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Please Use AI

shawnsmucker.substack.com

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Re: Please Use AI

#191

Post by jimbokun »

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 was the optimistic view of the Internet. That we would be able to stay in touch with friends and families over vast distances. That we would be able to develop new relationships with people over shared interests not limited to geographical proximity. That we would be able to collaborate to create new things.

The reality was replacing human interaction with addiction to an algorithmic feed and endless hours of mindless consumption and very little creation and rapidly deteriorating mental health.

It is good to be skeptical of similar grandiose claims about AI, and consider what the reality might turn out to be.

Re: Please Use AI

#193

Post by frankest »

SlinkyOnStairs wrote: post #72
frankest wrote: post #15

The poem is absolutely on point. Nobody wants to consume AI content, especially on the parts that should be all-human. At the same time the poem is published on Substack, instead of a hand-crafted custom blog. There are 1) the tools that let us surface the human, then there is 2) the human, and then there comes 3) the factory generated business (someone doesn’t care but has to do it) content pretending to be human to…

> At the same time the poem is published on Substack, instead of a hand-crafted custom blog. Look. I am a massive fan of the janky old manually created website. will never die and it is hilarious that browsers will have to retain the feature for years to come. But "the blog was generated by a machine" isn't the problem with Substack. "Machine Generated" blog sites have been around ever since blogs went big. Blogspot…

The point is that that an “impurity” for some is a tool that lets many more others speak up and show their humanity. AI abused as a sales tactic becomes slop. For others may be a tool they use to finally build things they would have never ever been able to build before due to lack of access to skilled people that would help them. The poem hopefully sticks in that people who could express themselves should do it instead of outsourcing to AI. Thus the emotion it triggers will hopefully mitigate some of the disrespectful slop.

Re: Please Use AI

#195

Post by jimbokun »

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.

> A lot of people don't have that many friends.

Start there.

Re: Please Use AI

#196

Post by NiloCK »

A great many today find themselves surrounded by people staring at phones, who express irritation any time they are asked to look up.

I saw a video a while back on one social media site or another where someone sitting in a car recorded three young men shotgunning some beers on an apartment balcony. The insinuation being that hanging out was cringe, and that the poster had caught some losers in the act.

It's hard to gauge "real" general sentiment from social media, but if having a beer in a slightly silly way is the level of vulnerability at which you can be recorded for public ridicule, it's not hard to empathize with a generation reluctant to reach out for connection.

Re: Please Use AI

#197

Post by ignoramous »

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…

> ... we just prompted ChatGPT and chose one of the results ...

Notice how the blogger simply calls it "Chat".

  and feeding them into Chat
  or Gemini
  or Claude.

Re: Please Use AI

#198

Post by frankest »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #76
frankest wrote: post #15

The poem is absolutely on point. Nobody wants to consume AI content, especially on the parts that should be all-human. At the same time the poem is published on Substack, instead of a hand-crafted custom blog. There are 1) the tools that let us surface the human, then there is 2) the human, and then there comes 3) the factory generated business (someone doesn’t care but has to do it) content pretending to be human to…

The "If it's on substack, it's not a real blog, it's just sparkling page bloat" take is a little strained for me. The content is great. The tool gives writers a low-friction mechanism to charge for premium content, and works on most people's devices. I would rather have read this on substack, than the author get frustrated at having to learn how to publish pages by hand and give up. Maybe we just need a better altern…

It’s not about substack but about the fact that some tools can be used both to spam and to enable more humanity to come out.

Re: Please Use AI

#199

Post by number6 »

culopatin wrote: post #105
ryandrake wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

AI is like cheap void calories. Writing by hand is calories from a good home cooked meal with all the nutrients and love, AI code (unless maybe you worked on putting together an AI system and the harness is your build), feels like calories from a Sprite. Also I’ve been thinking that ai code is like cheap amazon furniture and hand crafted is well… hand crafted.

Will there be a point where hand crafted does end you somewhere like the Toaster Project [1]

[1]https://www.thomasthwaites.com/the-toaster-project/

Re: Please Use AI

#200

Post by cortesoft »

smokedetector1 wrote: post #82
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.

> they don't understand it and therefore they fear it I feel this whenever discussion of consciousness comes up. Even though consciousness is not well understood at all (e.g. no scientific progress whatsoever on the "hard problem"), some people would rather say "it's just molecules and we don't have free will, we don't really exist, it's all an illusion, science will reduce it eventually, etc. etc." It baffles me tha…

Who argues that we don't really exist just because we are made up of molecules? That doesn't make sense at all, EVERYTHING that exists is made up of molecules, that is what existence is.

I know I have consciousness, and I know I am made up of molecules. I don't find that limiting or disappointing at all.

I am very confused by these people you say argue that we don't exist. I have never heard anyone argue that.

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