This micro blog meta is fascinating. I've seen small micro blog content like this popping up on the HN home page almost daily now.
I have to start doing this for "top level"ish commentary. I've frequently wanted to nucleate discussions without being too orthogonal to thread topics.
I've always said that driving a car with modern driver assist features (lane centering / adaptive cruise / 'autopilot' style self-ish driving-ish) is like riding a horse. The early ones were like riding a short sighted, narcoleptic horse. Newer ones are improving but it's still like riding a horse, in that you give it high level instructions about where to go, rather than directly energising its muscles.
Maybe from the client's point of view, although it's more likely a Tamagotchi. But from the server side, it’s more like a whole hippodrome where you need to support horse racing 24/7
Famously Steve Jobs said that the (personal) computer is "like a bicycle for the mind". It's a great metaphor because- besides the idea of lightness and freedom it communicates- it also described the computer as multiplier of the human strength- the bicycle allows one to travel faster and with much less effort, it's true, but ultimately the source of its power is still entirely in the muscles of the cyclist- you don't get out of it anything that you didn't put yourself.
Bu the feeling I'm having with LLMs is that we've entered the age of fossil-fuel engines: something that moves on its own power and produces somewhat more than the user needs to put into it. Ok, in the current version it might not go very far and needs to be pushed now and then, but the total energy output is greater than what users need to put in. We could call it a horse, except that this is artificial: it's a tractor. And in the last months I've been feeling like someone who spent years pushing a plough in the fields, and has suddenly received a tractor. A primitive model, still imperfect, but already working.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 57.9 ms ] threadOn AI with no name
It felt good to be out of the rAIn
In the desert, you can remember your name
'Cause there ain't no one for to give you no pain"
My favorite quote from the excellent show halt and catch fire. Maybe applicable to AI too?
Either way it is an imagined end point that has no bearing in known reality.
Horse rumours denied.
I have to start doing this for "top level"ish commentary. I've frequently wanted to nucleate discussions without being too orthogonal to thread topics.
Bu the feeling I'm having with LLMs is that we've entered the age of fossil-fuel engines: something that moves on its own power and produces somewhat more than the user needs to put into it. Ok, in the current version it might not go very far and needs to be pushed now and then, but the total energy output is greater than what users need to put in. We could call it a horse, except that this is artificial: it's a tractor. And in the last months I've been feeling like someone who spent years pushing a plough in the fields, and has suddenly received a tractor. A primitive model, still imperfect, but already working.