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I Am An AI Hater

anthonymoser.github.io

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Re: I Am An AI Hater

#91

Post by iLoveOncall »

I don't think the author hates AI, but rather the people developing AI, and in particular the CEOs and others of those companies. This is particularly clear in this paragraph:

> And to what end? In a kind of nihilistic symmetry, their dream of the perfect slave machine drains the life of those who use it as well as those who turn the gears. What is life but what we choose, who we know, what we experience? Incoherent empty men want to sell me the chance to stop reading and writing and thinking, to stop caring for my kids or talking to my parents, to stop choosing what I do or knowing why I do it. Blissful ignorance and total isolation, warm in the womb of the algorithm, nourished by hungry machines.

There are legitimate uses for which AI (or any other technology to be clear) would relieve everyone. Chores that people HAVE to do but nobody WANTS to do.

If GenAI allows you to build automations for those tasks, by all means it will make you life more meaningful because you will have more time to spend on meaningful things. Think of opening the tap to get water instead of having to carry a bucket home from the well.

It's fine to hate the people who build AI, it's fine to hate the people who push for AI use, it's fine to hate the people who release garbage built with AI, etc. But hating "AI" is nonsensical. It's akin to hating hammers or shoes, it's just a tool that may or may not fit a job (and personally, like the author, I don't think it fits any job at the moment).

Re: I Am An AI Hater

#92

Post by perching_aix »

randcraw wrote: post #23
jkingsman wrote: post #8

I appreciate seeing this point of view represented. It's not one I personally hold, but it is one a LOT of my friends hold, and I think it's important that it be given a voice, even if -- perhaps especially if -- a lot of people disagree with it. One of my friends sent me a delightful bastardization of the famous IBM quote: A COMPUTER CAN NEVER FEEL SPITEFUL OR [PASSIONATE†]. THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER CREATE AR…

Picasso's Guernica was born of hate, his hate of war, of dehumanization for petty political ends. No computer will ever empathize with the senseless inhumanity of war to produce such a work. It must forever parrot.

To honor the "spirit" of OP's post:

I looked up Picasso's Guernica now out of curiosity. I don't understand what's so great about this artwork. Or why it would represent any of the things you mention. It just looks like deranged pencilwork. It also comes across as aggressively pretentious.

What makes that any better than some highly derivative AI generated rubbish I connect to about the same amount?

Re: I Am An AI Hater

#93

Post by brokencode »

yifanl wrote: post #69
danielbln wrote: post #12

Yet it is here to stay, won't go away and even if it won't get any better at the useful things it does, it is useful. The externalities are real, some can be removed, some mitigated. If you're a hater and a human, then you don't have to mitigate anything, of course. Me, I hate the externalities, but I love the thing. I want to use my own AI, hyper optimized and efficient and private. It would mitigate a lot. Maybe so…

> Yet it is here to stay, won't go away Source for this claim? Are you still using Groupon?

You must be living on a different planet if you think the adoption and societal impact Groupon was ever remotely comparable to AI.

Re: I Am An AI Hater

#94

Post by pmdr »

footy wrote: post #82
pmdr wrote: post #56

Is Ed Zitron's newsletter banned here? I haven't seen a single article of his on HN and he's been ranting about AI for years now.

I think it just doesn't do very well and likely gets flagged often. If I type his domain name into the search bar there are only three articles.

I mean, I get that the tone might not be liked by everyone, but his work does raise some IMO valid concerns about the economics LLMs, which I don't see discussed around here very often. Then again, I get that AI has AI-friendly owners.

Re: I Am An AI Hater

#95

Post by didibus »

jkingsman wrote: post #8

I appreciate seeing this point of view represented. It's not one I personally hold, but it is one a LOT of my friends hold, and I think it's important that it be given a voice, even if -- perhaps especially if -- a lot of people disagree with it. One of my friends sent me a delightful bastardization of the famous IBM quote: A COMPUTER CAN NEVER FEEL SPITEFUL OR [PASSIONATE†]. THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER CREATE AR…

Hate can be emotional, but it can also have underlying rational causes.

