a shortcut through some busy work or ensuring a life event doesn't tank their grade.

[–] astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz 10 points 7 months ago

Sounds like yet another high crime and misdemeanor. Why doesn't the co-equal branch established in Article I do it's duty? And failing that, why doesn't Hegseth, who has "We the People" tattooed on his drunken forearm, have the courage that he demands of others to tell off his boss? Where are the Oath Keepers who say they are so opposed to a tyrannical government and take their oaths to the Constitution seriously?

They wipe their collective asses with the Constitution. For that, everyone in this administration, and those who enabled it should burn as the traitors that they are.

[–] astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz 10 points 8 months ago

I see both points. You're totally right that for a company, it's just the result that matters. However, to Bradley's, since he's specifically talking about art direction, the journey is important in so much as getting a passable result. I've only dabbled with 2D and 3D art, but converting to 3D requires an understanding of the geometries of things and how they look from different angles. Some things look cool from one angle and really bad from another. Doing the real work allows you to figure that out and abandon a design before too much work is put in or modify it so it works better.

When it comes to software, though, I'm kinda on the fence. I like to use AI for small bits of code and knocking out boilerplate so that I can focus on making the "real" part of the code good. I hope the real, creative, and hard parts of a project aren't being LLM'd away, but I wouldn't be surprised if that's a mandate from some MBA.

[–] astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz 1 points 9 months ago

Rolling your own email is a pain. That said, I use a VPS and host my own server with domain name and site for $5/month. Setting it up was a pain, but once you get all the records right so you're not considered spam, it works really well. That said, I haven't done anything with webmail; I strictly use IMAP and SMTP.

[–] astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz 1 points 10 months ago

Ah, gotcha. I didn't go too deep into the code, just did a cursory look. I think it's still an interesting concept.

[–] astronaut_sloth@mander.xyz 0 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I don't know why this is getting downvoted. It seems like an interesting concept for certain use cases, and it looks like it's just a tiny team.

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