What problems in my life does generative AI immediately and obviously solve for me?

Like I said, it is "abstract" which is why you can make such a claim with such a high degree of confidence. Every person who sees POTENTIAL with generative AI has their own ideas as to what sorts of applications it has that they would find useful. The very words "generative AI" and "ChatGPT" create a Barnum Effect (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnum_effect). Right now, I would posit that ChatGPT is like pet rocks. It got popular because it is neat and novel. Once that effect wears off, people will stop caring and the hype train will die as fast as crypto.

Therefore, until a company releases a product that uses ChatGPT under the hood and solves a real problem that a lot of people need solving right now, there's no tangible value that is inherent in the technology that can be identified. Only ideas and potentials.

> video games

Cool. There is a very real chance that he will have more of those because they will be cheaper to make. He won’t be using the generative AIs, he will be consuming content made with them.

> my wife and I can enjoy retirement

Joe doesn’t have to worry about retirement. Someone will use a combination of these AI technologies to make his wife fall in love with a perfectly attentive, smoky voiced older guy. When this AI powered person suffers a terrible car accident on a business trip she sends a significant portion of their savings to him. When Joe finds out he immediately calls his bank. There an other AI powered agent handles his issue. It takes a while for Joe to be understood, because the agent he is interacting with is heavily biased towards trying to upsell Joe on a new mortage.

Eventually he is able to claw back some of the money, but the stress and the implied emotional infidelity ruins their mariage. He talks with the assistant of a divorce lawyer (another AI). She collects all the information from him and the lawyer (this time a real person, albeit one heavily supported by various AI systems) sends over all the paperwork. The AI of Joe’s lawyer agrees with the AI of his wife’s layer about the details and once that is done the humans sign the papers and they are divorced.

Joe still has some money left. He can rent a bungallow and maybe he can spend his retirement there, but unfortunately Joe picks up a nasty addiction to online porn. (What Joe doesn’t know that the booties he is looking at are generated exactly to his taste, as measured by his pattern of clicking on the free samples.) This is the last straw, the addiction sucks Joe’s wallet empty and he dies destitute. Many many people with generative AIs have Joe’s money now.

To his last breath Joe doesn’t really understand what this AI thing is everyone is talking about on the news.

Video game NPCs will very quickly be replaced by LLms. No more boring scripted dialogue. This allows for a truly open world where the inhabitants can dynamically respond to your actions. Video games will become cheaper to create with generative AI that can quickly create a layout of a game world that can then be built on.

> Video game NPCs will very quickly be replaced by LLms. No more boring scripted dialogue.

I'm skeptical that this is what the users want. Sure, it would be nice to have, say, less repetitive background chatter in Skyrim. But, human-scripted dialog is intentional, which is at the core of a lot of gaming. Take that away and you end up with the early versions of No Man's Sky, where yes, there's an infinity of different variations to explore. But it wasn't what users actually wanted; they wanted a designed experience.

You fundamentally cannot make a random npc interesting because they are not supposed to be interesting. Ideally they say very little.

Now your daughter has learned a lot more, has opened up a world of possibilities and this helps her get a job (or create a company) that helps her buy a new home.

Also for video games, they could use these generative AIs to create more immersive characters and worlds. Your video game experience just became much better -- especially if you're drinking while playing.

And if you play sports at a local level, generative AI can take in as input a bunch of rosters and play-by-play data (maybe eventually creating the play-by-play data directly from video) and being able to output stories about games. Today coverage of local and club sports is limited because of resources -- but if you could apply AI to this problem then you're local bowling league could almost be covered like the NFL on the web.

EDIT: And another thing -- which actually is something we started doing now. You have a personal medical assistant that you use with your doctor to ensure that your wife gets the help she needs with her current condition. Joe Sixpack is happy that it is much less likely that the doctor misses something "obvious".

Now your daughter has learned a lot more, has opened up a world of possibilities and this helps her get a job (or create a company) that helps her buy a new home.

Those two paragraphs look like they are in opposition to me. If a degree becomes that much easier to get with AI assistance, then everybody else is also using the same assistance, and then the jobs available to graduates in that degree have also become less valuable as companies no longer need to hire them and they start laying off people already in those jobs.

And it doesn't have to solve a problem for you to make an impact on your life- it can make your life worse too. If your daughter is interested in writing, graphic design,or programming, well, finding a job and moving out by 30 might become a lot harder. Bing is already in use. Copilot is already in use. These are not small markets or use cases.

That's not for me. I gave it a try for a couple of days, but using ChatGPT as a search engine is much, much less useful to me than the old-fashioned method.

I'm not so sure that's actually true outside of enthusiast circles, to be honest. The value of what the hype describes is apparent, but the hype is about a possible future, not what's actually here right now.

There are a couple of people in my workplace who are using ChatGPT as part of their development process. So far, the value of them doing so isn't obvious to the rest of us. Their work isn't better, nor are they working more productively (although they think they are).

> There's a reason ChatGPT ended up becoming a household name with literally no marketing whatsoever.

Most noncomputer people I know have barely heard of ChatGPT, and those that have only know of it by the hype that has spilled over into the news feeds. They certainly don't really know what it is, and don't think of it as being anything important.

Those that do understand it and think it's important mostly consider it a threat and are afraid of it.

That said, the new tech is powerful and likely to have a large impact, just not as much through new interfaces as the hype suggests.

Unfortunately I think the biggest use-case for generative AI in the medium term will be automating away middle class jobs. The cabability is looking very possible, and the profit motive is immense. Despite the fun creative uses and the strong PR, the development of this tech is extremely profit focused.

Everyday people will likely feel the effects of this tech, but it mostly won't come in the form of fun and games.

You can't eliminate the ability of most people to earn a meaningful living and expect anything but a dystopian nightmare.

This is also why I'm hoping the enthusiasts are completely wrong.

Mine as well, as I mentioned.