For example, someone can feel like they already have to compete with people, and that's nature, but now they have to compete with machines too, and that's a societal choice.

Re: I Am An AI Hater

#96

Post by myhf »

danielbln wrote: post #12

Yet it is here to stay, won't go away and even if it won't get any better at the useful things it does, it is useful. The externalities are real, some can be removed, some mitigated. If you're a hater and a human, then you don't have to mitigate anything, of course. Me, I hate the externalities, but I love the thing. I want to use my own AI, hyper optimized and efficient and private. It would mitigate a lot. Maybe so…

> the useful things it does

It's weird how AI-lovers are always trying to shoehorn an unsupported "it does useful things" into some kind of criticism sandwich where only the solvable problems can be acknowledged as problems.

Just because some technologies have both upsides and downsides doesn't mean that every technology automatically has upsides. GenAI is good at generating these kinds of hollow statements that mimic the form of substantial arguments, but anyone who actually reads it can see how hollow it is.

If you want to argue that it does useful things, you have to explain at least one of those things.

Re: I Am An AI Hater

#97

Post by Mallowram »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #74
Mallowram wrote: post #16

[dead]

> Words are the most indirect form of perception imaginable. Both Aristotle and Cassirer knew this What?

Aristotle: There are no contradictions.

Cassirer: “Only when we put away words will be able to reach the initial conditions, only then will we have direct perception. All linguistic denotation is essentially ambiguous–and in this ambiguity, this “paronymia” of words is the source of all myths…this self-deception is rooted in language, which is forever making a game of the human mind, ever ensnaring it in that iridescent play of meanings…even theoretical knowledge becomes phantasmagoria; for even knowledge can never reproduce the true nature of things as they are but must frame their essence in “concepts.” Consequently all schemata which science evolves in order to classify, organize and summarize the phenomena of the real, turns out to be nothing but arbitrary schemes. So knowledge, as well as myth, language, and art, has been reduced to a kind of fiction–a fiction that recommends its usefulness, but must not be measured by any strict standard of truth, if it is not to melt away into nothingness.” Cassirer Language and Myth

Re: I Am An AI Hater

#98

Post by siliconsorcerer »

I really appreciate the tone of this article, and honestly I was an "AI hater" as well. I honestly just don't think it makes sense any more. Almost everything in this article is making a valid point, AI is being pushed by the powers that be that have absolutely no regard for the masses and how this is going to affect society. But I fail to see how that is different than any other time or any other technology in history. People that are declaring that "AI is harmful to society" are ignoring the fundamental brokenness of society that is the underlying reason why AI development is moving forward with reckless abandon. AI is a problem because our society doesn't have a solid moral compass.

Re: I Am An AI Hater

#99

Post by bee_rider »

brabel wrote: post #57
notfed wrote: post #4

"I strongly feel that AI is an insult to life itself." - Hayao Miyazaki I'm going to start using this quote.

You should see the context in which he said that. It was 2016. It was no ChatGPT he was talking about. It was some truly bizarre art that was going on back then, like a sort of humanoid form trying to learn how to walk without being given instructions... it would do disturbing things like us its head as if it was a limb and move in completely unnatural ways... that's what he, and most who watch that video, found so d…

Lots of quotes are out of context, it’s a great like with the context stripped from it.

Re: I Am An AI Hater

#100

Post by footy »

pmdr wrote: post #94
footy wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it just doesn't do very well and likely gets flagged often. If I type his domain name into the search bar there are only three articles.

I mean, I get that the tone might not be liked by everyone, but his work does raise some IMO valid concerns about the economics LLMs, which I don't see discussed around here very often. Then again, I get that AI has AI-friendly owners.

I agree with you, but until very recently it was super rare to see anything other than techno-optimism about LLMs on this site. I assume partially for the reason you bring up.
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