Both of those sound kinda dystopian. Because you just know the first one will start getting gamed by every company from the grocery companies trying to SEO the AI, to the big fossil fuel companies trying to get you to drive your car more.
In other words, we need to recognize that the real problem is that companies will always try to game the system for product differentiation/market segmentation purposes, so the real solution is for the government to create and enforce standards.
I can’t wait for the technology to get basic enough where I can roll my own self hosted instance of it without it taking months. Because I can see a way it’s doable without a centralized service to get around that. But for mass consumer level, I can see that becoming true. But this can be applied to every bit of software currently. All of it can be ran by you, if you have time. Hell I’ve got my own cloud (hosted at my home ) music streaming service.
A lot of that is doable now - like, how many grocery stores are even nearby to someone, so writing a custom bit of code to check the website of each, one by one, and looking for previously manually-identified items could be automated.
One major downside is prioritization of large chain stores at the expense of smaller mom & pop ones that don’t maintain a constant inventory system accessible via the web. Someone could even volunteer their time to build them a database backend, but still they’d have to see the value in actually scanning the items every time or else it would quickly fall behind.
Yeah, it wouldn’t be a huge lift if you’re familiar with python.
That’s precisely what I was thinking, but reflecting more on it, I don’t know how well it would handle the webpages, so maybe some other languages mixed in too (I’m out of date, maybe PHP?). If AI writing code worked it would lower the barrier, but I’m not certain we’re quite there yet to trust anything it would create.
Python web scraping is just fine, with the llms you.have the option of either extracting the html and having the LLM read.over that, or having a vision ai OCR the page and make its own decision of what to extract.
#!/usr/bin/env python import groceryshoppingoptimizer
Yeah I was going to say, I’ve done similar for clients with regards to competitor pricing
How is making a picture of me as an astronaut “dystopian”?
The same technology can be used for widespread, low-cost, highly convincing misinformation and propaganda campaigns
The moon landing wasn’t faked, but I was there instead of Neil Armstrong. See these pics?
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You think the world will be better when literally anyone can create convincing misinformation and propaganda? Personally I prefer when that power is limited, even if there are still powerful entities that can do it
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I think everything gets better when it’s less centralized
Would it be better if everyone had access to nuclear weapons? Or biohazards?
Some things in this world, the fewer people that have access to them, the better. In a perfect world, we might have nobody have access to those things, but I’ll settle for few rather than many.
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Uses tons of energy which could ironically be used to get you to space for real (a lot more energy but at least you get a real experience).
Ok am I wrong or was this not what Google Assistant used to be in the 2010s?
It still is. Problem is if you ask it this you might have to triple check what it tells you because it will most likely be wrong.
This is so sad. I bet Alexa can’t even play Despacito anymore if I ask her to.
When that song went viral, it was played so much that the collective power draw could have powered 40.000 households for a year.
Best I can do is give you a list of the worst deals for you that will bring your money to the corporations who paid me the most with a nice helping of targeted ads for all eternity.
The farmer would like to not work to make food for these kinds of people. She would love for these kinds of people to feel the heatwave of summer on their back as they pinch yet another tomato for tomorrow’s salad.
Before AI, farmers never had to deal with the market and compete for customers :(
Thanks AI is becoming the new thanks Obama.
But they could make AI work for the farmers too! Like maybe grow vertical farms and let AI robots pick the fruit.
What the fuck are you talking about? How is wanting lower grocery prices a bad thing?
The farmer, who works really hard, would get paid less money.
American farmers don’t grow food for humans, they grow food for livestock. Immigrant workers do any hand picking. American farmers are paid by the government to grow corn. Growing corn is easier than growing a lawn.
So who grows your food?
The sticker says Mexico
Farmers own supermarkets now?
Yeah farmers hates AI.
I mean, if they could focus AI on farming so she doesn’t have to, she probably would be happy?
