Head of Data Science, US Ops @Peak_HQ, Forecasting, Economics and #rstats enthusiast. PhD Economics from @LancasterUni. Views my own.
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Joined November 2015
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AI lacks the empathy with the intended audience unless you are super specific (and I think still requires human understanding) - the AI is writing it for you and your requests - resulting in identikit presentations which have not been created for a specific purpose
I have this same conversation with students: I can tell when slides have been AI generated as everything is in words - good slides have a logical flow that allows you to use less words. LLMs have mostly been encouraged to be verbose - the opposite is required here
my hypothesis for why AI-generated slides for technical presentations are so awful:
people who don't have a lot of experience presenting think that to make a talk you just put all of the stuff you want to talk about on the slides, then you go through each slide and say the stuff the slide says.
how you're actually supposed to prepare a presentation: you decide what to say, write it out as a rough script, then put maybe 3% of the text on the slide, plus a bunch of visual aides (e.g. plots that only include data you're planning to discuss).
AI-generated presentations are mostly the former. they have a ton of stuff the presenter never mentions, and the stuff that is most useful for the presenter is absent or not highlighted. they include enough content for a presentation 10 times longer than the actual presentation is supposed to be.
maybe try doing it the other way: first write the script for what you actually want to say, and make sure you can say all of it in the time you have. then prompt the model to create the slides based on the script. ask it to use as little text a possible, and a minimalist visual style rather than the claude house style. you can thank me later (I accept both venmo and zelle).
Simon Spavound retweeted
my hypothesis for why AI-generated slides for technical presentations are so awful:
people who don't have a lot of experience presenting think that to make a talk you just put all of the stuff you want to talk about on the slides, then you go through each slide and say the stuff the slide says.
how you're actually supposed to prepare a presentation: you decide what to say, write it out as a rough script, then put maybe 3% of the text on the slide, plus a bunch of visual aides (e.g. plots that only include data you're planning to discuss).
AI-generated presentations are mostly the former. they have a ton of stuff the presenter never mentions, and the stuff that is most useful for the presenter is absent or not highlighted. they include enough content for a presentation 10 times longer than the actual presentation is supposed to be.
maybe try doing it the other way: first write the script for what you actually want to say, and make sure you can say all of it in the time you have. then prompt the model to create the slides based on the script. ask it to use as little text a possible, and a minimalist visual style rather than the claude house style. you can thank me later (I accept both venmo and zelle).
You could extend this to "a system can never be held accountable" a la @dsquareddigest. My own view is that absolute statements should be taken with a pinch of salt and this was a normative statement of what should be done, rather than what will be.
Simon Spavound retweeted
I hate this slide every time it comes up, and now from CSAIL
This has been false since before the slide was made. Automated systems make management decisions all the time (trading, logistics, customer service, insurance) & pretending they don't actually launders responsibility.
As an example of code moats dropping - AnyPS5 was started in August and has now got ~88% coverage of all PS5 system calls. This would have been a multi year undertaking not so long ago
I think this says a larger amount about what value companies measure from AI usage. Agree on the comparison with salary costs, but consider from a CFO perspective $1000 * number of employees is a significant expense if you cannot show ROI
Where is the thinking about REA (Reverse Engineer Anything), or the sudden ability to replicate existing software. A few of my own thoughts: (1/9)
Media industry radically changed with streaming and the collapse in physical sales. I am not so naive to believe that piracy was the only cause of these changes. (8/9)
I wish I had written down somewhere publicly that I expected this. If AI really makes workers dramatically more productive, then logically firms should be able to take an 18 year old, give them the models, and replace some of what we currently expect universities to provide.
Tech companies launching their own programs to train grads because they 'can't rely' on Ivy Leagues trib.al/Fi2miAG
