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Please Use AI

shawnsmucker.substack.com

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Re: Please Use AI

#381

Post by the_af »

btilly wrote: post #379
the_af wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You've just demonstrated a lack of reading comprehension Why are you escalating this? I didn't personally attack you or question your comprehension, I'm challenging some of what you said. Not even all. > Are you having a discussion with me, or a strawman that you're projecting onto me? Right now it looks like you're debating a strawman. Who doesn't look anything like me. Not a strawman. I'm addressing a broader con…

> Why are you escalating this? I didn't personally attack you or question your comprehension, I'm challenging some of what you said. On personal attacks, you literally said that it looked to you like I am part of a productivity death cult. How was that not you attacking first? Moving on, What you challenged was not what I said. It was a misunderstanding of what I said. A misunderstanding that is directly contradicted…

You seem very defensive and angry, I have zero interest in discussing anything in that tone.

Re: Please Use AI

#382

Post by the_af »

llbeansandrice wrote: post #367
beej71 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just acted as an amateur editor for my friend's new novel. It took a long time to get through with hundreds or thousands of minor corrections and notes. I'm certain I outperformed an LLM for a lot of that in terms of quality.

You don’t need to outperform an LLM tho. The experience of working on it together is incredibly meaningful. I generally reject this litmus test that someone has to be “better” and an LLM in order for the human interaction and effort to be worthwhile. You’re now part of the journey of this novel. They will thank you in the acknowledgements section. It’s this foundation upon which our lives, communities, culture and so…

> You’re now part of the journey of this novel. They will thank you in the acknowledgements section. It’s this foundation upon which our lives, communities, culture and societies are built.

Beautifully said.

I think this is what the poem is all about. Some people (bizarrely, in my opinion) sometimes focus on whether AI is good enough or whether it lets them be more productive with their projects, in some mad rush to optimize life. But I think that's a red herring, and I think so does the poem's author.

Re: Please Use AI

#383

Post by customguy »

datakan wrote: post #118
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.

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…

> We've created little prisons for ourselves and locked the door.

Yes, but that kind of ignores the more active elements. This story didn't languish with few upvotes and a few shallow comments, it was an instant HN darling so had to be killed, or it would still be on the front page.

[0] https://hnrankings.info/48323101/

And whatever the reasons or rationalizations for that may be, you can be 100% sure it was by a tiny minority.

Re: Please Use AI

#384

Post by zingababba »

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…

Find satisfaction doing something else. What is this soul vs machine obsession?

Re: Please Use AI

#386

Post by kcplate »

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…

For me the rule now is…use AI to analyze and summarize (but check it like a hawk). However, after some initial experimentation to see capabilities, I refuse to use it to create anything new.

It’s certainly on the surface impressive, but when I dive into the details of what it creates, the slop becomes so apparent I cant unsee it and it distracts me.

Re: Please Use AI

#387

Post by kajaktum »

I have been thinking of something like this. We are paid to solve problems but should we really solve them?

This is easiest to see in games, when people complain about the balance of a game, they often want some "problems" to be solved. "This map is massive, can't we just create teleportation nodes everywhere? Can't we just have a very fast flying mount?". To me this is missing the point, is battle mechanic an obstacle over the story? Maybe it is, but have you considered that they expected to experience the story with the combat?

In real life, it is not so easy to say "This problem is necessary for human life". If an LLM can infer what I want to say to someone in a much clearer form, should we do that? Should we use LLM to fix all of our grammars? Should making accounts be really cheap? Is market making a problem that we should solve? Should we really make it easier for people to invest i.e. democratizing finance? Should we really give everyone access to 1GBps bandwidth internet? Should we really want full internet access everywhere even in the middle of Amazon forest?

Personally, I don't know if the answer is that straightforward. For each of the items I listed, I can see things that we lose. A lot of humanity is problem solving, and we have solve a lot of problems that have kept humanity busy for most of their lives. We are not living in an era where problems that we face are unique and we are simply not designed for.

Re: Please Use AI

#388

Post by kajaktum »

sushshshhs wrote: post #129
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…

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…

I think you are right, but I still care. I want to write software that is immortal. My dream is to write code that people would be happy to read and easy to understand. It is also some kind of meditation. I can zone into something and "get my hand dirty".

> 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.

So yes, to be honest, some people write software for the "heck of it". Will my implementation of Lisp interpreter matter at all in the grand scheme of things? No. It is in fact a waste of time, because you _could_ have learnt how it works and implement it in less than an hour with LLM.

> The spec, the intent, the architecture, the contracts are what I find interesting.

To me, this is like saying the financial of the company is what determines the company's success, not whatever the engineering team is doing. So instead of thinking about the "The spec, the intent, the architecture, the contracts", just give the right monetary incentives and you will come up with a successful project.

From this perspective, can you empathize with the "low level" developers?

Re: Please Use AI

#389

Post by kajaktum »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #321
ryukoposting wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The entire purpose of a photo is to capture a moment. What 'moment' is AI capturing? Do the books in the background represent the 'moment'? The adverts? The furniture? The clothing? The hairstyle? These are all 'parts of the moment'. When we look at old pictures, these details are the parts people LOVE going over. None of that is there in AI, and in 20 years, no one will care go look it over, because it's meaningless…

Does it matter if the moment is real? What makes you think that all of the photos that have been taken thus far are real? What makes you think that the photographer chose a certain angle to craft a story? Is that moment real? When people say "cheese" in photos to make them smile, are those real?

I am not a proponent of AI images, believe me, but I find it interesting to think that people would not like AI images. People don't really care if something is real or not. They just want to be told a good story.

i.e. we are fucked, but we have already been fucked for years without knowing. Call me a luddite but selfies is the fakest shit ever. I would rather take pictures of plants, rocks and animals than people.

Re: Please Use AI

#390

Post by aidenn0 »

causal wrote: post #380
aidenn0 wrote: post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The poem itself is elitist. If you leverage a broad social network, you are better than if you use AI.

You completely misunderstood it then. It was not about utilizing broad social networks nor was it about not-using AI.

If it's not about those things, then it's ineffective writing.
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