Spyke
kbin.life

Now see, I like the idea of AI.

What I don't like are the implications, and the current reality of AI.

I see businesses embracing AI without fully understanding the limits. Stopping the hiring juniors developers, often firing large numbers of seniors because they think AI, a group of cheap post grad vibe programmers and a handful of seasoned seniors will equal the workforce they got rid of when AI, while very good is not ready to sustain this. It is destroying the career progression for the industry and even if/when they realise it was a mistake, it might already have devastated the industry by then.

I see the large tech companies tearing through the web illegally sucking up anything they can access to pull into their ever more costly models with zero regard to the effects on the economy, the cost to the servers they are hitting, or the environment from the huge power draw creating these models requires.

It's a nice idea, but private business cannot be trusted to do this right, we're seeing how to do it wrong, live before our eyes.

136
europe.pub

And the whole AI industry is holding up the stock market, while AI has historically always ran the hype cycle and crashed into an AI winter. Stock markets do crash after billions pumped into a sector suddenly turn out to be not worth as much. Almost none of these AI companies run a profit and don't have any prospect of becoming profitable. It's when everybody starts yelling that this time it's different that things really become dangerous.

38
sp3ctr4lreply
lemmy.dbzer0.com

Yep, exactly.

They knew the housing/real estate bubble would pop, as it currently is...

... So, they made one final last gambit on AI as the final bubble that would magically become super intelligent and solve literally all problems.

This would never, and is not working, because the underlying tech of LLM has no real actual mechanism by which it would or could develop complex, critical, logical analysis / theoretization / metacognition that isn't just a schizophrenic mania episode.

LLMs are fancy, inefficient autocomplete algos.

Thats it.

They achieve a simulation of knowledge via consensus, not analytic review.

They can never be more intelligent than an average human with access to all the data they've ... mostly illegally stolen.

The entire bet was 'maybe superintelligence will somehow be an emergent property, just give 8t more data and compute power'.

And then they did that, and it didn't work.

18
piefed.social

I agree with everything you said, but that doesn't mean it can't be very useful in many fields.

6
sp3ctr4lreply
lemmy.dbzer0.com

I mean, I also agree with that, lol.

There absolutely are valid use cases for this kind of 'AI'.

But it is very, very far from the universal panacea that the capital class seems to think it is.

7

When all the hype dies down, we will see where it's actually useful. But I can bet you it will have uses, it's been very helpful in making certain aspects of my life a lot easier. And I know many who say the same.

1
europe.pub

That too is the classical hype cycle. After the trough of disillusionment, and that's going to be a deep one from the look of things, people figure out where it can be used in a profitable way in its own niches.

6
sp3ctr4lreply
lemmy.dbzer0.com

... Unless its mass proliferation of shitty broken code and mis/disinformation and hyperparasocial relationships and waste of energy and water are actually such a net negative that it fundamentally undermines infrastructure and society, thus raising the necessary profit margin too high for such legit use cases to be workable in a now broken economic system.

8

The world revolves around the profit margin, so the current trend may even continue indefinitely.. Sad.

2
piefed.social

Time will tell how much was just hype, and how much actually had merit. I think it will go the way of the .com bubble.

LOTS of uses for the internet of things, but it's still overhyped

-5
slrpnk.net

The .com bubble had nothing to do with the Internet of Things.

8

Fair enough.

The dot-com bubble (late 1990s–2000) was when investors massively overvalued internet-related companies just because they had “.com” in their name, even if they had no profits or solid business plans. It burst in 2000, wiping out trillions in value.

The "Internet hype" bubble popped. But the Internet still has many valid uses.

-4

and don't have any prospect of becoming profitable

There's a real twist here in regards to OpenAI.

They have some kind of weird corporate structure where OpenAI is a non-profit and it owns a for-profit arm. But, the deal they have with Softbank is that they have to transition to a for-profit by the end of the year or they lose out on the $40 billion Softbank invested. If they don't manage to do that, Softbank can withhold something like $20B of the $40B which would be catastrophic for OpenAI. Transitioning to a For-Profit is not something that can realistically be done by the end of the year, even if everybody agreed on that transition, and key people don't agree on it.

The whole bubble is going to pop soon, IMO.

8

It's a nice idea, but private business cannot be trusted to do this right, we're seeing how to do it wrong, live before our eyes.

You're right. It's the business model driving technological advancement in the 21st century that's flawed.

9

I have to disagree that it's even a nice idea. The "idea" behind AI appears to be wanting a machine that thinks or works for you with (at least) the intelligence of a human being and no will or desires of its own. At its root, this is the same drive behind chattel slavery, which leads to a pretty inescapable conundrum: either AI is illusory marketing BS or it's the rebirth of one of the worst atrocities history has ever seen. Personally, hard pass on either one.

5

You nailed it, IMO. However, I would like a real artificial sentience of some sort just to add to the beautiful variety of the universe. It does seem that many of my fellow humans just want chattle slaves though. Which is saddening.

1

tbf now I think AI is just a tool... in 3 years it will be a really impactfull problem

2
lemmy.world

Do you really need to have a list of why people are sick of LLM and Ai slop?

Ai is literally making people dumber:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/lee_2025_ai_critical_thinking_survey.pdf

https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/18/is_ai_changing_our_brains/

They are a massive privacy risk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyH7zoP-JOg&t=3015s

https://theconversation.com/ai-tools-collect-and-store-data-about-you-from-all-your-devices-heres-how-to-be-aware-of-what-youre-revealing-251693

Are being used to push fascist ideologies into every aspect of the internet:

https://newsocialist.org.uk/transmissions/ai-the-new-aesthetics-of-fascism/

And they are a massive environmental disaster:

https://news.mit.edu/2025/explained-generative-ai-environmental-impact-0117

https://www.forbes.com/sites/cindygordon/2024/02/25/ai-is-accelerating-the-loss-of-our-scarcest-natural-resource-water/

Stop being a corporate apologist and stop wreaking the environment with this shit technology.

