Where in those ~12 billion commits is the software, products and "innovations" which are supposed to be making our lives better? Software and apps in particular are getting worse, normies hate AI more than ever because they're even less likely to get their desired outcome when calling their doctor or trying to get their online order refunded when chatting with a cutely named chatbot, wages for (most) knowledge work are being driven through the floor, artists are being squeezed more than ever, etc., etc. That's to say nothing of the existential threats to the economy, environment and critical thinking which are growing daily. I really think we've lost the plot, folks.
On the topic of translation/ language learning, I still find Google Translate better for when I need to type emails in Russian (my older family who only speak it) as far as grammar is concerned than what LLMs spit out.
The transformer was invented as a machine-translation algorithm, later adapted to create LLMs. I think it's a reasonable hypothesis that a ML system designed for translation will always beat an LLM role-playing a translation system (assuming equal computing power and engineer effort).
We're going to see is a lot of stuff people use LLMs for moving back to using bespoke algorithms solving the one specific issue. LLMs are just machine learning unlocked for the masses, where you can ask it "translate this for me", "what's the sentiment of this text", and it just does it. Any of these were already achievable before LLMs, they just needed a machine learning engineer to implement.
I myself started an LLM driven project to classify and sort all the photos I've got. I just ask an LLM to poop out tags for an image. Using a proper algorithm for this is possible, but I'd need to put in some effort to actually get it set up. LLMs do make it easier since they can directly, instructively help you that set up, and provide an easy stream of training data to distill out a model perfectly fit to your usecase.
I think majority of work currently going through LLMs is such inefficient tasks that can be solved quicker and better with a limited algorithm.
I'd be surprised if Google Translate isn't powered by a specialized, Transformer-powered model we would now recognize as a "small" language model heavily constrained to a specific task.
Most people would prefer an excellent language learning app to simply be available and ready for them to use, rather than having to come up with how such an app could best work, and to get an AI to implement it by themselves, and having to iterate on that. Just like most people simply want to buy nice clothes, and don’t want to become fashion designers and managers of a clothing factory. So far it doesn’t look like AI is making the former (readily available excellent apps) more widespread.
I think I agree. But it's nice to have the option. Furthermore, i think it's too early to see the results of this, as technology takes a while to diffuse. Since there are so many people trying to take advantage of the hype to make a quick buck, it takes time to figure out what is actually useful and what is not
Having an app means exactly nothing. How good your language skills will be after N years of learning is the actual measure of whether it's worth anything.
Hang on! What's the proposed causal chain from AI to famine here? Inference -> energy prices -> fertilizer/food prices? Or are you referring to the war?
> ai code dev has enabled people to make tools for themselves that they didn't have before.
...that sounds pretty worthless tbh. The promise of AI wasn't that you can bang out your own little half baked duolingo clone. It was that every engineer was supposed to become hundreds or thousands of percent more productive. The assumption being that things generally would therefore get noticeably better.
We're seeing hundreds of percent more commits. We're not seeing that translate to any real world improvement of anything. That's the problem.
Call me "ignorant" if you want, but back it up by showing what all this "AI productivity" has actually accomplished in real economic terms. Not vaporware.
Out of curiosity, what real economic terms would you have to see to be convinced?
Do you mean more earnings per share for corporations or real utility impacts on social systems (e.g., more new drugs)
When I ask Claude about the AI ROI, it seems to cite that ~95% of AI PoC's are negative ROI but the 5% that do have ROI tend to have decent return -- my guess is mostly back office clean up to reduce expenses and increase revenue/profit.
IIRC Uber claim their 1.5k/mo budget lead to no new value creation.
FWIW, I look at the situation with similar skepticism. One argument you could make was what Marc Andreesen said with the hypothesis that "all the big companies get nuked", so no new valued gets created but the large market cap companies get eaten by thousands of little pirañas. Obviously, so far, that doesn't seem to be the case.
As a hobby I am playing around with mesh radios using Lora.
Let me tell you, it is _silly_ the amount of vibe-coded software in this area is popping up every week. Is the software duplicated? To an extremely large extent, yes. It is useful? Yes, but each piece of software seems to have a smaller and smaller audience, and quality is often severely lacking.
Iv'e done my own, too, for "RF debugging" as I called it to look into SNR issues related to interference. The software getting produced is likely useful _somewhere_, its just that youre not going to notice it.
Are we just moving towards personalised digital assistants for everyone, which in turn will produce software to function? Not unlikely.
Yeah, a lot of the software around MeshCore people have created seems heavily vibe coded (since got used to having press a button multiple times until it works) & the community seems to be surprisingly non-critical to "AI" technologies. Is it just about timing or something else ?
What are the boosters ranting and raving about if not the above? Am I just confused and the end game for all of the AI hype, investment, infrastructure build out, etc. over the last N years is ... hobby projects?
Here's a quote I found after a quick web search for "dario ai benefits":
> The list of positive applications of powerful AI is extremely long (and includes robotics, manufacturing, energy, and much more), but I’m going to focus on a small number of areas that seem to me to have the greatest potential to directly improve the quality of human life. The five categories I am most excited about are:
It's hard to separate out the hype from the results, but if you think none of that's being tried or worked on then you're the Ostrich with your head in the sand. Mayo Clinic says AI models help detect pancreatic cancer on CT scans 3 years before clinical diagnosis.[1] Breast Cancer.org says emerging research shows AI might spot cancers in mammograms that radiologists might miss[2]. Nature.com has a paper conclusing that AI (in various forms) have "already revolutionised the diagnosis, prognosis, screening, biomarker discovery" of cancers.[3] Cancer.gov says NCI scientists are using AI to improve cervical cancer screening with deep learning and digital images[4].
Dr David Burns offers his Teams CBT therapy with an LLM based app for people who can't afford therapist visits[5].
U. Chicago says that AI weather forecasts can be faster and cheaper than supercomputer-based physical simulations and produce results weeks ahead, which makes accurate forecasts affordable and available for farmers in middle-income countries[6].
With your smartphone camera you can get an AI-assisted bike-fit at home[7].
You can get a bike fitness training plan[8] and performance analysis with an AI that you can chat with to analyse and explain or change it, used by three professional cycling teams.
Prophix Australia analyse photos of powerlines taken by helicopter using AI to track assets and identify and verify potential faults[9]. AI systems scan images for early signs of plant disease in the vineyards of the Swiss Alps [also 9]. AI systems analyze multispectral images and satellite images of crops to detect nutrient deficiencies or pest problems in large farms[also 9].
In 2020 - 2022 a trial of a system in a hospital to identify patients at risk of sepsis helped medics treat them 2 hours earlier and reduced the death rate from sepsis by 18%.[10]
Self-driving cars now exist. Camera drones which follow you and respond to gestures now exist.
Where in those ~12 billion commits is the software, products and "innovations" which are supposed to be making our lives better? Software and apps in particular are getting worse, normies hate AI more than ever because they're even less likely to get their desired outcome when calling their doctor or trying to get their online order refunded when chatting with a cutely named chatbot, wages for (most) knowledge work are being driven through the floor, artists are being squeezed more than ever, etc., etc. That's to say nothing of the existential threats to the economy, environment and critical thinking which are growing daily. I really think we've lost the plot, folks.