A.I. reads the HF main board and creates a podcast

[Divine]

what isn't correct then? that it can be better?

Well, technically a few things.

ai can't make something better since all it does is copy someone else's work. so if you already watch nothing but slop, you'll just be getting sloppy seconds

1.) Does copying or using someone else's work as reference exclude you from making it better?

No. In fact, most of the work in human history involves 'copying' someone else's work and improving it. Generally that's how progress is made in all facets of life. If I watch someone shoot a puck and learn from them, does that mean I can never be better than them at shooting the puck? That is basically what you're suggesting here. You're starting with a false premise.

2.) Is AI unable to do nothing other than copying someone else's work?

Also no. AI is able to create things that have never been created before.

 

[Hennessy]

You're a dope, OP.
I hope you die.

 

[sansabri]

Well, technically a few things.



1.) Does copying someone else's work exclude you from making it better? No. In fact, most of the work in human history involves 'copying' on someone else's work and improving it. Generally that's how progress is made in all facets of life. If I watch someone shoot a puck and learn from them, does that mean I can never be better than them at shooting the puck? That is basically what you're suggesting here. You're starting with a false premise.

2.) Is AI unable to do something without copying someone else's work? Also no. AI is able to create things that have never been created before.

no, the premise here was feeding a bunch of horror films and asking a computer to make new content out of them. where is the progress after this point?

 

[Divine]

no, the premise here was feeding a bunch of horror films and asking a computer to make new content out of them. where is the progress after this point?

Try it and let us know instead of creating an argument without any data.

 

[Osprey]

Yeah. One of those things that can be used for a lot of good, but the negatives will very much outweigh the positives.

I think that it's very much the opposite. We see this with most technologies. The positives far outweigh the negatives, but we have a habit of focusing on the negatives. It's often easier to imagine those... especially, in this case, thanks to movies like 2001 and The Terminator. It's harder to imagine the positives of AI and where it'll take us, just as it was hard to imagine what the internet would become... though some did while others had mostly doubts and fears...

Spoiler: "Why the Internet Will Fail"

The Internet? Bah!
Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn't, and will never be, nirvana

By Clifford Stoll | NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Feb 27, 1995

After two decades online, I'm perplexed. It's not that I haven't had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I've met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I'm uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

Consider today's online world. The Usenet, a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages across the nation. Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers. Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophony more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harassment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen. How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it's an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can't tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure.

What the Internet hucksters won't tell you is that the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. You don't know what to ignore and what's worth reading. Logged onto the World Wide Web, I hunt for the date of the Battle of Trafalgar. Hundreds of files show up, and it takes 15 minutes to unravel them--one's a biography written by an eighth grader, the second is a computer game that doesn't work and the third is an image of a London monument. None answers my question, and my search is periodically interrupted by messages like, "Too many connections, try again later."

Won't the Internet be useful in governing? Internet addicts clamor for government reports. But when Andy Spano ran for county executive in Westchester County, N.Y., he put every press release and position paper onto a bulletin board. In that affluent county, with plenty of computer companies, how many voters logged in? Fewer than 30. Not a good omen.

Point and click:
Then there are those pushing computers into schools. We're told that multimedia will make schoolwork easy and fun. Students will happily learn from animated characters while taught by expertly tailored software.Who needs teachers when you've got computer-aided education? Bah. These expensive toys are difficult to use in classrooms and require extensive teacher training. Sure, kids love videogames--but think of your own experience: can you recall even one educational filmstrip of decades past? I'll bet you remember the two or three great teachers who made a difference in your life.

Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised instant catalog shopping--just point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obsolete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet--which there isn't--the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

What's missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact. Discount the fawning techno-burble about virtual communities. Computers and networks isolate us from one another. A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee. No interactive multimedia display comes close to the excitement of a live concert. And who'd prefer cybersex to the real thing? While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth. A poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and where--in the holy names of Education and Progress--important aspects of human interactions are relentlessly devalued.

STOLL is the author of "Silicon Snake Oil--Second Thoughts on the Information Highway," to be published by Doubleday in April.

© 1995

That author wasn't completely wrong. He was right about the problems of internet shouting, the death of retail and the loss of human contact, but, 30 years later, most of us would probably agree that the internet's positives outweigh the negatives. I imagine that we'll feel similarly about AI in 30 years.

 

[wintersej]

AI is going to do some crazy things in the not too distant future. It's purely baby steps at this point.

