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Please Use AI

shawnsmucker.substack.com

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Re: Please Use AI

#121

Post by btilly »

cstever wrote: post #98
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 ha…

Odd. I never had any friends, families, or coworkers who were willing to be available for a dozen rough drafts. I've only had ones who were willing to talk during the idea stage, or after it was closer to a final speech.

For me, AI gives me feedback at places that I wouldn't have received it before. It does not replace the human feedback that I still look for.

Re: Please Use AI

#122

Post by moron4hire »

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.

It comes from an inclination to be argumentative for argument's sake. Some people approach everything with an eye that nobody else is as smart as them so everything everyone else makes must be flawed and it's their job to tell them how wrong they are.

Re: Please Use AI

#123

Post by swatcoder »

enraged_camel wrote: post #91
amdsn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The article is specifically about a strategy to improve on that (or rather a satirical exposé on how AI answers are the next spiral down into isolation).

Re: Please Use AI

#124

Post by elliotbnvl »

cstever wrote: post #98
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 ha…

Why can’t they continue to do so?

If anything an underlying truth about humanity is being exposed: we take the easy way out far more often than we’d like to admit.

Perhaps, this truth being made explicit is a wakeup call that will teach us the value of that hard work anew.

After all, nothing the author’s written isn’t also true about Google, but nobody realized how bad of a mistake that was.

Re: Please Use AI

#125

Post by cstever »

sushshshhs wrote: post #95
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.…

> 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.

I think you may have misread the parent comment.

And currently AI has no creativity nor does it enhance a human's creativity. It simply regurgitates and at best the human user can lie to themselves that they did it. Look at the "rinse and repeat" of animated movies. Humanity has been in a cycle of regurgitation for quite some time and AI is only going to make it worse.

Re: Please Use AI

#126

Post by yanis_t »

d--b wrote: post #77

I really dislike the condescending tone of the person who thinks they discovered the secret of happiness, but instead of distilling their wisdom for joy chooses to shame others in a passive aggressive poem. Sure, buddy, you know how to live a meaningful life, then why are you trolling the internet?

Exactly. I have children too you know. In fact we had a blast last time with my five year old shouting nonsense at Suno and having it make some cool songs out of it. Does it make me less human? It’s all about how you choose to use the technology

Re: Please Use AI

#127

Post by g-b-r »

eunoia wrote: post #26

Beautiful piece. I sometimes feel like technologists actually desire to remove the humanity from the world because it's messy and they don't understand it and therefore they fear it.

People like that probably hate AI, given how inscrutable it is

Re: Please Use AI

#128

Post by gbanfalvi »

enraged_camel wrote: post #91
amdsn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And you don't think AI is going to make these things worse? Even if you only have 3 friends, talk to them, hang out, do stuff with them.

Re: Please Use AI

#129

Post by sushshshhs »

ryandrake wrote: post #67
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…

Ever since I started experimenting with AI coding, I've totally lost that feeling of accomplishment. For projects I actually developed by typing in the code, it feels like I actually did something--like here's something I built and am responsible for bringing into the world. When I finish an AI-built project, I feel...nothing. Just that empty: "Code now exists where it didn't exist before, but I didn't really do anyt…

If your project contained original thought does it matter if the IFs and the ELSEs were generated?

I sometimes wonder if people get into this to create an actual working something or they just enjoy sorting colored blocks for the heck of it.

I am on the other extreme end: I don’t give a rat’s ass about the code itself. The spec, the intent, the architecture, the contracts are what I find interesting. All the “file handling” and “logging” and syntax wrangling and caring if some “variable” is on the “stack” or the “heap” I can live without very happily. It’s not that they are uninteresting in and of themselves but I find it hard to justify keeping my focus on these microscopic issues again and again and again and again.

Re: Please Use AI

#130

Post by LetsGetTechnicl »

Lerc wrote: post #70
nozzlegear wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Didn't that guy start his channel because he didn't have a father growing up? Seems like important context.

[flagged]

What the fuck?
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