Edit: thank you to every Ai apologist outing themselves in the comments. Thank you for making blocking you easy.

118
lmmarsanoreply
lemmynsfw.com

Do you really need to have a list of why people are sick of LLM and Ai slop?

With the number of times that refrain is regurgitated here ad nauseum, need is an odd way to put it. Sick of it might fit sentiments better. Done with this & not giving a shit is another.

0
lmmarsanoreply
lemmynsfw.com

OK, but you're just making yourselves lolcows at this point where you announce these easy-to-push buttons & people derive joy from pushing them. Imitating AI just to troll is a thing now.

So…that's a victory?

-2
Swedneckreply
discuss.tchncs.de

ah yes, the people doing what they can to go against a thing they think is bad, they are the stupid dumb people

not the ones going out of their way to make fun of them and be irreverent for no reason other than "haha this person has sincere beliefs, what a moron!"

think about what your point is, how are your posts doing any sort of good?

2

“haha this person has sincere beliefs, what a moron!”

It's more like

this person is making us sicker of them than the thing they're telling us to be sick of, and we were already sick of that!

Getting sanctimonious & overbearing with people who don't even disagree with you isn't effective advocacy. We largely avoid AI already, and a tedious circlejerk isn't getting us anywhere or adding anything that isn't frequently stated.

By drawing more ire toward them than things we should be sick of, circlejerks are unjust & deserve all the derision they can get until balance is restored.

-1
FauxLivingreply
lemmy.world

Do you really need to have a list of why people are sick of LLM and Ai slop?

We don't need a collection of random 'AI bad' articles because your entire premise is flawed.

In general, people are not 'sick of LLM and Ai slop'. Real people, who are not chronically online, have fairly positive views of AI and public sentiment about AI is actually becoming more positive over time.

Here is Stanford's report on the public opinion regarding AI (https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2024-ai-index-report/public-opinion).

Stop being a corporate apologist and stop wreaking the environment with this shit technology.

My dude, it sounds like you need to go out into the environment a bit more.

-1

We don’t need a collection of random ‘AI bad’ articles because your entire premise is flawed.

god forbid you have evidence to support your premise. huh.

1
lemmy.world

My dude, it sounds like you need to go out into the environment a bit more.

oh you have a spare ecosystem in the closet for when this one is entirely fucked huh? https://www.npr.org/2024/09/11/nx-s1-5088134/elon-musk-ai-xai-supercomputer-memphis-pollution

stop acting like it's a rumor. the problem is real, it's already here, they're already crashing to build the data centers - so what, we can get taylor swift grok porn? nothing in that graph supports your premise either.

That's stanford graph is based on queries from 2022 and 2023 - it's 2025 here in reality. Wake up. Times change.

0
FauxLivingreply
lemmy.world

That’s stanford graph is based on queries from 2022 and 2023 - it’s 2025 here in reality. Wake up. Times change

Objective polling shows attitudes about AI were improving. Do you have any actual evidence to support your implication that this is no longer the case?

Being self-righteous, rude and abrasive doesn't mean you're correct.

-1

You disregard everyone else's evidence but expect us to embrace your two year old data.

you disregard what mental health experts are saying this is doing to actual people.

You callously disregard the wellbeing of others for the benefit of aibros. Just because you're ignoring the evidence doesn't mean you're correct numpty. Being willfully ignorant of the harms caused to the environment from this just tells me you're profiting off of it, or a fanboy.

2
lemmy.world

Ai is literally making people dumber:

And books destroyed everyone's memory. People used to have fantastic memories.

They are a massive privacy risk:

No different than the rest of cloud tech. Run your AI local like your other self hosting.

Are being used to push fascist ideologies into every aspect of the internet:

Hitler used radio to push fascism into every home. It's not the medium, it's the message.

And they are a massive environmental disaster:

AI uses a GPU just like gaming uses a GPU. Building a new AI model uses the same energy that Rockstar spent developing GTA5. But it's easier to point at a centralized data center polluting the environment than thousands of game developers spread across multiple offices creating even more pollution.

Stop being a corporate apologist

Run your own AI! Complaining about "corporate AI" is like complaining about corporate email. Host it yourself.

-1
JcbAzPxreply
lemmy.world

Run your own AI!

Oh sure, let me just pull a couple billion out of the couch cushions to spin up a data center in the middle of the desert.

-2

Oh sure, let me just pull a couple billion out of the couch cushions to spin up a data center in the middle of the desert.

From my, very much not in a data center, desktop PC:

3

Comments like this remind me of all the blockchain hate. People with no idea what they were talking about inventing justifications for hating something they were unwilling to understand. There are so many legitimate reasons to criticize both and people still make shit up on the fly.

2

Weird ... It looks like there's nothing stopping me from signing up for an account on dbzer0 even though I'm not actually an anarchist.

6

Ai is literally making people dumber: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/lee_2025_ai_critical_thinking_survey.pdf

We surveyed 319 knowledge workers who use GenAI tools (e.g., ChatGPT, Copilot) at work at least once per week, to model how they enact critical thinking when using GenAI tools, and how GenAI affects their perceived effort of thinking critically. Analysing 936 real-world GenAI tool use examples our participants shared, we find that knowledge workers engage in critical thinking primarily to ensure the quality of their work, e.g. by verifying outputs against external sources. Moreover, while GenAI can improve worker efficiency, it can inhibit critical engagement with work and can potentially lead to long-term overreliance on the tool and diminished skill for independent problem-solving. Higher confidence in GenAI’s ability to perform a task is related to less critical thinking effort. When using GenAI tools, the effort invested in critical thinking shifts from information gathering to information verification; from problem-solving to AI response integration; and from task execution to task stewardship. Knowledge workers face new challenges in critical thinking as they incorporate GenAI into their knowledge workflows. To that end, our work suggests that GenAI tools need to be designed to support knowledge workers’ critical thinking by addressing their awareness, motivation, and ability barriers.

