@skinnylatte From Reddit:
That explains 99% of AI features companies add. They are not very needed and sometimes unrelated but it gives them free PR (and even hate PR still gets their products into the headlines)
@skinnylatte the worst bit about this is the C-level buyers, the ones who sign the contracts... they seem to collectively be under the delusion that if you don't have an AI feature, that you're producing a shitty and less forward thinking product.
quite literally companies lose deals if they don't have AI.
AI is added by companies just to enable them to sell to others.
it's so crappy, every company adding AI knows it's shit, the users know it's shit, and yet you can't sell the product if you don't have AI.
@rrb @skinnylatte increasingly not possible.
like buying a TV that isn't "Smart" is increasingly not possible.
no iPhone or Android being sold does not have AI features being shipped out of the box, Mac will follow, Windows is already going ahead.
and the nerd crowd on Linux, GrapheneOS, etc... aren't the mass audience of users, and still won't totally be able to escape this stuff.
every helpdesk we interact with, what we think are online travel agents... all AI, as far as the eye can see... and it's all a shit hellscape.
@furiousv you probably shouldn't. using autoconfabulators, be it ironically or not, in response to a post that clearly doesn't care for the current hype is simply rude. hope that helps.
@furiousv of all the neuropathological terms that could be used with regard to the output of the generative systems, confabulation is the most accurate analogy. (as any analogy, it does have its weaknesses, but compared with completely inadequate “hallucination” it's rather benign.)
note that it describes the mechanism of operation, and does not grant cognitive abilities to the systems that don't have it.
@furiousv i somehow hope that you don't call neurology an immature branch of medical sciences, especially in contrast to the computer sciences.
when you note that “hallucination” became a standard term used overwhelmingly by the ai researchers and already well established in journalistic descriptions of the machine learning, you quickly see why opposing more accurate “confabulation” on the grounds that it may increase the confusion is counterproductive.
anyways.
i'm not interested in litigating the use of specific words in my idiolect; the pertinent part of the conversation, which you seem to have missed entirely, is that replying “ironically” with precisely the type of shit that the previous poster criticises is — rude.
the examples of such rude behaviour include an llm-generated text when the previous poster criticises LLM slop, hilariously over-the-top misogyny when the previous poster criticises misogyny, a ridiculously bad example of racism when the previous poster criticises racism, etc., etc. et ad nauseam.
that is really all, and thank you for the conversation.
You're telling me you *don't* need an AI chatbot/data scraper in your PDF reader? What even are you doing with your life?
@skinnylatte
None of the IT departments I've ever been a part of would want to add something as ill-defined as AI. The last thing we'd need is something unpredictable to manage.
Perhaps a director or VP, but not any frontline manager let alone team.
@skinnylatte Hello, could you replace your alt with
photography, titled "Every company's tech department", of three people sitting, with text on them. A woman (unmet user need) holds a man (product manager) who is smiling at another woman (unrelated AI feature)
this way both the alt and the picture carries the same joke :)
@skinnylatte But the whole purpose of product managers is to make sure that the *developers* don't go off on pet projects and ignore the people paying their salaries, the users.
And I have come across product manager who do work like that. Though as customers tend to change their minds faster than the features they've requested can be built this can end up just a tad frustrating for the developers.
false
1 - most program mangers are clueless about user needs
2 - we must be able to say in our marketing "we innovated with AI" is Job 1
@skinnylatte Ooooh those sweet sweet VC funds that now chain your company to the weirdest antics. Do you remember taking them?
Also, what’s on, once AI is yesterday’s news?
Steve Jones
Adrianna Tan
Шуро
Kevin Riggle
Ornella 🍉
Dee in Lisbon
RRB
Jernej Simončič �
Albert Hickey
Marc Haber
furiousv
flere-imsaho 🇺🇦
Lars Marowsky-Brée 😷
Bastian
Softwarewolf
Ruben
eviloatmeal, resident Death Stranding 2 apologist (arch, btw)
Tipa
Anthony
witchescauldron
missed_sla
Bruce Elrick
Mage 🏳️🌈 🚏
Tim Ward ⭐🇪🇺🔶 #FBPE
Sterling Hammer 
Dekks
Jay
tony 🏳️⚧️ 🏴 🚴🧗🏻
HoldMyType
elevatebart