We are not close to being prepared as a society.

 

[TruePowerSlave]

We are not close to being prepared as a society.

Doesn't look like it. Most people still don't even think about these things. To them it's some super distant future when it's clearly not.

 

[wintersej]

I think that it's very much the opposite. We see this with most technologies. The positives far outweigh the negatives, but we have a habit of focusing on the negatives. It's often easier to imagine those... especially, in this case, thanks to movies like 2001 and The Terminator. It's harder to imagine the positives of AI and where it'll take us, just as it was hard to imagine what the internet would become... though some did while others had mostly doubts and fears...

Spoiler: "Why the Internet Will Fail"

The Internet? Bah!
Hype alert: Why cyberspace isn't, and will never be, nirvana

By Clifford Stoll | NEWSWEEK
From the magazine issue dated Feb 27, 1995

After two decades online, I'm perplexed. It's not that I haven't had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I've met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I'm uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

Consider today's online world. The Usenet, a worldwide bulletin board, allows anyone to post messages across the nation. Your word gets out, leapfrogging editors and publishers. Every voice can be heard cheaply and instantly. The result? Every voice is heard. The cacophony more closely resembles citizens band radio, complete with handles, harassment, and anonymous threats. When most everyone shouts, few listen. How about electronic publishing? Try reading a book on disc. At best, it's an unpleasant chore: the myopic glow of a clunky computer replaces the friendly pages of a book. And you can't tote that laptop to the beach. Yet Nicholas Negroponte, director of the MIT Media Lab, predicts that we'll soon buy books and newspapers straight over the Internet. Uh, sure.

What the Internet hucksters won't tell you is that the Internet is one big ocean of unedited data, without any pretense of completeness. Lacking editors, reviewers or critics, the Internet has become a wasteland of unfiltered data. You don't know what to ignore and what's worth reading. Logged onto the World Wide Web, I hunt for the date of the Battle of Trafalgar. Hundreds of files show up, and it takes 15 minutes to unravel them--one's a biography written by an eighth grader, the second is a computer game that doesn't work and the third is an image of a London monument. None answers my question, and my search is periodically interrupted by messages like, "Too many connections, try again later."

Won't the Internet be useful in governing? Internet addicts clamor for government reports. But when Andy Spano ran for county executive in Westchester County, N.Y., he put every press release and position paper onto a bulletin board. In that affluent county, with plenty of computer companies, how many voters logged in? Fewer than 30. Not a good omen.

Point and click:
Then there are those pushing computers into schools. We're told that multimedia will make schoolwork easy and fun. Students will happily learn from animated characters while taught by expertly tailored software.Who needs teachers when you've got computer-aided education? Bah. These expensive toys are difficult to use in classrooms and require extensive teacher training. Sure, kids love videogames--but think of your own experience: can you recall even one educational filmstrip of decades past? I'll bet you remember the two or three great teachers who made a difference in your life.

Then there's cyberbusiness. We're promised instant catalog shopping--just point and click for great deals. We'll order airline tickets over the network, make restaurant reservations and negotiate sales contracts. Stores will become obsolete. So how come my local mall does more business in an afternoon than the entire Internet handles in a month? Even if there were a trustworthy way to send money over the Internet--which there isn't--the network is missing a most essential ingredient of capitalism: salespeople.

What's missing from this electronic wonderland? Human contact. Discount the fawning techno-burble about virtual communities. Computers and networks isolate us from one another. A network chat line is a limp substitute for meeting friends over coffee. No interactive multimedia display comes close to the excitement of a live concert. And who'd prefer cybersex to the real thing? While the Internet beckons brightly, seductively flashing an icon of knowledge-as-power, this nonplace lures us to surrender our time on earth. A poor substitute it is, this virtual reality where frustration is legion and where--in the holy names of Education and Progress--important aspects of human interactions are relentlessly devalued.

STOLL is the author of "Silicon Snake Oil--Second Thoughts on the Information Highway," to be published by Doubleday in April.

© 1995

That author wasn't completely wrong. He was right about the problems of internet shouting, the death of retail and the loss of human contact, but, 30 years later, most of us would probably agree that the internet's positives outweigh the negatives. I imagine that we'll feel similarly about AI in 30 years.

It’s been a net negative for kids.

 

[Gaylord Q Tinkledink]

A.I. can suck it.

 

[Clint Eastwood]

I want to abolish A.I.

