Re: It's useful
Unfortunately, you don't seem to have a lot of imagination.
I built a handheld device, essentially a Raspberry Pi Zero 2, powered off a LIPO with two radios and GPS, I can walk around a space, capture all the wifi signals in the area (as well as the position they were detected), it also has a signal meter that outputs to an LCD, it's all wrapped in a 3D printed shell...I then had some scripts that would parse the PCAP data that was dumped and it would provide me with some data I could use to optimise the wifi in that space by improving the wifi config and physical location of wifi access points...it someone sped up the job, brought it down to about 2 hours.
All fine and well I thought, a nice little device I can carry around to help with wifi surveys...
...then I incorporated the OpenAI API. Oh mama. After stripping away any identifiable information and/or replacing certain information with arbitrary information (i.e. SSID, Mac addresses, etc)...when I pass the data through to ChatGPT (with some carefully curated prompts), I can now do the job in 30 minutes or less (it more or less depends on how much space I have to cover on foot).
I also have a second device, in my home office, built around a NanoPi R4S running Mycroft as a voice input. Some of my work requires me to keep an eye on some high traffic servers and occasionally step in to manage the resources (scale up, scale down etc when the automated scripts aren't able to respond because of outlying threshold breaches etc)...I usually know ahead of time roughly when to expect events like this (as the sites are tied into sporting events, betting etc)...now what I do with this box, if I get knackered (as humans do) and I want to go to bed if it's late, I'll tell the AI to take over for me, which triggers a script that starts processing data (once again, filtering it down to only the information the AI needs) dragged in from AWS and pipes it into ChatGPT. When I return in the morning (all nice and refreshed), I simply ask for a recap for the time I left, and Mycroft fills me in on what happened. If something requires my attention while I'm away, the AI triggers an alarm on my phone to wake me up and bring it to my attention. This AI can also run tests for me based on verbal commands (such as load tests using Apache Bench) which feed into ChatGPT which then provides me with a spoken summary of the result...this gives me a jump start on analysing the data myself in the reports that are generated and gives me a rough idea what to expect, it also frees me up to continue working on something else while the scans, tests etc are going on without having to tie up my screen space and break my focus.
AI is a tool like any other...in most hands, it can perform clumsy work...in the right hands, it can do some spectacular stuff.
Will I open source the code and schematics for my device? Eventually maybe...but right now...fuck no! We are at a point with AI where the minority can find massive competitive edges can be gained by using it while the majority still believe it's a toy.
The key thing with AI as it functions right now, is to ask it the right questions...which is probably true of any source of knowledge. People that have always lacked the ability to ask the right questions, will never be able to unlock the power that exists with AI.
The other key thing with AI as it stands now, is the approach you take is fundamental to getting the best out of it. For example, approaching AI as a tool that can take "bitch work" away is a pretty weak use of AI...e.g. getting it to write your CV, having it write marketing taglines etc etc. It's pretty average at that and a decent human with decent skills in those areas can do a better job...if you approach the use of AI in terms of it being an assistant rather than your lackey you can get far better results. For example, showing it snippets of code you've written (obviously without any API keys, personal information, trade secrets etc) and asking it to improve upon it...make your changes that you think will improve it, feed it back, wash, rinse, repeat. The nice thing is, unlike your colleagues, AI won't be pissed off at you for firing questions at it at 3am.
If you use AI to write your code from scratch, it's basically no better than an automated Stack Overflow. You're going to get shit code and unless you fully understand that code, it's always going to be shit code...eventually you will end up with a solution that is basically just a patch work quilt of unmanageable shitty code.
Bottom line:
There are already people out there getting massive amounts of value out of AI and it's associated tools. The future is here, it is what you make of it. A lot of solutions built using AI are unfortunately behind closed doors right now as a lot of people (myself included) are making hay while the sun shines, I'm shaving hours off various workflows but charging the same, because at the moment, hardly anyone knows you're working with AI and saving bucket loads of time or doing tons of shit in parallel...by the time a lot of useful AI based tools hit the mass market, you'll be competing with the millions of other people that have access to exactly the same tools and the status quo for you will continue, except your expected output will be higher, because now you have AI tools to help you, the cat will be well and truly out of the bag...at that point you won't be spending 10 times less time doing the same job, you'll be spending the same time doing 10 times more work...for the same money. That only benefits the people that employ you, because now they need 10 times less staff to get the same productivity and it costs them 10 times less, but they can charge the same.
Do yourself a favour, grab yourself a beer, go and sit in the springtime sunshine and start thinking of some bat shit crazy ways you can leverage AI right now. Because now is your chance. The fortunes that will be made with AI are starting to be made, RIGHT NOW! People are experimenting...RIGHT NOW! The only thing you should be waiting for, is for AI to catch up with your ideas. You can start building them now and keep adding to them as and when new functionality, better models etc become available.
I currently have 3 or 4 models running on my own servers right now, LLAMA etc etc whatever I can find and I am constantly trying out new ideas...most of them are fucking dumb, I'll admit, and most of them don't work or are limited by the current state of AI...but that's ok, because I've already started working on them and saved myself some time down the road when the functionality / models become available that I require.
If you want some sort of idea of just how many models etc are out there...take a look at:
https://huggingface.co/
Because pretty much every mainstream model you've heard of, has probably been extended, modded, tweaked etc dozens of times already. It's later than you think.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