I would not say "can potentially lead to long-term overreliance on the tool and diminished skill for independent problem-solving" equals to "literally making people dumber". A sample size of 319 isn't really representative anyways, and they mainly had a sample of a specific type of people. People switch from searching to verifying, which doesn't sound too bad if done correctly. They associate critical thinking with verifying everything ("Higher confidence in GenAI’s ability to perform a task is related to less critical thinking effort"), not sure I agree on this.

This study is also only aimed at people working instead of regular use. I personally discovered so many things with GenAI, and know to always question what the model says when it comes to specific topics or questions, because they tend to hallucinate. You could also say internet made people dumber, but those who know how to use it will be smarter.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/18/is_ai_changing_our_brains/

They had to write an essay in 20 minutes... obviously most people would just generate the whole thing and fix little problems here and there, but if you have to think less because you're just fixing stuff instead on inventing.. well yea, you use your brain less. Doesn't make you dumb? It's a bit like saying paying by card makes you dumber because you use less of your brain compared to paying in cash because you have to count how much you need to give, and how much you need to get back.

Yes, if you get helped by a tool or someone, it will be less intensive for your brain. Who would have thought?!

-3

They are a massive privacy risk:

I do agree on this, but at this point everyone uses instagram, snapchat, discord and whatever to share their DMs which are probably being sniffed by the NSA and used by companies for profiling. People are never going to change.

-4

Are being used to push fascist ideologies into every aspect of the internet:

Everything can be used for that. If anything, I believe AI models are too restricted and tend not to argue on controversial subjects, which prevents you from learning anything. Censorship sucks

-5

You’re repeating debunked claims that are being pushed by tech giants to lobby for laws to monopolize AI control.

I’d rather read AI crap than this idiocy.

-7
lemmy.world

If you ever take a flight for holiday, or even drive long distance and cry about AI being bad for the environment then you're a hypocrite.

Same goes for if you eat beef, or having a really powerful gaming rig that you use a lot.

There are plenty of valid reasons AI is bad, but the argument for the environment seems weak, and most people using it are probably hypocrites. It's barely a drop in the bucket compared to other things

-25
Jankatarchreply
lemmy.world

Texas has just asked residents to take less showers while datacenters made specifically for LLM training continue operating.

This is more like feeling bad for not using a paper straw while local factory dumps all their oil change into the community river.

24
lemmy.world

Maybe they should cut down on Beef first, it uses exponentially more water than AI and CO2

  • 1 kg Beef = 60kg CO2 - source
  • 1000km Return flight = 314kg CO2 - source
  • 1 Bitcoin transaction = 645kg of CO2 - source
  • 1000 AI prompts = 3kg of CO2 - source
-3

your source about beef relies on poore-nemecek 2018, a paper with dubious methodology

2
BroBot9000reply
lemmy.world

Ahh so are you going to acknowledge the privacy invasion and brain rotting cause by Ai or are you just going to focus on dismissing the environmental concerns? Cause I linked more than just the environmental impacts.

16

Uh dismissing that concern seems like valid point? Do people have to comprehensively discredit the whole list to reply?

10
Sl00kreply
programming.dev

This echo chamber isn't ready for this logical discussion yet unfortunately lol

-8
CXORAreply
aussie.zone

When someone disagrees with me - echo chamber.

When someone agrees with me - logical discussion.

10
Sl00kreply
programming.dev

Then why are you guys avoiding a logical discussion around environmental impact instead of spouting misinformation?

The fact of the matter is eating a single steak or lb of ground beef will eclipse all most peoples AI usage. Obviously most can't escape driving, but for those of us in cities biking will far eclipse your environmental impact than not using AI.

Serving AI models aren't even as bad as watching Netflix, this counterculture to AI is largely misdirected anger that thrown towards unregulated capitalism. Unregulated data centers. Unregulated growth.

Training is bad but training is a small piece of the puzzle that happens infrequently, and again circles back to the unregulated problem.

2

It is easier to oppose a new thing than change ingrained habits.

If your house is on fire, it is reasonable to be mad at someone who throws a little torch onto it.

4
Randomgalreply
lemmy.ca

You're getting downvoted for speaking the truth to an echo chamber my guy.

-10
Sl00kreply
programming.dev

This is valid to all data centers serving all websites. Your take is a criticism of unregulated capitalism, not AI.

Beef farming is a far far far more impactful discussion, yet here we are.

-1
CXORAreply
aussie.zone

Ai takes far more power to serve a single request than a website does though.

And remember, AI requires those websites too, for training data.

So it's not just more power hungry, it also has thw initial power consumption added on top

11
Sl00kreply
programming.dev

A good chunk of the Internet usage is HD videos which is far more power hungry than AI. I agree it's added on top...just like streaming did in 2010, and as things will continue to do.

1

The problem is the companies building the data centers; they would be just as happy to waste the water and resources mining crypto or hosting cloud gaming, if not for AI it would be something else.

In China they're able to run DeepSeek without any water waste, because they cool the data centers with the ocean. DeepSeek also uses a fraction of the energy per query and is investing in solar and other renewables for energy.

AI is certainly an environmental issue, but it's only the most recent head of the big tech hydra.

