this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2024
1490 points (98.8% liked)

Technology

59091 readers
4565 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 28 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

I am thinking of deploying a RAG system to ingest all of Linus's emails, commit messages and pull request comments, and we will have a Linus chatbot.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago

Hold on there Satan... let's be reasonable here.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

The only time I've seen AI work well are for things like game development, mainly the upscaling of textures and filling in missing frames of older games so they can run at higher frames without being choppy. Maybe even have applications for getting more voice acting done... If the SAG and Silicon Valley can find an arrangement for that that works out well for both parties..

If not for that I'd say 10% reality was being.... incredibly favorable to the tech bros

[–] [email protected] 28 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 6 days ago

If anything he's being a bit generous.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 days ago (3 children)

I play around with the paid version of chatgpt and I still don't have any practical use for it. it's just a toy at this point.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 days ago

I used chatGPT to help make looking up some syntax on a niche scripting language over the weekend to speed up the time I spent working so I could get back to the weekend.

Then, yesterday, I spent time talking to a colleague who was familiar with the language to find the real syntax because chatGPT just made shit up and doesn't seem to have been accurate about any of the details I asked about.

Though it did help me realize that this whole time when I thought I was frying things, I was often actually steaming them, so I guess it balances out a bit?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I use shell_gpt with OpenAI api key so that I don't have to pay a monthly fee for their web interface which is way too expensive. I topped up my account with 5$ back in March and I still haven't use it up. It is OK for getting info about very well established info where doing a web search would be more exhausting than asking chatgpt. But every time I try something more esoteric it will make up shit, like non existent options for CLI tools

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

ugh hallucinating commands is such a pain

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

It's useful for my firmware development, but it's a tool like any other. Pros and cons.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Like with any new technology. Remember the blockchain hype a few years back? Give it a few years and we will have a handful of areas where it makes sense and the rest of the hype will die off.

Everyone sane probably realizes this. No one knows for sure exactly where it will succeed so a lot of money and time is being spent on a 10% chance for a huge payout in case they guessed right.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 days ago (2 children)

There's an area where blockchain makes sense!?!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Cryptocurrencies can be useful as currencies. Not very useful as investment though.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 days ago

Git is a sort of proto-blockchain -- well, it's a ledger anyway. It is fairly useful. (Fucking opaque compared to subversion or other centralized systems that didn't have the ledger, but I digress...)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago

It has some application in technical writing, data transformation and querying/summarization but it is definitely being oversold.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

Yep, Ik ai should die someday.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Copilot by Microsoft is completely and utterly shit but they're already putting it into new PCs. Why?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

Investors are saying they'll back out if no AI in products. So tech leaders will talk talk and all deal with ai.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 days ago

Copilot + Pcs tho...

[–] [email protected] 18 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Linus is known for his generosity.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago
[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago

True. 10% is very generous.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Nice replacement topic after the maintainer drama last week

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

I think the drama came from when the Russian forces started killing civilians 🤷

Not a company following the law.

Sucks to ~~suck~~ work for companies run by a wartime government.

[–] [email protected] 314 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (49 children)

As a fervent AI enthusiast, I disagree.

...I'd say it's 97% hype and marketing.

It's crazy how much fud is flying around, and legitimately buries good open research. It's also crazy what these giant corporations are explicitly saying what they're going to do, and that anyone buys it. TSMC's allegedly calling Sam Altman a 'podcast bro' is spot on, and I'd add "manipulative vampire" to that.

Talk to any long-time resident of localllama and similar "local" AI communities who actually dig into this stuff, and you'll find immense skepticism, not the crypto-like AI bros like you find on linkedin, twitter and such and blot everything out.

[–] [email protected] 94 points 1 week ago (4 children)

For real. Being a software engineer with basic knowledge in ML, I'm just sick of companies from every industry being so desperate to cling onto the hype train they're willing to label anything with AI, even if it has little or nothing to do with it, just to boost their stock value. I would be so uncomfortable being an employee having to do this.

load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (48 replies)
[–] [email protected] 104 points 1 week ago (4 children)

I had a professor in college that said when an AI problem is solved, it is no longer AI.

Computers do all sorts of things today that 30 years ago were the stuff of science fiction. Back then many of those things were considered to be in the realm of AI. Now they're just tools we use without thinking about them.

I'm sitting here using gesture typing on my phone to enter these words. The computer is analyzing my motions and predicting what words I want to type based on a statistical likelihood of what comes next from the group of possible words that my gesture could be. This would have been the realm of AI once, but now it's just the keyboard app on my phone.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

There's a name for it the phenomenon: the AI effect.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 74 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Yup.

I don't know why. The people marketing it have absolutely no understanding of what they're selling.

Best part is that I get paid if it works as they expect it to and I get paid if I have to decommission or replace it. I'm not the one developing the AI that they're wasting money on, they just demanded I use it.

That's true software engineering folks. Decoupling doesn't just make it easier to program and reuse, it saves your job when you need to retire something later too.

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›