DjangoCon US 2023: Don't Buy the "A.I." Hype 

I thought he was going to give a view that was going to say these things will have no impact. But he chose to say we need to be careful with how we use these things (LLMs). Which makes sense. It was a good talk

Fair point. Exactly happened on crypto hype a few years ago. Sometimes we need to step back and see what is really happening.

An incredibly mature talk on such a hot topic. Bravo sir! 👏

The greatest irony of "Dunning-Kruger Effect" from the talk is that this is not Dunning-Kruger Effect, but nobody read the paper, everyone just repeat the chart

I was like "How did you get your talk up so fast!" As always, incredibly impressive, engaging and fun. Love you, friend!

Absolutely and utterly brilliant. I've been saying the same thing-albeit less eloquently-to anyone with ears. Whether they hear or not is another matter.

Can't help but notice the video yelling the truths on this has very few likes and views.

Brilliant talk, thank you!

A minor correction on the AI pie diagram. Current AI isn't just 1/6th of the approach. They currently use Machine Learning, NLP, Decision Making (to an extent), Object Recognition, and Robotics is being integrated with it now. This means that only 2.5 of the 6 pieces of the AI puzzle aren't being done currently, though they are working on it. Additionally, while I agree that AI is currently over-hyped, I think the presenter is incorrect when he compares current AI to the 3D-TV, and other tech that went no where. There's a key difference here. Current AI, even in its limited state, improves the rate at which you can work, it reduces costs, and makes some mundane tasks easier. Anything that reduces costs, or makes life easier is not a fad that is going to go away. It may not live up to the hype, but it's not going to disappear either.

This video is not going to hold up well. I already use AI to enhance so much of my work and life. He is so wrong on this one. Anyone who listens to him is going to be left behind. This technology is still in its infancy and it has many challenges, but it's well on its way to disrupt almost everything.

Very thoughtful talk, helps one see more of the world's real problems.

AI is a bigger deal than any of those tech fads you listed. Hype and irresponsible uses aside, the underlying machine learning tech is transformative in a way that the metaverse and blockchain never could have been even if they were as big a deal as the techbros made them out. Machine learning solved the protein folding problem. Machine learning found improved sort algorithms that are already merged upstream in the LLVM libc++ library. The previous code was hand tuned assembler and hadn't changed in ten years. Machine learning has come up with matrix multiply and hashing algorithms that beat the best humans had been able to do. While searching for new chemical synthesis paths for some existing pharmaceuticals, a machine learning algorithm produced 40,000 new potential chemical weapons, some predicted to be more toxic than VX (it also independenly invented VX). None of the other tech hypefests in our lives involved technology powerful enough to do these things. AI/ML is different. I do agree with you that turning loose these LLMs trained on god knows what random internet data was the height of irresponsibility. But any powerful new tech is going to be abused by the unscrupulous.

"Facts are not discovered, facts are not created, facts are simply acknowledged. A truth on the other hand, is almost the opposite. Truths are those things that are not simply acknowledged, but must be discovered, or created."

Hey Tim. Kyle from Penn. Good going.

FTX should be the biggest "Red Flag" that tech is dead

I don't think it's all hype but we are way too soon in the game.

100th like! Great talk!

As a person who fully believes the hype, i did enjoy this talk. Downplaying AI's current state is like downplaying a flu pandemic. Exponential Tech is difficult to comprehend, and comparing it to past tech after decades of Moores law is a mistake.

I also feel the "A.I" hype is overrated because the Tech Industry is becoming stagnant. Just watch an episode of "Silicon Valley" and it gives you an idea of how the different tech companies are so competitive, but can be so not independent in thinking and just bickering over who has the better version of '"the new thing".

This guy is a goof ball in his own right. Sure machine learning is being overhyped so Silicon Valley bros can secure funding but he seems to be personally offended by a tool. Also he doesn’t understand what the dunning Krueger effect actually is

When it comes to stock investing, you may be right. When it comes to the way "AI" (i would rather say Machine Learning) is and will be changing the world in near future - you are wrong. Chat-GPT may be overhyped, but remember that there are tons of ML applications that flourish and people don't know about.