-1
lemmy.world

AI itself is a massive strain on the environment, without any true benefit

Rockstar games developing GTA5: 6k employees 20 kwatt hours per square foot https://esource.bizenergyadvisor.com/article/large-offices 150 square feet per employee https://unspot.com/blog/how-much-office-space-do-we-need-per-employee/#%3A%7E%3Atext=The+needed+workspace+may+vary+in+accordance

18,000,000,000 watt hours

vs

10,000,000,000 watt hours for ChatGPT training

https://www.washington.edu/news/2023/07/27/how-much-energy-does-chatgpt-use/

There are more 3d games developed each year than companies releasing new AI models.

-3
lemmy.world

You're getting downvoted for providing a well founded argument that should facilitate a broader discussion. Jesus Christ what are we doing here, people?

3

And your car or flight is a massive strain on the environment. I think you're missing the point. There's a way to use tools responsibly. We've taken the chains off and that's obviously a problem but the AI hate here is irrational

-4
piefed.social

The same can be said for taking flights to go on holiday.

Flying emits way exponentially more CO2 and supports the oil industry

-6
Atroposreply
lemmy.world

I just avoid both flights and AI in its current form.

1

Do you stream HD video, or Game or eat meat? Because those footprints are more than if you'd use AI a lot.

Not saying you should use AI, just pointing out a hypocrisy I see on here a lot

2

Do you really think those data centers wouldn't have been built if AI didn't exist? Do you really think those municipalities would have turned down the same amount of money if it was for something else but equally destructive?

What I'm hearing is you're sick of municipal governance being in bed with big business. That you're sick of big business being allowed to skirt environmental regulations.

But sure. Keep screaming at AI. I'm sure the inanimate machine will feel really bad about it.

-8
Honytawkreply
lemmy.zip

AI uses 1/1000 the power of a microwave.

Are you really sure you aren't the one being fed lies by con men?

-11

Hi. I'm in charge of an IT firm that is been contracted to carry out one of these data centers somewhat unwillingly in our city. We are currently in the groundbreaking phase but I am looking at papers and power requirements. You are absolutely wrong on the power requirements unless you mean per query on a light load on an easy plan, but these will be handling millions if not billions of queries per day. Keeping in mind that a single user query can also be dozens, hundreds, or thousands of separate queries... Generating a single image is dramatically more than you are stating.

Edit: I don't think your statement addresses the amount of water it requires as well. There are serious concerns that our massive water reservoir and lake near where I live will not even be close to enough.

Edit 2: Also, we were told to spec for at least 10x growth within the next 5 years which, unless there are massive gains in efficiency, I don't think there are any places on the planet capable of meeting the needs of, even if the models become substantially more efficient.

15
jimjam5reply
lemmy.world

What? Elon Musk’s xAI data center in Tennessee (when fully expanded & operational) will need 2 GW of energy. That’s as much as some entire cities use in a year.

9
lemmy.world

Rockstar games: 6k employees 20 kwatt hours per square foot https://esource.bizenergyadvisor.com/article/large-offices 150 square feet per employee https://unspot.com/blog/how-much-office-space-do-we-need-per-employee/#%3A%7E%3Atext=The+needed+workspace+may+vary+in+accordance

18,000,000,000 watt hours

vs

10,000,000,000 watt hours for ChatGPT training

https://www.washington.edu/news/2023/07/27/how-much-energy-does-chatgpt-use/

Yet there's no hand wringing over the environmental destruction caused by 3d gaming.

-4

And then you have a trained model that requires vast amounts of energy per request, right? It doesn't stop at training.

You need obscene amounts GPU power to run the 'better' models within reasonable response times.

In comparison, I could game on my modest rig just fine, but I can't run a 22B model locally in any useful capacity while programming.

Sure, you could argue gaming is a waste of energy, but that doesn't mean we can't argue that it shouldn't have to cost boiling a shitload of eggs to ask AI how long a single one should. Or each time I start typing a line of code for that matter.

6

Semi non sequitur argument aside, your math seems to be off.

I double checked my quick phone calculations and using figures provided, Rockstar games with their office space energy use is roughly 18,000,000 (18 million) kWh, not 18,000,000,000 (18 billion).

2
lemmy.world

The problem isn't AI. The problem is Capitalism.

The problem is always Capitalism.

AI, Climate Change, rising fascism, all our problems are because of capitalism.

68
zecareply

Problems would exist in any system, but not the same problems. Each system has its set of problems and challenges. Just look at history, problems change. Of course you can find analogies between problems, but their nature changes with our systems. Hunger, child mortality, pollution, having no free time, war, censorship, mass surveilence,... these are not constant through history. They happen more or less depending on the social systems in place, which vary constantly.

15
Eldritchreply
piefed.world

While you aren't wrong about human nature. I'd say you're wrong about systems. How would the same thing happen under an anarchist system? Or under an actual communist (not Marxist-Leninist) system? Which account for human nature and focus to use it against itself.

6

I'll answer. Because some people see these systems as "good" regardless of political affiliation and want them furthered and see any cost as worth it. If an anarchist / communist sees these systems in a positive light, then they will absolutely try and use them at scale. These people absolutely exist and you could find many examples of them on Lemmy. Try DB0.

2
pebblesreply
sh.itjust.works

I think you are underestimating how adaptable humans are. We absolutely conform to the systems that govern us, and they are NOT equally likely to produce bad outcomes.

5

Every system eventually ends with someone corrupted with power and greed wanting more. Putin and his oligrachs, Trump and his oligarchs... Xi isn't great, but at least I haven't heard news about the Uyghurs situation for a couple of years now. Hope things are better there nowadays and people aren't going missing anymore just for speaking out against their government.

