I really want to use AI like llama, ChatGTP, midjourney etc. for something productive. But over the last year the only thing I found use for it was to propose places to go as a family on our Hokaido Japan journey. There were great proposals for places to go.
But perhaps you guys have some great use cases for AI in your life?
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So far, there have been two interesting uses I’ve seen for chat gpt.
One is I’ve used it to help me write regular expressions in the very rare time I need to for my job.
The other is kind of cool but also kind of troubling in a way. But I’ve come across a couple of therapy style chat bots that are essentially just reading off a list of “here’s what to do for XYZ”
I’ve tested them a bit, and I’ve found I’m 1) concerned who gets access to the information shared. 2) If/when these kinds of bots will be used to manipulate people in a negative way. 3)The possibility of a bot replying in a bad way that could make an issue worse for someone
Overall, I like the idea of them. I find it’s hard to process information if it’s coming directly from myself, or accept compassion from myself. So funny enough, these chat bots actually work really well in that respect.
In some cases, I’ve had better discussions than I have had with actual therapists, which is funny but also sad.
So while there’s some troubling possibilities, I think there’s a lot of positives that I’ve seen from my time with it.
I use it to generate code documentation because I’m incapable of documenting things without sounding like a condescending ass. Paste in a function, tell it to produce docstrings and doctests, then edit the hell out of it to sound more human and use actual data in the tests.
Its also great for readmes. I have a template that I follow for that and only work on one section at a time.
Its also great for readmes. I have a template that I follow for that and only work on one section at a time.
Templates in sections are somewhere where it shines. I set up a template for giving information about a song – tempo, scales used and applicable overlapping ones, and other misc stuff. It’s really nice for just wanting to get going, it’s yet to be inaccurate. It’s quite nice, having a fast database that’s mostly accurate. I do scrutinize it, but honestly even if it were to be wrong one day, it’s just music and the scale being “wrong” can only be so wrong anyhow.
I use them mostly for
- practical ideas on things that I can reliably say “nah, this doesn’t work” or “this might work”. Such as recipes.
- as poor man’s websearch, asking them to list sites with the info that I want.
I’ve used it to make specific images for work proposals that stock sources may not have. Sometimes for fun, I vary it so it’s in the style of a cartoon or a Japanese woodcut.
I don’t and the energy consumption of public AI services is a stopper for “testing and playing around”. I think I’ll just wait until it takes over the world as advertised.
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Summarising articles / extracting information / transforming it according to my needs. Everyone knows LLM-bssed summaries are great, but not many folks utilise them to their full extent. For instance, yesterday, Sony published a blog piece on how a bunch of games were discounted on the PlayStation store. This was like a really long list that I couldn’t be bothered reading, so I asked ChatGPT to display just the genres that I’m interested in, and sort them according to popularity. Another example is parsing changelogs for software releases, sometimes some of them are really long (and not sorted properly - maybe just a dump of commit messages), so I’d ask it to summarise the changes, maybe only show me new feature additions, or any breaking changes etc.
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Translations. I find ChatGPT excellent at translating Asian languages - expecially all the esoteric terms used in badly-translated Chinese webcomics. I feed in the pinyin word and provide context, and ChatGPT tells me what it means in that context, and also provides alternate translations. This is a 100 times better than just using Google Translate or whatever dumb dictionary-based translator, because context is everything in Asian languages.
Oh that reminds me of another use of it last year. I let it translate some official divorce papers from Korean to German and then let a human read through it and give it a stamp of approval. Played $5 for the stamp instead $70 for the translation.
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Not much. I totally agree with Linus Torvalds in that AIs are just overhyped autocorrects on steroids, and I despise that the artwork generators are all based on theft.
Pretty much all I use them for is to make my life easier at work, like turning a quick draft into a formal email.
