I've found the best route at that point is just... copying people who are really good. For my interest (3d modeling) if you want voice-over and directions, those are all pretty basic, but if you want to see how someone approaches a large, complex object, I will literally watch a timelapse of someone doing it and scrub the video in increments to see each modifier/action they took. It's slow but that's also how I built some intuition and muscle memory. That's just the way...

For what it's worth, I have dealt with pretty severe depression for most of my adult life. I am only starting to have periods of coming out when I realized that most of depressed feelings come from a place of ego. I have an identity of who I am and what I like, and I seek things in the external world which might provide meaning for me. For me, it's because I always sought value from the things around me, rather than believing that I am already enough. Every single day, I have to beat down my instincts that tell me that I am worthless and remind myself that there is more beauty in the world and it's actually absurd that I am letting society tear away from me my natural instincts to want to live and enjoy life. You have to really sit with these feelings though... like really really get to know your voice vs the internalized societal voice. I have developed "tests" that help me discern which voice is which, but it has helped a bit. Also working out and taking care of your body is a bonus, and just taking pride in like... doing things to lead a peaceful life is underrated. Hope you feel better.

I hope you can understand that this and other comments about needing to find meaning and needing to sit with inner feelings... It feels patronizing. I have spent tremendous amounts of time and energy analyzing my feelings and looking for meaningful experiences. I've sought relief in meditation, religion, therapy, yoga, travel, art, etc. Most people probably have in one way or another. It's not rocket science to know those activities may be beneficial. They undoubtedly do help some people overcome feeling depressed. But feeling depressed is different from having depression.

I'm sorry it came off that way, I really didn't intend it to be, it was actually a self call out because I actually never learned as a child to sit with my inner feelings. I attribute that to being more sensitive and probably more intelligent than my siblings and acting as a buffer for my parents and basically only ever wanting to make other people happy, I never developed an inner world like other kids do.

Also I noticed... yoga, travel, art, those are still external. Even meditation can be if you approach it from a standpoint of like... one that is about forming your ego around it rather than being present... not sure if this makes sense. Like you can approach anything from a negative or place of wanting to 'fix' yourself, which ruins the experience imo. For me I would ruin things that were supposed to be fun because I would tell myself I should do this because it's good for me.

That being said, there are really low days still when I will feel absolutely nothing, I will think to myself... if this psychological pain is so intense, why should I keep going? I don't have answers for that. I genuinely just have to make it through the day. I understand that with the pressures of a family and kids, it's not one of those things where you can easily tap out, medication makes sense for that. I was just trying to share how I feel because honestly for me there isn't anyone in my life who I can relate with on this deep of a level... of these feelings, and it's really alienating in itself.

Only for the most basic of requests. I have interacted with a fair share of AI front loaded customer service chat portals and they are often misleading, sending outright incorrect info (telling us that the dev team would work on it even when they weren't going to) and I almost always just want to talk to an agent. Yes, it's a good first layer to prevent people who haven't even bothered to read any FAQ or informational pages, but it's not doing real customer service work.

I tend to agree, most platitudes are less impactful simply because your mind inserts what it already knows/autocompletes the phrase meaning because it's something so commonly heard. I read it as something like... you have enough resources to lead a life that has prosperity relative to the limited faculties of a human organism. That seems less catchy, and if you're too literal in your phrasing in writing, then you get the opposite problem where the reader limits their thinking to just what is written. Do you come to a different conclusion?

This phrase comes up alot in mindfulness and self-esteem related writings. I interpret it to mean that you don't have to do anything to justify your existence on the planet or prove your worth. I agree with this. But the phrasing of "you are enough" implies that it is possible to not be enough, but I don't think that's true since there's no bar that you have to meet, you just are.

I sort of relate. I suspect the misplaced confidence one can develop from early successes in one's career eventually manifests as a lot of beliefs needing to be unlearned later in life (especially when facing challenges requiring resilience). I think I am a better person for it (and that is the point).

YES, and the sad truth is that the only person who can write good, simple code is likely the one who doesn't need an AI helper. ;(

The bubble was the friends we made along the way.

This is such a good idea, the ultimate solution is connecting the furbies to CI.

Every time I see news like this, I just try to focus more on working on things I think are meaningful and contributing positively to the world... there is so much out of our control but what is in our control is how we use our minds and what we believe in.

I like that way of thinking. Out of curiosity, what kind of things do you work on that you feel make a positive contribution?

The thing I find the most funny about all of these demos is they outsource tasks that are pretty meaningful ... choosing where to hike, learning more about the world around you, instead, you'll be told what to do and live in blissful ignorance. The challenge of living life is also the joy, at least to me. Plus I would never trust a company like openai with all of my personal information. This is definitely just them wanting greater and greater control and data from their users.

