ZosGrinderMar 29, 2023
Brandon Silverman
I think one underappreciated thing that's happening with ChatGPT is that it's reminding people of how joyful it is to do totally mundane searches, i.e. looking up recipes, and *not* get indundated with a million fucking ads.
Mar 27, 2023 at 4:54pmWeb
Show threadFreediverXMar 27, 2023
@brandonsilverman
We're just getting started. The enshittification stage comes later.
Show threadTHMMar 27, 2023
@brandonsilverman Yes, it is nice to get real results, and even phrase your search in the form of a question.
Show threadstephen judkinsMar 27, 2023
@brandonsilverman still in the early part of the cycle where they try to get people excited. if/when they achieve lock-in any ads will be deeply insidious. see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Zmh5hbgHFI
Truman Show Product Placement

YouTube
Show threadstephen judkinsMar 27, 2023
@brandonsilverman my vague feeling of optimism is that it may be pretty hard for the big players to get a stranglehold on AI tech, it seems like the barriers to entry are pretty low. My fears of Peter Thiel's Robotic Oppression Force are receding
Show threadflere-imsaho 🇺🇦Mar 27, 2023
@stephenjudkins @brandonsilverman srsly? do you realise the amount of resources you have to throw at an llm to produce acceptable results?
Show threadstephen judkinsMar 27, 2023

@mawhrin @brandonsilverman i've been following it fairly closely and the cost of training appears reasonably affordable and is dropping pretty rapidly. At cloud costs it's in the low $10Ms now, which wouldn't be too hard to raise. It's likely it will get a whole lot cheaper

https://blog.heim.xyz/palm-training-cost/

Estimating 🌴PaLM's training cost

How much did Google's 530B parameter model PaLM's training cost? Something around $9M to $23M.

blog.heim.xyz
Show threadLaurens HofMar 27, 2023
@mawhrin @stephenjudkins @brandonsilverman https://simonwillison.net/2023/Mar/17/beat-chatgpt-in-a-browser/

the costs are dropping extremely rapidly, Alpaca 7B is roughly equal to GPT3 (not chatgpt's 3.5) quality, and an estimated training cost of 85k USD.

Obviously, gpt4 is wayyy more expensive, but alpaca proves that finetuning is cheap, and its now open source available. Lots of implementations also dont need the wide skills of gpt4, but instead need to be finetuned to specialize, so lower performance than gpt4 is fine
Could you train a ChatGPT-beating model for $85,000 and run it in a browser?

I think it’s now possible to train a large language model with similar functionality to GPT-3 for $85,000. And I think we might soon be able to run the resulting …

Show threadstephen judkinsMar 27, 2023
@laurenshof @mawhrin @brandonsilverman yes, and even the "expensive" training costs are well within the bounds of medium-sized investors. It's simply not a big enough moat to protect the big players. If someone can credibly spend $20M to dethrone MS/Google there will be investors lining up with their checkbooks
Show threadAaron Ross Powell ☸️Mar 27, 2023
@brandonsilverman @mmasnick Also, even when you’re not getting ads, search engines have tuned themselves to be basically shopping engines, and so searches are overwhelmed by results from e-commerce sites.
Show threadMichael WymanMar 27, 2023
@brandonsilverman if it can also just give me the f—ing recipe without the novella sites write in front of it solely for SEO, that’s totally worth it!
Show threadMark HughesMar 27, 2023
@brandonsilverman
Why do people still tolerate ads, is it an iOS thing?
Show threadMark HughesMar 27, 2023
@brandonsilverman
Oh, and if you think GPT doesn't have ads 🤔
Show threadroyalMar 27, 2023
@brandonsilverman I don't see that lasting long.
Show threadAndrew GruenMar 27, 2023
@brandonsilverman Ads yes... but also, there's magic to a reduction in drudgery. Ask it to do something that you *know* how to do, but would be annoying, and get it back instantly? Even if not perfect, it really feels like magic. Ask it to write some complex regex or spreadsheet formulae for you...
Show threadBrandon SilvermanMar 27, 2023
@ag I never said there wasn't lots of other magic as well. There clearly is.
Show threadAndrew GruenMar 27, 2023
@brandonsilverman fair! I guess ad blockers just mean that I’ve been hit with other magic more!
Show threadGoldaMar 27, 2023

@brandonsilverman yes! I am guardedly hopeful that we can center human intention in a new way using these AIs that grok grammer & logic.

They can do what you mean and we should expect them to.

Maybe the best guard for now is to grow that cultural expectation.

Show threadPhilMar 27, 2023
@brandonsilverman Have you verified that the ingredients are correct? I’ve done a number of searches where biographical details are pulled from other related people, not the subject I was searching on. Sounded plausible until I did further non-AI research
Show threadjmhtMar 27, 2023
@brandonsilverman They'll not be far behind. Perhaps even more subtle ...
Show threadPer FunkeMar 27, 2023

@brandonsilverman

Oh, you just wait. You'll get the surprise of your life.

Show threadErwin Rossen 🔸Mar 27, 2023
@brandonsilverman It's trivially simple to block most ads, so people still seeing ads must somehow like them.
Show threadAaron MoshiashwiliMar 27, 2023
@brandonsilverman okay, but what is the quality of recipe you get in response? Presumably it's an LLM's guess about what chicken Kiev is, statistically, which doesn't sound amazing.
Show threadJValenteMar 27, 2023
@brandonsilverman "Couldn't agree more! Using ChatGPT (not bing)has reminded me of how amazing it feels to search for something mundane, like a simple recipe without being bombarded with adds or social media buttons, in a conversational way.
Show threadBrawliMar 27, 2023
@brandonsilverman so... It's growing with novelty, and will probably die with ads.
Show threadDouglas PhillipsMar 27, 2023
@brandonsilverman BBC has a whole recipe collection completely free of ads. Also free of "in 1860 my great great great grandfather was born in a horse trough in the middle of a Siberian winter in the desert .." crap. https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes
Recipes

BBC Food

BBC Food
Show threaddecibyteMar 28, 2023
@brandonsilverman maybe AI is not the solution to their problems, but ad blockers are? Reminds me of the old days when some people insisted on solving every problem with blockchains.
Show threadPeter Paaske JuulMar 28, 2023
@brandonsilverman