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A Young Man Used AI to Build a Nuclear Fusor

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Re: A Young Man Used AI to Build a Nuclear Fusor

#51

Post by SecretDreams »

Etheryte wrote: post #8
Y_Y wrote: post #5

Why use AI to make good content, when you can take unremarkable content and add the string "AI" to pretend it's interesting. You could have just done an old-school web search for this! https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Build-a-Fusion-Reactor-... https://makezine.com/projects/nuclear-fusor/ https://fusor.net/board/viewtopic.php?t=3247 The "artificially intelligent" aspect is trivial.

The trick is to still use the same underlying information, but forwarded to you by a large language model, that way you can take most of the credit yourself. How unsensational of an article would it be, if you said you followed a step by step guide and built the thing the guide built before. But slap an LLM between yourself and the tutorial and now you can suddenly say you built something with the help of AI. Weird t…

I wonder if this is better for society somehow? I found even getting people to use a search engine to find a link to figure something out was like pulling teeth. Maybe LLMs will teach people how to use search engines? Also, while bypassing the various ads on the enshitified internet (for now)?

Re: A Young Man Used AI to Build a Nuclear Fusor

#52

Post by pithanyChan »

phito wrote: post #20
Etheryte wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick is to still use the same underlying information, but forwarded to you by a large language model, that way you can take most of the credit yourself. How unsensational of an article would it be, if you said you followed a step by step guide and built the thing the guide built before. But slap an LLM between yourself and the tutorial and now you can suddenly say you built something with the help of AI. Weird t…

I've seen a lot of that happening recently. People claiming they did this and that, when they actually followed the steps from a LLM. I actually don't mind this, except for the part where they omit the use of a LLM to get all the credits to themselves. Reminds me of all these YouTubers making video essays parotting something they have just learned, without actually mastering the subject.

whitelabelled content became a thing when some idiot made the phrase "ugly (on the inside) artists steal" or something popular ...

Re: A Young Man Used AI to Build a Nuclear Fusor

#54

Post by fsloth »

Y_Y wrote: post #35
jdietrich wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying "we don't need teachers because we've got books". A how-to guide has to assume a certain level of knowledge, so will inevitably be insultingly basic for some readers or completely impenetrable for others. A static document can't elaborate on something you don't understand or fill in gaps in your knowledge. It can't help you debug a problem or look at your setup and point out where you might have go…

> That's like saying "we don't need teachers because we've got books". I respectfully disagree. I don't think it's wrong or useless to get an LLM to help, I recently did a similar project myself (even though I manually fact-checked all the high-voltage stuff). If you find a guide that explains too much then you can skip the parts you know. If it doesn't explain something you don't know yet then you recursively look t…

>evidently this project has >been done lots of times in >similar circumstances without >LLMs.

LLMs help organizing knowledge and research in a novel domain. The point is not “can you do it”. LLMs are great at giving vanilla standard answers. Which is exactly what you want when researching a novel domain. I’ve been dipping into novel domains for 25 years and LLM:s make it so much more pleasant.

Re: A Young Man Used AI to Build a Nuclear Fusor

#55

Post by lupusreal »

bloomingkales wrote: post #46
lupusreal wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are so many relatively popular youtube channels making 10 to 20 minute videos about interesting subjects which say nothing more than the Wikipedia page for that topic. Whole channels, well liked by the algorithm, built off paraphrasing Wikipedia without citing it. Being generous to them, some of them do a good job of picking topics I wouldn't have thought to look up myself. They probably do spend a lot of time…

It’s probably low effort scripts that are performed by influencers. The scripts are probably not written by the influencers because the influencer usually brings the looks, voice acting, and charm.

Some of them certainly, that beard and thick rimmed glasses guy with a dozen channels comes to mind (I don't know his name, but other people have given me the same description of him). Others are pretty weird looking nerdy guys tbh, I believe they probably read Wikipedia a lot.

Re: A Young Man Used AI to Build a Nuclear Fusor

#56

Post by BoxFour »

bloomingkales wrote: post #36
phito wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen a lot of that happening recently. People claiming they did this and that, when they actually followed the steps from a LLM. I actually don't mind this, except for the part where they omit the use of a LLM to get all the credits to themselves. Reminds me of all these YouTubers making video essays parotting something they have just learned, without actually mastering the subject.

