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Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
I've been self-hosting my own AI stuff for a bit using Ollama. I use it to create images, design a tattoo, run a chatbot, write emails, write code and commit-messages, run a D&D game, explain concepts that I'm not familiar with, translate languages, etc.
I've been toying with different models, and I'm not sure that I have one that I would say is a goto. I am liking Ollama to be able to easily pull in and test new LLMs, as well as Stable-Diffusion for image generation/modification.
Supermaven code autocomplete in vscode is really nice
The only thing that comes to mind is I wanted to make a shell script that moved every file in a directory to another directory, but one at a time, slowly, and I didn't want to learn sh from scratch, so I asked an LLM for a script that would do it.
The script didn't work, but I was able to figure out how to fix it better than write it from scratch.
I felt bad for the environment I was destroying, and I would never pay for this shit.
If we are talking chatbots I see them as another level of abstraction to search and is useful but I have concerns on the energy use. Other uses I have encountered is just sorta a convenience thing. Where it can do a bunch of things that individual software can do but at a one stop shop. I have not directly been involved in other aspects but im aware how they are baked into things like facial recognition and tracking and such.
Dont use AI chat as a replacement for search except on popular subjects with broad consensus. Which unfortunately is when you generally don't need it.
its fine as long as it gives references to check out. I mean its not fine because of the energy usage but if that is solved I would use it for search. again as long as it tells me sources.
If what you want is sources, a regular Google search will do a better job if it's a popular subject.
Chatgpt and it's kin will be inexplicably creative in its choice of sources, and in its summary thereof. And in the sources themselves sometimes.
If it's something you care to get right, just skip AI.
If it's meaningless, then it's harmless in its potential inaccuracy
See just like a normal search its up to you to evaluate it. ai search wise is as I said another abstraction. Not using it is like turning off the little snipets search engines do nowadays and going back to just clicking an each and every link. The problem is people just taking the response as gospel with no critical thought.
Like a normal search, except it only provides like 4 links, it's choice of links is even worse than Google SEO, and it provides inaccurate summaries of them rather than relevant text snippets.
So yes, people just taking the response as gospel is bad. But also it's just worse than search if you're using it as a search.
You go to the sites just like you would with the snippets and if they don't pan out you can rephrase or just go back to a normal search. This is what I meant by a level of abstraction. You can skip the scroll and check what it gives you and if its good you save time (much like the snippets saved time) and if not you are no worse and you correct or go slightly older school. As much as I agree the chatbots can be wrong I don't find them to usually be off base. They generally find pretty decent resources. Now when they are wrong they can be really wrong but its no different from someone searching and just using the first return without going through the results and evaluating each link. It reminds me when a neighbor in the dorms was explaining html to me as he was making a site and I was like. Why? Just use gopher.
But like I said, if you're using it like a search then it's just worse.
It's way slower, it's way fewer results, and the summaries can never be as accurate as verbatim quotes of the pages themselves.
The only reason to use AI is to get the summary, and then you're not using it as a search. Maybe it provides some references you can use to fact check, but that's still not a search.
You have to remember, LLM's are literally just auto-complete. They don't have the goal of giving you an answer or resources, they have the goal of providing text that would complete the conversation in a way that looks similar to what they've seen before. If they can give you a biased answer supported by cherry picked references, that's just as valid of a completion, because it looks like how such a conversation might be completed.
In situations where the response can be inherently assessed for correctness (eg art, but that's a whole other ethical issue) or correctness can be automatically verified (eg programming) then there is some value in limited use.
Although I personally think the implications of putting it in the hands of business owners isn't worth it, that another topic.
The less results is a feature. Again when it works the currated list should be stuff you would have landed on by evaluating snippets. Look. If I search for something I do a search then scroll through results. I may or may not find some links to go to. I go to them and if any are promising I maybe make them a new tab but if not I modify the wording of the search and this thing can repeat a few times but usually less than three. In the end I tend to have about three websites I use. The chatbot acts like asking someone to look into it. When they get back to you they give you the "answer" but you talk with them and go over what they found to make sure. Why? Because if you were ok with them going forward then you would just give them that role. Its the same thing with the chatbot. Its like an assitant but you are responsible for the output and need to evaluate it. It can save time but does not always. I have asked someone to do something and after evaluation I have to do it myself because it was not good enough and I go send them to do something else or have them shadow me while I do the thing. The nice thing with the chatbot is you don't need to make sure its time is being utilized efficiently so you don't need to give it a new task and it does not have the capability of shadowing you (if it did then jobs would really be in trouble.)
Normal Google search is already curated.
And when you're done with the list of curated results and you want more? You click "next page" to get the next page of curated results. 10 curated results at a time.
The chat bot is NOT like asking someone to look into it, it just LOOKS like it. Don't anthropomorphize chatbots, because then they trick you into thinking they're doing something they're not.
You evaluate the references they send you, but you don't evaluate the references they don't send you.
This is a problem with Google SEO too, but LLM equivalent is already a problem and getting worse.
I disagree. Its using a similar process when evaluating what makes a good result. Im not anthropomorphizing it I am making a comparison and such things are about comparing things that have similarities but are not the actual thing. I don't think its a human. Again its why I say its another level of abstraction. Your response here would suggest people should stop looking at search results that are organized and go through each and every result not utilizing the algorithms that are looking for that best fit. The chatbot is just more algorithms. Look I don't care if you use it or not this whole thing was just me saying I see value in the same way I have seen value in each level of technology as it has come. Don't get me wrong I don't use it for majority of search just like I have not embraced technology before but I do realize at some point I likely will be utilizing it extensively although hopefully with more options that are as not mainstream and if im lucky local.
For some situations I used Copilot to script an auto-translator for XML-EPG in bash.
For that it worked okay enough.
The only time I've seen real use from an ai tool is at work, we are using it to get data from an invoice/quote/etc from the pdf that we get emailed to data that we can put in the database. It's not a perfect solution, but there isn't really anything else we can find other than getting people to do it, which is slower and more expensive.
I think I’ve found the one area where LLMs really excel: business books / self help literature. The real life examples in that genre are pretty awful and dragged out as it is, so you can’t really make it much worse, now can you? The information density is kept low to fluff up the page count, and oh boy, are LLMs good at that. So, if you want to become a self help guru, but can’t be bothered to write your own book about magical hotels, marriage advice, productivity tips and communication, LLMs can take care of that for you. Copilot has turned out to work well for projects like that.
If you raise the bar, you’re going to have to read and edit the text manually. You also need to keep track of what has already been mentioned elsewhere and avoid repeating them again, depending on the genre. In business books though, that’s not a problem at all.
BTW, if you wonder about the downvotes, it’s because Asklemmy@lemmy.world isn’t a safe space for AI related discussions. Consider posting somewhere else.
I was testing a lot of tools for work (UX), but they all sucked. Basically I just use gpt, cursor for tab coding,l and image generation for various purposes (Leonardo).
Most apps work poorly and using a model directly works better.
I worked on a few apps that use ai without a chat bot, but we found users expected one, maybe that will change in the future.
I chat with llm's to help me remember shit I already know, or to change the tone of stuff I write but thats about it.
I mostly use it to generate smut for gooning. It's useful for that. Chat gpt is absolutely filthy if you get it going the right way.
Do you enjoy providing data companies with your personal porn preferences?
To browse Pornhub with cookies on or with cookies off? That is the question 💀.
