Best argument I’ve seen
I am leaving the AI party after one drink
131–140 of 145 posts
Re: I am leaving the AI party after one drink
#132I'm a little tired of the environmental argument against AI. It feels contrived, like people are fishing for a "problemism" to use to oppose it to avoid harder discussions. Let's compare AI to one typical 20 mile round trip commute. I asked Gemini and Claude and compared to see if the results looked good, but feel free to check. One ~20 mile round trip commute: about 5700 Wh in an EV, about 27000 Wh in a gas car (due…
I think it was a carry over from crypto days. Crypto terrible for energy etc etc. AI is also compute heavy so same deal. Regardless of real world use environment arguments are hard to sell because everything in modern life is terrible across the board. I am pretty sure that the beef industry is far worse than data centers. Dont get me started on plastics. Stronger arguments can be made “against” ai then energy use.
Everything in modern life is terrible compared to how it could be. There is quite a lot of room for improvement.
But compared to living in extreme poverty in parts of the developing world today or the life of a peasant in the Middle Ages? It’s much better for the vast majority of people.
It would have to get a lot worse to be as bad as subsistence farming or filthy slum life.
I think the most frustrating thing though is that many of our problems are self inflicted. The subsistence farmer and the slum dweller are victims of circumstance or societal forces far outside their control.
Re: I am leaving the AI party after one drink
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is why I understand everything before I commit. Ai can write a lot of bad code - but an expert can guide it to good code.
After a while why wouldn’t the expert just write the good code if the AI never truly learns?
Because the ai can write the tedious parts fast. you have to check but that is faster than writing.
Re: I am leaving the AI party after one drink
#134There are always a lot of people afraid of change. People in my rough age bracket have lived in a time where change usually sucked for us, so we tend to look at this latest change and think, "oh my god, not again."
It's fear of being worthless in a society where previously being "smart" (because they could write code) made them special. The truth is and it's a bummer, but none of us are special anymore. That's OK, get over it and go build cool things! Life is short.
Re: I am leaving the AI party after one drink
#135Reposting a comment (and one of the replies) since it's relevant: --- It occurred to me on my walk today that a program is not the only output of programming. The other, arguably far more important output, is the programmer. The mental model that you, the programmer, build by writing the program. And -- here's the million dollar question -- can we get away with removing our hands from the equation? You may know that…
Brandon Sanderson recently did a talk about something similar:
https://youtu.be/mb3uK-_QkOo
Re: I am leaving the AI party after one drink
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
After a while why wouldn’t the expert just write the good code if the AI never truly learns?
Because the ai can write the tedious parts fast. you have to check but that is faster than writing.
True experts can design code architecture that doesn’t have “tedious parts”.
Re: I am leaving the AI party after one drink
#137Good lord, don't hire a plumber to fix the pipes, you'd better do it yourself then. Maybe you like plumbing; then plumb. But most people will just pay for the person that does a good enough job that they can take a shower in the morning. Personally I think I do a better job so I do it myself, but my wife sure as hell wouldn't, and shouldn't. The sheer selective blindness is mind boggling. I get so sick of seeing this…
> don't hire a plumber to fix the pipes, you'd better do it yourself then
This but unironically. I'm self-taught; what I've seen from people with normal education is a complete inability if not fear of learning any skill on their own after they get their degree.
Delegating is great, but learning something for yourself is better, and much easier than many seem to believe.
Re: I am leaving the AI party after one drink
#138[dead]
Re: I am leaving the AI party after one drink
#139> I don’t want to feel this kind of “addiction.” > I don’t want to depend on something doing the work I earn money with. > I don’t want to give up my brain and become lazy and not think for myself anymore. There are a lot of good reasons we should be skeptical of AI and not give up on essential skills. But sometimes I want to shake these people by the shoulders. Do you drive an automatic car? Do you use a microwave?…
Interesting that your thought process is failing in the same way that llms fail, which is though faulty analogies.
Re: I am leaving the AI party after one drink
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do you drive an automatic car? Do you use a microwave? Do you buy food from a grocery store? Do you own power tools? None of these things allow you to turn your brain off while the machine does the work. I still have to DRIVE the car and all the thinking that goes with that. It's not a robotaxi. I still have to acquire and prep the food I am microwaving. It's not a replicator. I still have to know what I want to ea…
All of your examples involve you sitting and waiting. That doesn't seem like an apt analogy for what AI can do. You don't have to sit there and come up with other things to do while the AI does the work. When AI works (and technology in general) that's kind of what it's like. You'll never perceive that you are not doing the work anymore because you won't perceive the work.
> All of your examples involve you sitting and waiting. That doesn't seem like an apt analogy for what AI can do.
I just read a blog post or comment (honestly cant keep track of all this AI hype) about someone who literally did just that. They told and AI to build an app then went out and painted their fence or something, came back and had an app.
This is what people want from AI. They want take-out software.