The barriers to AI engineering are crumbling fast

I feel like I see this comment fairly often these days, but nonetheless, perhaps we need to keep making it - the AI generated image there is so poor, and so off-putting. Does anyone like them? I am turned off whenever I see someone has used one on a post, with very few exceptions.

Is it just me? Why are people using them? I feel like objectively they look like fake garbage, but obviously that must be my subjective biases, because people keep using them.

Some people have no taste, and lack the mental tools to recognize the flaws and shortcomings of GANN output. People who enthuse about the astoundingly enthralling literary skills of LLMs tend to be the kind of person who hasn't read many books. These are sad cases: an undeveloped palate confusing green food coloring and xylitol for a bite of an apple.

Some people can recognize these shortcomings and simply don't care. They are fundamentally nihilists for whom quantity itself is the only important quality.

Either way, these hero images are a convenient cue to stop reading: nothing of value will be found below.

An insidious feature of machine generated content is that it will dominate not because it’s better, but because it’s cheaper.

I think AI images can be very nice, I like to use them myself. I don't use images I don't personally like very much. So if you don't like them, it is not because, AI, it is because your taste and my taste don't match. Or maybe you would like them, if you didn't have a bias against AI. What I love about AI images is that you can often generate very much the thing you want. The only better alternative would be to hire an actual human to do that work, and the difference in price here is huge, of course.

It is like standing in front of a Zara, and wondering why people are in that shop, and not in the Versace shop across town. Surely, if you cannot afford Versace, you rather walk naked?

You mean to tell me this doesn't convincingly look like people working on their laptops on trestle tables in the forest at dusk?

Last time I worked on my laptop on a trestle table in the forest at dusk it looked almost exactly like this.

That picture doesn't even have anything to do with the contents of the post either.

Reminds me of the image attached to Karpathy's (one of the founding members of openAI) twitter post on founding an education AI lab:

https://x.com/karpathy/status/1813263734707790301

I just don't understand how he didn't take 10 seconds to review the image before attaching it. If the image is emblematic of the power of AI, I wouldn't have a lot of faith in the aforementioned company.

If you're going to use GenAI (stable diffusion, flux) to generate an image, at least take the time to learn some basic photobashing skills, inpainting, etc.

I don't find the image poor, but somehow I see immediately that it is generated because of the stylistic style. And that simply triggers the 'fake' flag in the back of my head, which has this bad subjective connotation. But objectively I believe it is a very nice picture.

> these hero images are a convenient cue to stop reading.

If you don't like such content. But I would say don't judge a book by its cover.

Edit: i looked at it more closely and the way the people are sitting, their direction, is totally unnatural.

You aren't exaggerating! There are some creepy arms in that image, along with the other weirdness. I'm surprised Karpathy of all people used such a poor quality image for such a post.

Yeah, wow. And it's a lovely post otherwise, too!

"GenAI" slop is a time-vampire.

In a world where anyone can ask an LLM to gish-gallop a plausible facsimile of whatever argument they want in seconds, it is simply untenable to give any piece of writing you stumble upon online the benefit of the doubt; you will drown in counterfeit prose.

The faintest hint that the author of a piece is a "GenAI" enthusiast (which in this case is already clear from the title) is immediate grounds for dismissing it; "the cover" clearly communicates the quality one might expect in the book. Using slop for hero images tells me that the author doesn't respect my time.

A trend I see in the "frothiest" parts of the AI world is an inattention to details and overwhelming excitement about things just over the horizon. LLMs are clearly a huge deal and will be changing a lot of things and also there are a bunch of folks wielding it like a blunt object without the discernment to notice that they're slightly off. I'm looking forward to the next couple of decades but I'm worried about the next five years.

The Spam sketch from Monty Python comes to mind.

You state this as if it is general truth. Somehow the article gets attention on HN.

They very clearly were making a general claim, and stating their reasons too, rather than insinuating vague nothings like your comment. As I understood it:

  Premise 1 : anyone can get an LLM to churn out "content" in minutes.
  Premise 2 : reading "AI" slop is a poor way to spend one's time.
  Premise 3 : someone who thinks those images are ok is likely to have a poorly developed capacity to differentiate between actual expertise and confident-sounding blah-blah-ing.

  Conclusion : abort at the first sign that someone thinks that that vaguely confident-seeming world of half-truths and vibing is in any way acceptable.

It's a hard line, but I certainly can see the logic in it. One would be free to make exceptions in certain specific scenarios but the general thrust of the idea is excellent (for people who value their time, and want to read good things rather than feel-good things).

Your argument, on the other hand: it got traction on HN, therefore... something. Traction, or viewership, or ability-to-attract-attention, does not equate to value. And yes, I'm stating this as a general truth.

Thanks for that comment!

I agree, with some nuances. Premise 2 goes also without the word AI in the sentence. Premise 3, there's no way to solve the fact that confident AI-or-not bla bla convinces people.

If one finds an article has bla bla vibes, be it from weirdly looking pics or from sounding overly optimistic, it is everyone's choice to skip (which makes sense!) or continue to look for any value or even entertainment. Do you stop watching a movie always when it doesn't have the correct vibes from the beginning?

Indeed convincingness does not equal to value.

The reason I reacted to the comment was largely its patronizing vibes.