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Please don't say mean things about the AI I just invested a billion dollars in

mcsweeneys.net

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Re: Please don't say mean things about the AI I just invested a billion dollars in

#61

Post by gllmariuty »

echelon wrote: post #53
solid_fuel wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are fiction machines. All they can do is hallucinate, and sometimes the hallucinations are useful. That alone rules them out, categorically, from any critical control loop. After you eliminate anything that requires accountability and trustworthiness from the tasks which LLMs may be responsibly used for, the most obvious remaining use-cases are those built around lying: - advertising - astroturfing - other forms…

[flagged]

> AI is a force multiplier for labor capital

for an 2011 account that's a shockingly naive take

yes, AI is a labor capital multiplier. and the multiplicand is zero

hint: soon you'll be competing not with humans without AI, but with AIs using AIs

Re: Please don't say mean things about the AI I just invested a billion dollars in

#62

Post by ajkjk »

seizethecheese wrote: post #5

> There’s an extremely hurtful narrative going around that my product, a revolutionary new technology that exists to scam the elderly and make you distrust anything you see online, is harmful to society The article is certainly interesting as yet another indicator of the backlash against AI, but I must say, “exists to scam the elderly” is totally absurd. I get that this is satire, but satire has to have some basis in…

if you make a thing and the thing is going to be inevitably used for a purpose and you could do something about that use and you do not --- then yes, it exists for that purpose, and you are responsible for it being used in that way. you don't get to say "ah well who could have seen this inevitable thing happening? it's a shame nobody could do anything about it" when it was you that could have done something about it.

Re: Please don't say mean things about the AI I just invested a billion dollars in

#63

Post by irjustin »

only-one1701 wrote: post #54
seizethecheese wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all. I’m saying AI doesn’t exist to scam elderly , which is saying nothing about whether it’s dangerous in that respect.

Perhaps you’ve heard that the purpose of a system is what it does?

In broad strokes - disagree.

This is the knife-food vs knife-stab vs gun argument. Just because you can cook with a hammer doesn't make it its purpose.

Re: Please don't say mean things about the AI I just invested a billion dollars in

#64

Post by nozzlegear »

soulofmischief wrote: post #39
jacquesm wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot about 'open source contributors' and 'musicians'.

As an open source contributor and musician who is not rich, I am pretty stoked about the engineering, scientific and mathematical advancements being made in my lifetime. I have only become more creatively enabled when adopting these tools, and while I share the existential dread of becoming unemployable, I also am wearing machine-fabricated clothing and enjoying a host of other products of automation. I do not have s…

As an open source maintainer, I'm not stoked and I feel pretty much the opposite way. I've only become more annoyed when trying to adopt these tools, and felt more creative and more enabled by reducing their usage and going back to writing code by hand the old fashioned way. AI's only been useful to me as a commit message writer and a rubber duck.

> I do not have selective guilt over modern generative tools because I understand that one day this era will be history and society will be as integrated with AI as we are with other transformative technologies.

This seems overly optimistic, but also quite dystopian. I hope that society doesn't become as integrated with these shitty AIs as we are with other technologies.

Re: Please don't say mean things about the AI I just invested a billion dollars in

#65

Post by navigate8310 »

echelon wrote: post #53
solid_fuel wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are fiction machines. All they can do is hallucinate, and sometimes the hallucinations are useful. That alone rules them out, categorically, from any critical control loop. After you eliminate anything that requires accountability and trustworthiness from the tasks which LLMs may be responsibly used for, the most obvious remaining use-cases are those built around lying: - advertising - astroturfing - other forms…

[flagged]

> I want to be able to leverage Hollywood grade VFX and make shows and transform my likeness for real time improv.

While i certainly respect your interactivity and subsequent force multiplayer nature of AI, this doesn't mean you should try to emulate an already given piece of work. You'll certainly gain a small dopamine when you successfully copy something but it would also atrophy your critical skills and paralyze you from making any sort of original art. You'll miss out on discovering the feeling of any frontier work that you can truly call your own.

Re: Please don't say mean things about the AI I just invested a billion dollars in

#66

Post by solid_fuel »

ajross wrote: post #43
solid_fuel wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LLMs are fiction machines. All they can do is hallucinate, and sometimes the hallucinations are useful. That alone rules them out, categorically, from any critical control loop. After you eliminate anything that requires accountability and trustworthiness from the tasks which LLMs may be responsibly used for, the most obvious remaining use-cases are those built around lying: - advertising - astroturfing - other forms…

> [...] are fiction machines. All they can do is hallucinate, and sometimes the hallucinations are useful. That alone rules them out, categorically, from any critical control loop. True, but no more true than it is if you replace the antecedent with "people". Saying that the tools make mistakes is correct. Saying that (like people) they can never be trained and deployed such that the mistakes are tolerable is an awfu…

> True, but no more true than it is if you replace the antecedent with "people".

Incorrect. People are capable of learning by observation, introspection, and reasoning. LLMs can only be trained by rote example.

Hallucinations are, in fact, an unavoidable property of the technology - something which is not true for people. [0]

[0] https://arxiv.org/abs/2401.11817

Re: Please don't say mean things about the AI I just invested a billion dollars in

#67

Post by [deleted] »

porkloin wrote: post #10

I hate LLMs as much as the next guy, but this was honestly just not very funny. Humor can be a great vehicle for criticism when it's done right, but this feels like clickbait-level lazy writing. I wouldn't criticize it anywhere else, but I have enjoyed reading a bunch of actually good writing from mcsweeney's over the years in the actual literary journal and on their website.

[deleted]

Re: Please don't say mean things about the AI I just invested a billion dollars in

#69

Post by anonymars »

ajkjk wrote: post #62
seizethecheese wrote: post #5

> There’s an extremely hurtful narrative going around that my product, a revolutionary new technology that exists to scam the elderly and make you distrust anything you see online, is harmful to society The article is certainly interesting as yet another indicator of the backlash against AI, but I must say, “exists to scam the elderly” is totally absurd. I get that this is satire, but satire has to have some basis in…

if you make a thing and the thing is going to be inevitably used for a purpose and you could do something about that use and you do not --- then yes, it exists for that purpose, and you are responsible for it being used in that way. you don't get to say "ah well who could have seen this inevitable thing happening? it's a shame nobody could do anything about it" when it was you that could have done something about it.

> you...could have done something about it

What is it that isn't being done here, and who isn't doing it?

Re: Please don't say mean things about the AI I just invested a billion dollars in

#70

Post by jychang »

ajkjk wrote: post #62
seizethecheese wrote: post #5

> There’s an extremely hurtful narrative going around that my product, a revolutionary new technology that exists to scam the elderly and make you distrust anything you see online, is harmful to society The article is certainly interesting as yet another indicator of the backlash against AI, but I must say, “exists to scam the elderly” is totally absurd. I get that this is satire, but satire has to have some basis in…

if you make a thing and the thing is going to be inevitably used for a purpose and you could do something about that use and you do not --- then yes, it exists for that purpose, and you are responsible for it being used in that way. you don't get to say "ah well who could have seen this inevitable thing happening? it's a shame nobody could do anything about it" when it was you that could have done something about it.

Yeah. Example: stripper poles. Or hitachi magic wands.

Those poles WERE NOT invented for strippers/pole dancers. Ditto for the hitachis. Even now, I'm pretty sure more firemen use the poles than strippers. But that doesn't stop the association from forming. That doesn't make me not feel a certain way if I see a stripper pole or a hitachi magic wand in your living room.

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