What grinds my gears!

Started by Mouth for war, Thu 24/09/2015 13:43:15

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heltenjon

I think i now need to write a dialogue for a game where two people discuss music.  :-D It can work, and I've discussed music with unknown people lots of times. Though it helps if one of you are wearing a band t-shirt, so you know where to start.

An advantage that comes with discussing music instead of movies or books, is that you seldom run into spoiler territory. A drawback may be a lack of vocabulary, unless you're a musician or really into it.

Snarky

When people who ought to know better pronounce "mischievous" as if it's "mischievious."

Creamy

When the radio announcer talks over the intro of a song, therefore ruining it.

They have cues for the start of the singing part and think it entitles them to utter banalities until the last second  >:(
 

Khris

- failing at the most basic level of communication -

A client of mine wanted my help with increasing the limit for international wire transfers from currently 1000€. He showed me an email he got from the bank about how to do this.
We logged into his account at the bank and I saw that it was already increased to 7000€. I was puzzled by this but he didn't really address it...

Then he got hung up on the fact that the "Continue" button at the bottom of the form was disabled so I demonstrated to him that it only turns active once you actually change one of the values; again he wasn't really acknowledging this, as if that somehow didn't make perfect sense. (This alone is very irritating to me; you explain a simple mechanism in the most basic terms imaginable and the other person is incapable of giving a normal response like "I see" or "I still don't get it". Drives. me. up. the. wall.)

He then explained that this was what got him stuck, making me even more confused, given that a) the limit had already been increased and b) up to this point I was under the impression he hadn't done anything by himself yet. We increased it to 8000 and he put in his security code and it went through and we saw a massive confirmation message on the screen. I asked him how he missed this confirmation when he increased it to 7000 and he didn't know...

Getting more and more confused, I asked him why he wouldn't mention any of this and instead pretend as if he hadn't done anything yet after somehow receiving the email.
He then actually tells me he had already been on the phone with a lady from the bank who had guided him through the change, and he basically just wanted me to confirm it went through...!

How do you not mention this AT THE START OF THE CALL?

I mean sure, maybe he was embarrassed that he spent 15 minutes in the queue and a bunch more on the phone with somebody from the bank instead of simply calling me directly. But if the call keeps getting weirder because your support guy keeps asking about the situation, maybe get over yourself and "come clean?" Seriously.

Snarky

I sympathize, @Khris. I must admit that I have myself deliberately withheld somewhat similar information from tech support, because I want to keep focus on the key issue I'm having without distracting them with too many details. (Having experienced cases where they'll pick up on one minor thing mentioned that wasn't the actual problem I contacted them about, "resolve" that, and close the ticket.) But that requires good judgment about what is and is not relevant and necessary information, and in any case there's no indication that this was part of your client's calculation.

Here's one of mine:

When people insist that "AI" is just a marketing term, or that modern AI systems aren't "really" AI. (Often they'll say something like how it's just a big pile of if-then-else statements.)

FFS!

"AI" isn't limited to sentient computer minds with superhuman intelligence. AI has been a computer science sub-field for as long as we've had computer science. The term itself was coined in the fifties, and all kinds of "mere" computer programs have used the "AI" label ever since. I mean, practically anyone who's played a damn computer game with computer opponents has used the term for those basic, manually hardcoded strategies that control them. And they were perfectly correct to do so! The principles underlying those algorithms came out of AI research.

Or sometimes people say that "AI" is just a bullshit marketing term for what is really Machine Learning. Machine Learning is and has always been one particular area of study within AI! It's like complaining that people have "rebranded" calculus as "Math."

Essentially, AI is about getting machines to perform tasks that otherwise require some degree of intelligence or reasoning, and don't have an obvious path to automation. It doesn't depend on computers "really" being intelligent, only that they are able to simulate intelligent behavior: that's the whole point of the Turing Test!

The mistake isn't that we're calling things AI that aren't. It's that we're not calling lots of things AI that are AI.

Oh, and reducing modern deep learning systems to "a pile of if-then-else" is just fucking ignorant. Also, no, they're not "really" intelligent, but they are doing some pretty amazing things.

Pax Animo

People who spread lies about you in the workplace and then quit, leaving you without a chance to defend yourself, put management in a position where they must confront you based solely on the word of the ex-employee, even though there is no evidence.
Misunderstood

Khris

I have a slightly different take on the "AI" situation and it fits this thread :-D

It is absolutely used as a marketing term. Ads and journalists keep calling things "AI powered" even (and especially) when the things they're referring to literally are a bunch of if-else statements. This is because laypeople and marketers do not distinguish between old-school AI and the ChatGPT type; the former because they do not understand that an AI is just an algorithm connected to a model / database, the latter because they want to deliberately blur the boundaries in order to sell more BS.

Also, social media is full of people who think that programs like ChatGPT are capable of gaining consciousness or have already gained it. That is because they do not understand that that is fundamentally impossible.

And soulless ghouls like Altman are pushing this misconception because one of the main objectives is to move culpability for workplace accidents and driverless cars killing people to AIs.

