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Bored of It

paulrobertlloyd.com

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Re: Bored of It

#301

Post by spencerflem »

crazygringo wrote: post #292
nessbot wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"But the stuff you learn in a PhD program is all published." - What? This is the kind of misunderstanding of knowledge that AI boosters present that drives me insane. And last sentences conflate a PhD with a google search or even dictionary lookup. I mean, c'mon!

I'm not talking about learning practical skills like research and teaching, or laboratory skills. I'm talking about the factual knowledge. Academia is built on open publishing. Do you disagree? And the things I'm looking up just can't be found in Google or a dictionary. It's something defined in some random paper from 1987, further developed by someone else in 1998, that the author didn't cite.

And something that lead you to that paper would be wonderful but instead you have been disconnected from the social side of scholarship and forced to take the AI "at its word".

I've also seen AI just completely make up nonsense out of nowhere as recently as last week.

Re: Bored of It

#302

Post by nhinck3 »

flanked-evergl wrote: post #293
nhinck3 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I too consult AIs to see how I should feel about the quality of artistic works because I've given up all ability to think for myself.

Calling something artistic does not make it so.

Thank you grand arbiter, I'll make sure to consult the llm oracle next time so I don't make the same mistake.

Re: Bored of It

#304

Post by skydhash »

9rx wrote: post #260
martindbp wrote: post #91

I've noticed something about people's reaction to AI. People who view themselves mainly as engineers or craftsmen are threatened by AI, understandably. People who just want to make cool stuff, solve real problems or just have fun are not threatened, but love it. And I get it, an expert furniture craftsman will not have respect for IKEA furniture, and that's fine. But it means I can affordably furnish a new apartment…

The trouble right now, in the context of engineering, is that it is terribly difficult to get AI to produce something you can be confident in. We've been burned by the human junior engineer who produces something that gets things done in the present, but two-three years down the line becomes a nightmare liability, and AI is now that same junior engineer. It is too early to tell if what AI produces will also become th…

How much time do we need?

Industrial invention used to be judged by actual usefulness. If we take space exploration as an example, at every stage, we have actual usefulness for what the technology so far was able to accomplish. Same with computing. But now we're two years after the first release to the general public of LLMs and no one can provide an actual, reliable use case for it. Instead, it's mostly about destroying values, hindering workflows, and crippling the internet.

Re: Bored of It

#305

Post by eMPee584 »

diggan wrote: post #120
jsheard wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The younger generations do seem to be embracing AI more, but mainly because it can do their homework for them without requiring them to learn anything. For now at least, until curriculums have time to adjust to this new reality.

I initially picked up programming because I wanted to create things (well, initially break things, but moved on from that), and the programming was one way of doing that. I only learned how to structure my programs, because they became hard to change. I only learned testing and refactoring, because I noticed I was faster when the code was better and more tested, even if the upfront cost was slightly higher. If I was…

> all alone banging my head against some trivial problem for weeks?

thanks for this lil' dose of copium, so at least it qualifies as character buildup what a relief

Re: Bored of It

#306

Post by AlexandrB »

eddd-ddde wrote: post #162
mapt wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On that specific quote - I feel like this is offensive on more than one level. The waste of our best minds... sure. Fine. But - "to sell you ads." Marketting has the dubious distinction of being one area of human endeavor where technological advances serve mostly to make your life worse, make your mind less focused, make your wallet more empty. The spherical-cow "ideal" 100% efficient perfect marketing campaign/tacti…

I disagree. The spherical cow of marketing is a system that connects consumers with EXACTLY what they are looking for. What you are describing is the capitalist spherical cow.

Marketing isn't just about connecting consumers to products, it's also about creating demand.

Re: Bored of It

#308

Post by kristopolous »

slumberlust wrote: post #300
spencerflem wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketing is so rarely for a "novel" thing. The biggest spender is CocaCola, how much do we still need to know about them?

Did you know the invented modern santa branding? Prior to that he was more a vagabond/homeless type and much much less jolly.

Snopes has a classic extensive article on that

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-claus-that-refreshes/

Re: Bored of It

#309

Post by rtsil »

nisa wrote: post #140
jsheard wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The younger generations do seem to be embracing AI more, but mainly because it can do their homework for them without requiring them to learn anything. For now at least, until curriculums have time to adjust to this new reality.

It's creating devastating effects in higher education here. I'm a bit older but did a masters after working a few years and I've now decided to quit because most - if not all - students just upload the sheets to an llm and copy the output. Group projects used to be really intense and interesting here - now my partners in the group-projects ask me to explain their code to them. It's not an ivy-league university here b…

That's what happens when the entire education system is optimized for grades instead of the use and acquisition of knowledge. In this case, LLMs are just laying bare our failings as a society.

Re: Bored of It

#310

Post by lurk2 »

diggan wrote: post #120
jsheard wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The younger generations do seem to be embracing AI more, but mainly because it can do their homework for them without requiring them to learn anything. For now at least, until curriculums have time to adjust to this new reality.

I initially picked up programming because I wanted to create things (well, initially break things, but moved on from that), and the programming was one way of doing that. I only learned how to structure my programs, because they became hard to change. I only learned testing and refactoring, because I noticed I was faster when the code was better and more tested, even if the upfront cost was slightly higher. If I was…

> Or would I have been able to learn even more and faster, since I wouldn't have been all alone banging my head against some trivial problem for weeks?

This was my experience. I’m not a programmer but I enjoy playing around with Python. I work with it a lot more and make far more complicated programs now because I don’t have to spend half an hour trying to find a solution to my problem on StackOverflow.

The issue I found is that I don’t bother trying to build anything on my own anymore, so even though I’ve learned a lot about designing programs, my knowledge of Python has probably actually declined.

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