-2

I see, so you don't understand. Or simply refuse to engage with what was asked.

1

Can, would... and did. The list of environmental disasters in the Soviet is long and intense.

0
lemmy.world

That's a pathetic, defeatist world view. Yeah, we're victims of our circumstances, but we can make the world a better place than what we were raised in.

13

You can try, and you should try. But some handful of generations ago, some assholes were in the right place at the right time and struck it rich. The ones that figured out generational wealth ended up with a disproportionate amount of power. The formula to use money to make more money was handed down, coddled, and protected to keep the rich and powerful in power. Even 100 Luigi's wouldn't even make the tiniest dent in the oligarch pyramid as others will just swoop in and consume their part.

Any lifelong pursuit you have to make the world a better place than you were raised in will be wiped out with a scribble of black Sharpie on Ministry of Truth letterhead.

5

The fittest survive. The problem is creating systems where the best fit are people who lack empathy and and a moral code.

A better solution would be selecting world leaders from the population at random.

1

The currently hot LLM technology is very interesting and I believe it has legitimate use cases. If we develop them into tools that help assist work. (For example, I'm very intrigued by the stuff that's happening in the accessibility field.)

I mostly have problem with the AI business. Ludicruous use cases (shoving AI into places where it has no business in). Sheer arrogance about the sociopolitics in general. Environmental impact. LLMs aren't good enough for "real" work, but snake oil salesmen keep saying they can do that, and uncritical people keep falling for it.

And of course, the social impact was just not what we were ready for. "Move fast and break things" may be a good mantra for developing tech, but not for releasing stuff that has vast social impact.

I believe the AI business and the tech hype cycle is ultimately harming the field. Usually, AI technologies just got gradually developed and integrated to software where they served purpose. Now, it's marred with controversy for decades to come.

45
lemmy.blahaj.zone

Distributed platform owned by no one founded by people who support individual control of data and content access

Majority of users are proponents of owning what one makes and supporting those who create art and entertainment

AI industry shits on above comments by harvesting private data and creative work without consent or compensation, along with being a money, energy, and attention tar pit

Buddy, do you know what you're here for?

EDIT: removed bot accusation, forgot to check user history

45
suppo.fi

Or are you yet another bot lost in the shuffle?

Yes, good job, anybody with opinions you don't like is a bot.

It's not like this was even a pro-AI post rather than just pointing out that even the most facile "ai bad, applause please" stuff will get massively upvoted

33

Yes, good job, anybody with opinions you don't like is a bot.

I fucking knew it!

17

Yeah, I guess that was a bit too far, posted before I checked the user history or really gave it time to sit in my head.

Still, this kind of meme is usually used to imply that the comment is just a trend rather than a legitimate statement.

2
fedia.io

Maybe there's some truth to it then. Have you considered that possibility?

2
suppo.fi

HaVe YoU ConSiDeReD thE PoSSiBiLiTY that I'm not pro-AI and I understand the downsides, and can still point out that people flock like lemmings (*badum tss*) to any "AI bad" post regardless of whether it's actually good or not?

7

Ok, so your point is: Look! People massively agree with an idea that makes sense and it's true.

Color me surprised....

4

Why would a post need to be good? It just needs a good point. Like this post is good enough, even if I don't agree that we have enough facile ai = posts.

Depends on the community, but for most of them pointing out ways that ai is bad is probably relevant, welcome, and typical.

1

Why would you lend and credence to the weakest appeal to the masses presented on the site?

2

I mean, it is objectively bad for life. Throwing away millions to billions of gallons of water all so you can get some dubious coding advice.

40

Its true. We can have a nuanced view. Im just so fucking sick of the paid off media hyping this shit, and normies thinking its the best thing ever when they know NOTHING about it. And the absolute blind trust and corpo worship make me physically ill.

39
lemmy.blahaj.zone

How people dare not like the automatic bullshit machine pushed down their troat...

Seriously, genrative AI acomplishment are :

  • Making mass spam easier
  • Burning the planet
  • Making people lose their job and not even being a decent solution
  • Make all search engine and information sources worse
  • Creating an economic bubble that will fuckup the economy even harder
  • Easing mass surveillance and weakening privacy everywhere
39
lemmy.world

Yes. AI can be used for spam, job cuts, and creepy surveillance, no argument there, but pretending it’s nothing more than a corporate scam machine is just lazy cynicism. This same “automatic BS” is helping discover life-saving drugs, diagnosing cancers earlier than some doctors, giving deaf people real-time conversations through instant transcription, translating entire languages on the fly, mapping wildfire and flood zones so first responders know exactly where to go, accelerating scientific breakthroughs from climate modeling to space exploration, and cutting out the kind of tedious grunt work that wastes millions of human hours a day. The problem isn’t that AI exists, it’s that a lot of powerful people use it selfishly and irresponsibly. Blaming the tech instead of demanding better governance is like blaming the printing press for bad propaganda.

1
kibiz0rreply
midwest.social

This same “automatic BS” is helping discover life-saving drugs, diagnosing cancers earlier than some doctors

Not the same kind of AI. At all. Generative AI vendors love this motte-and-bailey.

17
atopireply
piefed.blahaj.zone

Arent those different types of AI?

I dont think anyone hating AI is referring to the code that makes enemies move, or sort things into categories

9
lemmy.world

LLMs aren't artificial intelligence in any way.

They're extremely complex and very smart prediction engines.

The term artificial intelligence has been co-opted in hijacked for marketing purposes a long time ago.

The kind of AI that in general people expect to see is a fully autonomous self-aware machine.

If anyone has used any llm for any extended period of time they will know immediately that they're not that smart even chatgpt arguably the smartest of them all is still highly incapable.