Quote from: Snarky on Fri 11/10/2024 20:53:44The mistake isn't that we're calling things AI that aren't. It's that we're not calling lots of things AI that are AI.
The correct name for 90% of things that are called "AI" nowadays is "algorithm". However this word is already used by laypeople to refer to the specific algorithm that picks the next video(s) / composes the "for you" feed. Unfortunately this is just how language works, but it still very much grinds my gears :P

Snarky

Quote from: Khris on Mon 14/10/2024 00:26:08It is absolutely used as a marketing term. Ads and journalists keep calling things "AI powered" even (and especially) when the things they're referring to literally are a bunch of if-else statements.

But what is the objection to using a term in marketing when that term is accurate? "AI" is a really broad term; if we were to draw an analogy to an earlier age, it's like calling something "electronic" in the 1960s-80s. It was used as a marketing term, and to some customers it no doubt brought to mind computers, but that doesn't mean it was false to call e.g. simple transistor radios "electronic."

I don't know exactly what that toothbrush AI consists of, but presumably they trained a classifier on a bunch of motion sensor data to enable it to recognize where and how you're brushing and give you feedback/recommendations. In my book, that is a perfectly valid use of the term AI.

If that's what they did I also think it's misleading to describe it as "a bunch of if-else statements" because the key thing is that the logic hasn't been designed in a linear fashion, but was trained on a bunch of data to perform pattern recognition holistically. (And while it is different from the technologies underlying e.g. ChatGPT in a number of ways, they have that in common.)

"A bunch of if-else statements" is a fairly accurate way to describe AI that consists of e.g. a state machine (though I still think often an intentionally misleading one, attempting to exploit people's incorrect intuition about what that entails).

Quote from: Khris on Mon 14/10/2024 00:26:08Also, social media is full of people who think that programs like ChatGPT are capable of gaining consciousness or have already gained it. That is because they do not understand that that is fundamentally impossible.

While I don't think ChatGPT has any plausible chance of meaningful awareness at the moment, I dislike this argument because we don't actually have a satisfactory explanation for what "consciousness" is or the mechanisms that produce it, so to firmly assert that it is "fundamentally impossible" strikes me as unwarranted dogmatism.

Quote from: Khris on Mon 14/10/2024 00:26:08The correct name for 90% of things that are called "AI" nowadays is "algorithm". However this word is already used by laypeople to refer to the specific algorithm that picks the next video(s) / composes the "for you" feed. Unfortunately this is just how language works, but it still very much grinds my gears :P

Just because one word applies, that doesn't mean another one doesn't as well.

Danvzare

Time for me to intentionally and annoyingly muddy the water by both agreeing with Khris and answering your questions from my point of view.   (laugh)


Quote from: Snarky on Mon 14/10/2024 10:33:47But what is the objection to using a term in marketing when that term is accurate?
There is no objection. It's an accurate term, but it's also clearly being used as a marketing buzzword, the latter of which is annoying. So it sounds like we're in agreement.  :-D

Quote from: Snarky on Mon 14/10/2024 10:33:47While I don't think ChatGPT has any plausible chance of meaningful awareness at the moment, I dislike this argument because we don't actually have a satisfactory explanation for what "consciousness" is or the mechanisms that produce it, so to firmly assert that it is "fundamentally impossible" strikes me as unwarranted dogmatism.
It's because of the way ChatGPT is implemented and functions that makes it fundamentally impossible to gain sentience (in much the same way as the creatures in Creatures are never going to gain sentience). It's not the concept of a machine gaining self-awareness that's fundamentally impossibly. So once again, it seems as though we're in agreement.  :-D

Quote from: Snarky on Mon 14/10/2024 10:33:47Just because one word applies, that doesn't mean another one doesn't as well.
And just because two different words can mean similar (if not the same) things, doesn't mean that the concept of English being a living language, isn't a frustrating topic. "Literally" and "Figuratively" mean both the same AND the opposite thing. I can accept it. But it'll still always annoy me.
So once again, we're in agreement.  :-D


Why have you brought up a bunch of Khris's points that you agree with, and then portrayed them as though you disagreed with them?  ???
Or have I completely misunderstood Khris?  ???

Khris

@Snarky I guess I just take issue with everything being called "AI" because the term loses all meaning. If I told a layperson that AIs have been around since the 90s when they moved units in Dune 2 or Warcraft 1, I don't think they'll know what I'm talking about.

Regarding the term "a bunch of if-else-statements", I don't think it's supposed to downplay the complexity of LLMs. The point is rather to clarify that there's no actual intelligence; it's still a CPU running a program. And no matter how much OpenAI might suggest it, there's simply no path to an actual consciousness, which is a prerequisite for intelligence.

My point is: laypeople have no idea how programming works. To them, ChatGPT is indistinguishable from Skynet. Buying into the hype by calling everything AI will reinforce this nonsense. That ship has sailed though I guess.

