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AI Is a Horse (2024)
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
"Computers aren't the thing. They're the thing that gets you to the thing."

My favorite quote from the excellent show halt and catch fire. Maybe applicable to AI too?

Something like that used to be Apple’s driving force under Steve Jobs (definitely no longer under Tim Cook).

https://youtube.com/watch?v=oeqPrUmVz-o&t=1m54s

> You’ve go to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try to sell it.

> You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try to sell it.

If those LLM addicts could read, they'd be very upset!

  • hkt
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ChatGPT, tell me how I should feel about this!
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That works when you are starting a new company from scratch to solve a problem. When you're established and your boffins discover a new thing, of course you find places to use it. It's the expression problem with business: when you add a new customer experience you intersect it with all existing technology, and when you add a new technology you intersect it with all existing customer experience.
> You can’t start with the technology and try to figure out where you’re going to try to sell it.

The Internet begs to differ. AI is more akin to the Internet than to any Mac product. We're now in the stage of having a bunch of solutions looking for problems to solve. And this stage of AI is also very very close to the consumer. What took dedicated teams of specialised ML engineers to trial ~5-10 years ago, can be achieved by domain experts / plain users, today.

> We're now in the stage of having a bunch of solutions looking for problems to solve.

We've always had that.

In olden times the companies who peddled such solutions were called "a business without a market", or simply "a failing business." These days they're "pre-revenue."

Maybe it will be different this time, maybe it will be exactly the same but a lot more expensive. Time will tell.

  • latexr
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I think you’re missing the point. Of course you can make such a product. As Steve says right after, he himself made that mistake a lot. The point is that to make something great (at several levels of great, not just “makes money”) you have to start with the need and build a solution, not have a solution and shoehorn it to a need.

The internet is an entirely different beast and does not at all support your point. What we have on the web is hacks on top of hacks. It was not built to do all the things we push it to do, and if you understand where to look, it shows.

> excellent show "halt and catch fire".

I found it very caricature, too saturated with romance - which is untypical for tech environment, much like "big bang theory".

IMO it really came into its own after the first season. S1 felt like mad men but with computers, whereas in the latter seasons it focused more on the characters - quite beautiful and sad at times.
It's still very good I'd say. It shows the relation between big oil and tech: it began in Texas (with companies like Texas Instruments) then shifted to SV (btw first 3D demo I saw on a SGI, running in real time, was a 3D model of... An oil rig). As it spans many years, it shows the Commodore 64, the BBSes, time-sharing, the PC clone wars, the discovery of the Internet, the nascent VC industry etc.

Everything is period correct and then the clothes and cars too: it's all very well done.

Is there a bit too much romance? Maybe. But it's still worth a watch.

AI is not a horse (2023) https://essays.georgestrakhov.com/ai-is-not-a-horse/
We don't know it, up to the point we observe it.
  • zombot
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But since the act of observation influences the object observed, who knows what then becomes of it?
  • baxtr
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Maybe AI is a centaur??
Baxtr, JAMES BAXTR? That's the exact comment I'd expect of someone named that.
Or a reverse-centaur ? https://locusmag.com/feature/commentary-cory-doctorow-revers...
Or a reverse centaur [1].

[1] https://locusmag.com/feature/commentary-cory-doctorow-revers...

It's also a big bloatey gas bag that needs constant de-farting to function
So essentially a cow?
  • krige
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Oh horses fart a lot too.
Horses poop a lot. A lot.
I had to search about and it's indeed a lot:

"it is quite normal for a horse to poo (defecate) 8-12 times a day and produce anywhere from 13 to 23 kilograms of poo a day."

Source: https://www.ranvet.com.au/horse-poo/

That's what you get when your primary source of nutrition is very calorie-poor and largely indigestible.
"No, I am not a horse."

Horse rumours denied.

*sweats profusely* https://imgur.com/a/PszeiAu
That's something a horse pretending to be AI would say.
A horse that can do your homework.
All true apart you can only lead it to water - it drinks ALL the water regardless of anything else.
Some day, I imagine one will be a senator
We only have enough budgeted for one joke in 2026 and this is the one.
  • taneq
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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.
I was expecting a spin about the faster horses
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.

Ai is a horse, i get it! I have a horse, and I put money in the front of the horse, and get "ponyium" out the back.
Through many attempts to make ingesting the ponyium more bearable, I’ve found that taking it with more intense flavors (wintergreen mint, hoppy hops, crushed soul, dark roast coffee, etc) improves its comestabilty. Can’t let it pile up. We’ve always eaten ponyium right, and we all like it, right, guys, folks?
  • d--b
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And the salesman always says it’s great while it’s in fact lame.
you rather don't want it in your bed
this post is aging like milk
"I've been through the desert

On 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"

you forgot to write pAIn and it reminded me of this: https://youtube.com/watch?v=nt9mRDa0nrc
If an AI aims at the thing we call it hallucinations, when humans do it we call the delusion goal setting.

Either way it is an imagined end point that has no bearing in known reality.

Or your typical American teenager.