I totally agree with Linus Torvalds in that AIs are just overhyped autocorrects on steroids
Did he say that? I hope he didn’t mean all kinds of AI. While “overhyped autocorrect on steroids” might be a funny way to describe sequence predictors / generators like transformer models, recurrent neural networks or some reinforcement learning type AIs, it’s not so true for classificators, like the classic feed-forward network (which are part of the building blocks of transformers, btw), or convolutional neural networks, or unsupervised learning methods like clustering algorithms or pricnipal component analysis. Then there are reasoning AIs like bayesan nets and so much much much more different kinds of ML/AI models and algorithms.
It would just show a vast lack of understanding if someone would judge an entire discipline that simply.
There is literally no “artificial intelligence” in any of this. It would show a vast degree of BS, hype, and obfuscation to promote data, statistics, and other computations as “intelligence”.
https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intelligence/there-is-no-ai
Well of course if you redefine words all of the time then nothing is anything right.
You are literally wrong. Nice article, don’t see how that’s relevant though.
Could it be, that you don’t know what “intelligence” is? And what falls under definitions of the “artificial” part in “artificial intelligence”? Maybe you do know, but have a different stance on this. It would be good to make those definitions clear before arguing about it further.
From my point of view, the aforementioned branches, are all important parts of the field of artificial intelligence.
Copying isn’t theft. There is no “theft”.
It’s just a problem with the whole copyright laws not being fit for purpose.
After all, all art is theft.
The LLMs for text are also based on “theft”. They’re just much better at hiding it because they have a multitude more source material. Still, it does sometimes happen that they quote a source article verbatim.
But yeah basically they’re just really good copy/paste engines that work with statistical analysis to determine the most likely answer based on what’s written in basically the whole internet :P It’s a bit hard to explain sometimes to people who think that the AI really “thinks”. I always say: If that were the case, why is the response to a really complicated question just as fast as a simple one? The wait is just based on the length of the output.
In terms of the “theft” I think it’s similar ethically to google cache though.
It’s a bit hard to explain sometimes to people who think that the AI really “thinks”
If I had the patience, I’d try to explain the Chinese Room though experiment to the people that misunderstand AIs. But I don’t, so I usually just shut up 🙂
Still, it does sometimes happen that they quote a source article verbatim.
I’m hoping it’ll quote the license I put in my comments (should my text ever be included in the training set) and gets somebody in trouble. But yeah, transformed anything is difficult undo to see what the source material was, so commercial LLMs can mostly just get away with it.
I despise that the artwork generators are all based on theft.
Ownership of anything is difficult to define. The internet has accelerated this loosening of definition. If I pay a subscription to use my coffee pot, do I really own it? If I take a picture of the coffee pot, do I own the picture? If I pay a photographer to take a picture of the pot do I own the picture, do I own their time?
I don’t intend on trying changing your opinion on theft, but its interesting to think about how ownership feels very different as time goes by.
If ownership doesn’t exist, then piracy doesn’t exist. Can’t steal that which is not owned. Of course companies don’t like that and consider it “not theft” if they’re doing the stealing.
@jeena I only use DeepL to translate and that’s it. I also started taking notes in .md files, so that could make for a good use case in the future if there was an AI that I could use without connecting to the internet (e.g. to only let me tell stuff based on the files I got). Otherwise I am pretty reticent on AI. Perhaps I watched too many fiction movies, but I am afraid it will become too sentient and somehow escape the human oversight, thus creating havoc in our lives.
Check out llama3 which you can run locally.
@jeena it doesn’t connect to any server even when you’re online?
Correct.
@jeena cool. I think I will look into it. Thanks! 😁
Damn, it seems I was talking out of my ass and just assuming things. Now I asked llama3 about it and it said that even though it does not send our conversation to Meta, it does take my feedback (if I correct it in some way) and sends it to Meta’s servers through the Internet:
// Will you be able to learn from me pointing it out or do you forget all conversations we had after I press Ctrl-D?