I think we seek to credit the source for reasons that are not clear. Do you feel any which way if I suggest to you your carrot soup only tastes good because of the carrots you put in it? With the follow up question being, why don’t you admit you put carrots in it? We don’t really do this because there’s no concept of ownership of food to that degree. Maybe 200 years ago, where a farmer may chew you out since he toile…

> I think we seek to credit the source for reasons that are not clear... We don’t really do this because there’s no concept of ownership of food to that degree.

Cooking is not a great comparison, and it betrays your point more than anything. If you cook something particularly impressive or complex, people will almost universally ask about the recipe and where it came from.

Origination is actually a pretty common topic of discussion for many things.

Re: A Young Man Used AI to Build a Nuclear Fusor

#57

Post by makapuf »

BoxFour wrote: post #56
bloomingkales wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we seek to credit the source for reasons that are not clear. Do you feel any which way if I suggest to you your carrot soup only tastes good because of the carrots you put in it? With the follow up question being, why don’t you admit you put carrots in it? We don’t really do this because there’s no concept of ownership of food to that degree. Maybe 200 years ago, where a farmer may chew you out since he toile…

> I think we seek to credit the source for reasons that are not clear... We don’t really do this because there’s no concept of ownership of food to that degree. Cooking is not a great comparison, and it betrays your point more than anything. If you cook something particularly impressive or complex, people will almost universally ask about the recipe and where it came from. Origination is actually a pretty common topi…

Some fine restaurants here are very proud to tell you the meat comes from such and such farm, the vegetables from such farm by this people and the wine from this vineyard. That's even on the menu.

Re: A Young Man Used AI to Build a Nuclear Fusor

#58

Post by halfmatthalfcat »

stevage wrote: post #44

By far the most interesting part of this post is this stuff: > It’s more that I was watching HudZah navigate his laptop with an AI fluency that felt alarming to me. He was using his computer in a much, much different way than I’d seen someone use their computer before, and it made me feel old and alarmed by the number of new tools at our disposal and how HudZah intuitively knew how to tame them. I often feel like a c…

It’s hyperbole. The way we use to dumpster dive through Google, SO, etc, now we’re just adding LLMs into the mix. Same shit, different browser tab.

Re: A Young Man Used AI to Build a Nuclear Fusor

#59

Post by pjc50 »

stevage wrote: post #43
llm_trw wrote: post #12

>HudZah was told that he could be killed by the high voltage, X-ray radiation and possibly other things. This only made him more excited. “My whole intention was, ‘If I fuck up, I’m dead, and this is why I should do it,’” he said. It sounds like he got exactly what he wanted to. >I must admit, though, that the thing that scared me most about HudZah was that he seemed to be living in a different technological universe…

Wow, I've never heard anything like this before. Is this really a thing? People disappearing because they're so deep down the rabbit hole with AI and don't need to talk to anyone?

How would you tell?

"Hikikomori" is not a new thing, long pre-dates AI, but I think similar things are starting to be observed outside of Japan. Internet-enabled entertainment competes with the real world and occasionally achieves total victory.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4912003/

Re: A Young Man Used AI to Build a Nuclear Fusor

#60

Post by c-fe »

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #58
stevage wrote: post #44

By far the most interesting part of this post is this stuff: > It’s more that I was watching HudZah navigate his laptop with an AI fluency that felt alarming to me. He was using his computer in a much, much different way than I’d seen someone use their computer before, and it made me feel old and alarmed by the number of new tools at our disposal and how HudZah intuitively knew how to tame them. I often feel like a c…

It’s hyperbole. The way we use to dumpster dive through Google, SO, etc, now we’re just adding LLMs into the mix. Same shit, different browser tab.

I dont think its hyperbole. Im young and I have friends my age that also use these AI tools in ways that seem borderline nauseating to me. A friend of mine built a whole polished project page for his app with cursor, and when I watched him for a bit I was surprised how fast he interacted with cursor, claude and chatgpt. Of course it wasnt perfect and I cringe at the idea of creating a project with tons of AI generated files I dont understand, but still, I felt like my grandma when she watches me use my phone or laptop.
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