this post was submitted on 03 Jun 2024
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[–] [email protected] 126 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Both of those sound kinda dystopian. Because you just know the first one will start getting gamed by every company from the grocery companies trying to SEO the AI, to the big fossil fuel companies trying to get you to drive your car more.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 months ago (2 children)

How is making a picture of me as an astronaut "dystopian"?

[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 months ago (7 children)

The same technology can be used for widespread, low-cost, highly convincing misinformation and propaganda campaigns

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago

The moon landing wasn't faked, but I was there instead of Neil Armstrong. See these pics?

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I can’t wait for the technology to get basic enough where I can roll my own self hosted instance of it without it taking months. Because I can see a way it’s doable without a centralized service to get around that. But for mass consumer level, I can see that becoming true. But this can be applied to every bit of software currently. All of it can be ran by you, if you have time. Hell I’ve got my own cloud (hosted at my home ) music streaming service.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (5 children)

A lot of that is doable now - like, how many grocery stores are even nearby to someone, so writing a custom bit of code to check the website of each, one by one, and looking for previously manually-identified items could be automated.

One major downside is prioritization of large chain stores at the expense of smaller mom & pop ones that don't maintain a constant inventory system accessible via the web. Someone could even volunteer their time to build them a database backend, but still they'd have to see the value in actually scanning the items every time or else it would quickly fall behind.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

In other words, we need to recognize that the real problem is that companies will always try to game the system for product differentiation/market segmentation purposes, so the real solution is for the government to create and enforce standards.

[–] [email protected] 100 points 2 months ago (4 children)

You don't need "AI" for that. All you would need is some standardized APIs for the various shops, and you could easily solve this with computer technology from 20 years ago.

[–] [email protected] 97 points 2 months ago (5 children)

The reality is, though, that there are no such APIs. LLMs on the other hand could be a valid tool for the use case.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 2 months ago (9 children)

It's not that there's no API. It's that there's probably a different API for every single grocery store. And they make random changes and don't have public documentation. That's why we need the AI.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 months ago

Yup, exactly, no standardized APIs.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The stores don't want you to have easy comparable access to their prices.

They'd quite like it if you just came in, saw that the item you wanted is out of stock, and then just buy some shit you didn't need.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (6 children)

Indeed. LLMs read with the same sort of comprehension that humans have, so if a supermarket makes their website compatible with humans then it's also compatible with LLMs. We have the same "API", as it were.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 months ago

No, that's why we need regulations to enforce standards.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (11 children)

LLMs are not a good tool for processing data like this. They would be good for presenting that data though.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago

All you would need is some standardized APIs for the various shops

Stores: "I'm going to stop you right there"

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

And it's a service because AI

And the service costs a subscription fee

And the service quality drops once it saturates the market

And the service now contains ads

And the grocery stores can pay to promote their store when it is not the most affordable option

And now it's not economically feasible to not use their service

[–] thefool 18 points 2 months ago

This is disgusting, but true.

Upvoted

[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 months ago (5 children)

I was working on this with a friend over 10 years ago but the only grocery store that made a decent effort at organizing their website to be scrapeable was Loblaws and all the others had APIs that cost $100,000

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 months ago (2 children)

The cheapest way to get groceries in the States has always been do all your grocery shopping in the same store, preferably a discount store like an Aldi, instead of cutting coupons and going to multiple different stores due to the simple fact that the gasoline used for driving around is most likely going to cancel out any saving from shopping around, an unfortunate side effect of America's car centric infrastructure.

You don't really need an AI to make this list, plus, I think there are apps that already trying to do exactly that.

However, getting a computer to draw yourself in ridiculous situations (usually with an equally ridiculous number of fingers) is great entertainment.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

This kind of small scale optimization is not really the best use case for AI anyway. Considering the actual cost of running that kind of code at a large scale... I'm not convinced the savings are worth it even setting aside the petrol issue.

AI doesn't need to be in the hands of consumers. It should be a step removed, working behind the scenes to make all those basic foods cheaper before you even go shopping. It should be optimizing supply chains, reducing production costs, and otherwise making us more efficient at a societal level.