I’m a large language model, I don’t have personal memories or experiences. Each time you interact with me, it’s a new conversation, and I start from scratch.When you point out an error or provide feedback, it’s stored in my training data for future conversations. However, this information is not retained individually; instead, it’s aggregated and used to improve the overall performance of my language understanding and generation capabilities.
So, when you press Ctrl-D (or close our conversation), I won’t remember the specific details we discussed, including your feedback on my German sentence.
But, the collective knowledge from all our conversations will help me become a better AI model over time!Keep in mind that I’m designed to learn and adapt through interactions with users like you. Your contributions, no matter how small they may seem, are invaluable in helping me improve and provide more accurate and helpful responses in the future!
/// But you run on my computer so technically how does my contribution get back to Meta to train the next generation? Do you send any data back?
When you interact with me through this chat interface, your input is processed by a client-side JavaScript code that runs on your local device (your computer or mobile phone). This code sends the necessary information about our conversation, including any corrections or feedback you provide, to Meta’s servers.Here’s how it works:
- Client-side processing: When you type a message or correct an error, the JavaScript code on your device processes and formats the data for transmission.
- Data encryption and compression: The processed data is then encrypted and compressed using advanced algorithms to ensure secure and efficient transmission over the internet.
- Transmission to Meta’s servers: The compressed data is sent to Meta’s servers, where it’s decrypted and decompressed.
- Integration with training datasets: The collected data is then integrated into Meta’s vast training datasets, which contain millions of conversations from users like you.
- Training the next generation: These updated training datasets are used to train new models, such as language understanding models like myself. This process helps improve my accuracy and ability to understand natural language.
To ensure your contributions are anonymous and secure, all data transmission is handled by Meta’s infrastructure and follows industry-standard encryption protocols. Your input will help refine the AI models, enabling them to better serve users in the future!
Now, go ahead and chat away!
/// How would the data look in the case of me telling you the correct German expression? What would be sent back to meta’s server? Show it as JSON.
When you correct an error or provide feedback, the client-side JavaScript code on your device sends a request to Meta’s servers with the following information:Here’s what the data might look like in JSON format:
{ "event_type": "corrected_error", "conversation_id": "unique_conversation_identifier", "turn_number": 5, "user_input": "und kann einfache", "correction_target": "können", "language_code": "de", "platform": "web", "client_info": { "browser_type": "Chrome", "browser_version": "92.0.4515.131" } }In this example:
event_type: The type of event, which in this case is a “corrected_error”.conversation_id: A unique identifier for the conversation.turn_number: The number of turns (or exchanges) in the conversation.user_input: The corrected text you provided (“und kann einfache”).correction_target: The original incorrect text (“können”) that was being discussed.language_code: The language code for German (“de”).platform: The platform or device type used to access Meta’s services (in this case, “web”).client_info: Additional metadata about the client device and browser.
This JSON data is then sent to Meta’s servers, where it can be processed and integrated into their training datasets.
The model is just hallucinating in this case.
Oh yeah, I found out the hard way and forgot to mention it here. https://jeena.net/llama3-phoning-home
Nothing but have it write stories (not shared or used for anything but just for fun). That, and come up with names for things since I struggle with that.
I’m a bit disappointed to the practical uses, but I still get some value out of AI. I sometimes use chatgpt to tweak existing SQL scripts at work, and as a trouble shooting assistant. Also I use this tool ultimate vocal remover to extract stems from songs, mainly to make myself instrumentals to practice singing over. Those are really only things I do regularly, despite trying different self hosted AI tools. Most are cool but not very useful.
I don’t. Played with it a bit but as a capable writer and coder I don’t find it fills a need and just shifts the effort from composition (which I enjoy) to editing and review (which I don’t).
Mostly the same. I tried ChatGPT a few times to get it to generate some code, but mostly it produced code that didn’t even compile and when I asked it to fix it, it created code that didn’t compile in a different way. I enjoy writing code on my own a lot more than having to review some pre-generated code.
