this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2024
45 points (79.2% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26778 readers
1414 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Been using Perplexity AI quite a bit lately for random queries, like travel suggestions.

So I started wondering what random things people are using it for to help with daily tasks. Do you use it more than Google/etc?

Also if anyone is paying for Pro versions? Thinking if it's worth it paying for Perplexity AI Pro or not.

(page 2) 26 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I use Gemini as a replacmet for google search. Still kinda shit but everything else wants money or bans VPN users.

I run Mistral locally for anything personal or fun but I need a new GPU. My 1080ti is finally showing its age.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I don't word good and ChatGPT bro helps me use my nouns.

That's only kind of a joke, I have anomic aphasia and use ChatGPT to help me find the words when I lose them. I used to use Google but it doesn't really work anymore.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I use LLM bots mostly

  • as websearch - e.g. "list sites containing growing conditions for pepper plants";
  • for practical ideas - e.g. "suggest me a savoury spice mix containing ginger"

I never use them for the info itself. It's foolish to trust a system that behaves like a specially irrational assumer. (It makes shit up, it has the verbal intelligence of a potato, and fails to follow simple logic.)

I'm not using any Pro version.

For reference: nowadays I'm using ChatGPT 3.5 and Claude 1.2, both through DuckDuckGo. I used Gemini a fair bit, but ditched it - not just for privacy, but because Gemini's "tone" rubs me off the wrong way.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

Once upon a time I had it writing summaries of some of the comic series I was selling on Whatnot. Did that twice. Haven’t used it for anything else.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

I've tried paid versions of ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. I am currently using Gemini, and it is working reasonably well for me.

I mostly use it to replace searches. I haven't used Google in years, but mainly relied on DuckDuckGo until SEO made it less useful. My secondary use case is for programming. I tend to jump around to a lot of different languages and frameworks, and it's hugely helpful to get sample code describing what I want to do when I don't know the syntax.

Once in a great while, I will have it rewrite something for me. That is mostly for inspiration if I want to change the tone of something I wrote (then I'll edit). I think that all of the LLMs suck at writing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago

Daily? Only speech-to-text.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 6 months ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (2 children)

I don't use it for daily tasks. I've been tinkering around with local LLMs for recreation. Roleplay, being my dungeon master in a text adventure. Telling it to be my "waifu". Or generating amateur short stories. At some time I'd like to practice my foreign language skills with it.

I haven't had good success with tasks that rely on "correctness" or factual information. However sometimes I have it draft an email for me or come up with an argumentation for a text that I'm writing. That happens every other week, not daily. And I generously edit and restructure it afterwards or just incorporate some of the paragraphs into my final result.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 months ago

I've only used ChatGPT and it's mostly good for language-related tasks. I use it for finding tip-of-my-tongue words or completing/paraphrasing sentences. Basically fancy autocorrect. It's also good at debugging stuff sometimes when the language itself doesn't give useful errors (looking at you sql). Other than that, any time I've asked for factual information it's been wrong in some way or simply not helpful.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I'm using local models. Why pay somebody else or hand them my data?

  • Sometimes you need to search for something and it's impossible because of SEO, however you word it. A LLM won't necessarily give you a useful answer, but it'll at least take your query at face value, and usually tell you some context around your question that'll make web search easier, should you decide to look further.
  • Sometimes you need to troubleshoot something unobvious, and using a local LLM is the most straightforward option.
  • Using a LLM in scripts adds a semantic layer to whatever you're trying to automate: you can process a large number of small files in a way that's hard to script, as it depends on what's inside.
  • Some put together a LLM, a speech-to-text model, a text-to-speech model and function calling to make an assistant that can do something you tell it without touching your computer. Sounds like plenty of work to make it work together, but I may try that later.
  • Some use RAG to query large amounts of information. I think it's a hopeless struggle, and the real solution is an architecture other than a variation of Transformer/SSM: it should address real-time learning, long-term memory and agency properly.
  • Some use LLMs as editor-integrated coding assistants. Never tried anything like that yet (I do ask coding questions sometimes though), but I'm going to at some point. The 8B version of LLaMA 3 should be good and quick enough.
[–] [email protected] 0 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

Got any links teaching how to run a self hosted RAG LLM?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I think I'm using ChatGPT because that's what Bing's chatbot is. I've searched for some many dumb Python questions that it started promoting paid-for courses at one point. It gave me exactly what I was looking for the other day, but that doesn't mean it never hallucinates answers, or provides the answer to the question it assumes I must be searching for (rather than the one I am searching for).

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago

I stopped using perplexity only used it briefly. Chatgpt? Open ai specifically?

Lots of things.

To generate AI friend conversational ai character back story's. Bc sometimes they have to be long include lots of info.

To summarize reddit posts asking for advice. You know sometimes ppl make them longer then need be. It summarizes them for me when I'm lazy

Reframe verbiage

Just a few

[–] [email protected] 19 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Nothing. I'm a software developer, but don't use any AI tools with any regularity. I think I only asked ChatGPT or similar something once about programming because the documentation was awful, but I do remember that as having been helpful.

The only thing that might be close, though not directly, is translation software (kanji be hard).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago

The only thing that might be close, though not directly, is translation software (kanji be hard).

Well that's the dirty little open secret, isn't it? These "AI" programs are just beefier versions of the same kinds of translation, predictive text, "smart" image editing, and chatbot software we've had for a while. Significantly more sophisticated and more powerful, but not exactly new. That's why "AI" is suddenly appearing everywhere: in many cases, a less sophisticated predecessor of it was already there, they just didn't use the marketing language OpenAI popularized.

I legit had a spelling and grammar checking add-on that rebranded itself to "AI", and it did absolutely nothing different than what it already did.

And the whole point is that absolutely none of this is "AI" in any meaningful way. It's like when that company tried to brand their new skateboard/segway things from a few years ago as "hoverboards". You didn't achieve the thing, you're just reducing what the term means to make it apply to your new thing.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

I tried to use it to find me a decent phone under $500 and half of the listed options were $900+ so uhh.. Not too useful.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Tbf, I think chat GLT's Internet dump is a few years old. So maybe it recommends a banger of a phone from 2020 or so and the pricing data is now garbage.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 6 months ago (1 children)

IPhone 13 was listed, and while it's a good phone, it's uhh.. Not $500

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 months ago

Replaced forums like Stack for me both could give me incorrect information, one doesn't care how dumb my questions are.

My job pays from premium, and it's been useful clearing up certain issues I've had with tutorials for the current language I'm learning. In an IDE CO-Pilot can get a bit in the way and its suggestions aren't as good as they once were, but I've got the settings down to where it's a fancy spell check and synergises well vim motions to bang out some lines.

It's only replaced the basic interactions I would have had without having to wait for responses or having a thread ignored.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (3 children)

There's now a privacy-respecting offer on DDG, use the !ai bang to get to it.

To answer your question, any "natural language" query of modest importance, where asking a question like "will there be any more movies in that series by this director?" is easier than checking the usual movies websites.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 33 points 6 months ago

Basically nothing. I'm good at using search engines and the porn feels boringly samey from it so the only use case left for me is making meme images, which is rare at best.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 months ago
  • Proofread/rewrite emails and messages
  • Recipes
  • Find specs for computers, gadgets, cars etc.
  • Compare products
  • Troubleshoot software issues
  • Find meaning of idioms
  • Video game guide/walkthrough/reviews
  • Summarise articles
  • Find out if a website is legit (and ownership of the sites)

I don't see any need for Pro versions. ChatGPT 4 is already available for free via Bing. I simply use multiple AI tools and compare the results. (Copilot / Gemini / Claude / Perplexity)

load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›