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Please Use AI

shawnsmucker.substack.com

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Re: Please Use AI

#91

Post by enraged_camel »

amdsn wrote: post #59
Brendinooo wrote: post #29

This makes me think about that "Dad, how do I?" YouTube channel that made headlines a few years back. People seem to be fine with such a thing existing, they don't seem to be lamenting that people might go to that channel instead of asking their own fathers. Like, apparently Mr. Smucker has a friend who's into fly fishing, and the time to talk to that person. Great! Good for him! If I do not have a friend who's into…

I really don't understand taking the author's silly hyperspecific examples of unique humans in his life as berating the reader for not knowing exactly those same people. I read it as "remember all the unique people you know and try reaching out to them instead of going to AI or the internet."

A lot of people don't have that many friends. I forget the average but it is in fact absurdly low, at least for Americans. There are a lot of reasons for this (e.g. erosion and disappearance of "third place" spaces, rise of social media, etc.) but the circumstances have essentially been ripe for something like AI to come in and fill the gap, and it is.

Re: Please Use AI

#92

Post by sumeno »

randoments wrote: post #79
antonyt wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook, sure, but Uber and AirBNB? I don't see how Uber has displaced some community function. AirBNB is arguably destructive to communities, but again how was community fulfilling the need it attempts to address?

with classified ads? or calling the local tourist office? Like people didnt rent a house for their holiday before airbnb

Most people did not rent houses on trips before airbnb

Re: Please Use AI

#93

Post by graemep »

Brendinooo wrote: post #29

This makes me think about that "Dad, how do I?" YouTube channel that made headlines a few years back. People seem to be fine with such a thing existing, they don't seem to be lamenting that people might go to that channel instead of asking their own fathers. Like, apparently Mr. Smucker has a friend who's into fly fishing, and the time to talk to that person. Great! Good for him! If I do not have a friend who's into…

> This makes me think about that "Dad, how do I?" YouTube channel that made headlines a few years back. People seem to be fine with such a thing existing, they don't seem to be lamenting that people might go to that channel instead of asking their own fathers.

Not everyone has a father to ask. His own family were abandoned by their father when he was 14 and his sister was 9. People die. Some people have abusive or neglectful parents.

Not every dad is good at everything.

Re: Please Use AI

#94

Post by Brendinooo »

happytoexplain wrote: post #37
Brendinooo wrote: post #29

This makes me think about that "Dad, how do I?" YouTube channel that made headlines a few years back. People seem to be fine with such a thing existing, they don't seem to be lamenting that people might go to that channel instead of asking their own fathers. Like, apparently Mr. Smucker has a friend who's into fly fishing, and the time to talk to that person. Great! Good for him! If I do not have a friend who's into…

>If I do not have a friend who's into fly fishing, or if I need an answer quickly, am I...just out of luck? I really don't understand the need to torture alternate meanings out of the writing of people we don't agree with. Nothing in the author's writing even comes close to implying what you're suggesting here.

There's an undercurrent in a lot of writings like this that don't seem to grasp that LLMs enable access to a ton of knowledge that was otherwise out of reach for a ton of people.

I'll give an example. I just traveled to Serbia, and I went on a run through a park in New Belgrade, where I saw a monument written in Cyrillic. I snapped a pic of it and uploaded it to Claude; it translated and gave me some context.

I thought this was amazing!

But I'm sure someone could point out that I took a mental shortcut, that I made myself dumber by not grasping Serbian and Cyrillic to have a go at translating myself. Or they could say that I lost the human connection that would have come by finding a resident who spoke English and asking about what that meant.

In a sense, this are plausible critiques. But the reality is that I was on a run, and I almost certainly never would have done those things if Claude (or smartphones with cameras, for that matter) didn't exist. I didn't become lazier or lose the imperfections of human connections, the whole thing was a net add for me.

And so, in that light - it's okay to use a recipe book, or ask an LLM about fly fishing, or do some web searches to get some advice about how to write a wedding toast.

If that's missing the point somehow, so be it. Perhaps you could enlighten me (and thus cultivate a human connection)!