What we do have to come to terms with is that these llms do have an application they have function and they are useful and they can be used in a deleterious way just like any technology at all.

0

If a program that can predict prices for video games based on reviews and how many people bought it can be called AI long before 2021, LLMs can too

2
piefed.social

One could have said many of the same thigs about a lot of new technologies.

The Internet, Nuclear, Rockets, Airplanes etc.

Any new disruptive technology comes with drawbacks and can be used for evil.

But that doesn't mean it's all bad, or that it doesn't have its uses.

0
RushLanareply
lemmy.blahaj.zone

Give me one real world use that is worth the downside.

As dev I can already tell you it's not coding or around code. Project get spamed with low quality nonsensical bug repport, ai generated code rarely work and doesn't integrate well ( on top on pushing all the work on the reviewer wich is already the hardest part of coding ) and ai written documentation is ridled with errors and is not legible.

And even if ai was remotly good at something it still the equivalent of a microwave trying to replace the entire restaurant kitchen.

8
piefed.social

I can run a small LLM locally which I can talk to using voice to turn certain lights on and off, set reminders for me, play music etc.

There are MANY examples of LLM's being useful, it has its drawbacks just like any big technology, but saying it has no uses that aren't worth it, is ridiculous.

-1
lemmy.ca

That's like saying "asbestos has some good uses, so we should just give every household a big pile of it without any training or PPE"

Or "we know leaded gas harms people, but we think it has some good uses so we're going to let everyone access it for basically free until someone eventually figures out what those uses might be"

It doesn't matter that it has some good uses and that later we went "oops, maybe let's only give it to experts to use". The harm has already been done by eager supporters, intentional or not.

6
Honytawkreply
lemmy.zip

No that is completely not what they are saying. Stop arguing strawmen.

0

It's not a strawman, it's hyperbole.

There are serious known harms and we suspect that there are more.
There are known ethical issues, and there may be more.
There are few known benefits, but we suspect that there are more.

Do we just knowingly subject untrained people to harm just to see if there are a few more positive usecases, and to make shareholders a bit more money?
How does their argument differ from that?

2
RushLanareply
lemmy.blahaj.zone

But we could do vocal assistants well before LLMs (look at siri) and without setting everything on fire.

And seriously, I asked for something that's worth all the down side and you bring up clippy 2.0 ???

Where are the MANY exemples ? why are LLMs/genAI company burning money ? where are the companies making use of of the suposedly many uses ?

I genuily want to understand.

4
piefed.social

You asked for one example, I gave you one.

It's not just voice, I can ask it complex questions and it can understand context and put on lights or close blinds based on that context.

I find it very useful with no real drawbacks

-2
RushLanareply
lemmy.blahaj.zone

I ask for an example making up for the downside everyone as to pay.

so, no ! A better shutter puller or a maybe marginally better vocal assitant is not gonna cut it. And again that's stuff siri and domotic tools where able to do since 2014 at a minimum.

3

Siri has privacy issues, and only works when connected to the internet.

What are the downsides of me running my own local LLM? I've named many benefits privacy being one of them.

-1
JcbAzPxreply
lemmy.world

The fact that was the best you could come up with is far more damning than not even having one.

-1
sh.itjust.works

I can run a small LLM locally which I can talk to using voice to turn certain lights on and off, set reminders for me, play music etc.

Neat trick, but it's not worth the headache of set up when you can do all that by getting off your chair and pushing buttons. Hell, you don't even have to get off your chair! A cellphone can do all that already, and you don't even need voice commands to do it.

Are you able to give any actual examples of a good use of an LLM?

0
piefed.social

Like it or not, that is an actual example.

I can lay in my bed and turn off the lights without touching my phone, or turn on certain muisic without touching my phone.

I could ask if I remembered to lock the front door etc.

But okay, I'll play your game, let's pretend that doesn't count.

I can use my local AI to draft documents or emails speeding up the process a lot.

Or I can used it to translate.

-2
sh.itjust.works

If you want to live your life like that, go for that's your choice. But I don't think those applications are worth the cost of running an LLM. To be honest I find it frivolous.

I'm not against LLMs as a concept, but the way they get shoved into everything without thought and without an "AI" free option is absurd. There are good reasons why people have a knee-jerk anti-AI reaction, even if they can't articulate it themselves.

1

It's not expensive for me to run a local LLM, I just use the hardware I'm already using for gaming. Electricity is cheap and most people with a gaming PC probably use more electricity gaming than they would running their own LLM and asking it some questions.

I'm also against shoving AI in evening, and not making it Opt-In. I'm also worried about privacy and concentration of power etc.

But just outright saying LLMs are bad is rediculous.

And saying there is no good reason to use them is rediculous. Can we stop doing that.

-1
lemmy.ca

Of those, only the internet was turned loose on an unsuspecting public, and they had decades of the faucet slowly being opened, to prepare.

Can you imagine if after WW2, Werner Von Braun came to the USA and then just like... Gave every man woman and child a rocket, with no training? Good and evil wouldn't even come into, it'd be chaos and destruction.

Imagine if every household got a nuclear reactor to power it, but none of the people in the household got any training in how to care for it.

It's not a matter of good and evil, it's a matter of harm.

1
piefed.social

The Internet kind of was turned lose on an unsuspecting public. Social media has and still is causing a lot of harm.

Did you really compare every household having a nuclear reactor with people having access to AI?

How's is that even remotely a fair comparison.

To me the Internet being released on people and AI being released on people is more of a fair comparison.

Both can do lots of harm and good, both will probably cost a lot of people their jobs etc.

-2

You know that the public got trickle-fed the internet for decades before it was ubiquitous in everyone house, and then another decade before it was ubiquitous in everyone's pocket. People had literal decades to learn how to protect themselves and for the job market to adjust. During that time, there was lots of research and information on how to protect yourself, and although regulation mostly failed to do anything, the learning material was adapted for all ages and was promoted.

