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Please Use AI

shawnsmucker.substack.com

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Re: Please Use AI

#131

Post by cocoto »

michaelchisari wrote: post #48
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…

You underestimate how easy it is to get someone who's into fly fishing to talk about fly fishing. You don't need to have known them for more than thirty seconds. Even NYC has a fishing meetup group with over 1000 members.

Not everyone live in a big city.

Re: Please Use AI

#132

Post by customguy »

1shooner wrote: post #106
causal wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, the poem doesn't suggest technology isn't ever useful. It's highlighting that the inefficiency of human relationship is a feature, not a bug. You might not have a friend who is into fly-fishing, but surely you know somebody into SOMETHING you could ask about. Maybe that's less efficient, maybe it's less direct. But our whole reason for existing, all of the stuff that gives life meaning- it requires each other, an…

>but surely you know somebody into SOMETHING you could ask about But this is the thing. Many people don't, or have some other real or imagined barrier preventing them from it. Many people are really extraordinarily isolated. While I relate to the heart of the poem, there is an aspect of it that's essentially criticizing people for their suffering. There's a "just stop drinking" vibe.

> Many people are really extraordinarily isolated.

Then let's talk about that, and encourage them to speak up and reach out, rather than entombing them and throwing away the key.

I can stand someone who is lonely, and awkward, or sad. I have been all those things. I cannot stand someone who is so hospitalized by talking to LLM constantly that they treat me like a jukebox, too. That they're not even stupid or bad with words, but cannot think at all, and do it in a high volume, high confidence manner, with lots of big words and things that seem to make sense until you put weight on them. So unless someone more patient than me comes along, as far as I'm concerned, they are now lonely for good, unless I can avoid it. And that's not a state of things I want for myself or others.

Re: Please Use AI

#133

Post by happytoexplain »

Brendinooo wrote: post #116
elric wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> disrupts a status quo in a way that some might find harmful I love a good strawman argument myself, but this is just madness. Who the heck finds substitute "dad advice" harmful?

Right! Neither do I find it inherently harmful to ask Claude for a recipe instead of calling your friend. The author of the poem, however, is clearly portraying that as a negative.

That is correct - this is the whole story. Everything else you've portrayed the author as saying is misleading.

The author believes if you have a friend who cooks, see if they have a recipe. You believe there's no harm in going straight to Claude in the same scenario.

That's the whole disagreement.

Re: Please Use AI

#134

Post by SuperV1234 »

I found this quite cringy and an attempt at pulling at one's heartstrings due to the lack of a strong argumentation.

I wouldn't have called a friend for a meal plan or to figure out a hiking path 10 years ago, I would have used a search engine.

If I want to talk to a friend, I don't need an excuse to do so. And I'm not going to waste their time by asking something I can easily figure out on my own, today with AI, years ago with Google, and prior to that with printed material.

The anti-AI craze is just as bad as the "AI will solve everything" crowd.

Re: Please Use AI

#135

Post by jimbokun »

elliotbnvl wrote: post #124
cstever wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

> Why can’t they continue to do so?

Because we are talking to the AIs instead of talking to them.

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

There was plenty written about how Google was making us dumber because we didn't need to remember anything any more.

Re: Please Use AI

#136

Post by vitally3643 »

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…

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

No, and if you think that, your friends, family, and coworkers probably don't like you that much. You can push yourself harder for someone else, but it is and has always been something you do. Making it everyone else's problem to improve you makes you a codependent asshole. You can and should find purpose and meaning, even motivation and inspiration in others. It is not anyone's "job" to make you a better person.

That's precisely the kind of thinking that's landed us in the mess we're in. Abdication of personal responsibility. Shifting blame and responsibility from yourself onto anyone nearby. It is your job to make yourself a better person for the people around you. Not the other way around.

Re: Please Use AI

#137

Post by chasebank »

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…

Every new technology promises to fundamentally change learning, education, personal growth and ends up being used in the laziest way by 99% of people. Radio, TV, internet, now AI. Eating right and exercise or GLP1?

I agree with the sentiment, however, by definition most people will not follow your advice.

Re: Please Use AI

#138

Post by bigstrat2003 »

llm_nerd wrote: post #78
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…

>they don't seem to be lamenting that people might go to that channel instead of asking their own fathers. Much of the anti-AI sentiment has this sort of false dichotomy as its foundation. An imagination that the alternative to AI is the purest form of manual labour in some sort of idealized, bucolic form, filled with heartfelt, purposeful, sincere human connection. So every time I'm thinking about what to make with…

Sure, there's always been a subset of human endeavor which is just phoned-in slop. But AI makes the problem much worse, because it's basically all slop now. Moreover, I am an unabashed human supremacist. I find anything a human does to have some intrinsic value, even if it's not a high quality effort. So if it's the choice between human slop or AI slop, even if it were the same percentage of slop, I would rather have the human slop. At least that has some value due to being made by a human.

Re: Please Use AI

#139

Post by saltcured »

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…

I salute your introspection. In my mind, it is better than the alternative cope.

My wife has an ongoing frustration with a colleague who has adopted the mindset, "I reviewed it, so I wrote it". I guess he must sleep well at night, and probably votes in the "AI gives me superpowers bloc", but it is pretty apparent he doesn't really review it much either, because it is full of flaws and absurdity.

Re: Please Use AI

#140

Post by draftsman »

hootz wrote: post #40
steve_adams_86 wrote: post #16

This was great. I think about this a lot and have for years now. When LLMs first showed up I thought “but doesn’t this take away a little bit of what my life is? Don’t I like programming and solving the problems and learning the unexpected things and so on?” Now I use them extensively, daily, millions of tokens per day, and I still ask that question. I don’t use them for recipes or toasts or camping trips. I use them…

To be honest, when working on personal projects with AI I feel like I've replaced some of the joy of tinkering with code with the joy of tinkering with models. They require different work, writing prompts, setting up guardrails, harnesses etc, and that is also pretty fun for me!

I find very little joy in trying to wrangle the blackboxes that are LLMs. The undeterministic nature of them frustrates me, and feels nothing like the software engineering I know and love. However, I know I’m in the minority here, as almost everyone else in the industry I’ve talked to seems to love using them.
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