Yeah, a really basic and relevant example might be if I have a meeting coming up on my calendar, an agent can pull info from my LinkedIn about the participants, check their socials (so I can make small talk and chat), research info about some of the topics in the meeting (e.g. pull stats, recent articles, etc.) and summarize it to prepare me for the meeting.
Like, that's actually useful but probably not super sexy.
This is a good example of where we should have stigma attached to AI: a partner showed me their CRM that summarized my profile for them. It was creepy in how far into my online life it had dug. It also said, along with the creepy things, that I was "risk adverse" and "only acted when I had complete information" ... as a startup CTO this is both laughably wrong and could have career implications.
LLM's can be tuned to do what you want it to do. It can be as simple as "summarize these notes" to as questionable as "rate this candidate for this job".
The former is mostly just a reduction in task and condensation of information. The latter is the opposite: an extrapolation of some conclusion based on given information.
This is not the fault of an LLM, but the people using it and the use cases that have been designed. An AI assistant that just gave me the facts (condense) rather than generate its own conclusions (expand, extrapolate) is fine, IMO.
I get what you are saying but, the same way ad targeting can be used to "serve me more interesting ads" and "surveillance" can be used to find missing children and sex trafficing victims, it isn't being used that way across the board.
My writing ability might not be good enough to make them flashy here on HN, but I am sure that each of the scenarios could be made very flashy or moving with a bit of imagination & Apple's still-excellent production quality.
One of my favourite ads is a very simple story that is made gut-wrenching by creating an emotional connection and some great production value: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2lv_Xl1e4U
Yes, but usually it is pretty bad for the learning experience, if the teacher stumbles and needs time for himself to figure things out. It can work out to become a deep lesson, if the student is highly motivated and the teacher good at explaining his thought processes - otherwise the student will stand aside and get bored and loose interest, as the problem is way beyond his level to understand.
In college, I took a discrete math course with the world's most unprepared, distractible professor. It was incredible. He would come in with nothing planned in particular, we could ask about concepts from the textbook and he would invent a problem on the spot. Then he'd run through various problem-solving strategies until one worked. I learned so much about how a mathematician thinks from this class.
This was in sharp contrast to my calculus classes where the results were basically thrown at you fully-formed. If you're lucky, you might get to walk through a proof with the professor, but you're never going to see how they mentally navigate the search space.
I personally balk at the idea that everything is at our fingertips. Yes, a lot of information is readily available, but it is mostly very shallow, poorly referenced, and in short form. It is actually very hard to find in-depth, long form content on the Internet these days. You have to look very hard. Almost the only way to find it is by crawling dedicated forums and getting links that way. It's still much easier to find information in books.
It's not only distraction though. The phone is a window to the internet which offers all the knowledge of the world.
And in 'my day' I spent a lot of time at the library which was full of thrillers and comics. And spent most of my time learning about computers and electronics.
It's not an unprecedented problem and offers new offers new opportunities too.
Your comment is totally irrelevant to the conversation regarding schools, though. Smartphones are massively corroding kids' brains these days, and YES, this is much worse than TV or video games back in the day.
You've definitely used Twitter, even if just to see an announcement or something. Too much important information has been posted there over the last decade for anyone online a lot to have been able to avoid it.
I only use windows as a dumb terminal to access my Linux system remotely. I'd require a significant payrise to consider using windows as a daily driver.
Not talking about using it as a daily driver, just contrasting your claim that you have never used twitter with the people who claim to have never used windows over a 20 year period of working or hobbying in IT.
> I have definitely not used Windows for a hobby for 19 years
I never said you did. In fact, I never said anything about you using Windows at all, yet twice now you seem to have taken what I wrote as though I did.
I did not take it as you saying that I did, both times I was trying to make the point that those people that you don't believe exist include me as one of them.
Fair enough. I guess I'm just incredibly skeptical of your claims. Certainly I can get you've never used Windows as your primary OS, but that's quite a different claim from never having used it, which is the specific claim I was saying some people make. And it strains incredulity to believe you've never clicked on any Twitter links because of how prevalent the platform is.
oh I did use windows as my primary OS, it was Windows 95/98/XP on desktops, which started my hatred of it, and then I was stuck on a very poor laptop and windows mistake edition for 3 months before I switched to Linux for good.
yes, I've clicked on Twitter links the same way I've clicked on ads, by accident.
> oh I did use windows as my primary OS, it was Windows 95/98/XP on desktops,
So you're definitely not in the amp of people who never claimed to use Windows, which is the group I was comparing you to.
> Yes, I've clicked on Twitter links the same way I've clicked on ads, by accident.
That's what I'm skeptical of. Twitter sucks, but sometimes it's literally the only place the source of a story is, like if Elon makes a newesworthy post or something. I'm not saying you had an account or anything, but literally never clicking on a link, hundreds of which have been submitted as HN stories alone, beggars belief.
> like if Elon makes a newesworthy post or something
hahahaha! thank you! starting my day with a belly laugh is a great privilege!
but seriously, just because most of the tech bros admire him, doesn't mean I need to hear every idiocy that comes out of his deranged mind.
even when it's something truly interesting - I watched the space x double landing on YouTube a few hours after it happened several years ago - I don't need to be informed of every single thing the instant it happens.
