alt Hacker NewsI think you're right, but I'd add that... if this wasn't obvious to you without being told, you should really question your worldview a bit.
A lot of people think that chat.com is an AI called "chat". Most people don't know acronym "LLM". Most people don't know about the existence of companies called "OpenAI" or "Anthropic", or that they are worth a lot of money. Etc.
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The joke of it is that I see those same people (ones who haven’t heard “LLM” before, don’t know what a model is or even the vaguest idea how these work, etc) have very strong opinions on the state of AI, where it’s headed, and are willing to make projections with timelines.
Bill Maher is one example.
> you should really question your worldview a bit.
Yeah, I still struggle with it. I have a diverse friend circle and sometimes I forget that most of them don't have the same information diet that I do (or don't even care about tech the way I do). Maybe I should be more like them and just chill? I don't know.
This is very accurate. I teach seniors about how to use AI responsibly and they are always mind blown, and I keep it very high level. The amount of Chat”GTP” users there are out there that have no idea who the main vendors are. Most of them also think that Google is just a “search” company.
People are generally bad with acronyms. For the longest time I used to refer to San Francisco as SFO. On my first visit to Bay Area, I was talking to a local friend and casually said - last weekend, I went to SFO for sightseeing. He was confused and asked why I was sightseeing at the airport. That’s when I realized it’s SF not SFO.
> Most people don't know about the existence of companies called "OpenAI" or "Anthropic", or that they are worth a lot of money.
I agree with your general premise but that one sounds like bullshit to me. Tons of people who otherwise don't know anything about LLMs know about these companies specifically because they are worth a lot of money, and of course tons of people know who OpenAI is because of ChatGPT.
Even Shingy called chatgpt "chat" when he went on Ed Zitron's show. It was very weird to hear from a guy who has been around tech world for such a long time even if he's non technical.
They call it "Chatty"
I think you are overestimating things. While there will be people who don't know - it's probably not as many as you think.
> OpenAI
this is unnecessarily austere or whatever - people absolutely know what openai is because lots of "normies" now use chatgpt
TIL openai owns chat.com
I hung out with my parents this weekend and heard them talking about "chat", as a noun. I assumed they were talking about ChatGPT; there being a literal chat.com makes sense why they'd call it that.