Yeah, im skeptical of AIs to accurately do any of that, at least not any LLM. Like, LLMs aren’t going to be could at decision making based on ever-changing real time information.
However tradition software and apps with good data practices can do this…indeed some of them have existing for like a decade in certain markets…they themselves becoming systems people and companies try to gamify to sometimes counter-productive outcomes.
Yeah, llms are a really great advancement in language processing, and the ability to let them hook into other systems after sussing out what the user means is legitimately pretty cool.
The issue is that people keep mistaking articulate mimicry of confidence and knowledge as actual knowledge and capability.It’s doubly frustrating at the moment because people keep thinking that llms are what AI is, and not just a type of AI. It’s like how now people hear “crypto” and assume you’re talking about the currency scheme, which is needlessly frustrating if you work in the security sector.
Making a system that looked at your purchase history (no real other way to get that data reliably otherwise), identified the staple goods you bought often and then tried to predict the cadence that you buy them at would be a totally feasible AI problem. Wouldn’t be even remotely appropriate for an llm until the system found the price by (probably) crudely scraping grocery store websites and then wanted to tell you where to go, because they’re good at things like "turn this data into a friendly shopping list message "
To be completely fair, the confusion is because of the marketing. You and I both know that Tesla cars can’t really drive themselves for the same reasons you outlined but the typical person sees “autonomous mode” or “self-driving” applied to what they are buying.
People treat llms like something out of a super hero movie because they’re led to believe it to be the case. The people shoveling in the money based on promises and projections are the root cause.
People are just really bad at prompt engineering and so they aren’t good at getting LLM’s like gemeni and GPT to do what they want
You can train it, within conversations to get good at specific tasks. They’re very useful, you just gotta know how to talk to them
The issue is that it’s a language model. You can go a long way by manipulating language to get useful results but it’s still fundamentally limited by languages inability to perform reason, only to mimic it.
Syntax can only take you so far, and it won’t always take you to the right place. Eventually you need something that can reason about the underlying meaning.
I would even say llms is an important part of what eventually will become an AI and not a type of AI in itself.
There’s a conflation of terms.
One sense of AI is as artificial intelligence: a huge swath of computer algorithms, techniques and study relating to machines measuring inputs, pulling information from them, and making decisions based on what they deduce. Sometimes it’s little more than a handful of equations that capture how to group things together by similarity. What matters is that it’s demonstrating demonstrating intelligence or some manner of operating on knowledge.
The other sense of AI is as a synonym for “a general purpose intelligent system of at least human level”.
Your phones auto complete is an example of the first sense of AI. The second sense doesn’t exist.
There’s a tendency for people to want to remove the AI label from anything they’re used to, or that isn’t like that second sense.
AIs use will never see it reach its full potential because companies are liars and deplorable entities that have historically demonstrated they will screw over everyone and everything for profits.
In another universe, AI would help people. It would tell you that you are eating too much bread. It would alert you that you do not eat enough foods in vitamin A. It would tell you that your late night habits of staying up lead to poor health. It would tell you that going to be before 12am leads to you having much better restorative sleep. It would tell you you’re sitting in one position too long. That if you left now, you’d make it 5m early. The list is endless. A machine always calculating and monitoring your status; in an effort to improve your life.
In our universe it’s going to tell you to buy Anamin’s sleep aid, now 50% off. Then track how much you take it so the company that sell you more. Or pass the data to their “partners” so they can sell you more crap.
Your proposal sounds bad too. Not malicious like AI in this universe, but unbelievably annoying.
The first iterations of Google Now felt useful in a similar way. Google was already squeezing data out of me, but it did so by marketing a palatable service.
Yeah, but then idiots felt it was too invasive, so now Google just collects the same amount of data or more… but without as much benefit to the user.
It is, sadly, all very poorly focused on the things that won’t benefit society as a whole, but once again, the ruling class. I really wish AI had not been developed with the intent to make white collar jobs obsolete. If only these same brilliant minds had been focused on robotics and processes that humans don’t want to participate in.
