I dunno, I like AI for what it’s good for. The luddite argument doesn’t particularly sway me, my clothes, furniture, car, etc, are all machine made. Machine made stuff is everywhere, the handmade hill to die on was centuries back during the industrial revolution.
The anti-capitalist arguments don’t sway me when specifically applied to AI. The corporations are going to bad things? Well yeah! It’s not “AI bad” it’s “corporate bad”.
The ethical arguments kinda work. Deep fakes are bad, and I don’t think that the curios AI provides tip the scales when weighed against the bad of deepfakes.
I think my point is, the consumer versions of AI, like chat bots, are pretty shit, and they’re making us dumber. They’re also kind of dangerous, of which we’ve already seen numerous examples.
I’m also not interested as a programmer. I’m not looking to bug hunt as a profession. I want to make my own bugs, dammit! That’s the fun part! To create something! Not fix something a machine made until it’s ready to ship. How boring.
Ok but there’s a distinction between “you don’t see the value in it”, and “there is no value in it.” The first means, congrats don’t use it, leave everyone else alone, unless you want to sound like Ben Shapiro claiming hip-hop isn’t music. The second is much harder to demonstrate, particularly as it’s value has already been demonstrated to many people. Just as an example, it turned a blank page into a covering letter that I could edit into what I wanted, breaking through blank page paralysis=value. Maybe it’s very little value, but it’s still value. Not the only use case for generative AI, or the best one.
Back in my day calculators were making us dumber, and to be clear I would accent that mental numeracy ability is lower now, but not that we’re dumber for having them. Luddite arguments are not convincing, I suppose I’m still hearing “calculators are making us dumber”
My use of a calculator is not making me dumber, just faster. I can do the calculations, just not as fast. And I have to know what needs to be calculated in order to get the correct results. AI is more like “give me a budget that works for me”. I fear AI will allow us to bypass having to learn anything and prevent us from thinking at all. The leap is too great.
It could/should definitely be used as a tool, but IMO not used to create whole solutions.
Scaffolding = fine, I guess, but I think it can be a slippery slope if abused.
I have an example of actual people using AI to generate a vacation itinerary for them, and they just printed it and followed it on their vacation. Could potentially be dangerous, first of all. And it’s literally following the will of a computer and experiencing its version of your vacation instead of doing a little bit of research into what you want to do and see and experience.
I don’t know. I just have a bad gut feeling about it.
It’s not Luddite either, I am usually one to adopt tech very quickly and be optimistic about new shit. I for example trust my car to keep pace after other cars and automatically break when the car in front slows down. This is new tech for me as of this year. But what I’m seeing right now with AI induces strong skepticism for me. I have actual people I know that have lost whole projects due to vibe coding.
And the numerous examples of AI being blatantly yet confidently incorrect, racist, suicide coercion, all kinds of shit. Having its input be based on human output just doesn’t feel good. That’s not a good feedback loop. It’s not conducive to independent thought, at its very core.
Correct, calculators can make you quicker… Just like they made me quicker with my cover letter. A pocket calculator would make my writing a cover letter slower though. Correct tool, correct job. I will accept for some jobs there isn’t an appropriate calculator yet.
Let’s reframe the issue with your car using your braked for you. You don’t see potential dangers in trusting a machine with acceleration and breaking? Tesla is screaming that you should.
But for cruise control you have accepted certain dangers and for AI you haven’t. That’s fine, don’t use it. For my own experience, the car can accelerate but the brakes are mine always, for if it does weird things with the power.
It is luddite though. “Tech is potentially dangerous” is luddite. I agree, it is potentially dangerous, so are knives, cars, etc. but we accept potential dangers in society, I would like them better regulated (deep fakes are bad yo) but I wouldn’t throw away scalpels because knife crime is on the rise.
Can your confusion be treated with a scalpel?
I dunno, is it heavy and blunt?
It’s AI… So… Yeah.
I dunno, I like AI for what it’s good for. The luddite argument doesn’t particularly sway me, my clothes, furniture, car, etc, are all machine made. Machine made stuff is everywhere, the handmade hill to die on was centuries back during the industrial revolution.
The anti-capitalist arguments don’t sway me when specifically applied to AI. The corporations are going to bad things? Well yeah! It’s not “AI bad” it’s “corporate bad”.
The ethical arguments kinda work. Deep fakes are bad, and I don’t think that the curios AI provides tip the scales when weighed against the bad of deepfakes.
Tl:Dr AI is a heavy, blunt tool.
I think my point is, the consumer versions of AI, like chat bots, are pretty shit, and they’re making us dumber. They’re also kind of dangerous, of which we’ve already seen numerous examples.
I’m also not interested as a programmer. I’m not looking to bug hunt as a profession. I want to make my own bugs, dammit! That’s the fun part! To create something! Not fix something a machine made until it’s ready to ship. How boring.
Ok but there’s a distinction between “you don’t see the value in it”, and “there is no value in it.” The first means, congrats don’t use it, leave everyone else alone, unless you want to sound like Ben Shapiro claiming hip-hop isn’t music. The second is much harder to demonstrate, particularly as it’s value has already been demonstrated to many people. Just as an example, it turned a blank page into a covering letter that I could edit into what I wanted, breaking through blank page paralysis=value. Maybe it’s very little value, but it’s still value. Not the only use case for generative AI, or the best one.
Back in my day calculators were making us dumber, and to be clear I would accent that mental numeracy ability is lower now, but not that we’re dumber for having them. Luddite arguments are not convincing, I suppose I’m still hearing “calculators are making us dumber”
My use of a calculator is not making me dumber, just faster. I can do the calculations, just not as fast. And I have to know what needs to be calculated in order to get the correct results. AI is more like “give me a budget that works for me”. I fear AI will allow us to bypass having to learn anything and prevent us from thinking at all. The leap is too great.
It could/should definitely be used as a tool, but IMO not used to create whole solutions.
Scaffolding = fine, I guess, but I think it can be a slippery slope if abused.
I have an example of actual people using AI to generate a vacation itinerary for them, and they just printed it and followed it on their vacation. Could potentially be dangerous, first of all. And it’s literally following the will of a computer and experiencing its version of your vacation instead of doing a little bit of research into what you want to do and see and experience.
I don’t know. I just have a bad gut feeling about it.
It’s not Luddite either, I am usually one to adopt tech very quickly and be optimistic about new shit. I for example trust my car to keep pace after other cars and automatically break when the car in front slows down. This is new tech for me as of this year. But what I’m seeing right now with AI induces strong skepticism for me. I have actual people I know that have lost whole projects due to vibe coding.
And the numerous examples of AI being blatantly yet confidently incorrect, racist, suicide coercion, all kinds of shit. Having its input be based on human output just doesn’t feel good. That’s not a good feedback loop. It’s not conducive to independent thought, at its very core.
Correct, calculators can make you quicker… Just like they made me quicker with my cover letter. A pocket calculator would make my writing a cover letter slower though. Correct tool, correct job. I will accept for some jobs there isn’t an appropriate calculator yet.
Let’s reframe the issue with your car using your braked for you. You don’t see potential dangers in trusting a machine with acceleration and breaking? Tesla is screaming that you should.
But for cruise control you have accepted certain dangers and for AI you haven’t. That’s fine, don’t use it. For my own experience, the car can accelerate but the brakes are mine always, for if it does weird things with the power.
It is luddite though. “Tech is potentially dangerous” is luddite. I agree, it is potentially dangerous, so are knives, cars, etc. but we accept potential dangers in society, I would like them better regulated (deep fakes are bad yo) but I wouldn’t throw away scalpels because knife crime is on the rise.