Thread

1. dzink · 1789752442 · focus · HN ↗

   You are a photographer from the olden age. Taking a photo back then took forever. You are standing on a hill trying to get the perfect picture of a sunset. You measure and sort and calculate angles and light. A tourist stands next to you with an high-speed iphone auto-settings camera. They spin around and get thousands of photos from different angles while you are thinking and measuring your one shot. That’s what AI does. It gives you many shots at the same problem. The thinking guy with the one approach will likely lose a photo competition to one of the accidentally better shots of the person who tried a lot more. Make and filter now may be a better approach than overthink and try only once.

   1. ssfdg · 1789752835 · focus · HN ↗

      I don't buy this analogy and I think it takes a depressingly reductive view of creativity. In both cases, the photographers had to take the time to go to a place, see a view they thought was worth capturing, operated their equipment to get a shot, and then had enough discernment to recognize which of their final products were worth something. Both the traditional photographer and the modern photographer can create images of value in different ways.

      If you want to shoehorn AI into this analogy at all then no one is even bothering going hiking at this point, let alone seeing anything worth capturing. It would just vomit up endless permutations of statistically average images that look like the kind of pictures people take of landscapes.

      1. dzink · 1789755296 · focus · HN ↗

         Here is why it works in more than one way:

         In the past few could afford to be photographers due to time and money. Many were not the most artistic or talented minds in the universe on the subject (you can’t find those until you give everyone a camera) but just people who enjoyed it and could make money off of it. Those who gained experience with the old tech were essentially AI models trained on statistically good probabilities of getting good shot. You had smaller selection and the model / brain quality determined what % of the best that photo was between 0 and 100% for any sunset. In modern days more people get a camera - more people with bad taste and more people with good taste. You also get more attempts at the shot - more photos taken, more tries. More tries means you are now preserving more of that moment from more angles and extending the time your taste people have to pick the best shot of all possible.

         Your plethora of statistically average photos happen if you don’t have anyone filtering the ginormously increased output. If the problem is really valuable, someone will filter it. Possibly a model.

         The real filter is value, not capability anymore. Do you have the empathy and taste to know what matters? The AI tokens/cost lets everyone make and become interested in making of someone hasn’t solved their problem. And then if search isn’t improved - everyone will just repeat the making of the same thing over and over. So if you don’t want repeated slop. fix search.

         Or do you copy everything and everyone into making more of nothing.

         1. ssfdg · 1789764233 · focus · HN ↗

            "Those who gained experience with the old tech were essentially AI models trained on statistically good probabilities of getting good shot"

            I am so glad I am not you. What a miserable way to live your life.

Unofficial Hacker News client; not affiliated with Y Combinator.