They are, look at modem factory or mine they’re full of robotics, now injuries are incredibly low and many of the most dangerous jobs are as safe as a well run office
We’re in a big transition as new technologies are developed, it’s going to take time but there are are some huge things coming soon - llms and cv are enabling fsctory toolarms to leave the factory so expect cooking arms, repair arms, construction arms, micro factories bringing manufacturing back to local markets… sure it sucks we don’t have it now but don’t hate the early stages of it just because it’s not finished yet.
What does creating pictures of astronaut kittens or videos of perpetual zooming have to do with any of that, let alone creating poems about robots and ninjas?
That’s not AI, that’s just a program easily able to do that without all the “AI” garbage technology. Why do we all of a sudden think that every solution computing does is “AI” now? For fuck’s sake.
A program that can deduce what groceries you need to buy is a type of AI. AI is a much broader category than the LLM stuff that everyone is currently paying attention to. Most things in the field of AI don’t have particularly awe inspiring appearances, so companies don’t feel compelled to advertise that it’s AI because people expect AI to be “like people” which precludes the vast majority of applications.
if (amount_of_bread < bread_threshold) list.bread++;
That’s not AI. That’s simple programming. Holy fuck, people have no idea what computing even is any more now that this sci-fi buzzword AI is out there.
I’ll let you in on a little secret in the field of AI as someone who’s job is AI (computational linguistics); AI is, and has always been, mostly just a fancy word for algorithms, a bunch of if-else/switch/match statements. It doesn’t have to be complex…
That being said, you’re underestimating how much engineering would go into a program that calculates the groceries you need to buy and where/when. Especially so if it’s supposed to be automated, e.g. you’re not just putting in how much bread you have currently every time you use bread.
I think where we drifted apart was when I was paying attention to the usage of the word “anticipate”.
If you run out of milk every week and buy more, an intelligent system would know to add it to the list even though you currently have milk. You also would probably want the system to figure out whatbread_thresholdwas dynamically, rather than having to hard code it.It kinda sounds like you’re the one with the sci-fi conception of what AI is if you think that simple machine learning and pattern recognition algorithms aren’t examples of it.
Because the average person out there could not make “just a program”… the promise of AI is that anyone can be a programmer now…
In reality, I would bet a full morning of prompting ChatGPT wouldn’t produce what the lady is asking for accurately
So AI can magically see everything in your refrigerator, pantry, etc, right? Oh wait. You need a program created so you can enter what you have and don’t have.
Goddamn, AI is now literally magic to you people. Pathetic.
Well there’s probably like, cameras and sensors or something in there, right?
Yea, I kind of got the impression the end game is for there to be a system that can literally see what’s in your fridge and figure out what you are low on. Processing the images is definitely something AI would be useful for, as well as figuring out what “low” means for individuals. If I have less than 5-6 different hot sauces, I’m running low.
Not the end game… they literally “demoed” this…
Of course, as at least half the stuff out there on “AI” it turned out to be faker than an Elon promise… but it’s reasonable to see people believe this is possible considering the vast amount of fake advertising all AI companies have been pumping
I’m referring to what kind of system the person who Tweeted is imagining. Something that doesn’t exist yet as far as I’m aware. I’m not sure of what product you’re referring to. All the existing ones are pretty useless IMO.
So AI can magically see everything in your refrigerator, pantry, etc, right?
It was literally showcased in what turned out to be one of the many AI scams
https://youtu.be/22wlLy7hKP4?si=cImQy0BQjySRR7ep&t=1058
It has also been demoed by others as well… so yes, AI powered devices can or are supposed to be able to “look” into your fridge
Sigh. I give up. Enjoy being taken over by AI, you masochistic freaks. For fuck’s sake. This is the easiest goddamn thing ever to understand, that AI is a bloated, power-sucking, privacy-stealing, cheating, stealing pile of garbage. Everyone should be on the side of “fuck AI”. Everyone.
