The GitHub copilot example seems to indicate it’s a pricing problem. In fact this situation might indicate that users are finding it so useful that they are using it more than MS expected when they set up their monthly subscriptions. Over time, models are going to be optimized and costs will reduce.
Expecting AI to take over all human intensive tasks is not realistic but eventually it’s going to become part of a lot of repetitive tasks. Though I hope that we see more open source base models instead of the current situation with 3-4 major companies providing the base models behind most of the AI applications.
GitHub Copilot is extremely useful. It also runs pretty much on every key stroke and programmers make a lot of keystrokes throughout the day…
It’s a useful enough tool that people would be willing to pay more, but at the same time it’s not using an advanced AI model. It uses an older (and now deprecated) model that I’m pretty sure a high end computer (even some laptop) could provide similar output without any cloud service, using open source / freely available models.
My feeling is Copilot needs to either lower their price or improve the quality of the product if it’s going to survive. And I suspect they’re going to do the latter one.
The other factor not discussed here is the hardware we use today for this task isn’t really designed for it. The GPUs most datacentres run AI models on are designed for graphics, not AI, and the algorithms mostly just need huge amounts of fast memory. I’m sure soon there will be dedicated hardware specifically designed for large language models with less compute cores and more memory. They’ll likely also run at lower clock speeds and use less power/generate less heat/etc.
Just because companies are losing money right now doesn’t mean they will be in five years time.
Even with the costs implied here, Copilot would be useful as hell.
Think about it, an average (western) developer costs easily 100k/year, sometimes even 2 or 3 times that. Spending something like 1000€ per year makes sense, even if productivity is increased by just one percent.
Good, we as a society aren’t ready for these kind of tools. AI would further increase the divide between people. One of the reasons is that it costs too much to run it.
Everyone who can’t afford the hardware would be dependent on AI owned by corporations. And most people can’t even afford those fees. Since we build our society around (materialistic) “productivity”, I am sure AI would escalate how we treat people and whole countries who fall off the capitalism train. I hope the hype dies.
Ok, but AI isn’t going away. So if these companies stop serving open access, the ONLY people that will use them will be the people who can afford the server/processing time.
This article isn’t about usefulness of the models to normal people. It’s about profitability of the models to the corporations that serve them.
Billionaires spend billions making some jobs just a bit more efficient, against the wishes of the people who do those jobs, and then cry when it doesn’t actually pay that much.
AI has been paying of for decades, it is used in all industries for appropriate tasks.
Now it is even better we are doing stuff no one thought it could be possible and advancing our work.
Perfect use case is for things that are simple to do but take too much time to be economical for humans (ex. counting products, plants, trees, cars, disease detection…) and using additional data to make better decisions.
Generative AI (for writing text, coding,… ) is of course no where close to being useful, but it can interesting to try. It is just a toy, expensive one, but still a toy.
Generative AI (for writing text, coding,… ) is of course no where close to being useful, but it can interesting to try. It is just a toy, expensive one, but still a toy.
I disagree. It’s absolutely useful… in certain industries, for appropriate tasks.
That doesn’t stop it from also being used as a toy.
100% agree with this. Good, sharp knives are perfect for creating wonderful dishes in the kitchen. But people can also use them for harm.
I’ve seen some incredibly useful ways in which gen-AI can be used. A few months or so back, there was someone here on the Fediverse that was able to spin up a working prototype of a self-hosted Spotify replacement after only 8 or so hours of gen-AI code development. Stuff that would’ve taken 5x as long to research and code with just a human.
Gen-AI is ultimately a useful technology… when used the right way.
As someone who has always been skeptical of “AI,” I definitely hope corporations dial back their enthusiasm on it; but I think its value has never been commercial, but industrial.
“AI” was not designed so consumers could see what it would look like to have Abraham Lincoln fighting a T-Rex without having to pay artists for their time. “AI” was designed so that could happen on a much larger enterprise scale (though it would probably be stock images of technology or happy people using technology instead).
With this in mind, I think “AI” being a money pit won’t dissuade corporations since they want the technology to be effective for themselves, they just want consumers to offset costs.
“AI” was not designed so consumers could see what it would look like to have Abraham Lincoln fighting a T-Rex without having to pay artists for their time.
Sure… AI can do that… but it can also be used for “here’s photo of my head with trees in the background, remove the trees”.
I could also do that as a human, but it’d take me hours to do a good job blending my hair into a transparent png without a green tinge. AI can do it in seconds.
Just because a tool can be used to do useless things, doesn’t mean the tool is useless.
Could OpenAI refactor their code and algorithms to be more efficient? The more Instructions Per Cycle (IPC) that can be performed in the same amount of time can reduce costs to some extent when employed at scale.
That and computers are always getting more energy efficient, so if they can have these keep up or outpace user growth then it might become a little more sustainable.
I feel like companies were all hoping to get in early, to get a solid chunk of the cake. Well, and then a lot more companies got in than anyone could have guessed, so the slices of the cake are a lot smaller.
We’ll have to see what happens, though. It’s possible that the startups have to give up and only a few big fish remain. But if those have to increase prices to become profitable, this market will still be a lot smaller than people were hoping for.
AI is just the next 'big thing' that amounts to nothing. 90% of what anyone says in the press/media is total nonsense. And most AI researchers are downplaying the hype because they know it's all bullshit and AI will ultimately not be a major change anymore than navigation systems in cars was. It is merely convenience and those that 'rely' on it will end up in trouble.
It's a complementary technology, not a revolution.
I’m not too well-versed on the subject but, isn’t user interactions with LLM’s also train them further? They make it sound like the product has already been matured and they’re letting people use it for free.
At first I thought "damn, what kind of socially defective moron upvotes a comment like this", then I checked the activity and saw that you upvoted your own comment.
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