Microsoft and Alphabet both reported mostly strong results Tuesday, but the disparate reactions from investors showed that Wall Street only cares about AI now.
We are in the infancy of generative AI. For you it has already replaced an entire sector of the workforce: artists. For others it has replaced them wholesale. For others it just assists. Hollywood was trying to legally own actors voices and likenesses to replace them.
This technology is not standing still. It will be great at a lot of things in the future. It could be next month. It could be next year. It could be in a decade. Whenever it arrives for your job it will be cheaper than you. There will be no going backward on this technology.
I totally agree that we’re just scratching the surface of what AI can do. But I don’t think it’s what Wall Street thinks it is. It’s not too terribly difficult to spin up an LLM, which means it’s going to be difficult to set up chokepoints to extract rent.
Though I bet they’ll get the government’s help with that by regulating AI for “safety.” The big guys won’t have a problem but anyone else will have illegal programs running.
I agree corporations will lobby for a legalized monopoly so they’re able to extract rent.
Generative AI will only grow to replace more and more labor. Labor is most corporations largest expense. Participating in the economy as labor is how most people make their living.
If AI replaces labor, regardless of who controls it, it will change the world’s economy by putting most people out of a job.
This only works if we have a system in place to handle most humans not working. Like a UBI of some kind. Capitalism can’t function once there are no more jobs to work.
I’m really confused by these comments. I work on AI and absolutely hate all the clickbait and marketing simple algorithms as actual AI. But this seems like the pendulum swinging way too hard the other way.
To put it bluntly - No, it is not simple or trivial to “spin up” an LLM. Unless you want it to be worse than simple chatbots that have already existed for over a decade.
I think we might end up with the Microsoft/Apple/Google situation all over again. While it’s easy to build an AI, having to jump between AIs for each and every task is no fun. I think the one that wins the golden goose is the one that manages to build a complete OS with AI at it’s core, i.e. instead of Unix shell, you just have a ChatGPT-like thing sitting there that it can interact with all your data and other software in a save and reliable manner. Basically the computer from StarTrek were you just tell it what you want and it figures out how to get it.
That others can spin up their own LLM won’t help here, as whoever gets to be the default AI that pops up when you switch on your computer will be the one that has the control and can reek the benefits.
Yes, but whoever overcomes those problems will be the next Microsoft/Apple/Google (or get rich by getting bough by either of them). I think a large paradigm shift in how we do computing is unavoidable, LLMs are way to powerful to just be left as chatbots.
Do you think these problems are solvable, and not inherent characteristics? I don’t know, I expect to see computers with high performant ai modules, but not a full ai computer.
Just have the LLM output verifiable scripts instead of manipulating the data directly itself and have version control for the data so the AI can undo changes. All pretty doable, though maybe tricky to get into old apps.
Especially where image generation is concerned, the infancy part can’t be understated. It’s growing so, so fast. A year ago, people would be dismissing AI art as “you can always tell”, it largely couldn’t do hands, and text was right out. But current cutting edge models can semi-reliably generate imperceptible works, needing only some fairly trivial manual curation to pick the best output. There’s also some models that are now able to do basic text. Just comparing a couple of years worth of progress side by side makes it very clear that it’s advancing rapidly and there’s no signs yet that it’s plateaued.
The big barrier to image generation, though, is profit. The images that it creates are useful, but current understanding is that they can’t be copyrighted and there’s ongoing legal challenges that make it very murky. I don’t think these companies can stay in business from regular people who’ll pay for some tokens to generate art. They need to be usable by commercial companies, and the legal issues will scare many of those away, at least for now.
As a dev, I honestly can’t understand that. I probably use regex a dozen times a day. Basic regex is so easy and useful, but describing exactly what you want is so iffy for an AI. The basics of regex are also so easy. It’s not like most people are trying to, say, parse an email address with regex. Most usage is basic, like “extract this consistent pattern from this text” or “remove this (simple) parameter from this function”. It takes me seconds to come up with a working regex in most cases.
There are many of us, myself included, who struggle with Regex. We are common enough that there is a pretty standard joke among developers that if you have a problem and solve it with Regex, congratulations you now have two problems.
I appreciate what you’re saying and you’re a god among men if you are proficient in Regex but you’re not the norm.
AI is great, I had gotten tired of Shutterstock and needed something to replace stock images.
Not sure it’s good for much else though.