To me AI is like having a young graduate come to live with you as an assistant. It's happy to do some research for you though not very inspired. But make lunch? No. Do some cleaning. Def no, but happy to chat about how you should do it. It all seems a bit pointless in the end.

I have a sad semi-fantasy, semi-fear, that AI will show us that everything we do online is rather pointless and force us back into the real world (this would cause me and most of this site to lose our jobs, hence the fear part)

AI is like those folks happy to give advice / tell people what to do ... but they seem kinda incapable at those things themselves.

Be patient. In few years, it will be a senior graduate :)

How could you positively and constructively add to the discussion by literally having the truth in your hands of what the future will be? The only thing I know it is that it's not even a young graduate, as soon as you have someone with a bit of domain expertise it will tell you how many lies they output

It’s always “Book me a flight” or “write an email”. Like all we do is email people about where we’re flying next

Remember Quibi? It was a streaming platform of TV shows, where they were filmed in portrait mode instead of landscape, and the episodes were 5 minutes instead of 30.

Their pitch was basically: "Nobody has time to sit down and watch a whole TV show anymore, that's why the short form content like Instagram and TikTok is doing so well - we're going to make TV shows to compete with those platforms that you can watch while you're waiting in line for a coffee!"

They got like billions of dollars in runway because the idea resonated so deeply with the boardrooms full of executives that they were pitching to, but the idea was completely dead on arrival. Normal (non-career-obsessed) people actually have a TON of free time. They chain-smoke entire seasons of shitty reality TV in one sitting. They plop down on the weekend and watch sports for hours on end, not on a phone, but on an actual TV in their living room.

I definitely agree that a ton of these AI use cases seem hyper-tailored to the executives running these companies and the investors that are backing them, and may not resonate at all with the broader population nor lead to widespread adoption.

Quibi was 5 years too early. Vertical micro dramas are now an $8B market, just exceeded box office in China and expanding rapidly elsewhere.

have you heard about second screen content

If you've ever wanted insight into what C-suite is doing all day, it's this.

And make restaurant reservations! We also make restaurant reservations. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42806755

This is what always happen when your general purpose tool needs to be marketed through use cases.

I find the hike itself more meaningful than the searching for it. If an LLM can recommend be me a better hike, I’m all for it.

The word choice here: “you’ll be told what to do” doesn’t really reflect my experience with LLMs. You can always ask for more recommendations or push back.

(As an aside, I’ve found LLMs to be terrible for recommending books.)

I found a big part of what makes doing an activity enjoyable is the time spent thinking/planning involed to make it happen.

For example if I spent a week looking at exactly how to plan my trip, and then finally going out to accomplish it vs just waking up one morning and someone guiding me on exactly what to do

I'm the complete opposite. Nothing enjoyable about it whatsoever. I love going on trips with a friend group where someone takes lead and I don't need to be involved in the planning at all.

I think thats a different enjoyment which is just having a good time with friends or perhaps doing something you havent done before

An aside to the aside: I did too, until I exported my Goodreads ratings and uploaded the CSV. Then it's pretty great.

You can usually do with less than the full history. "Here are five books where I liked the tone/setting/worldbuilding/topic, gimme more" has proven pretty successful.

With gradual refinement - "I like #1 and #4, but I wonder if something like that exists with a 40s scifi tone. Gimme your top 10"

It's... mostly worked out so far. (It also turns out that some topics, I seem to have thoroughly explored. Taking recommendations for off-the-beaten-path heist novels :)

Huh, I’ve struggled with your suggested strategy. Maybe it’s a skill issue :)

It would be great if it could do my taxes, or schedule a doctor's appointment, or do literally anything that's actually difficult and time consuming, but because those problems haven't already been solved by APIs it can't and never will be able to.

These things aren't difficult because they have to be. It's because the people in your town/state/country make them difficult. Personally, to make a doctor's appointment I open an app, select a time slot, and wait for a call later that day. If they want me to come in, they give me a time and I go in. Taxes is mostly automated but for the bits that aren't I tell them how much I made in total, fill in a short form, and get told what I owe. Simple.

Yes, that's obviously my point. A wrapper around already simple problems is not impressive. And yes, most of the time scheduling a doctor's appointment or doing regular taxes isn't hard, but the points when they do become complicated (finding a specialist, dealing with some unusual one off income) is where I want a tool to save me time, not reordering enough Cheetos for the month.

I've done my taxes through an API for years and it would be trivial to hook up an AI if I wanted to. I also don't see what would be so hard about scheduling a doctor's appointment when I'm already doing it through an app.

that’s an extraordinary thing to say. I would unsurprised if this was common in a couple of years.