Re: Please Use AI

#95

Post by sushshshhs »

annnoo wrote: post #55

I had this moment when we designed shirts for the marathon we ran as a group. Instead of Brainstorming something funny, we just prompted ChatGPT and chose one of the results. I felt lost immediately. All the creativity, the humanity, the endless hours of putting soul into something. Gone For one hour or so I had some kind of existential crisis. Just because of a funny slogan on a shirt. And sometimes I still feel emp…

Endless hours of putting soul into your shirt? I mean, good for you, but it sounds like your team wasn’t so stoked about that as you are. So I’m not sure you can blame AI for that one.

Give it time. This is a skill (and tooling) issue.

AI enables so goddamn much creativity. You literally don’t know what to do with it, but once society adapts and we all calm TF down we are free to create in whatever capacity we like.

Your shirt? Go to town! Draw something yourself and let AI patch up some rough edges. Do some style transfer. Or don’t use it. That’s still an option. As you said it is hard to create with AI without losing your soul but that’s not inherent to the tech. It’s a massive skill and tooling issue.

Instead of choosing between “do it fully myself” and “let someone else do it” you get a slider now. You get to pick! How awesome is that?

Re: Please Use AI

#96

Post by dominotw »

annnoo wrote: post #55

I had this moment when we designed shirts for the marathon we ran as a group. Instead of Brainstorming something funny, we just prompted ChatGPT and chose one of the results. I felt lost immediately. All the creativity, the humanity, the endless hours of putting soul into something. Gone For one hour or so I had some kind of existential crisis. Just because of a funny slogan on a shirt. And sometimes I still feel emp…

> so I had some kind of existential crisis

realization was that you had been generating slop all this while before ai and somehow convinced yourself that it was original and human ?

Re: Please Use AI

#97

Post by jdw64 »

I am truly envious of people who have the luxury of a supportive environment that allows them to write a post like this.

For my first dev job, I was made to set up a sole proprietorship just so the company could illegally dodge minimum wage and severance. I didn't get mentored; I learned through constant abuse. It was only when I first used AI that I realized the people around me were teaching me garbage and my books were completely obsolete.

I envy that this person was surrounded by people who cared. Before AI, trying to learn programming just meant dealing with insults. They can stay in touch with their network because they were respected. I had zero people in my environment for intellectual discussions or programming.

It really shows how your environment shapes your relationship with tools. I have a love-hate dynamic with AI. It frustrates me that my manual coding skills are degrading, but I'm incredibly thankful for the easy access to knowledge I never had. At the end of the day, reading this just makes me envy those who get to live and work in a warm, respectful setting.

Re: Please Use AI

#98

Post by cstever »

btilly wrote: post #85

I am reminded of Veritasium: What Everyone Gets Wrong About AI and Learning (original video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xS68sl2D70 ) from a year ago. "The world is full of heavy things, and yet most of us aren't ripped." AI is an opportunity. On the one hand, it can be used to let our minds and social lives atrophy. On the other hand, it is an opportunity to help our minds grow. Most people will make the lazy ch…

>Take, for example, speeches. I do not let AI write my speeches. But my speeches are better for having been critiqued by AI. But the result is still my speech. My thoughts, my ideas, my words, and my meaning. Just improved with rounds of feedback about where it fell flat, where I was likely to lose people, and so on. Feedback that I had to fix.

> So do not let AI write your speeches. But do use it to push yourself harder.

This used to be the job of our friends, families, and coworkers: To push us harder. I think we are losing something.

Re: Please Use AI

#99

Post by caymanjim »

randoments wrote: post #79
antonyt wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook, sure, but Uber and AirBNB? I don't see how Uber has displaced some community function. AirBNB is arguably destructive to communities, but again how was community fulfilling the need it attempts to address?

with classified ads? or calling the local tourist office? Like people didnt rent a house for their holiday before airbnb

Short-term home rentals were basically non-existent before Airbnb. A tiny, tiny market for them in some vacation hotspots.

Re: Please Use AI

#100

Post by brunoborges »

Brendinooo wrote: post #29

This makes me think about that "Dad, how do I?" YouTube channel that made headlines a few years back. People seem to be fine with such a thing existing, they don't seem to be lamenting that people might go to that channel instead of asking their own fathers. Like, apparently Mr. Smucker has a friend who's into fly fishing, and the time to talk to that person. Great! Good for him! If I do not have a friend who's into…

Go to a store that sells fly fishing equipment and talk to a customer or a staff. You may as well end up with a new friend.
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