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Please Use AI

shawnsmucker.substack.com

221–230 of 414 posts

Re: Please Use AI

#221

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…

I'm building something that aims to take on a bunch of the issues Substack has. I'm aware of what you refer to in (2), I see the results of all the "use our agent to write content in your voice, _totally_ human" tools, I'm fed up with everything needing a recurring subscription.

But I'm not entirely sure what you refer to in (1). Would you care to elaborate? I'd love to learn more.

Re: Please Use AI

#222
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…

PE channel as quote is great work from you,

Re: Please Use AI

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There are people who think a machine that can produce the same outputs as or better than humans are just as good or better than humans, that we can be treated just as black boxes.

Those people frighten me.

Re: Please Use AI

#224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ha…

If a photo has strong composition and symbolism, does it matter if the photographer took the photo as opposed to prompting it into existence?

An interesting question because photos are mostly machine-generated to begin with. The photographer just hits a button.

Re: Please Use AI

#225
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.

I was thinking the other day about animals in their natural habitat versus in captivity. Remove a gorilla from its jungle and stick it in a small zoo enclosure and it tends to go insane at worst, at best depression sets in. With orcas their fin flops over and even when released back into the wild it never returns to form, we can only guess what happens to them psychologically. Humans in supermax prisons exhibit the s…

These are excellent analogies.

We are destroying the environments humans were designed to thrive in.

Re: Please Use AI

#226
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…

> 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 choice. But you can choose to do otherwise.

Something that has a worse outcome for most people is worse for society.

Yeah it might be some antisocial hustler opportunity to get a leg up on everyone else. Huzzah.

Can SV Tech just make something that makes things better for society overall? No, impossible.

Re: Please Use AI

#227

For the sake of it: Just do everything manually. Stop using the computer to talk to strangers, take your feed and go to your neighbour and talk to them. Stop buying online. Spend your free time in the crowded city and ask someone in the electronic store who doesn't know shit. Just go to the place everyone else is going at the same time because its a lot more fun than trying to pre analyse it upfront. How about stop b…

You're being intentionally intellectually dishonest with your take here and this an absurd whataboutism. The author isn't telling people to stop using AI for work, coding tasks, etc he's saying to stop using it as a replacement for human interaction. Anecdotally, I've seen the effects that people delegating their executive functions to AI have had and the damage is quick and harrowing

No i'm not. You could just ask me and have an option discussion instead of downvoting and thinking i'm dishonest.

People today don't ask other people what 'time saving tipps' they have, you google and checkout some influencer etc.

I also have never asked some friends about their camping trip ideas. I use tripadvisor, or similiar things. My mom does it the same way and the rest of my family (all non it people).

He uses some hyperbole for the marriage proposal text but lets be honest, if a person is using that instead of trying it themselves, they wouldn't have tried it themselves anyway.

I also take pictures, you know how it felt already 10 years ago when people compared your pictures to evyerone else pictures? This train has departed. Everyone did red color key pictures, had their B/W phase etc.

How much time do we all actually sit in front of screens? Why are we discussiong this on hn? I don't know you, you don't know me. You don't care who i'm as a person.

My comment is genuin and its true.

Re: Please Use AI

#228
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…

It really depends on your goal. If your goal is to spend the evening coming up with funny things to say with your friends, then you shouldn't use AI. If your goal is to finish the t-shirts so that you can move on to the next topic in organizing a very complex event like a marathon, then perhaps you should use tools. Using AI tools isn't a problem. It's lack of care and thoughtlessness. That is the problem. That's alw…

I think this is part of the issue. Most activities can be divided into two categories (obviously this is only one of many different ways to categorize):

1. Things which are done primarily to accomplish a specific goal

2. Things which are done primarily for the joy of doing them.

Many tasks have aspects of both of these things. Automation, in all it's forms, is a way of maximizing the first, often at the expense of the second. When a new category of task first falls to automation, I think it takes a while for us to figure out how to pursue it solely for the second, but the two can co-exist. Backyard gardening and industrial agriculture both have their place.

Right now, coding and tech is, seemingly, in the middle of that transition. It's going to take a while before people learn to separate the two kinds of goal I think.

Re: Please Use AI

#230
Why do these kind of articles getting into front page in HN everyday. There is nothing substantive and these are the empty kind of articles that anti AI folks should be against.

No one is forcing you or pressuring you to not call friend to ask for recipe. Even AI would say that you should talk to friends.

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