News Linus Torvalds reckons AI is ‘90% marketing and 10% reality’

[Eric Schwartz]

I'm not sure anyone who reads Tom's Hardware needs the creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel to tell us that AI has been more flash than substance.

 

[RUSerious]

This man might be my pc lord amd savior but boy does he make some dumb comments sometimes. The comment was 10% reality. Lets not get it twisted with your personal hang ups.

Exactly. When Linus is talking about Linux stuff - I 100% trust him. When he talks about trends in OSes, applications, development tools and languages - I 95% trust him. Other stuff - well, he's just another guy who maybe be right or maybe wrong.

 

[Mattzun]

A lot of what has been shown from the LLM AI projects is pretty bad.
Training on random stuff on the internet is providing a lot of clearly incorrect results that make you wonder how accurate the stuff that seems plausible is.
The old style google search would usually brings up better info than the current AI search.

Training on curated data isn't nearly as sexy, but is far more useful at the moment.
- Image processing ML trained on good, bad and marginal parts to drive sorting in manufacturing
- Training an AI off a curated set of manuals and FAQs to provide more responsive answers to questions than looking for search terms
- Training on organized ERP data to generate alerts for potential issues.
- Providing good translations for specific contexts (sci fi/tech manuals/Anime...)

The useful stuff doesn't require a ten billion dollar data center
Its often a cheap module for a knowledge management system, ERP or manufacturing robot.

 

[Tonet666]

You know who is profiting from AI ? Nvidia by selling all those overpriced gpu dedicated for AI.
"The more GPU you buy the more money you save." Jensen 2018

 

[hotaru251]

yeah its entirely marketing.

it isnt ai for one & there is no profit to be had w/ it long term. (its extremely niche) compared to how much these rich fools spend on it.

 

[jobmontro]

Folks seem to be spoiled. The AI progress so far would have been extremely impressive and unbelievable 10-20 years ago. AI could be used in any part of your life. Cars, Shopping, Education, Work, Home, ETC. Google and Microsoft seem to understand and will fight it out. Others like Tesla and Meta will want control. The hype is real. It has already helped me save time and I want it in more areas of my life. The part i'm most concern about is government, military applications, or the fact that they restrict the public version.

 

[DS426]

Sounds like his Steve Ballmer-iPhone moment. If legacy tech executives understand new tech they would be the one driving it

And it's better to have these new peons driving "tech" i.e. AI as the savior of humanity!?!?...

Lol definitely cynical on my part but let's ask this philosophical question: where is the middle ground?

 

[Gilderas]

It's not just marketing, it's misunderstanding. Intelligence comes from the latin word intellegre and this means understanding. Nothing more and ai is understanding. Or better: there are 3 steps in ai. ANI (artificial narrow intelligence), AGI (artificial general intelligence) and ASI (artificial super intelligence. Actually we have ANI. It's possible to understand what you want and give you the most possible answer to it. Here is the point: the most possible answer. Why is this important? People think "it's intelligence, so I'm telling it wat I want and I get the answer". Yes and no. If you ask the tool your question in one or two sentences, it tries to give you the best answer, but the amount of answer is huge. These tools don't have memories. They don't know you and they don't know how you think.

Best example: Google says more then 90% of all searches are wrong. More then 90% of all users don't know how to use the search correctly. That's crazy. And now we have AI. It's nothing else then a better search engine. You have to know how to use it. If not, the output is trash.

I'm a software developer and I'm using these tools daily. I learnt a little bit of prompt engineering and I read some papers. It's <Mod Edit> crazy what you can do with ai. My prompts are really long, but I get perfect functions and can use it without testing it. It's mind blowing.

So in my opinion these tool are absolutely crazy and not just marketing. The biggest problem is you have to learn it. It's not that intelligence. It can't think for you. You have to say exactly what you want and more input means better output.