Hi @catnip77 ,
Welcome.
Tbe pace of change is very difficult for elderly people. We get left behind and feel out of touch.
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LLMs are nothing but glorified statistics engines. While useful for a lot of tasks, they cannot replace us in most places.
In creative expression, it produces what is distinctively average; works of which there are a million in a dozen and all such works contain telltale signs it’s AI written.
When it is entrusted coding tasks, it quickly messes up. Sure, it’s useful to generate a function; but entire programs? No.
It could be entrusted tasks where messing up doesn’t have big concequences; such as harassing people to buy stuff by phone or providing the first line of support.
However, in the end, LLMs aren’t trustworthy enough to make decissions which could cause real problems.
Most of what people hear about LLMs is marketing hype. In reality their real use is quite limited. They’re simply too prone to messing up and have zero creativity.
The AI space is currently one huge bubble. All the marketing crap is designed to make us think LLMs are the next big thing. They are not. The LLM companies invest massive amounts of borrowed money in datacenters. As it stands, they have very little returns to their investments.
These companies need to maintain the illusion and so are investing in marketing.
Don’t be fooled by the marketing. LLMs are not such a big revolution as it is painted to be.
When the bubble bursts, a lot of people will become very unhappy.
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And magnified. The size of these models defies comprehension of what they are doing.
The biggest worry in Australia is the water usage of these centres … for cooling.
Next biggest the power consumption.
We are going to have to decide between data centres and people very soon.
Untill AI, all the trends in computing were towards small end of the scale and distributed computing. Now suddenly we have centralised monsters.
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When the head of IBM Mr Watson stated something like (I paraphrase) “the world will only need five computers…” - he wasn’t far wrong…
As it is - we have maybe 3 or 4 major cloud “providers”…
Maybe after the AI boom (many predict it will bubble and burst like dot.com) - it may again decentralize?
Now Elong Must (sic) wants to fill our skies with even MORE (a million+) satellites and do AI in the stratosphere!
and WELL before we even started having these discussions - knowing full well it would remove jobs - what about a basic universal income for all? NO! That’s commusim apparently!
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It sort of exists by way of the safety nets… but who wants to be there?
Could and should. … we seem to be hardwired to do ‘could’
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For any UK older member on basic state pension this would be a god send.
For some young people (my step daughter and her boyfriend for 2) why work they get more on state benefit than I do on pension. Plus if they start work they would be worse off. Just signed up for another course. Grumpy old man !
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I think about the way Stephen Hawking was able to use his PC without a mouse or keyboard.
I believe in 50 years or sooner, we will be able to use a computer without either of these. Some type of monitor / screen will be most likely need to view pictures.
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How about no hardware at all… turn the whole world into a computer which is just ems frequencies which we all tune into with some implanted device.
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I do think screens will remain pretty much as is. Perhaps a layer on top to provide a holographic 3D interface on top of what the monitor is already projecting. Perhaps special 3D monitors will appear which have a special chamber filled with gases which light up when struck with certain lasers.
The advantage of 3D view would at first be for people who do things with 3D; look around the object they are editing without actually turning it. GUIs would soon follow.
The keyboard is a nice interface for interacting with the computer. The mouse I also don’t see disappearing for the foreseeable future, unless there’s a revolution in GUI design that makes the mouse unnecessary for most people.
Mouse and keyboard are just too efficient. Perhaps the next step is a keyboard with little displays in all the keys so you can assign symbols to each key which are not the standard. In such a situation, a company could produce just one keyboard and people just configure the keyboard to do the language(s) they want it to do.
Mice are getting more and more buttons. There are already mice with integrated fingerprint detector; useful for authentication. The next step from mice is touch screen – we’re already seeing this on tablets and smartphones. It’s quite practical in most cases. However, there are situations in which the multiple buttons and precision of a mouse are more practical.
There are already pens with multiple buttons appearing on the market which you can use together with your tablet.
In 50 years most people will not own a desktop computer, laptop, or some such. They will own a smartphone and a tablet. The few who own a computer have a genuine need for it.
Smartphones and tablets are getting more and more powerful with each iteration. A lot of software niches are already available for smartphones and tablets. There are some which will remain desktop niche, such as coding and detailed computer drawings.
LLMs will have found their niche after most of the big companies have gone bust and have left behind petabytes of training data. They will mostly be used for fuzzy tasks, such as finding all my pictures with my cat in them and putting them in their own directory while giving them appropriate names. They are not without their uses. Expect GUIs to be more perceptive of what you’re trying to achieve. A configurable help AI will be available. Does it have a memory? Is it allowed to search the internet? Is it allowed inside your documents?
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I do not like interfaces that try to guess what you want.
Firefox can be so annoying if you try to edit the searchline… it links up with google, slows everything down, then staṛts applying autocomplete to your editing. It wont let you arrow back over the search line content like you would with a command line… you have to backspace and remove everything back to the character you want to change.
They have a false idea of what being helpful is.
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Many times now when asked by a client what computer should I buy I quite often recommend just a tablet but that over a phone due to screen size as we age we need better size résolution to be able to see or read
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