I understand the point being made, but it does feel a bit like writing a post in the early days of the internet saying:

"No, everyone is not using the internet for everything."

Which would have been entirely true when written, and entirely false a relatively short time later.

Everyone does use the internet for everything today, and everyone will use AI for everything soon.

In my non-tech circle, most people don't even realize how the internet is running literally everything. Even if we start to use mass scale AI for something, they wouldn't realize or care much about it. They at best turn on the TV to watch netflix or look at the phone to send messages on whatsapp. If all of that went away tomorrow, they'd be inconvenienced at best and then go on with their day to day life. This feels like we are literally all in our IT echo chamber where we throw stuff on walls and go crazy, while the world is sunshine and rainbows, always been.

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jacobgold 5 hours ago | parent [-]

"They at best turn on the TV to watch netflix or look at the phone to send messages on whatsapp. If all of that went away tomorrow, they'd be inconvenienced at best and then go on with their day to day life."

I'm not saying it is a good thing, but this is completely out of touch with how dependent (most) people are on these technologies.

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mawadev 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I'd say its just businesses and governments that are dependant, most people can get by just fine

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simonw 5 hours ago | parent [-]

A lot of people are genuinely stranded if their phone runs out of battery. How do they pull up a map, or call an Uber, or phone someone to pick them up?

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layer8 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The cellular phone network doesn’t require the internet to work.

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simonw 4 hours ago | parent [-]

It does require the phone to have battery charge.

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layer8 4 hours ago | parent [-]

The context was “Everyone does use the internet for everything today” and “most people don't even realize how the internet is running literally everything”. You don’t need the internet for your phone to have a battery charge.

	▲	inigyou an hour ago \| parent [-]
		They were providing some illustrative examples: most people rely on the internet for maps. If they don't have internet (because their battery is flat) they can't do xyz.

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bluefirebrand 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm not sure the point you're trying to make. This was true before cell phones too. People didn't carry maps everywhere.

What's the difference between then and now?

Pay phones, basically? Physical maps being available in public places more readily?

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simonw 4 hours ago | parent [-]

The argument here is "most people can get by just fine" without access to the internet.

I tried to pick an obvious example to illustrate how that's not true.

The difference is that, prior to everyone having a smart phone, people had backups for if they ran into trouble. They might simply not go somewhere that they might have trouble returning from. They sorted out their travel plans in advance - someone to pick them up from a location at a time. They memorized phone numbers so they could call from a pay phone if they needed to. They carried cash or a cheque book to pay for cabs.

	▲	bluefirebrand 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Fair enough. I suppose a better argument would be "people can learn to get by just fine without the internet if they have to" But you're definitely right. We become pretty reliant pretty quickly. I think that should be concerning with the way technology is trending in society

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sublinear 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You'll find it hard to pin down what you mean by "everything" otherwise you wouldn't have said that. Nobody uses the internet for everything.

Local models are highly likely to dominate in the long run as "good enough" inevitably becomes trivially cheap. This is a very different pattern of incentives and adoption compared to the internet.

I think it's more similar to the advent of personal computers. They had a brief surge and then turned into something else (smartphones, cloud, etc.) for all but a few niche cases. AI is not changing the consumer landscape. It's getting absorbed into existing platforms where there's a clear use case and benefit. It's just another expected software feature. This is far from the first time people have rejected a "personal assistant" concept and they'll just keep rejecting it.

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jacobgold 6 hours ago | parent [-]

It seems fair to leave the definition of "everything" to a reasonable person's interpretation. It's obvious that the internet is beyond ubiquitous in modern life.

I agree that where models run will will change over time, probably they'll run everywhere, but it's still the same kind of AI we are talking about.

Smartphones are personal computers.

	▲	sublinear 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Just about every app has a "help" button, but do you really use it? What about captions on a video or any number of other accessibility features? They're in everything, but not used for everything. It makes perfect sense that they exist and were way overdue for an update, but they're just extra blades on the multitool. Perhaps in some designs they become more integral, but that is expected and invisible. Yes "everything", but that's not even close to sufficient to become a huge breakthrough like the internet.