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The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

aphyr.com

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Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#31

Post by zabzonk »

chungusamongus wrote: post #20

Complaining about AI slop is starting to become its own kind of slop. There isn't anything novel in this little essay. It might as well have been written by AI because I've seen this type of dude complain about this exact type of thing countless times at this point, and none of them have a solution other than empty moralizing or call your representative or whatever. None of that’s going to work. Fortune, Gizmodo, The…

Spotting a problem is relatively easy. Coming up with a solution, not so much. But it is still worth pointing out that there is a problem.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#32

Post by alehlopeh »

chungusamongus wrote: post #20

Complaining about AI slop is starting to become its own kind of slop. There isn't anything novel in this little essay. It might as well have been written by AI because I've seen this type of dude complain about this exact type of thing countless times at this point, and none of them have a solution other than empty moralizing or call your representative or whatever. None of that’s going to work. Fortune, Gizmodo, The…

If you’re not an AI yourself it’s weird how you’re so offended by this stuff.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#34

Post by miltonlost »

chungusamongus wrote: post #29
airza wrote: post #2

I agree with the general sentiment that the structure of society is going to change, but I don't know what the satisfying solution is. It's hard to imagine not participating will work, or even be financially viable for me, for long.

That's exactly it. This person does not understand the coercive competition of the market. If you don't use new tech, you are going to be undercut by people who do. And every HR dept is going to expect to to have experience with AI even if the department that’s hiring doesn't really use it. If the author's supposed solution to the problem has negative personal consequences, why would you do it? To be nice?

Because I don't like the feeling my conscience gives me by doing something I think is evil and bad. Some people have moral lines that they won't cross when finding jobs.

If my competitors are filling their flour with sawdust, guess I got to just do the same?

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#35

Post by masfuerte »

voidUpdate wrote: post #13

> "Unavailable Due to the UK Online Safety Act. Now might be a good time to call your representatives." Having the "call your representatives" link be to your website as well isn't particularly helpful... I already can't get to it

https://web.archive.org/web/20260416134911/https://aphyr.com...

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#36

Post by baal80spam »

lukev wrote: post #17

This is a must-read series of articles, and I think Kyle is very much correct. The comparison to the adoption of automobiles is apt, and something I've thought about before as well. Just because a technology can be useful doesn't mean it will have positive effects on society. That said, I'm more open to using LLMs in constrained scenarios, in cases where they're an appropriate tool for the job and the downsides can b…

> Just because a technology can be useful doesn't mean it will have positive effects on society.

You say it in a way that it sounds like automobiles don't have a positive effect. I don't agree - they have some negative effects but overall they have a vast net positive effect for everyone.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#37

Post by delecti »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #10
poszlem wrote: post #4

From the article: "I’ve thought about this a lot over the last few years, and I think the best response is to stop. ML assistance reduces our performance and persistence, and denies us both the muscle memory and deep theory-building that comes with working through a task by hand: the cultivation of what James C. Scott would call metis." "What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do wi…

> "What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do without thinking. Things we do without thinking-there's the real danger" - Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune I always preferred this take: “Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.” ― Alfred North Whitehead It's both opposite and complementary to your Frank Herb…

I think it's important that we recognize and understand how those operations are being done, and ignorance of the complexity of all the parts of our lives leads to the death of expertise. People who would learn a lot just from reading the course description of a 100 level class in a field are assuming their lack of knowledge means there's no complexity there.

> “There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.” ― Isaac Asimov

The easier society makes it to be unaware of the complexity of everything around us, the easier it becomes to assume everything is actually as simple as their surface-level understanding.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#38

Post by Sharlin »

dfxm12 wrote: post #5

The idea that Claude might be able to help you change the color of your led lighting as a legitimate counter to things like a less usable world wide web, worse government services, the loss of human ability, etc. is excellent parody.

It's way too real, that's just how humans tend to work. Short-term personal benefit almost always outweighs long-term societal cost.

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#39

Post by miltonlost »

wmeredith wrote: post #27
poszlem wrote: post #4

From the article: "I’ve thought about this a lot over the last few years, and I think the best response is to stop. ML assistance reduces our performance and persistence, and denies us both the muscle memory and deep theory-building that comes with working through a task by hand: the cultivation of what James C. Scott would call metis." "What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do wi…

> ML assistance reduces our performance and persistence, and denies us both the muscle memory and deep theory-building that comes with working through a task by hand On one hand I intuitively think this is correct, on the other hand these very concerns about technology have been around since the invention of... writing . Here is an excerpt of Socrates speaking on the written word, as recorded in Plato's dialogue Phae…

And you know, Socrates was right. We did lose our memory with writing! How many phone numbers do you remember now that you have a phonebook in your phone? Humans will lose skills due to LLMs. That's just obvious on its face by the fact that if you don't do a skill regularly, you will lose it (or lose to do it as well as you once had).

Re: The future of everything is lies, I guess: Where do we go from here?

#40

Post by chungusamongus »

gdulli wrote: post #11
poszlem wrote: post #4

From the article: "I’ve thought about this a lot over the last few years, and I think the best response is to stop. ML assistance reduces our performance and persistence, and denies us both the muscle memory and deep theory-building that comes with working through a task by hand: the cultivation of what James C. Scott would call metis." "What do such machines really do? They increase the number of things we can do wi…

Also Frank Herbert: "Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."

I mean, people are talking about the butlerian jihad without any sense of irony or subtext. Dune is literally a feudal hellscape that takes place in the wake of that event. It didn’t make things better. Lmao
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