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0 pointsazangru2y ago0 comments

> “So it tells you wrong answers? Sounds utterly pointless”. I was flabbergasted.

Could you tell a bit more about why this objection surprised you so much? I am often seeing this in the same tech circles that rejected the web3 craze; and I have to confess, it does sound reasonable to me. There is a recent PR opened in the MDN docs repository after MDN added the "AI explain" button, pointing out how utterly useless a AI guide is if it gives you incorrect answers and you do not have enough knowledge to catch it [0].

[0] - https://github.com/mdn/yari/issues/9208

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2 comments · 2 top-level

mannykannot2y ago

There is nothing wrong about the specific objection but, to borrow an analogy from Scott Aaronson, it is rather like dismissing the Wrights’ early airplanes as being slower than a train and only carrying one passenger. What is missing is an appreciation for how intractable the problem seemed five years before.

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demarq2y ago

I explained all it could do, and I felt I was doing great. But the moment I mentioned that it can get things wrong and sound totally confident, pretty much the conversation was me trying to justify why it’s still useful and I didn’t get anywhere beyond that.

I was shocked because I felt that being occasionally wrong would be a foot note, but to the person I was talking to its entire usefulness hinged on it being fully reliable.

For the capabilities we’re getting surely, the occasional wrong answer is barely a sacrifice!

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