Of course, I guess I should have expected a world full of fucking idiot flat earthers, vegans, Trump supporters, goddamn theists who still believe in a goddamn invisible sky friend in 2024, moon landing denialists, and so many other brainless cretins to actually support one of the worst technologies to ever come along. How fucking dystopian is it for a goddamn company to have all this data of your food stocks when you can build an application that you manually fill out and update to rely on itself and nothing else to tell you when things are going down? Enjoy pointing a camera at your damn food 24/7. People are literally this goddamn lazy.
How about this: go to the store every week and write down what you need before you leave? How fucking hard is that? Is that too fucking 20th century for you? Too much brain power needed?
Fuck all of you AI loving freaks who are destroying this society.
???
Dude we are misunderstanding each other here…
I am not defending AI at all… in fact, from your comment it seems we both hate it equally.
All I was saying is that they have already “shown” this magical scanning of fridge as a function already available… it turned out to be complete garbage and fake (as most of the AI over hype they have pumped) but they did. Please note I actually posted as “in what turned out to be one of the many AI scams”
Here is the vid where they “showed” how this is supposed to work and how it actually flops hilariously: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLvFc_24vSM
Going back to the original thread, my intention was to say that AI was promised as a way for anyone to be a programmer now. That is not me saying it, that is literally what was pumped out. To an extend, a very short extend, this is true. You can get a little script going or maybe even some heavy Excel spreadsheet manipulation with AI tools and not knowing any code. But that is the end of it.
What I have been able to confirm AI doing is about 30% of what is being promised out there… literally the “pro” vs “nailed it” discrepancy. I also agree with you in that this bit of AI that does work is not worth the harm we are doing to jobs, the environment, etc
i thoguht it was copypasta
Best we can do is sell you a $200 piece of plastic that promises to but doesn’t actually do these things, then automate your job away.
Well, Google tried it with their Assistant many years ago, people got scared how smart it was and it got nerfed into a ground.
I want self organising files and things so bad. I need an algorithm to look through my digital library and fix the metadata.
Look up llama fs
And it’s a service because AI
And the service costs a subscription fee
And the service quality drops once it saturates the market
And the service now contains ads
And the grocery stores can pay to promote their store when it is not the most affordable option
And now it’s not economically feasible to not use their service
This is disgusting, but true.
Upvoted
The cheapest way to get groceries in the States has always been do all your grocery shopping in the same store, preferably a discount store like an Aldi, instead of cutting coupons and going to multiple different stores due to the simple fact that the gasoline used for driving around is most likely going to cancel out any saving from shopping around, an unfortunate side effect of America’s car centric infrastructure.
You don’t really need an AI to make this list, plus, I think there are apps that already trying to do exactly that.
However, getting a computer to draw yourself in ridiculous situations (usually with an equally ridiculous number of fingers) is great entertainment.
This kind of small scale optimization is not really the best use case for AI anyway. Considering the actual cost of running that kind of code at a large scale… I’m not convinced the savings are worth it even setting aside the petrol issue.
AI doesn’t need to be in the hands of consumers. It should be a step removed, working behind the scenes to make all those basic foods cheaper before you even go shopping. It should be optimizing supply chains, reducing production costs, and otherwise making us more efficient at a societal level.
Which, well, in some cases it already is. Sadly many companies just use it to optimise their marketing 🙄
going to multiple different stores due to the simple fact that the gasoline used for driving around is most likely going to cancel out any saving from shopping around
I wouldn’t jump to that conclusion. Here in suburbia, there are different stores every couple miles. Figure even a 5-mile detour to go to another store, and that “simple fact” of gasoline used turns out to cost less than a dollar. I save that much on a pair of salad kits by going to one store over another, and it’s really more of a one-mile detour anyway. Plus, there are simply things that one store does better than the other and I like to take advantage of that too.