Meanwhile LLMs are at least as impactful as the internet, and were released to the public almost without notice. Research on it's affects is being done now that it's already too late, and the public doesn't have any tools to protect itself. What meager material in appropriate use exist hasn't been well researched not adapted to all ages, when it isn't being presented as "the insane thoughts of doomer Luddites, not to be taken seriously" by the AI supporters.

The point is that people are being handed this catastrophically dangerous tool, without any training or even research into what the training should be. And we expect everything to be fine just because the tool is easy to use and convenient?

These companies are being allowed to bulldoze not just the economy, and the mental resilience of entire generations, for the sake of a bit of shareholder profit.

2

we should allow lead in paint its easier to use /s

You are deliberatly missing my point which is : gen AI as an enormous amount of downside and no real world use.

4
lemmy.world

I personally think of AI as a tool, what matters is how you use it. I like to think of it like a hammer. You could use a hammer to build a house, or you could smash someone's skull in with it. But no one's putting the hammer in jail.

31
lemmy.ca

Yeah, except it's a tool that most people don't know how to use but everyone can use, leading to environmental harm, a rapid loss of media literacy, and a huge increase in wealth inequality due to turmoil in the job market.

So... It's not a good tool for the average layperson to be using.

18
Randomgalreply
lemmy.ca

Stop drinking the cool aid bro. Think of these statements critically for a second. Environmental harm? Sure. I hope you're a vegan as well.

Loss of media literacy: What does this even mean? People are doing things the easy way instead of the hard way? Yes, of course cutting corners is bad, but the problem is the conditions that lead to that person choosing to cut corners, the problem is the demand for maximum efficiency at any cost, for top numbers. AI is is making a problem evident, not causing it. If you're home on a Friday after your second shift of the day, fuck yeah you want to do things easy and fast. Literacy what? Just let me watch something funny.

Do you feel you've become more stupid? Do you think it's possible? Why wouild other people, who are just like you, be these puppets to be brain washed by the evil machine?

Ask yourself. How are people measuring intelligence? Creativity? How many people were in these studies and who funded them? If we had the measuring instrument needed to actually make categorizations like "People are losing intelligence." Psychologists wouldn't still be arguing over the exact definition of intelligence.

Stop thinking of AI as a boogieman inside people's heads. It is a machine. People using the machine to achieve a mundane goal, it doesn't mean the machine created the goal or is responsible for everything wrong with humanity.

Huge increase in inequality? What? Brother AI is a machine. It is the robber barons that are exploiting you and all of the working class to get obsenely rich. AI is the tool they're using. AI can't be held accountable. AI has no will. AI is a tool. It is people that are increasing inequality. It is the system held in place by these people that rewards exploitation and encourages to look at the evil machine instead. And don't even use it, the less you know, the better. If you never engage with AI technology, you'll believe everything I say about how evil it is.

0

Literacy what? Just let me watch something funny.

This is like the most pro-illiteracy thing I've ever read.

Do you feel you've become more stupid?

My muscles were weaker until I started training. As it turns out, the modern convenience that allows me to sit around all day doesn't actually make me stronger by itself.

It is people that are increasing inequality.

Yes, what if the billionaires simply chose not to, hm? Have I ever thought of that? Probably not, I'm very stupid.

3

That's some real "guns don't kill people, people kill people" apologist speak.
The only way to stop a bad robber Baron using AI is a good robber Baron using AI? C'mon.
I know that's not exactly what you said, but it applicable.

I work with these tools every day, both as a tool my employer wants me to use, and because I'm part of the problem: I integrate LLMs into my company's products, to make them "smart". I'm familiar with the tech. This isn't coming from a place if ignorance where I've just been swayed by Luddites due to my lack of exposure.

When I use these tools I absolutely become temporarily stupider. I get into the rhythm of using it for everything instead of using it selectively.
But I'm middle aged; which means both that I'll never be as good with it but also that it's harder to affect me long term, I've already largely finished developing my brain. I only worry that it'll be a brand new source of misinformation for my generation, but I worry that that (with the escalating attacks on our school system) it'll result in generations of kids who grow up without having developed certain mental skills related to problem solving, because they'll have always relied on it to solve their problems.

I know it's not the tool's fault, but when a tool can do easily cause massive accidental harm, it's easiest to just regulate the tool to curb the harm.

1
oppy1984reply
lemdro.id

Seriously, the AI hate gets old fast. Like you said it's a tool, gey get over it people.

12

Edited. That's what I get for trying to type fast while my dog is heading for the door after doing her business.

3

What about self hosting? I can run a local GenAI on my gaming PC with relative ease. This isn't consuming mass amounts of power.

4
Randomgalreply
lemmy.ca

Do you think hammers grow out of the ground? Or that the magically spawn the building materials to work on?

Everything we do has a cost. We should definitely strive for efficiency and responsibile use of resources. But to use this as an excuse, while you read this in a device made of metals mined by children, is pretty hypocritical.

No consumption is ehical under capitalism, take responsibility instead for what you do with that consumption.

-2

Most of the material used in hammers does come from the ground.

1
Tjareply
programming.dev

The algorithm is a bunch of math. It's not until someone wants to run it that it needs any energy.

-6
prolereply
lemmy.blahaj.zone

Extreme oversimplification. Hammers don't kill the planet by simply existing.

0

And neither does AI? The massive data centers are having negative impacts on local economies, resources and the environment.

Just like a massive hammer factory, mines for the metals, logging for handles and manufacturing for all the chemicals, paints and varnishes have a negative environmental impact.