Well why wasn't it common 10 years ago already? API isn't rocket science.

Yeah I thought the same, they're automating ordering on instacart. That's such a small task. I wonder if it was a paid product placement

Yeah, it's weird, I want to use LLMs to automate the boring stuff! But it all requires MFA to login so it doesn't work.

Yea totally - like those Black Mirror-esque (and South Park?) videos of people having AI talk to their partner about deep relationship stuff.

We just built a mechanical parts AI search engine [1], and a lot of what it does it just get the best options clustered together, and then give the user the power to do the deeper engineering work of part selection in a UI that makes more sense for the task than a chat UI.

Feels like this pattern of "narrow to just the good options, but give the user agency / affordances" is far better.

[1] https://www.govolition.com/power-search

> people having AI talk to their partner about deep relationship stuff. I have read stories about people using AI to write their Tinder messages, eulogies, etc.

Gives me a weird/strange feeling.

Did we watch the same demo. Maybe I skipped over those parts. It nailed one of my immediate needs. Grocery shopping. I really don’t want to waste time adding items to my Walmart shopping cart for pickup or delivery. I want to send a bunch of recipe videos, get back a book of my version of how to format a recipe and also a cart full for me to click purchase. They nailed this.

I'm Italian, I love cooking in my free time, it's also part of our culture. I honestly can't figure out what's stressfull and time wasting shopping for groceries, I often get lost inside the smell of vegetables, pickin the right one, looking for the right color, even optimizing for cost and less waste. I find it so relaxing and like a zen experience

Time is money and picking out ingredients is incredibly low return on my time. I love grocery shopping, going to HEB or Central Market or other boutique store. I don’t want to do it every week multiple times a day though. I am sure some of this is cultural and what type of stores are available.

Nobody said it was stressful, it’s simply a huge chunk of time gone, would much rather spend it with family or doing the cooking itself. Go to any grocery store in America, even if you have a specific list it’s takes a good chunk of time. Why would I want to spend it smelling the veggies. I am sure you could probably get a slightly better taste or quality but I imagine on average it’s minimal. Everyone is different though. I cook a lot, have worked in kitchens, but with kids and a job, I have little interest in being selective on a daily basis. I can simply spend 5 mins, add a list of items to order, get it delivered and have saved probably a good hour in total.

I can't relate at all. I also hate just deciding on dishes. Subscribing to weekly meal kits is one of the best things I've done. I don't need to plan any meals and I only need to shop for basic stuff. I also cook way more varied recipes that I would otherwise never even think of.

If I were to start smelling vegetables in the local supermarket I'd be escorted out. I also hate cooking and hate shopping. I generally order the same items, order them online in 5 mins, and have them delivered.

I’m Italian, I love eating, I hate cooking with a passion so much so that if I ever become a millionaire, my first expense is hiring a personal chef.

YMMV.

Until you look at the demo video and they put $12 worth of green onions in the shopping bag because chatgpt thought 6 green onions == 6 bunches of green onions

The guy did say "it could just checkout if you ask it too, but I prefer to review it first myself". Reviewing a list is much quicker than doing the whole shop provided it's 90% accurate. In the case you mention you click the minus button 5 times.

Saw that and still not a concern here. Quicker to refine than it is to work through the whole list.

If this ever gets popular then sellers will “optimize” their product listings to exploit the LLM (a “soft” prompt injection if you will). This will definitely be the case in marketplaces (like Amazon and Walmart). It’ll turn the old boring task of shopping into a fun puzzle to spot the decoy item or overpriced product.

It could happen but I am not building an Amazon shopping list. It’s about building a list from a physical store that will get delivered to me in a few hours. This is for shopping through a retailer, not the market place.

I do think it’s a concern but I think it’s no different than the exact problem that exists today in these marketplace operations like Amazon. I know for me I will actually split my shopping up and often shop less with an Amazon and more with a Walmart because of it.

Yes and no. Sometimes friction is just friction.

This is apple style advertisings. I bet most llm use is pretty boring - correcting grammar and spelling mistakes

The biggest use of LLMs right now is virtual friends and therapists. It's overtaken everything else in the last year.

I can totally see wanting to automate your life like this for work - "re-order that shipment from last week" or "bump my flight a day". But using this for personal stuff, it does seem like a slide towards just living a totally automated life.

There is something so cutsey and stupid about the sample prompts they do in these videos. I really hope people aren't as helpless as they seem in these ads. Maybe they are, and that's why they are billion dollar companies.

The end station is advertising and for that they need your data.

soon Chatgpt will hike for you, just watch!