> do people really believe no novel things will be unlocked with this tech?
Yes. It's a mostly shitty but very fast and relatively inexpensive replacement for things that already exist.
Give your best example of something that is novel, ie isn't just replacing existing processes at scale.
It's been 3 and a half years now since the initial hype wave. Maybe I genuinely missed the novel trillion dollar use case that isn't just labor disruption.
I think that most people are pretty short-sighted about the utility cases right now (which is understandable given the negative feelings about a lot of what's currently going on).
There are a lot of really useful things that were impossible before. But none of these use cases are "easy," and they all take years of engineering to implement. So, all we see right now are trashy, vibe-code style "startups" rather than the actual useful stuff that will come over the years from experienced architects and engineers who can properly utilize this technology to build real products.
I'm someone who feels very frustrated with most of the chatter around AI - especially the CEOs desperate to devalue human labor and replace it - but I am personally building something utilizing AI that would have been impossible without it. But yeah, it's no walk in the park, and I've been working on it for three years and will likely be working on it for another year before it's remotely ready for the public.
When I started, the inference was too slow, the costs were too high, and the thinking-power was too poor to actually pull it off. I just hypothesized that it would all be ready by the time I launch the product. Which it finally is, as of a few months ago.
With this said, a lot of people are likely worried about being eaten by whales when it comes to doing things with AI.
It's kind of like dealing with Amazon, or any other company that has both compute and the ability to sell the kind of product you make.
Said AI providers can sell you the compute to make the product, or they can make the product themselves with discounted compute and eat all the profits you'd make.
This is always a worry, but typically, being first to market is the most important part. As long as you can scale quickly and maintain your edge, this doesn't seem like such a big deal.
However, my product is so far removed from anything these companies would make, on top of that I'm using open-source models (e.g., oss gpt 120b is really, really good). I don't use any of the main providers like AWS, etc., and the underlying AI systems are only about 5% of the product. I need it for the idea to work, but it is a tiny part of the full offering. I can't really imagine it would make any sense for Amazon, etc., to compete on something like this.
But yes, in the end, huge conglomerates with infinite money can destroy smaller entrepreneurs - but that's not really any different than it's been for decades pre-AI.
The most obvious thing is bio-tech, protein folding, drug discovery, etc. As in, things that have an actual positive effect on humanity (not just dollars).
I don't really get people who are dismissive about this aspect of AI- my original question wasn't about cost-efficiency of developing these things, but just that the technology itself is creating things that wouldn't have been possible before. It seems hard to refute.
Whether or not it's worth the cost is a different debate entirely- about how tech trees are developed and what the second order effects of technology are. There are so many examples- the computer itself, nuclear power, etc. I think AI is probably on the same order as these.
Correct me if I'm off base but these things (protein folding and drug discovery) both existed before AI, no?
The implication of your comment seemed to be that this was going to be so much more than replacing people. But I fail to see how any of the items you listed are anything other than that.
These things have always been possible. Just slow and limited by labor. Which is the primary and novel "unlock" of AI.
You can argue it's a good thing, and in many areas I'd probably agree. I'm directly responding to your skepticism and implied absurdity that replacement is the main unlock here. It absolutely is.
I do still believe the main value proposition is large scale replacement and am unconvinced that most people driving AI adoption have these other more noble pursuits in mind with respect to AI.
But I will absolutely stand corrected here and if our dystopian future includes some genuinely useful medicinal advancements then maybe that will make the medicine (heh) go down easier.
I can't say I'm a regular user but a while ago I stumbled upon another post about tiledwords while a loved one was in the hospital and it was a fun and welcome distraction to solve some of the puzzles together while stuck in an otherwise grim environment.
Thanks for making this and I wish you all the success in the future.
I'll take it over seemingly endless deluge of FUD-slop from the past 4 years that claims you better get ready for the AI takeover coming for all the jobs in just-long-enough of a timeline that nobody will remember to hold the author accountable when their prediction is woefully incorrect, where the "advice" in the article is conveniently to pay for more AI tools.
Yes. It's a mostly shitty but very fast and relatively inexpensive replacement for things that already exist.
Give your best example of something that is novel, ie isn't just replacing existing processes at scale.
It's been 3 and a half years now since the initial hype wave. Maybe I genuinely missed the novel trillion dollar use case that isn't just labor disruption.
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