I use AI for what Google used to be able to do: Finding answers to simple questions. Usually about tech but sometimes movies or music. Like how do I add a physical volume to LVM, or what are the specs of this little fan model? Or who was that actress in a movie about kids buried in a collapsed building? Things like that…
It links to the original article it found so you can check its work, which is nice. It’s perplexity.ai if you’re curious. I find it quite useful. And as much as AI makes shit up I wouldn’t trust it otherwise.
Cool. Yeah I think the best use case of AI is just gonna be better search of unorganized that. Having said that though, it would never be as good as a good search engine with organized data.
Someone wants to send you a communication of some sort. They draft a series of bullet points or short version.
They have an LLM elaborate it into a long-form email or report.
They send the long-from to you.
You receive it and have an LLM summarize the long-form into a short-form.
You read the short form.
Do you realize how stupid this whole process is? The LLM in step (2) cannot create new useful information from nothing. It is simply elaborating on the bullet points or short version of whatever was fed to it. It’s extrapolating and elaborating, and it is doing so in a lossy manner. Then in step (4), you go through ANOTHER lossy process. The LLM in step (4) is summarizing things, and it might be removing some of the original real information the human created in step (1), rather than the useless fluff the LLM in step (2) added.
WHY NOT JUST HAVE THE PERSON DIRECTLY SEND YOU THE BULLET POINTS FROM STEP (1)???!!
This is idiocy. Pure and simply idiocy. We send start with a series of bullet points, and we end with a series of bullet points, and it’s translated through two separate lossy translation matrices. And we pointlessly burn huge amounts of electricity in the process.
This is fucking stupid. If no one is actually going to read the long-form communications, the long-form communications SHOULDN’T EXIST.
I read this comment chain and no? They are giving you actual criticism about the fundamental behaviour of the technology.
The person basically explained the broken telephone game and how “summarizing” will always have data loss by definition, and you just responded with:
In this case it actually summarized my post(I guess you could make the case that my post is an opinion that’s shared by many people–so forer-y in that sense)
Just because you couldn’t notice the data loss doesn’t mean the principle isn’t true.
Your basically saying translating something from English to Spanish and then back to English again is flawless cause it worked for some words for you.
Do people here actually use AI? And if so…for what?
I use AI for what Google used to be able to do: Finding answers to simple questions. Usually about tech but sometimes movies or music. Like how do I add a physical volume to LVM, or what are the specs of this little fan model? Or who was that actress in a movie about kids buried in a collapsed building? Things like that…
But does it actually link the source or does it just say a basic answer and you have to take a leap of faith?
It links to the original article it found so you can check its work, which is nice. It’s perplexity.ai if you’re curious. I find it quite useful. And as much as AI makes shit up I wouldn’t trust it otherwise.
Cool. Yeah I think the best use case of AI is just gonna be better search of unorganized that. Having said that though, it would never be as good as a good search engine with organized data.
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So here’s the path that you’re envisioning:
Someone wants to send you a communication of some sort. They draft a series of bullet points or short version.
They have an LLM elaborate it into a long-form email or report.
They send the long-from to you.
You receive it and have an LLM summarize the long-form into a short-form.
You read the short form.
Do you realize how stupid this whole process is? The LLM in step (2) cannot create new useful information from nothing. It is simply elaborating on the bullet points or short version of whatever was fed to it. It’s extrapolating and elaborating, and it is doing so in a lossy manner. Then in step (4), you go through ANOTHER lossy process. The LLM in step (4) is summarizing things, and it might be removing some of the original real information the human created in step (1), rather than the useless fluff the LLM in step (2) added.
WHY NOT JUST HAVE THE PERSON DIRECTLY SEND YOU THE BULLET POINTS FROM STEP (1)???!!
This is idiocy. Pure and simply idiocy. We send start with a series of bullet points, and we end with a series of bullet points, and it’s translated through two separate lossy translation matrices. And we pointlessly burn huge amounts of electricity in the process.
This is fucking stupid. If no one is actually going to read the long-form communications, the long-form communications SHOULDN’T EXIST.
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if you believe that ai summary, i have a bridge that i’d like to sell to you.
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do look up the “forer effect” and then read that ai summary again.
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I read this comment chain and no? They are giving you actual criticism about the fundamental behaviour of the technology.
The person basically explained the broken telephone game and how “summarizing” will always have data loss by definition, and you just responded with:
Just because you couldn’t notice the data loss doesn’t mean the principle isn’t true.
Your basically saying translating something from English to Spanish and then back to English again is flawless cause it worked for some words for you.
Yep, pretty much every single “good” use case of AI I’ve seen is basically a band aid solution to enshitification.
You know what’s a good solution to that? Removing the profit motive.
Summarizing, drafting things, understanding complex things that are filled with jargon, etc.
Mostly stupid stuff involving sailor moon for me, using the lie machine for anything but funny pictures seems like maybe a bad idea at the moment: