Prototypes on ParAIde
I've been there too a few times
I run prototypes in production. I consider it fun. The trick is to keep budgets small and traffic at a trickle, which is not at all what's happening in AI. It is on the other hand what’s happening in this post.
As a professional early-adopter, I've spent the last year testing generative AI tools, learning about what's going on under the hood and thinking about where they might fit in for people like you and me.
The promise of AI is the stuff of science fiction. I mean, who doesn't want virtual ScarJo doing all the hard work while we collect the paycheck? Like with flying cars and virtual reality however we're still not quite there.
In aircraft inspection there's a saying that it's not about how small of a crack you can find, it's about how big of a crack you can miss. Small cracks grow but the big ones kill. Discussion around consumer AI has been too focused on little cracks with safety and marketing teams trying to convince you that these things are safe and sane when the reality is products with such massive blind spots can only be described as prototypes.
ChatGPT (and Grok, Gemini, etc.) has been interesting to use and at times impressive but there exist serious pitfalls. I like them for introductory research but for production I limit their use to creating extremely rough drafts and not often at that. Midjourney (Dall-e, Stable Diffusion) again creates interesting and at times impressive imagery but again, pitfalls. For any of them to enter my daily workflow their results need to be better. I'm cool with line edits, paragraph swaps - or for images cropping and filtering - but if it needs more than that I should do it myself.
When it comes to AI, thus far I've been content to let everyone else have all the fun. With meme connoisseurs, prompt engineers, and AutoGPT in one corner and artists, politicians, and doomers in the other all you really need is a secure supply of popcorn.
At the same time as a programmer who's experienced success in code and had just a taste in prose, I've become obsessed with writing. I'm working on a book which I hope as the great Carl Sandburg said "will include everything I would have liked to know 20-30 years ago." I'm beginning the editing phase and so it's time to open the door and start to share some of my own prototypes. That's why I'm here looking for the best parties on Substack.
I suspect everyone's hyped about AI because it's a hell of a lot of fun. Datacenters full of cutting-edge hardware are making everyone ask scary questions and spewing carbon while teasing the mother of all god candles, while most of us can only supply more data for the machine. Is AI going to kill us all or just put us out of work? Is there a conspiracy to pollute the internet and by extension our minds? Can machines hallucinate? How do we know what's real anymore?
I'm just a dude who paid attention in school, likes computers, and wants to have a good time. If you feel that AI is over-hyped but also that big cracks are being missed then go ahead and subscribe. Let me know in the comments what to check out or if you have any questions (or fears) that needs addressed.
I'm looking for writers with which to trade drafts and critique in order to improve together in this craft. If I can put out one quality piece a month that generates thoughtful discussion this will have been worth it. I'm also interested in talking to real people in real time. I suspect a lot of the delusions and innuendo on which society operates become irrelevant when we connect directly with others by phone or video. Get in touch if any of that sounds interesting.
Look at that. It's been like 20 minutes since I started writing this and AI hasn't turned off the lights yet. It's either not self-aware (yet) or has decided to keep us around (for now). I'm going to keep paying for these things not to kowtow to Roko's basilisk but because I'm lazy and I plan to write them off as soon as someone subscribes.
Hey, since OpenAI is a 501(c3) doesn't that mean the $20/mo is already tax-deductible? Probably not. I hope you enjoyed this post. Thanks for reading and have a great day!
That was a lot of fun. I see you all out here talking about AI, Ukraine, hydrocarbons, charisma, and cancer drugs. I can't wait to jump in, mostly in comments to start. I've got a chapter on curating your sources of information and I feel Substack is the best place to do that in 2024.