> hahahaha! thank you! starting my day with a belly laugh is a great privilege!
That's a really weird reaction. Like, yeah, he's a clown, but he has still made tweets that get discussed in thew news and here on HN.
> doesn't mean I need to hear every idiocy that comes out of his deranged mind.
Elon was just one example. Plenty of other tech people, hackers, politicians etc post important stuff on twitter. I mean, juts search HN for submissions with twitter or x.com as the domain. There is no shortage of submissions, and it beggars belief you have never clicked on one.
I really don't understand the obsession with the idea that I must somehow be interested in something just because somebody else said it. I've been offered free newspapers before - I told them thanks, but I don't have a cat.
> I really don't understand the obsession with the idea that I must somehow be interested in something just because somebody else said it. I
That's not the point I'm making. The point I'm making is Twitter has been too ubiquitous and important for you to have never clicked a submission at this site or a link to it somewhere, and not just accidentally.
> But I guess I'm an outlier like most people on this site that promotes learning new things though text-heavy presentation.
Bold to assume this is what most people on this site are like!
I'd hypothesize you're still an outlier in that group in these regards. And that's great! But lots of the data points to people like HN's general demographic still being pulled away from long form text content and towards synthesized/aggregated content served via mixed media. There's still just such strong cultural elitism in the notion of reading a book to learn something, it's not super sexy to claim on a messageboard.
> Bold to assume this is what most people on this site are like!
Really, look at the front page of this site. If you're not interested in dense textual content you would have closed the tab within 1 second. I really love this site but most people won't even see the story titles, their brain just registers "a confusing jumble of text" and doesn't even try to engage.
> But lots of the data points to people like HN's general demographic still being pulled away from long form text content and towards synthesized/aggregated content served via mixed media.
And what data is that?
> There's still just such strong cultural elitism in the notion of reading a book to learn something, it's not super sexy to claim on a messageboard.
I don't think I'm elitist or sexy. Just different. I hate video content because I can't consume it at my own pace (usually much faster than the content offers because video is tailored for the slowest possible denominator). And it's difficult to build context ("where am I within the story") when skipping forward or backwards. In text this is pretty seamless.
I don't tend to consume textual content in a start to end sequential manner. But I jump around. Because some stuff I already know, some i really want to deeper dive on, some I need to refer back to later. This is much harder with video.
> If you're not interested in dense textual content you would have closed the tab within 1 second.
And your theory is that all commenters have read those posts in their entirety? I'd suspect far far more readers jump to discussion rather than fixating on the post, as is evidenced by the amount of people that comment on and respond to topics irrelevant to the posts in question.
> And what data is that?
The slow death of academic and long form text medium in general? And the boom in mixed media aggregation happening? Or just the last 20 years of long form text as a whole?
But also, the work that's gone into building my company and its product.
> I don't think I'm elitist or sexy.
That's good. But I again think that your perception of this topic does not match society. Which isn't bad! But I think it's important to note our own biases and perceptions.
> I don't tend to consume textual content in a start to end sequential manner. But I jump around. Because some stuff I already know, some i really want to deeper dive on, some I need to refer back to later. This is much harder with video.
Yes, one might suggest that mixed media suffers from a lack of tooling for these types of challenges (aforementioned company)
I use instagram as a tool to follow certain parties and tattoo shops (for announcements of visiting artists). Since about a year they've spammed their 'reels' on me and make it much harder to avoid them. But every time I look at them it's the same brainless crap as the tiktok-branded videos that people send on to me via whatsapp or telegram.
I don't really understand how people are being captivated by this. It's all so hollow, shallow and brainless.
Youtube is no better. Only full of corporate marketing drones like marcus brownlee and linus tech tips. All very hollow, sponsor-ridden and glossy. The only one I appreciate is dave from eevblog but he posts pretty rarely these days so I never really watch youtube anymore.
There have been some really unusual moments -- like reviewing the pitch deck of a monk, or being suddenly involved in a design crit for a class of masters students.
And some are extraordinary. Last week I spoke with a hugely successful children's book author who has just opened a kids' playground that builds familiarity with the fundamentals of computing!
Sometimes I feel like I'm able to help. By being a second pair of eyes on what the other person sees as ordinary, or even tangled and overwhelming, we can identify a way forward or point of focus for a project or artistic practice.
But my favourites are the everyday conversations where we find common ground, and I learn something and they learn something too in the exchange.
I find that when I'm required to explain an opinion or some knowledge that I take for granted, the act of verbalising it illuminates new ideas, and talking to somebody else about it helps me find new perspectives.
It's the highlight of my week, and has been for 4 years now!
Science, at its core, is supposed to be a method of systematically seeking truth through rigorous experimentation, observation, and reasoning. When intentional dishonesty enters the equation, it undermines the entire purpose of the scientific endeavor
Science, at it's core, is figuring out how to make better TVs and phones with longer battery life. Truth-seeking should be done during your lunch break. If you have one.
