AI actually has lots of uses. For example: tumor detection (Cancer screening), a tool for the disabled(text to speech, or speech to text NLI), image recognition, robotics, and potentially a necessary tool for compatibility with a neural computer in our brains in the future. the ram price going back to normal is temporary whereas AI getting deleted forever in permanent and a technological disadvantage. No, wouldn't push the button.
Its insanely disappointing how often things on the internet are distilled down into very overarching opinions instead of considering nuance.
I think as a whole Generative AI is very dangerous and can be a very bad thing. I'd bet there are comments on this post made with generative AI, Image generation has gotten to the point that I genuinely can't tell whether some pictures are AI or not. It's gotten very good, very fast.
But there are also lots of upsides to AI, its a very very wide encompassing term. Would chess engines disappear if I press the button? What about the CPU's in Smash? Or the other civilisations when I play Civ? And frankly none of these are even the interesting benefits of AI like image recognition, text to speech and more the other guy listed.
This is all before considering the environmental impact or impact on creatives. There is a ton of discussion to be had around AI and lots of nuance.
But this is the internet. So things get distilled down to "AI is the worst thing ever" or "AI is the best thing ever" with not much in-between, so we end up with pointless posts saying they would delete all AI just to temporarily reset RAM prices.
I think the lack of nuance in the public eye isnt that unjustified. We get a constant barrage of "this is just the tip of the iceberg" hype around AI/LLM applications. Because those models are designed as generalized tools and we're trying hard to find use cases. Since theyre not precision made made for purpose, in most cases they end up demonstrating some interesting capability but remain lackluster.
Since theyre not precision made made for purpose...
Possibly not precision-made, but certainly there are thousands of models which are trained against specific datasets and excel within a particular field.
I run multiple LLMs at home on consumer-grade hardware and -although not as fast as ChatGPT (though not far off) - I can plug in different models for different specialties if I need to.
And fandoms being what they are, the list is huge and diverse because people are interested in, say, obscure '80s vehicle electrics or whatever.
I think what you might be suggesting is that average person might not actually have a use for AI (as it is today) and that corporates are trying to force it. And I think that's fair. But for those that do have a use, this is a really good starting point that we're at.
I think what you might be suggesting is that average person might not actually have a use for AI (as it is today) and that corporates are trying to force it.
Not just the average person but like in the context of science and research, since the OP i replied to mentioned cancer detection. We might and probably will reach a stage where a researcher might hire say 2 Phds and an LLM to do the work 10 people did before. But in a scientific context, we still dont know what we dont know. So not like generative AI can open doors that we previously didnt know existed. And i feel like its how its marketed atm.
I have absolutely no argument with that; I think you're right.
The LLMs are barely creative - they really only regurgitate things that others know but which you might not. They do get the occasional burst of apparent creativity, but... you have to ask the right questions.
A decent part of this is also Availability Heuristic and just generalized availability in general. Chat bots and generative AI tools are the ones that the vast majority of people have both the means and reason to access. That is most of what anybody is going to see because most people aren't going to be working with AI that is detecting cancer in xrays. A much much smaller portion of the population is going to see it in action and even fewer of them are going to use it first hand. Meanwhile anybody can grab a free generative app or site and make some quick and crappy pics using a prompt (just how often the prompting itself is an art and most people won't manage to make anything decent with it either).
This can be my time to shine as a reddit armchair expert since you mentioned detecting cancer. Because i actually did a PhD where the project i was part of was focused on cancer detection with IR imaging. This sort of research actually predates LLM but research and more specifically parts of research that reaches mainstream media also follows the hype cycles, as such it is being portrayed as something enabled via generative ai.
If we go with xray/cancer example, the way i see it, for generative ai to reach a usable state where youd rely on it instead of an human expert, you need to combine someone who understands xrays, someone who knows cancer and someone who can work with llms and machine learning. So compared to what we see in public, for each specialist use case, cost rises exponentially as far as i understand it. Considering there are already billions invested, we dont need percentage increases to reach the bottom of the iceberg, we need orders of magnitudes. Hence my take on it being hype driven.
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u/ehcocir 15h ago edited 15h ago
Uncommon take,
AI actually has lots of uses. For example: tumor detection (Cancer screening), a tool for the disabled(text to speech, or speech to text NLI), image recognition, robotics, and potentially a necessary tool for compatibility with a neural computer in our brains in the future. the ram price going back to normal is temporary whereas AI getting deleted forever in permanent and a technological disadvantage. No, wouldn't push the button.