Seriously. Sale items are often several dollars cheaper per item. It is well worth the time and gas driving to several stores unless they are very far apart, then just roll that into another trip. Some big “what could it cost, 10 dollars?” vibes off that comment.
You also need to factor in opportunity cost or concede that your free time doesn’t have value.
If you value your free time at the same rate that you work hourly, then suddenly it’s very hard to save money by spending more time. If you value free time as overtime equivalent, it gets even worse.
Dude, we all waste more than enough time on any given day that we don’t need to worry about the value of losing a half hour to save tens of dollars on our grocery bill. I can’t imagine anyone using a site like this one is particularly worried about lost productivity during their free time.
It’s not about “lost productivity”. It’s about what you enjoy doing. If you don’t enjoy shopping for food, it’s the same as if it were part of your job.
There are only two logical situations:
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You dislike shopping - you should go to one store maximum because your time is valuable. Get everything else delivered online. Do something you like in your free time.
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You like shopping - you should work for a shopping delivery service in your spare time. You can make hundreds of extra dollars and get your own groceries at the same time
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30 minutes for 10 hours and all the unnecessary waste of gasoline? Hard, hard pass. In fact, I’d work so that this was punished, what a waste of a limited resource that harms the environment.
Standard IRS reimbursement rate per mile driven is 67¢ per mile this year, which is essentially the per-mile average cost for driving a car. But like, with this sort of thing everyone has their own personal calculus for what they want to optimize for. Do they want to save as much money as possible? Do they want to have fun while shopping? Do they want to shop as quickly as they can? A lot of people will balance these priorities against each other and come up with a solution that isn’t optimal in any one specific area.
It’s honestly not that far off I bet. Though I bet once it does become viable, we’ll find that the best option is buying all your groceries from Amazon, or something like that.
The thing is, you don’t need technological advances for that. Someone could have built that ten years ago. No one did, because it’s a lot of individual, non-trivial steps.
Those stores may have that data online somewhere, but how you request it and in which format you get it, that’s going to be different for each store. Then you also need information where those stores are and need to integrate some navigation functionality between them.
And ultimately, your target users aren’t exactly willing to spend money, so good luck covering costs for your service.
You are basically giving all the reasons for why this hasn’t been done yet without AI, but none of the reasons for why this can’t be done with AI.
I know we like to be cynical about the advances of things like chat gpt, but I have found many uses that are very similar to what you describe below. Taking a problem that could be solved with tedious brute force and combining data from multiple sources and knowledge of a scripting language, but instead I ask chat gpt in just the right way and it will get me the answer.
Also worth noting, grocery store prices are easily accessible online now whereas 10 years ago they were not. It’s just a matter of time before AI gets access to this data and can integrate into whatever models it uses.
Well, no, I’m just saying the text generation stuff did not change anything about that process.
It can try to generate the right text for the requests to grab this data, but since there’s going to be practically no documentation for that out there, it will struggle to do so from just its training data alone.So, what you do instead is that you have a human figure out the API of each store that needs to be integrated + ideally a transformation of the returned data into a shared, documented format. And then you tell the text generation a trivial way for it to generate the text to make use of that.
So, basically you preface the whole user conversation with “If I ask for prices of Todd’s Tater Tots, run./prices_todds_tater_tots.shfor that and use the result according to the JSON schema inprices_store.schema.json.”.And then you repeat that for all the other stores, for some math API and some navigation API and then you’ve got a chance that the text generation figures out the right semantics of how these things should be called.
Semantics is what it’s good at. But the rest is still the same process as ten years ago.I think you’re under selling what chat gpt is capable of. It is able to take outside data in and use it with the rest of the model. Bing does it with its web index data. I was able to ask what the cheapest gas station near me is and bing gave me a list, likely coming from gas buddy.
Or, it wouldn’t ever be truly accurate. That would be an anti-capitalism tool and mangled or completely killed in order to ensure profit
