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I wonder if this AI (statistical software) hype is just like the 3D videos, or the blockchain, or the VR glasses, and so forth. I mean I am thinking what can they be useful for. Even if these AI can produce a lot of cool images and text, I mean what is it useful for? Cheating on your exams? Sure. Creating more spam-bot content to fill up websites quickly? Sure. For fun for a few days to generate random shit? Sure.

What else?

Maybe the only two useful things would be:

  • Coding and technical answers. So things that you can check. I tried using AI to help me push commits to the AUR, and was mostly helpful. Providing command line tips and all that. But since it is at times inaccurate you can also mess things up. On top of this if you use them to create pieces of code can be decent from my tests, but still primitive in many regards.
  • Quick unimportant answers. Like recipes, or whatever else you may need that does no have to be that factual.

Nothing near the hype that's happening right now. I can't see myself using these statistical software bots unless for coding purposes, rarely.

in reply to Tio

in reply to muppeth

Plus it changes the entire concept of search. instead of searching for websites (which in recent years has been so bad it's hard to find anything useful), you can search for information you need instead, by talking to a bot that will provide your information based on your dialog. Similar to AI in "Snow Crash". Instead of jumping from website to website (or in current state of internet one SEO shit post to another), you have a conversation with AI about subject you are interested in.
in reply to muppeth

For search I find it mesmerizing and deceptive. If you care about the info being factual, then these bots are not useful at all. In order to trust, you need to trust a source. So unless they provide easy to check sources, their answers are not relevant.
in reply to Tio

Depends what is it you are looking for. If you are doing a research on certain topic where sources are needed, sure. if I want to know how to build A or B or how to fix something or need info on how something works, I can get that without digging through ton of SEO articles of "10 best A/B of 2023".
in reply to muppeth

I do get that, but you can be easily tricked. I got plenty of wrong answers and outdated about how to do this or that. And the only reason I realized that was either because I tried and it was wrong, or I knew about that particular thing so I could tell it was wrong. Unreliable from my and so many others' tests.

Also don't forget that these bots will allow people to quickly create "original" content, which means those SEO vampires will create even more shitty websites/content and much faster. I know people whose entire job is just that. And then in the future these bots will feed from their own vomit :D. A positive feedback loop.

in reply to Tio

Also even now they are useful. Set your own, feed it the information you are researching (terabytes of documents) and have AI sieve that for you so you get info your need without need to read through every single one.
in reply to muppeth

Maybe these could be useful. Maybe isolated cases for specific research purposes that can be closely controlled. idk. But for the general purpose I see many issues with these algorithms and am not convinced it is nearly as close to revolutionizing anything.
in reply to muppeth

in reply to Tio

You could say the same thing about early internet too. This is why so many thought it was just a fa. It couldnt do much, was unreliable and slow and people said it will never have global coverage. At that time you could also say its all projections. The thing is seeing potential of technology and what it can bring in terms of improvement.
Eg. Ubisoft is already working on implementing AI for dialog creation. So instead of few lines or repeatable text from NPC's you could have proper discussions. Add to it AI generating voice and facial expressions (already exists) and you can have discuission ingame with any character you meet on your way.

I dont think the idea of AI is that it will write books or make music and we will all love it. It's not what it's meant to be IMO. It's another tool for us to make use to make cooler shit.

in reply to muppeth

in reply to Tio

in reply to muppeth

in reply to Tio

I'm not convinced myself of whether this is something I want to invest my time into, but I do see that it's something that it will be very relevant part of our lifes soon.
in reply to Tio

I dunno about AI generated text/code, but AI generated images could be useful for some things that come to my mind.

In particular, I'm thinking of tabletop style role playing games where a Game Master can quickly whip up some background art for a room or other setting. The AI could offer, say, a dozen images and if none of them are satisfactory it's no big deal - just fall back onto the normal role playing technique of no artwork.

There are ethical issues of the raw input data set, but I see this as solvable in a straightforward way - limit input data to public domain images (older art and various public domain photos etc).