 

[Osprey]

It’s been a net negative for kids.

Even if that were the case, and I don't believe that it is, you're focusing on the negative instead of the overall positive, as I was saying.

 

[HanSolo]

Not one mention of my OnlyFans... what a rip off.

Your subscription being more expensive than free is the real rip off.

 

[TatteredTornNFrayed]

I thought it was real and waiting for the couple to hand it over to AI. Wow.

Briefly me also, as the voices and inflections sounded fairly realistic. But the more it went on the more it sounded like it was guessing at what might be being discussed, rather actually understanding what was being discussed. Like ooh, Mackinnon missing 3 games could have big implications for the playoff race. Uh, no. The reason he and Makar will miss is it because it won't matter to the playoff race.

 

[Golden_Jet]

Reading is for chumps.

It’s kinda the mainstay of the site.

 

[BB79]

I want to abolish A.I.

Me too. I'd actually prefer physical robots though. We can take baseball bats to those. Much more fun

 

[hangman005]

Your subscription being more expensive than free is the real rip off.

Are you trying to tell me, people don't want to pay for intergenerational trauma.

 

[BB79]

AI is going to do some crazy things in the not too distant future. It's purely baby steps at this point.

I look forward to having my own podcast for 20 years. I'll then reveal to all 2 of my loyal listeners that they've been punked and listening to AI for 2 decades. Suckers!

 

[Bear of Bad News]

It’s kinda the mainstay of the site.

@Troll Stomper is the mainstay of the site. And you don't even have to be able to read to appreciate Troll Stomper.

 

[El Travo]

Briefly me also, as the voices and inflections sounded fairly realistic. But the more it went on the more it sounded like it was guessing at what might be being discussed, rather actually understanding what was being discussed. Like ooh, Mackinnon missing 3 games could have big implications for the playoff race. Uh, no. The reason he and Makar will miss is it because it won't matter to the playoff race.

I mean that's not far off for podcasters/radio hosts who only know surface level stuff about the NHL.

 

[Hobble]

Can we make one of these that summarizes all of HFBoards comments on Sportnet broadcasts and send it to them, so they realize how ass they are?

 

[Mr Positive]

The really scary day will be when a site like HF boards has AI posters to fill out the population. I don't know if I could stay if that happened, as I wouldn't even really know that anyone I was talking too was real

 

[tarheelhockey]

I’m a little surprised that so many people seem to think this is new. It’s been out for a while now.

For those in school — you can record your class, feed it to the AI bot, then get effectively the same information back as a podcast to listen to. It doesn’t replace going to a class where you can ask questions and do group work, but as a review tool for a pure lecture it’s incredibly effective.

 

[Osprey]

The really scary day will be when a site like HF boards has AI posters to fill out the population. I don't know if I could stay if that happened, as I wouldn't even really know that anyone I was talking too was real

I suspect that it won't be hard to distinguish the AI posters from the real HF posters because the former will sound strangely intelligent.

 

[Faterson]

when it comes to the content tough, it's very poor. The novelty factor wore off after 5 min and all that's left is pure AI slop.

Garbage in – garbage out. If you feed it first-class material, the result is no slop, it's not soulless or boring at all. It's then mesmerizing and as good as the source material. It's a podcast, meant to be listened to on-the-go, if you don't have the time to read through something. However, written summaries of everything are always available alongside the sound file in Google NotebookLM.

If you feed it a specific 100-page HFBoards thread (say, on the draft or the trade deadline), instead of the HFBoards homepage, it would summarize the thread neatly, for reading and/or listening, saving your time.

It doesn’t replace going to a class where you can ask questions and do group work

There's a new feature in NotebookLM now where you can actually jump right inside the podcast and start arguing with the gal and the guy summarizing the stuff, interrupt whatever they're saying and ask them questions.

I suspect that it won't be hard to distinguish the AI posters from the real HF posters because the former will sound strangely intelligent.

Also, it will be easily possible to distinguish robot moderators from human moderators thanks to the former being unfailingly polite, mild-mannered, and reasonable at all times, as opposed to the harshness, brutality, and irrationality that are, as we know all too well, the hallmark of the latter.

 

[Faterson]

For a hopefully fun meta-exercise, I asked the gal & the guy to summarize this very thread (right up until post #124). Some of you (such as @Divine, @Golden_Jet and @Osprey) are quoted by name. Enjoy (it's 10:15 min)!