We are in the infancy of generative AI. For you it has already replaced an entire sector of the workforce: artists. For others it has replaced them wholesale. For others it just assists. Hollywood was trying to legally own actors voices and likenesses to replace them.
This technology is not standing still. It will be great at a lot of things in the future. It could be next month. It could be next year. It could be in a decade. Whenever it arrives for your job it will be cheaper than you. There will be no going backward on this technology.
I totally agree that we’re just scratching the surface of what AI can do. But I don’t think it’s what Wall Street thinks it is. It’s not too terribly difficult to spin up an LLM, which means it’s going to be difficult to set up chokepoints to extract rent.
Though I bet they’ll get the government’s help with that by regulating AI for “safety.” The big guys won’t have a problem but anyone else will have illegal programs running.
Exactly. It isn’t hard to spin up an LLM.
I agree corporations will lobby for a legalized monopoly so they’re able to extract rent.
Generative AI will only grow to replace more and more labor. Labor is most corporations largest expense. Participating in the economy as labor is how most people make their living.
If AI replaces labor, regardless of who controls it, it will change the world’s economy by putting most people out of a job.
Good. Work sucks. Let robots do it.
This only works if we have a system in place to handle most humans not working. Like a UBI of some kind. Capitalism can’t function once there are no more jobs to work.
This just gets better and better!
I’m really confused by these comments. I work on AI and absolutely hate all the clickbait and marketing simple algorithms as actual AI. But this seems like the pendulum swinging way too hard the other way.
To put it bluntly - No, it is not simple or trivial to “spin up” an LLM. Unless you want it to be worse than simple chatbots that have already existed for over a decade.
I think we might end up with the Microsoft/Apple/Google situation all over again. While it’s easy to build an AI, having to jump between AIs for each and every task is no fun. I think the one that wins the golden goose is the one that manages to build a complete OS with AI at it’s core, i.e. instead of Unix shell, you just have a ChatGPT-like thing sitting there that it can interact with all your data and other software in a save and reliable manner. Basically the computer from StarTrek were you just tell it what you want and it figures out how to get it.
That others can spin up their own LLM won’t help here, as whoever gets to be the default AI that pops up when you switch on your computer will be the one that has the control and can reek the benefits.
While a full ai computer can sound cool, it would behave in a non reproducible and error prone way.
Yes, but whoever overcomes those problems will be the next Microsoft/Apple/Google (or get rich by getting bough by either of them). I think a large paradigm shift in how we do computing is unavoidable, LLMs are way to powerful to just be left as chatbots.
Do you think these problems are solvable, and not inherent characteristics? I don’t know, I expect to see computers with high performant ai modules, but not a full ai computer.
Just have the LLM output verifiable scripts instead of manipulating the data directly itself and have version control for the data so the AI can undo changes. All pretty doable, though maybe tricky to get into old apps.
Especially where image generation is concerned, the infancy part can’t be understated. It’s growing so, so fast. A year ago, people would be dismissing AI art as “you can always tell”, it largely couldn’t do hands, and text was right out. But current cutting edge models can semi-reliably generate imperceptible works, needing only some fairly trivial manual curation to pick the best output. There’s also some models that are now able to do basic text. Just comparing a couple of years worth of progress side by side makes it very clear that it’s advancing rapidly and there’s no signs yet that it’s plateaued.
The big barrier to image generation, though, is profit. The images that it creates are useful, but current understanding is that they can’t be copyrighted and there’s ongoing legal challenges that make it very murky. I don’t think these companies can stay in business from regular people who’ll pay for some tokens to generate art. They need to be usable by commercial companies, and the legal issues will scare many of those away, at least for now.
I work in IT, you want a list? Probably be quicker to tell you what it’s not doing/replacing.
No longer do I have to learn Regex! For that alone AI is worth.
As a dev, I honestly can’t understand that. I probably use regex a dozen times a day. Basic regex is so easy and useful, but describing exactly what you want is so iffy for an AI. The basics of regex are also so easy. It’s not like most people are trying to, say, parse an email address with regex. Most usage is basic, like “extract this consistent pattern from this text” or “remove this (simple) parameter from this function”. It takes me seconds to come up with a working regex in most cases.
There are many of us, myself included, who struggle with Regex. We are common enough that there is a pretty standard joke among developers that if you have a problem and solve it with Regex, congratulations you now have two problems.
I appreciate what you’re saying and you’re a god among men if you are proficient in Regex but you’re not the norm.
If you can explain it in a way a graphic designer would understand I would genuinely be interested