Ask HN: Are you getting GPT-Fatigue?

This is GPT summer, just accept it. It will be easier. A year ago it was crypto summer. Before that it was "microservices is a bad idea" summer. Before that it was "microservices is a good idea" summer. And before that it was "everything is JQuery" summer. And before that... and before that...

It will get better. Then a new buzzword comes forward.

I have been freelancing in AI for some time now, and have one main client with a huge product, and we are slowly evaluating ChatGPT features and ideas, but I am really happy that he isn't buying into the current hype cycle too much. No fatigue here, sometimes I wish he'd be trying out more stuff, but I just keep my mouth shut..

For myself on the other hand, I have been interfacing with ChatGPT (web / API) almost daily since release day, feeling like I am at the edge of things; not wanting to miss a single new thing; can't miss what others are working on and releasing ... and its becoming so exhausting, it almost feels like a second full time job. It's really hard to manage, because as much as I believe I need a break, its also the most exciting thing for me to happen as a developer in a while. Also ... I have been there for Bitcoin ... in 2011, through all the cycles, I made money, but resisted all the hype, but somehow this all feels different, I still wonder if I am just getting fooled because its different.

Although GPT is in the "peak of inflated expectations" phase of its hype cycle, there is immense opportunity now for startups to seriously disrupt even 10-year-old companies who falsely thought they had entrenched themselves and consequently became lazy and corrupt.

I predict that we're going to reach phase 5 some time soon ("the plateau of productivity"). And when the dust has settled, the damage to the entrenched-retrograde "IBMs" of our industry will be real. I know because I work for one of these "IBMs".

Unlike crypto or microservices, gpt is the new source of the lowest effort content on the web. I think this is what makes it so tiring. Every discussion has at least one chatgpt copypasta, every subreddit gets inundated with gptspam. It's gross and lazy content and it's everywhere.

Here's the skeptical GPT take, after months of seeing things evolve.

- "Prompt engineering" based products are fickle, and depend on the underlying model not changing much. They also have almost no moat. I can go into ChatGPT, and probably get a few plugins to do your product.

- Do you really want to use American Expresses, or Bob's Laundromat, or Instacarts chatbot? Or would you rather just use their product search, when search is called for. Use the few reliable, point-and-click actions when obvious self-service customer support? And talk to a human being when support escalation is needed? (I have a hard time imagining a chatbot taking an action that you need 'root access' to an org's processes because I have a weird one-off support issue). Though maybe LLMs can make these existing interactions more seamless, I'm less sure people want to throw away what they know to jump into a chatbot

Here's where I think we are:

- Obviously, the biggest game changer is interrogating information. I can ask any question and get a cogent answer with enough accuracy for it to be useful. I have a personal Stackoverflow (and a million other help forums) where the expertise under those forums is captured.

- ChatGPT and friends like spreadsheets. They are beginner programming paradigm for creating natural-language interactions over the entirety of human information. That in itself is revolutionary. But, like spreadsheets, a few vendors will own this space - those that can train on all of human knowledge. Also, like spreadsheets, you can only go so far with a "prompt-based programming" without needing to build a real application that goes really deep into that domain.

- LLMs, like good CGI, works best when you don't see them. ChatGPT and friends can massively improve the ease of implementing applications that require all of human knowledge: search, recommendations, and other applications where you may have had ot rely on some hand-crafted knowledge graph. These have existing affordances to real users.

- It's easier and easier to train and. fine-tune LLMs on your own data, which makes using them transparently to interrogate

> Am I the only one feeling this way?

Far from it. Fatigue started months ago.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34722220

I realized only now that with this post I contributed to the GPT-chatter, sorry world!

At least we've moved on from Blockchain as the technology du juor

I love all this stuff, but I have to agree there is so much GPT chatter that it drowns out everything else. But it will pass, like everything before it.

I am starting to find ways to use them for actual work.

Suggest more ideas to use it for ... well ultimately make money