AdditionalPizza OP t1_ivuzq1w wrote on November 10, 2022 at 8:23 PM

Reply to comment by blueSGL in Let's assume Google, Siri, Alexa, etc. start using large language models in 2023; What impact do you think this will have on the general public/everyday life? Will it be revolutionary? by AdditionalPizza

>People already talk to their phones and 'smart home' devices it'd just be bumping up the abilities a notch.

So you think it will be just "a notch" rather than substantially useful? I believe they will become more useful than googling things yourself. When I talk about voice assistants or virtual or whatever you want to call them, I mean the ability to type queries as well. So in that case, it could be for most people the "middle man" between user and internet.

On top of that, they could blast productivity and general knowledge off from those that don't use it. Compare say an elderly person that hasn't touched a smart phone to a 20 something year old college student in terms of technology know-how. I think the difference between someone that accesses their future-assistant and that college student today is a greater gap than that college student and the elderly person. I also think it will likely make the internet much more accessible to people that currently don't use it extensively, and it will have a greater affect on the average person's life than the internet itself did over the past ~20 years. It will hopefully be like conversing directly with the entirety of the internet.

I agree with your last 2 paragraphs. But the business side of things won't really show everday average people AI capabilities.

visarga t1_ivv8pk4 wrote on November 10, 2022 at 9:22 PM

> So in that case, it could be for most people the "middle man" between user and internet.

A big danger to advertising companies, hence the glacial release pace of these language models in assistants.

> they could blast productivity and general knowledge

Already happening: you can't draw? StableDiffusion. You need help with coding? Copilot. They take skills learned from some of us and make them available to others. That makes many professionals jealous and angry.

blueSGL t1_ivvarfl wrote on November 10, 2022 at 9:36 PM

I think companies are going to be scared to be the first out of the gate with LLM tech for the public. Heavily neutered versions will going out first. Everyone is going to be scared of "personal assistant writes N word poem"* or similar ridiculous gawker type headlines. Some people are going to take access to such models as a challenge to create those headlines. This is why I say it will be an upgrade on what we have now but will still have massive limitations in the name of 'safety' even though unfettered models will do much much more.

This is why I think it will first 'go large' in business use cases where they can really put the blinkers on the thing and instruct employees that if it comes out with something incorrect, it's expected, it's 'beta' and to follow a procedure if it happens.

There will be a rise in very narrowly targeted walled garden services with an LLM back end but I doubt they will be used for anything 'general' because scale and scope of the 'safety' problem will prevent it.

Edit: * shortened the title, no news outlet would go with something as verbose as "the personal assistant that writes poems about the N words" that would be a sub heading at best.