I initially started with natural language processing (small language models?) in school, which is a much simpler form of text generation that operates on words instead of whatever they call the symbols in modern LLMs. So when modern LLMs came out, I basically registered that as, “oh, better version of NLP,” with all its associated limitations and issues, and that seems to be what it is.

So yeah, I think it’s pretty neat, and I can certainly see some interesting use-cases, but it’s really not how I want to interface with computers. I like searching with keywords and I prefer the process of creation more than the product of creation, so image and text generation aren’t particularly interesting to me. I’ll certainly use them if I need to, but as a software engineer, I just find LLMs in all forms (so far) annoying to use. I don’t even like full text search in many cases and prefer regex searches, so I guess I’m old-school like that.

I’ll eventually give in and adopt it into my workflow and I’ll probably do so before the average person does, but what I see and what the media hypes it up to be really don’t match up. I’m planning to set up a llama model if only because I have the spare hardware for it and it’s an interesting novelty.

Lol. I guess you’d need to go to a mining crypto den then, I hear they pull that sort of nonsense. ;)

But seriously though, I’m not interested in listing, shipping, and dealing w/ customer feedback just to save a few bucks on a GPU, because that sounds like a job.

Yup, voted each time. Didn’t matter though, my state’s elections are almost never competitive. But it only took a few minutes and I voted at home, so at least I didn’t spend all afternoon in line.

shouldn’t it know what words are?

Not necessarily, but it should be smart enough to associate symbols with some form of meaning. It doesn’t do that, it juts associates symbols with related symbols, so if there’s nothing similar that already exists, it’s not going to be able to come back with anything sensible.

I think being able to create new content with partial sample data is necessary to really be considered general AI. That’s what humans do, and we don’t necessarily need the words to describe it.

the bubble bursting might very well be a good thing for the technology into the future

I absolutely agree. It worked wonders for the Internet (dotcom boom in the 90s), and I imagine we’ll see the same w/ AI sometime in the next 10 years or so. I do believe we’re seeing a bubble here, and we’re also seeing a significant shift in how we interact w/ technology, but it’s neither as massive or as useless as proponents and opponents claim.

I’m excited for the future, but not as excited for the transition period.

Eh, if the investment dollars start drying up, they’ll likely start optimizing what they have to get more value for fewer resources. There is value in AI, I just don’t think it’s as high as they claim.

And are you really interested in selling the extras?

But eventually, bubbles either deflate or pop, because eventually governments and investors will get tired of propping it up. It might take decades, but I think it’s inevitable.

The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

A. Gary Shilling

It’s really not, at least not in my state. I don’t really have a “contract” per se, just an offer letter and a set of company policies, many of which are legally unenforceable. I know multiple people at my company that have second jobs (i.e. a rental property, uber/doordash, etc), they just do them outside of normal work hours and certainly don’t share equipment between the various jobs.

And for references, I would never list my current employer anyway, because then they’d know I’m looking for a job. I might list an HR contact to verify employment and job title (if they need that, which is rare), but I’m much more likely to list someone unconnected to my current job as a reference. Most jobs I’ve applied to haven’t bothered asking for references, and my company certainly doesn’t bother with it either, either you get hired based on your own merits in the interview process, or you don’t. We do a background check once we send an offer letter to make sure you’re not a serial killer or something, but that’s as far as we go.

Eh, they can’t touch anything that’s not on their equipment, and they would have to prove that you did it while on their clock. It could be that you took your “breaks” from that job (legally allowed) to get all the work done for the other company, and you are just really productive in those 15-min breaks or whatever (or you pre-work outside of work hours and submit your work in those “break” periods). If it’s not on their hardware, they’d have a rough time proving it.

If you get fired, you can sue for wrongful termination and file for unemployment. But then you still need to find a new job.

Instead, take on extra work that’s incredibly easy but also has a paper trail that you can point to. You might even get a raise. :)

Eh, I have kids, so I already have enough mental drain w/o my full-time job, so I think I’d end up catching up on things I’ve been putting off, like exercise, repairs around the house, etc.

In fact, I lost my job at the start of COVID and didn’t start looking for a few months because nobody was hiring. I got so much stuff done around the house, and I was able to essentially home-school my kids at the end of one school year and the beginning of the next. I really enjoyed that, and I would totally homeschool my kids if I didn’t need to work every day to pay the bills.

So yeah, I’d absolutely appreciate a 30-ish hour work week, especially if I got one whole day off instead of it being spread across 5-days.

Or find a new job so you can save the entire salary, and then send in your 2-weeks just before yearly reviews. That way you can get ahead so you have less stress when you inevitably get cut off.

Wow, that’s ridiculous…

Grayjay on my Android phone. I like that it supports a lot of different services, and I have subs on Odysee, Rumble, and Nebula (I pay for a sub there). I sometimes download videos for offline use if I’m going to listen on my commute or something (no point in using up data if I don’t need to).

On my desktop/laptop, I just use YouTube directly w/ uBlock Origin on Firefox (to block ads) without logging in. I don’t watch much YouTube on my desktop/laptop, and when I do, I’ll just look for a specific video or whatever.

I also have NewPipe installed on my phone for when I want to find something specific (i.e. background music or something), because Grayjay’s search kind of sucks.

That’s really too bad. I have never had to file a dispute since everything I’ve ordered has so far been as expected. Then again, I haven’t had any problems in my area with shipping companies mishandling packages either, so YMMV in your area if that’s a common issue.

Eh, there are some search engines in the EU, the notable one I know about is MetaGer, but apparently they had to stop supporting their free, ad-supported service due to Yahoo ending its contract with them. But it’s based in Germany and still exists today.

That said, it’s a meta search engine and I don’t think it has its own index, but who knows, maybe if enough people sign up, they’ll work on their own engine some day.

I’m guessing he selects scammers for maximum enjoyment and doesn’t randomly sample. I imagine there are plenty of smart scammers out there.

Eh, depends on if the spammer’s AI can detect the chatbot AI consistently.