Though I don't think it does Deep learning justice to compare it to web3... I think it's more comparable to some tech like the Internet or the C programming language.

this was a very powerful video until you sidetracked into second life a bit too deeply, then picked up, but bogged down n FTX, MS, etc. sorry.

This talk is unhelpful. It does not explain how AI is being overhyped. As a programmer, he undoubtedly knows that he can now do the work of several days in three hours. With self-healing orchestration techniques, you can now get code that is tested and sent back until it works. This is serious stuff in one domain. In video, we have seen the Chinese Kling deliver results that appear to outpace OpenAI's SORA. This is not trivial; it changes an entire industry. These are two examples of profound changes to industry arising from AI, and I cannot see how they have been overhyped. If anything, their true disruptive potential has not quite been fully expressed yet, but it's here now, being used right now. That said, the only part I agreed with was that this is not intelligence.

ai is very useful to save time and easily increase productivity which in turn creates more profits, that said … you can’t stop this title wave. 🌊 it’s real. Pray to Jensen 💚🖤🇺🇸

Imagine telling people to reject AI in 2023...

Well, the people who jumped into the hype train of blockchain were wrong. Many of them are staying away from the AI hype

There is some solid points in here about ethical use and alignment but these comparisons just fall short for me... AI is already providing immense value in so many domains and is changing work life in the information age for good. AI ins't overhyped. It's overused as a term. AI has been used for decades for the dumbest things. State of the art neural nets of today are already doing things we didn't think were possible just a few years ago and there's a million more ways to teach neural nets useful concepts.

There certainly is hype over the current state of AI (machine learning, LLM's), but it definitely has real use cases, differently from metaverse, or Blockchain. I know, cause I use it daily. So, even if for some reason, it stopped improving today, it would already be a piece of disruptive technology. But it has not yet stopped improving, and we don't know were this will lead to.

17:00 I will give you three names. Tell me if any of their tunes have changed: Eliezer Yukowsky, Connor Leahy, Robert Miles. - This is not hype. This is reality.

This is awesome but you should review your view on "A.I." without getting to argumentative claiming it is only Machine Learning is simply incorrect. It is Deep Learning (often seen as a part of Lachine Learning). It is also Natural Language Processing. I didn't see Deep Learning on your graph so assume it is part of Machine Learning. NLP is a separate track though. In short, yeah it is in a massive Hype Cycle. And it is AI.

Lol bro is saying "Don't buy the AI Hype" while my everyday job (I work mostly with Django) ALREADY has transformed A LOT. I won't name the LLMS I use, no free ad lol, but they already play a huge role in my development process. Yes I know their weaknesses - like refactoring a huge codebase - and I'm not even trying that. No need to waste time. But lotta other things, they work really well IF you know what you're doing. Idc about exponential growth or singularity, it might not really happen in the next decade or even longer. But AI has already transformed programming, and anyone who can't adapt, will be thrown away. I already see how companies and projects incorporate AI into their development processes, and it's inevitable that it will continue to happen