Which, well, in some cases it already is. Sadly many companies just use it to optimise their marketing 🙄

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (2 children)

going to multiple different stores due to the simple fact that the gasoline used for driving around is most likely going to cancel out any saving from shopping around

I wouldn't jump to that conclusion. Here in suburbia, there are different stores every couple miles. Figure even a 5-mile detour to go to another store, and that "simple fact" of gasoline used turns out to cost less than a dollar. I save that much on a pair of salad kits by going to one store over another, and it's really more of a one-mile detour anyway. Plus, there are simply things that one store does better than the other and I like to take advantage of that too.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Seriously. Sale items are often several dollars cheaper per item. It is well worth the time and gas driving to several stores unless they are very far apart, then just roll that into another trip. Some big "what could it cost, 10 dollars?" vibes off that comment.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (5 children)

Any generative AI that was trained using the entirety of the Internet is gonna suck as an information tool, since it will have more bad information in it than correct information and its goal isn't to make sure the info is accurate; its goal is to output text that looks intelligent and isn't obviously generated by a computer.

Even if you fed it nothing but correct information, it will still end up blending multiple things into a single output, generating inaccurate information.

I don't want AI that just generates shit anywhere but in a video game. I want a tool that can go through real data and give me the relevant stuff I am asking for. Which was handled better with whatever Google was doing 20 years ago than whatever the fuck AI shit they got going on now.

[–] Tar_alcaran 9 points 2 months ago

I don’t want AI that just generates shit

You vastly underestimate the demand for mediocre crap that exists in the world.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

Yeah, but I want AI to make a picture of you as an astronaut but with two extra domes on the suit so I can see ur sweet tits at the same time.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Ladies and gentlemen....THE INTERNET

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (10 children)

I want people to use the right acronym, its a LLM not an AI.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago

AI covers so many things that it's inappropriate to hate "AI" when what you really hate is corporate applications of machine learning.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (5 children)

Yeah electronics lately instead of helping people squeezes money from us

Android smartphones are just elaborate ad viewing devices with extra stuff to not throw it out. Apple are subscription milking devices where you effectively pay monthly tribute to be less of a walking data stick. pick ur poison

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago (2 children)

AIs use will never see it reach its full potential because companies are liars and deplorable entities that have historically demonstrated they will screw over everyone and everything for profits.

In another universe, AI would help people. It would tell you that you are eating too much bread. It would alert you that you do not eat enough foods in vitamin A. It would tell you that your late night habits of staying up lead to poor health. It would tell you that going to be before 12am leads to you having much better restorative sleep. It would tell you you’re sitting in one position too long. That if you left now, you’d make it 5m early. The list is endless. A machine always calculating and monitoring your status; in an effort to improve your life.

In our universe it’s going to tell you to buy Anamin’s sleep aid, now 50% off. Then track how much you take it so the company that sell you more. Or pass the data to their “partners” so they can sell you more crap.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 months ago

Best we can do is sell you a $200 piece of plastic that promises to but doesn't actually do these things, then automate your job away.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I want self organising files and things so bad. I need an algorithm to look through my digital library and fix the metadata.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (2 children)

I don't want AI to give me coupons for the cheapest food available.

I want to be able to use my bike or walk to buy tasty, nutritious, locally produced goods every days.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 months ago (3 children)

OMG, is AI going to stop us from doing that?

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (3 children)

It is, sadly, all very poorly focused on the things that won’t benefit society as a whole, but once again, the ruling class. I really wish AI had not been developed with the intent to make white collar jobs obsolete. If only these same brilliant minds had been focused on robotics and processes that humans don’t want to participate in.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 months ago (9 children)

That would be currently possible with a combination of AI and standard computing.

  1. Have a camera on all the places you store food, let AI analyze it to tell you what's missing.
  2. Do some standard web scraping for prices.
  3. Use some clever algorithm to calculate the route (might not be always optimal, but there are some good algorithms for the travelling salesman problem).
  4. Let a LLM write some bullshit around the data to appear human.
  5. ???
  6. Profit
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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Ok am I wrong or was this not what Google Assistant used to be in the 2010s?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

It still is. Problem is if you ask it this you might have to triple check what it tells you because it will most likely be wrong.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Fuck that. I want AI to power a robot boyfriend.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 2 months ago (14 children)

For that you need an expert system managing a data warehouse/Smart agent. That's not Ai per se

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