141–150 of 221 posts
Ordinary people were generally marvelous of the electric motor because it was obvious how it would make life better. Their great grandchildren, with the same common sense, are extremely cynical about LLMs and other knowledge work robots. What changed?
Well, for a start, electric motors worked properly and didn’t generate infinite amounts of unreadable crap.
> I want to figure out how to use AI in ways that protect human creativity, autonomy, and problem-solving I think this is an admirable goal but I'd be curious how the author plans to even begin approaching it. It seems to me that this ship has sailed. Generative AI is here now, which is seems like it will lead us down a lowest common denominator path, not an enlightened one. How do we "protect human creativity, auton…
AI is awesome as a consumer. You can just build whatever bespoke thing you want. It can walk you through a myriad of home improvement projects.
It can help out with understanding tools, workflows, materials, etc but doesn’t actually understands what it’s writing about and is prone to over-engineering, making critical mistakes or just replying with nonsense (for example swapping dimensions, recommending a completely inappropriate procedure, the wrong tool, etc).
This is all with Opus and Sol. Paying 22€ per month for that is a bit pricy for what one gets in return.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My partner cried the other day because her long-planned PC upgrade is now an order of magnitude more expensive than she budgeted for pre-AI-boom.
I don't love this either, but at least it's a short-term economic quirk. At some point fabs will figure out what the long-term demand looks like and scale up production accordingly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Either use it and shut up or don't use it. Many people do not have a choice to not use it at their jobs due to internal mandates. Regardless of their own use, many people are subjected to externalized cost of AI proliferation (data centers, layoffs, electrical bills, etc). One cannot choose to not be affected by it. But even if one were personally not at all affected by it, it is still reasonable for someone to pus…
You always have a choice. If my job made me bash puppies on the head with a hammer, I'd quit. All you have to decide is where you draw that line.
Reasons why I currently dislike AI: - it is not as accurate and good as advertised - being forced to use and care about it - it is bad for the environment at the scale and competition that exists in this economy - it is a mirror, and augmentation and reveals really inhuman takes and thought processes from people who are on the longer lever in society - it is already in use for very unethical things (spying and war) -…
I'm curious what bad experience is regular people have with AI. For me it basically makes everything better. I use it probably a hundred times a day and struggle to think about interaction where I walk away wishing it It wasn't involved. I listen to AI generated audiobooks on the way to work. It makes my job easier and find data or papers or emails for me. On the way home I can have a Back in forth conversation about…
Or simply calling an energy provider to clarify something makes them talk to a robot voice until enough effort and words have passed so a human finally comes around.
These are very shallow and small things where it already creeps in and the fun part is that you cannot blame the AI for it, but what we do with it.
If you use AI unironically, hallucinations can make you go down a wrong path and cost you time. Something that used to be a quick google search leads you to AI generated sites making stuff up, so even when you talk to AI directly, you practically get the same-y or slightly different answer.
Reading documents starts to become a challenge as well. Bad translations or made up stuff can waste your time as well.
Then you just want to take a walk to the river and the river has the lowest water level since forever (rhine river) and you think to yourself, hmm, this can't be right.
Like what do you save all of this time and effort for? Is it truly balanced and sane what we are doing right now?
Doesn't all the time saving show detrimental effects in areas we cannot point at currently because of plausible deniability or wishful thinking?
Ordinary people were generally marvelous of the electric motor because it was obvious how it would make life better. Their great grandchildren, with the same common sense, are extremely cynical about LLMs and other knowledge work robots. What changed?
I think the same cycle is playing out with LLMs - the general public is somewhere between indifferent and actively hostile to them, as they have been with every new technology. Reconfiguring businesses and society to use them to their full potential - and benefits to society - will take years, if not decades.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Creating flashcards is also such a chore! For the recall part of education, the book's exercise, or simply covering up the relevant part with hand and forcing a recall, writing about what you learned, teaching someone else - all work great, and the flow is much more natural.
Creating the card is half the work though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No saying you're wrong but how is it making their lives worse? Most people know use AI for basic applications and seem to enjoy it while the people I know who hate it all seem to be idelogically motivated (seemingly this is a cause de célèbre on the left right now?)
The "obvious" one: supply chain chaos due to everyone and their dog spending as much as possible for AI boxen Every investor being full on AI has lead to big corps massively increasing AI spend, instead of "just" hiring people (talk to people who graduated from school in the past year...) I've seen some commentary about how SV turning from an "infinite cash reserves" place to a "let's massively load up on debt" place…
Pictures in menus just vaguely resembling the actual dish. Dunno what value the authors think a made up picture provides except for tourist traps. Like, I wont trust your menu twice.
I didn't anticipate McDonalds menu pictures becoming in the authentic and informative range of menus.
Ordinary people were generally marvelous of the electric motor because it was obvious how it would make life better. Their great grandchildren, with the same common sense, are extremely cynical about LLMs and other knowledge work robots. What changed?
Whether or not LLM's become an electric motor or an NFT, or something in between, only time will tell