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Researchers Put Google Gemini in Charge of an Entire Coffee Shop, and It's Inexorably Driving It Out of Business (futurism.com)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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A Google Gemini-powered AI agent was given free rein to run a coffee shop in Sweden, and is quickly burning through its budget.

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[+] -35 points 4 months ago (23 children)

Genuine curiosity:

You’re of course allowed to be mad at techbros and capitalism, but this feels like getting mad at a technology which I can’t resolve.

It’s a wonderful and fascinating technology that has real value and purpose when used correctly.

Is it a conflating of techbros + the new tech that everyone’s reacting to, or are we actually mad at the tech itself?

Thanks so much in advance for any constructive answers

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  • [–] 56 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    The article isn't about the technology. This "experiment" is pure techbro fantasy.

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  • [–] 45 points 4 months ago

    The problem is not the tech. LLMs (AI does not exist, not yet anyway) have their uses and are impressive technology

    The problem is the tech bros and all the mouth breathers who follow the tech bros without question while they insert lies, "AI", everywhere it's not supposed to go, and the places where it would actually be useful so far have been mildly neglected

    I see, for example, use in having AI check MRI results for cancer. A doctor already checked it found nothing, and an AI does a second check and might find something a doctor overlooked. A real doctor then needs to check the results again to confirm the flagging. Please note, I'm not a doctor, I might be saying nonsense right now, but the point I'm making is that AI may be useful as a second pair of eyes.

    AI can be, and has been used to find new novel mathematics. Mind you, AI is not creative, it just tries really weird and unexpected pathways to get to s solution which sometimes is useful

    But the way AI is used now, making porn of your little niece, chatbots, and hey, how about an AI pilot, eh? And ai of course can take over the work from thousands of developers and DevOps employees, so let's fire them all and then figure out that AI can't do any of this shit, not nearly at the level required, and it fucks up about 30%ish of the time...

    People are losing their jobs over this

    I am losing my job over this

    I can't find a new job either becat all the recruitment and job finding is now all AI slop and where 5 year ago ingot a job with 20-30 applications, I now have sent out 200 applications and gotten a single intro interview and that's it

    AI promised to take away the mundane boring and dangerous jobs so we could focus on art and fun.

    AI took the art and fun and guess who's left to do the mundane and dangerous?

    Yeah.

    Don't even get me started about the shit we'll face once we make real actual AI. For the ethics, just watch "ST TNG: the measure of a man" to get yours started. It will be a shit show

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  • [–] 29 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    First it's the tech bros using a tech for something it wasn't meant for and continuously lying about it. That causes a backlash and makes people hate the tech itself, because it's being used where it causes friction.

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  • [–] 12 points 4 months ago

    Yeah, it really sucks, because LLM tech itself is amazing. Quantifying language and ideas into what's basically a massive queryable concept map is a huge achievement. What do the tech giants decide to do with that achievement? Shove it every little place it doesn't belong making everyone hate it.

    Oh well, I'll keep backing up the interesting local open-source models people make and playing with them in the corner.

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  • [–] 16 points 4 months ago (8 children)

    LLM's are a technological dead end. They aren't interesting in the slightest, as anything they can do is already done more effectively and efficiently with other tools

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  • [–] 11 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Huh?

    I think people just need to reset their expectations.

    I asked one for help to interpret PCI policy application (credit card regulatory stuff). I gave it the situation and it provided me with a good answer that, when I asked our compliance team about, they agreed.

    That saved me a lot of time. I don't see how that's a dead end. Then I had it draft a response to the person asking questions; I tuned it a little to my liking and sent it. What might have taken me an hour before took 10 minutes. This seems like a helpful thing, not a bad thing. I'm not sure what other technology would have done that.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    I had it draft a response to the person asking questions; I tuned it a little to my liking and sent it.

    Gemini, remind me not to ask blargh any questions.

    Also, Gemini, my daughter is asking for someone to play with her. Can you run around with the feather wand and have her chase it or something?

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Do you have any examples?

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    In scientific queries. LMs return an answer from the largest data but if a system or model was recently proven wrong, they still return the wrong answer.

    If you make very specific queries about DNA or protein sequence, they usually generate fabrications that are completely wrong.

    They tend to return answers trained on the Internet, an uncurated pile of dogshit when it comes to science.

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  • [–] -3 points 4 months ago

    They aren’t interesting in the slightest, as anything they can do is already done more effectively and efficiently with other tools

    Then why are the other tools not being used?

    LLMs translate much better than anything that was engineered. Summarization of text is another application where there are simply no engineered counterparts.

    LLMs certainly don't live up to the absurd hype created by the tech sector, but it is just as absurd to state that they are worse than other tools in all tasks.

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  • [–] 9 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    This tech sucks balls. Stop trying to justify it.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    Yeah, LLMs are useful tools, though not the silver bullet the hype proclaims them to be. The tech bros tightly controlling LLMs and chasing insane profits with their closed models, data centers, and subscriptions are the main problem. Open models like Qwen 3.6 27B that are approaching frontier capabilities while running on consumer hardware is really the only thing that gives me any hope for the future of LLMs.

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  • [+] -3 points 4 months ago (1 child)
    [removed by mod]
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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    You don't appear any more capable of thought than the LLMs you hate. Your response doesn't even make sense in relation to the previous post, it's like you saw someone with a different opinion and your fingers just automatically started trying to describe the poster in a sexually compromising position with as much detail as possible. Typing out your delusions in strong language doesn't make them real.

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