Comment by nirui
18 days ago
I recently, meaning hours ago, had this delightful experience watching the Eric of Google, which everybody love, including he's extra curricular girl friend and wife, talking about AI. He seemed to believe AI is under-hyped after tried it out himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=id4YRO7G0wE
He also said in the video:
> I brought a rocket company because it was like interesting. And it's an area that I'm not an expert in and I wanted to be a expert. So I'm using Deep Research (TM). And these systems are spending 10 minutes writing Deep Papers (TM) that's true for most of them. (Them he starts to talk about computation and "it typically speaks English language", very cohesively, then stopped the thread abruptly) (Timestamp 02:09)
Let me quote out the important in what he said: "it's an area that I'm not an expert in".
During my use of AI (yeah, I don't hate AI), I found that the current generative (I call them pattern reconstruction) systems has this great ability to Impress An Idiot. If you have no knowledge in the field, you maybe thinking the generated content is smart, until you've gained some depth enough to make you realize the slops hidden in it.
If you work at the front line, like those guys from Microsoft, of course you know exactly what should be done, but, the company leadership maybe consists of idiots like Eric who got impressed by AI's ability to choose smart sounding words without actually knowing if the words are correct.
I guess maybe one day the generative tech could actually write some code that is correct and optimal, but right now it seems that day is far from now.
Thank you for sharing this!
When I use AI, I keep it on a short leash.
Meanwhile, folks like this ("I bought a rocket company") are essentially using it to decide where to plough their stratospheric wealth, so they can grow it even further.
Perhaps they'll lose a cufflink in the eventual crash, but they're so rich, I don't think they'll lose their shirt. Meanwhile, the tech job market is f**ed either way.
I started watching it, but had to stop because I was at great risk of becoming physically sick when he led with the "new move" stuff. Ugh.
Kudos to you for having the strength to get through it, and for living to tell the tale!
> it's an area that I'm not an expert in
> idiots like Eric
Now imagine Google working with US military putting Gemini into a fleet of autonomous military drones with machine guns.
> has this great ability to Impress An Idiot
Literally the killer app of AI.
Just wait until v2...it will probably get you laid in the local singles bar.
> During my use of AI (yeah, I don't hate AI), I found that the current generative (I call them pattern reconstruction) systems has this great ability to Impress An Idiot
I would be genuinely positively surprised if that stops to be the case some day. This behavior is by design.
AS you put yourself, these LLM systems are very good at pattern recognition and reconstruction. They have ingested vast majority of the internet to build patterns on. On the internet, the absolutely vast majority of content is pushed out by novices and amateurs: "Hey, look, I have just read a single wikipedia page or attended single lesson, I am not completely dumbfounded by it, so now I will explain it to you".
LLMs have to be peak Dunning-Krugers - by design.