Honestly, very disjointed and unconvincing talk. First of all, the semantic squabble over the term Artificial Intelligence is presented not with its actual history or the place in the scientific field of AI, but through the lense of a layman and a linguistic nitpicker. Artificial intelligence is the name given by the AI scientist John McCarthy in the 1950s to the field that studies any machine that can mimic elements of human cognition and to said machines as a whole. If you have a problem with that scientific term the time has already passed, and you should not misunderstand it for something else entirely, laymen usually confuse it with AGI, you could have dispelled such confusion instead of adding to it. More coherency and research would have been great. And I do not know for what reason you decide that AI is not artificial, but no, it is artificial and not natural, it is man-made. This whole semantic tangent was completely unnecessary and wrong. Second of all, concerning the main part of your video, I want to confidently state that analogy is NOT an argument. What you did is you showed past tech trends and said that AI will be just like them, that is not an argument, its an analogy. And secondly, some of the examples provided actually DID match the hype, if not initially, in the long-term, such as internet or Big Data (another one not included would be social media which also matched the hype eventually). True, there was the dotcom bubble, but it would be very wrong to say that the internet somehow was just a fad and didnt eventually match the hype. Just because there is a bubble does NOT mean that the technology that is behind is useless or not going to be fundamentally revolutionary. As for crypto it did not match the hype (at least yet) but it does have utility and is already pretty useful for unjustly sanctioned people of countries like Iran and Russia. Overall, this is a very low level of argumentation, it does not attack any of the main points of the "AI is not pointless hype" side and does not produce any of its own. All it has is analogies which is not an argument. Now to some minor things, the idea that it was the foreign actors who swayed the election of 2016 was not found to be true and is nothing more than putting your head into sand and denying the shifted political situation that many were unprepared for as they were not listening and looking to the political will of a certain subset of a population, and such explanations only deepen that view and deny that population any agency. And yes you can make up a fact, that is a perfectly acceptable phrase with the definitions of that word, such (wrong) semantic nitpicking adds nothing to the point and further confuses the listener. The talk would have been much nicer if at least engaged with the "Ai is revolutionary" arguments and either provided counter-arguments to them or provided your own as to why it is not. Currently, there are multiple high-profile academics and NGOs who are warning the public of excessive danger of AI systems precisely BECAUSE they are powerful and could be so revoluionary. You dont have to be a "tech-bro" to see the clear and direct danger not only to any political system but to the entire human race.

Interesting. But it was def not just "4 people in a RU troll farm" 😂 we got alota smart folks all thinking the same things like that and that in itself proves dudes point

ppl who think SBF was the end of crypto live in alternative universe. In this one, crypto just went federal

Great talk but yeah what the fuck do we all know

I like how he doesn't understand the first thing about AI. he is saying developers choose to program hallucinations???? Also AI is already crazy beneficial for design/software development companies.

Well, this didn’t age well… I get his case - I just don’t agree with it. There is a huge difference between where AI currently IS, where it’s going and any thing like Crypto etc. It WILL impact the entire world and we need to be vigilant and not ignore this as a fad.

people are just starting to realize that many of the things humans do don't actually require much creativity or thought beyond the given instructions western digital art over the last decade or so has notably become more and more limited to specific styles, with much of it being fan art of intellectual properties following premade design choices and compositions. what makes money in their society is a very narrow and limited subset of what is actually possible, and when such extreme repetition in their "expression" is the majority of their popular art it has been easy to replicate that with statistical learning software

This guy is a sophist.

Dude confidently espouses debunked conspiracies from 2016 while asking to be taken seriously

People make mistakes all the time. Does this mean they are useless? Sorry but I couldn't find meaningful arguments in this talk. AI is real and it is more intelligent than 90% of the humans. It optimizes your work and performance. No arguments can deny that.

So he became part of the Ai hype by getting speaking gigs for assuring people that the hype he is part of isn't real... kudos. Also, he is wrong, but that's another topic.

This will age like milk . after sora ai destroy video stock industry and porn industry

AI is not a hype. Codex, chatgpt are mature enough products. Saying AI is a hype is the new hype 😂

LLMs making things up is not a bug, it's a feature, and it's the most important feature one could ever hope for. LLMs (in particular, small 7B ones) are exactly the missing piece of the puzzle to make everything else work. So this dismissal of such a massive achievement is really uncalled for. On the other hand, what else to expect from the web coders, right?

"The voice of one crying in the wilderness". I mean, just compare the number of views to videos which praise AI and only "juggle" the buzzwords. My question is what happened to AI from 1950s? (Then 1970s and 1990s.) Where are they?

He literally has no idea what he's talking about. He needs to read Hinton, Sutskever, Rob Miles. His understanding ML is just incorrect. We don't really know how intelligent LLMs are. We've come so far with just scaling. People say "LLMs can't do ___" then a few months later they do it. They don't do it because a programmer wrote a new thing to make that one thing work. New functions emerge just by scaling the neural network. To suggest there is some fundamental hard limit on what these models can do just isn't supported by facts. We have found no such limit. Also the amount of times some models give incorrect information is greatly exaggerated. If you're using the best models like claude 3 opus or GPT-4o, you really don't see that often. If you claim that "ever" is a problem, do you think that asking a human would ever yield a wrong answer? It is not reasonable to expect perfection. They are already very good.