Dreams of AI

Both of those sound kinda dystopian. Because you just know the first one will start getting gamed by every company from the grocery companies trying to SEO the AI, to the big fossil fuel companies trying to get you to drive your car more.

I can’t wait for the technology to get basic enough where I can roll my own self hosted instance of it without it taking months. Because I can see a way it’s doable without a centralized service to get around that. But for mass consumer level, I can see that becoming true. But this can be applied to every bit of software currently. All of it can be ran by you, if you have time. Hell I’ve got my own cloud (hosted at my home ) music streaming service.
- A lot of that is doable now - like, how many grocery stores are even nearby to someone, so writing a custom bit of code to check the website of each, one by one, and looking for previously manually-identified items could be automated.
  
  One major downside is prioritization of large chain stores at the expense of smaller mom & pop ones that don't maintain a constant inventory system accessible via the web. Someone could even volunteer their time to build them a database backend, but still they'd have to see the value in actually scanning the items every time or else it would quickly fall behind.
How is making a picture of me as an astronaut "dystopian"?
- The same technology can be used for widespread, low-cost, highly convincing misinformation and propaganda campaigns

Best I can do is give you a list of the worst deals for you that will bring your money to the corporations who paid me the most with a nice helping of targeted ads for all eternity.

And it's a service because AI

And the service costs a subscription fee

And the service quality drops once it saturates the market

And the service now contains ads

And the grocery stores can pay to promote their store when it is not the most affordable option

And now it's not economically feasible to not use their service

The cheapest way to get groceries in the States has always been do all your grocery shopping in the same store, preferably a discount store like an Aldi, instead of cutting coupons and going to multiple different stores due to the simple fact that the gasoline used for driving around is most likely going to cancel out any saving from shopping around, an unfortunate side effect of America's car centric infrastructure.

You don't really need an AI to make this list, plus, I think there are apps that already trying to do exactly that.

However, getting a computer to draw yourself in ridiculous situations (usually with an equally ridiculous number of fingers) is great entertainment.

You don't need "AI" for that. All you would need is some standardized APIs for the various shops, and you could easily solve this with computer technology from 20 years ago.

All you would need is some standardized APIs for the various shops

Stores: "I'm going to stop you right there"
The reality is, though, that there are no such APIs. LLMs on the other hand could be a valid tool for the use case.
- LLMs are not a good tool for processing data like this. They would be good for presenting that data though.
- It's not that there's no API. It's that there's probably a different API for every single grocery store. And they make random changes and don't have public documentation. That's why we need the AI.

Ok am I wrong or was this not what Google Assistant used to be in the 2010s?

It still is. Problem is if you ask it this you might have to triple check what it tells you because it will most likely be wrong.
- This is so sad. I bet Alexa can't even play Despacito anymore if I ask her to.

That's not AI, that's just a program easily able to do that without all the "AI" garbage technology. Why do we all of a sudden think that every solution computing does is "AI" now? For fuck's sake.

Because the average person out there could not make "just a program"... the promise of AI is that anyone can be a programmer now...

In reality, I would bet a full morning of prompting ChatGPT wouldn't produce what the lady is asking for accurately
- So AI can magically see everything in your refrigerator, pantry, etc, right? Oh wait. You need a program created so you can enter what you have and don't have.
  
  Goddamn, AI is now literally magic to you people. Pathetic.

For that you need an expert system managing a data warehouse/Smart agent. That's not Ai per se

Expert systems are totally AI
- How?
For that you need companies that find value in cannibalizing sales of their more expensive products even if the quality is better.

Most stores in general rely on certain sales driving you in and you spending money on the more expensive items because your already there.
- What? Man any standard order management system does that and to have one you don't need to be any of those things.
  
  Y'all nibbas need Jesus

It is, sadly, all very poorly focused on the things that won’t benefit society as a whole, but once again, the ruling class. I really wish AI had not been developed with the intent to make white collar jobs obsolete. If only these same brilliant minds had been focused on robotics and processes that humans don’t want to participate in.

They are, look at modem factory or mine they're full of robotics, now injuries are incredibly low and many of the most dangerous jobs are as safe as a well run office

We're in a big transition as new technologies are developed, it's going to take time but there are are some huge things coming soon - llms and cv are enabling fsctory toolarms to leave the factory so expect cooking arms, repair arms, construction arms, micro factories bringing manufacturing back to local markets... sure it sucks we don't have it now but don't hate the early stages of it just because it's not finished yet.
- What does creating pictures of astronaut kittens or videos of perpetual zooming have to do with any of that, let alone creating poems about robots and ninjas?