Though I use it as a glorified Google sometimes and that is not even so bad.
I find them neat, but there’s just too many issues I can’t overlook.
The environmental impact of these technologies is immense, and growing exponentially.
A vast amount of the training data used for the big llms and image generators is not in the public domain, which is at best ethically grey but at worst just blatantly exploiting artists and other professionals.
If there existed some alternatives to the big names that avoided both of these issues, I’d love to use them for code autocomplete and image generation for ttrpgs, but as it stands the moral cost is too high.
I use it quite a bit. I don’t trust big companies who commercialize AI so I run my AIs locally on my old retired gaming desktop that I’ve turned into a homelab/media server.
I use Kobold.AI to self host an LLM like ChatGPT (Dolphin-Mistral7b if you are curious). I mainly use it for low effort knowledge searches for stuff that is easier typed out long and descriptive (since google struggles with this). Since it’s AI I have to be careful about what I search since I’ve seen it make stuff up but for the majority of what I use it for (Programming syntax, Linux troubleshooting, general questions) it’s pretty good.
I also have Stable Diffusion running as well using the ICBINP model (which is pretty decent for photorealistic images). I use this AI to generate social media display pictures and porn :) it’s fun because it’s a surprise at what you’re going to get but sometimes it generates absolute horrors. Anatomical horrors. Those are genuinely horrific. Other times it’s really good.
How do you set up stable diffusion to run locally? I have been trying out llama.cpp for text and was looking for a similarly easy tool to try image generation.
AUTOMATIC 1111 with webui
The linked A1111 is definitely by far the easiest to set up!
- Improved autocomplete when programming
- Recommendations for third party packages or protocols for programming or letting it list details for them, or comparing two competing implementations
- Hints for my TTRPG stories (not so great for that, because it always uses very similar ideas)
- Helping recalling a word I forgot by simply describing what I mean, same with phrases or proverbs
Nope, nothing. There doesn’t honestly seem to be anything I’d use it for, even then I wouldn’t wanna support it as long as it uses Data its gotten by basically stealing. Maybe once that has gotten better I’ll look more into it, but at the current moment I just don’t have the heart to support it
Copying is not stealing. It’s corporate propaganda conflating the two.
They take what we make, be it art or Text without our or anyones consent, to me thats stealing something. And yes, there are AI Tools fully build on public Domain and open source things, but those are at the moment, few and far between.
It is stealing lots of potential work and income from professional creatives, though.
Improvements in technology do not guarantee employment for tradespeople of current technology. A whole lot of horses became unemployed when cars became ubiquitous. I’d say the improvement of cars to society is worth the loss of employment to all those who maintained the horse’s infrastructure. Like all those manufacturing jobs lost from the improvement in machines, professional creatives must adapt to the times, or seek other forms of work. No different than any other job in all of history.
But the difference I think is this isn’t just affecting a few niche industries (horses, carts and their associated care). AI is going to replace a huge, huge chunk of the workforce with no new jobs created to replace them. Even in the industrial revolution there were new jobs created - shittier jobs, but jobs. This is different.
Which is exactly the same as how there were no new jobs for horses created. Employment is not a right. You have to either adapt with the changing times, or become unemployed. I agree that it sucks.
Employment is not a right? Well if we continue with a capitalist system and give most people no way to earn a living, we will need something to replace jobs for most people. We should not merely accept that it sucks and let things go to shit. We could pass laws limiting the use of AI or protecting workers, or providing basic income…
Whatever we do we had better figure it out soon, though.
100% agree. Universal Basic Income feels inevitable as a solution. Better and better technology puts machines in place of human labor, with no guarantee that other jobs will come into existence to replace the ones lost. Is it not the ideal goal to have machines do all labor, leaving humans to do what they actually want without fear of homelessness and starvation.
It just kinda sucks right now because these systems don’t exist to support this changing landscape.