Snarky

#1270
We'll get back to this discussion, no doubt, but meanwhile another gear-grinder: When editors on Wikipedia mark a sentence "[citation needed]" when it is followed by other sentences that provide the evidence. For example:

QuoteGolph Rundgren is widely acclaimed as one of the greatest street cleaners in American history.[citation needed] In her book Seven Sweepers Who Saved Civilization, Dorey Parsleen ranks him above famous cleaners like Rug Bentley and Annadee Yonk, and the equal, perhaps, of even Tefron DiManche.[23] Lom Axwell dubbed him "the Bob Dylan of the broom,"[16] a title adopted by many later commentators.[48][49][50][51] He won the Sorenson Sweepstakes awarded by the Swedish Nobel Prize Sub-Committee for Excellence in Street Cleaning twelve times in fifteen years (1923–1938), after which he requested his name be withdrawn from consideration.[7] Bacon Peligroso, in his critical exposé of the cleaning industry, Cloud of Dust, Throne of Ashes, strongly attacks what he terms "the Rundgren cult"[67] and how its continuing hold over American street cleaning in the Post-War years held the country back as international rivals such as Luxembourg and Cameroon explored radical new cleaning methods, but acknowledges his "unprecedented raw talent"[68] and "extensive technical contributions"[70] to street cleaning theory.

cat

It grinds my gears that there is no "Golph Rundgren", famous cleaner. Now I know why you didn't link that article.
Maybe this should be a topic for next writing competition? Make the best fake Wikipedia article?

cat

It grinds my gears when people don't learn the language of the country where they live. A colleague said yesterday that he now has Austrian citizenship but still talks English to everyone.

Khris

There's a node module called 'unique-string' with over 16 million weekly downloads.

This is the main script:
Spoiler
Code: javascript
import cryptoRandomString from 'crypto-random-string';

export default function uniqueString() {
	return cryptoRandomString({length: 32});
}
[close]

Snarky

The line down the middle of this photo:



(The other lines are just from the edges of the trowel, and will be sandpapered away.)

I'm redoing a wall, and before painting I've "wallpapered" it with a thin fiberglass mesh to make the surface sturdier. This leaves a seam between each roll, and I'm trying to plaster over it to even it out. Maddeningly, the seam appears even though I've plastered a fairly thick layer, gone over it with sandpaper, and plastered again. What kind of princess-and-the-pea sorcery is transmitting the seam through layers of plaster?

Danvzare

It grinds my gears that most AAA games now require you to hold a button in to perform simple contextual commands.

For example, you want to get into a car. You press the triangle button. Nothing happens. You press it a couple more times, still nothing happens. You realize a bar was partially filling up each time you pressed it. So you hold the triangle button in, now you enter the car.

You want to leave the car. You press the button. Nothing happens. You frantically press it a few more times, before you remember that you had to hold it in to go inside the car, so you probably have to hold it in to leave the car.

You see something you want to pick up. You walk towards it, the prompt appears and you press the X button. It doesn't work. You then sigh and hold the X button in to pick up the item.

This repeats for the next four hours.

You look in the options menu to see if there's a way to change this. You find an option to change combat from having to repeatedly press the attack button to just holding it in to repeatedly attack. You keep looking and find another option where instead of holding the button to climb over obsetacles while sprinting, you can just repeatedly tap it. You keep looking, but there's nothing for basic contextual prompts.


I completely understand using a hold button to distinguish from a press, when there are two possible actions that can occur. But that's never the case here. It's almost as though some idiot thought that it would be more "realistic" and "immersive" to hold the button in to do basic contextual actions, despite the obvious cost to usability!  >:(
I miss when UI design was done by people who knew what they were doing.  :~(

Blondbraid

Quote from: Danvzare on Thu 31/10/2024 11:42:08I miss when UI design was done by people who knew what they were doing.  :~(
I agree with everything here and want to add that I also hate how modern games all seem to have decided that all UI need to be white Helvetica font on a darkened background.

Remember when mainstream game UI would be artworks in themselves; fun images with patterns and decorations?
A fantasy game could have text trying to emulate parchment scrolls, WW2 games had typewriter fonts, sci-fi games had text and numbers looking like futuristic tech, and game UIs in general had at least some attempt to stand out but also fit the rest of the game aesthetic.

Danvzare

Quote from: Blondbraid on Fri 08/11/2024 12:46:22
Quote from: Danvzare on Thu 31/10/2024 11:42:08I miss when UI design was done by people who knew what they were doing.  :~(
I agree with everything here and want to add that I also hate how modern games all seem to have decided that all UI need to be white Helvetica font on a darkened background.

Remember when mainstream game UI would be artworks in themselves; fun images with patterns and decorations?
A fantasy game could have text trying to emulate parchment scrolls, WW2 games had typewriter fonts, sci-fi games had text and numbers looking like futuristic tech, and game UIs in general had at least some attempt to stand out but also fit the rest of the game aesthetic.

I used to love it when games would put the ingame-lore on actual scrolls and books with a suitably fancy font, like on the Thief games for example.  :~(

TheFrighter


 What grinds my gears when in hotels at breakfast the waiters asks: "American or continental?"
Because: 1) America is not a continent?
2) which continent? Africa, Oceania, Antarctica?

_

Snarky

Mac apps that run updates that make them incompatible with the version of MacOS they're running in.

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