Saying something kills the planet by existing is an extreme hyperbole.

1
kibiz0rreply
midwest.social

“Guns don’t kill people, people kill people”

Edit:

Controversial reply, apparently, but this is literally part of the script to a Philosophy Tube video (relevant part is 8:40 - 20:10)

We sometimes think that technology is essentially neutral. It can have good or bad effects, and it might be really important who controls it. But a tool, many people like to think, is just a tool. "Guns don't kill people, people do." But some philosophers have argued that technology can have values built into it that we may not realise.

...

The philosopher Don Idhe says tech can open or close possibilities. It's not just about its function or who controls it. He says technology can provide a framework for action.

...

Martin Heidegger was a student of Husserl's, and he wrote about the ways that we experience the world when we use a piece of technology. His most famous example was a hammer. He said when you use one you don't even think about the hammer. You focus on the nail. The hammer almost disappears in your experience. And you just focus on the task that needs to be performed.

Another example might be a keyboard. Once you get proficient at typing, you almost stop experiencing the keyboard. Instead, your primary experience is just of the words that you're typing on the screen. It's only when it breaks or it doesn't do what we want it to do, that it really becomes visible as a piece of technology. The rest of the time it's just the medium through which we experience the world.

Heidegger talks about technology withdrawing from our attention. Others say that technology becomes transparent. We don't experience it. We experience the world through it. Heidegger says that technology comes with its own way of seeing.

...

Now some of you are looking at me like "Bull sh*t. A person using a hammer is just a person using a hammer!" But there might actually be some evidence from neurology to support this.

If you give a monkey a rake that it has to use to reach a piece of food, then the neurons in its brain that fire when there's a visual stimulus near its hand start firing when there's a stimulus near the end of the rake, too! The monkey's brain extends its sense of the monkey body to include the tool!

And now here's the final step. The philosopher Bruno Latour says that when this happens, when the technology becomes transparent enough to get incorporated into our sense of self and our experience of the world, a new compound entity is formed.

A person using a hammer is actually a new subject with its own way of seeing - 'hammerman.' That's how technology provides a framework for action and being. Rake + monkey = rakemonkey. Makeup + girl is makeupgirl, and makeupgirl experiences the world differently, has a different kind of subjectivity because the tech lends us its way of seeing.

You think guns don't kill people, people do? Well, gun + man creates a new entity with new possibilities for experience and action - gunman!

So if we're onto something here with this idea that tech can withdraw from our attention and in so doing create new subjects with new ways of seeing, then it makes sense to ask when a new piece of technology comes along, what kind of people will this turn us into.

I thought that we were pretty solidly past the idea that anything is “just a tool” after seeing Twitler scramble Grok’s innards to advance his personal politics.

Like, if you still had any lingering belief that AI is “like a hammer”, that really should’ve extinguished it.

But I guess some people see that as an aberrant misuse of AI, and not an indication that all AI has an agenda baked into it, even if it’s more subtle.

0
Ignotumreply
lemmy.world

My skull-crushing hammer that is made to crush skulls and nothing else doesn't crush skulls, people crush skulls
In fact, if more people had skull-crushing hammers in their homes, i'm sure that would lead to a reduction in the number of skull-crushings, the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a skull-crushing hammer, is a good guy with a skull-crushing hammer

9

you’re absolutely right!

the ban on guns in australia has been disastrous! the number of good guys with guns has dropped dramatically and … well, so has the number of bad guys … but that’s a mirage! ignore our near 0 gun deaths… that’s a statistical anomaly!

5
Kintarianreply
lemmy.world

Guns don’t kill people. People with guns kill people.

Ftfy

8
Pup Birureply
aussie.zone

as an aussie, yeah, then you should stop people from having guns

i honestly wouldn’t be surprised if the total number of gun deaths in australia since we banned guns (1996) was less than the number of gun deaths in the US THIS WEEK

the reason is irrelevant: the cause is obvious… and id have bought the “to stop a tyrannical government” argument a few years ago, but ffs there’s all the kids dying in school and none of the stop the tyrant, so maybe that’s a fucking awful argument and we have it right down under

4

I’ve never understood how a redneck prepper thinks he’s going to protect himself with a bunch of guns from a government that has millions of soldiers, tanks, machine guns, sidewinder misses and nuclear weapons.

3
Grimyreply
lemmy.world

Bad faith comparison.

The reason we can argue for banning guns and not hammers is specifically because guns are meant to hurt people. That's literally their only use. Hammers have a variety of uses and hurting people is definitely not the primary one.

AI is a tool, not a weapon. This is kind of melodramatic.

5
Pup Birureply
aussie.zone

then you have little understanding of how genai works… the social impact of genai is horrific, but to argue the tool is wholly bad conveys a complete or purposeful misunderstanding of context

-2
lemmy.ca

I'm not an expert in AI systems, but here is my current thinkging:

Insofar as 'GenAI' is defined as

AI systems that can generate new content, including text, images, audio, and video, in response to prompts or inputs

I think this is genuinely bad tech. In my analysis, there are no good use cases for automating this kind of creative activity in the way that the current technology works. I do not mean that all machine assisted generation of content is bad, but just the current tech we are calling GenAI, which is of the nature of "stochastic parrots".

I do not think every application of ML is trash. E.g., AI systems like AlphaFold are clearly valuable and important, and in general the application of deep learning to solve particular problems in limited domains is valuable

Also, if we first have a genuinely sapient AI, then it's creation would be of a different kind, and I think it would not be inherently degenerative. But that is not the technology under discussion. Applications of symbolic AI to assist in exploring problem spaces, or ML to solve classification problems also seems genuinely useful.

But, indeed, all the current tech that falls under GenAI is genuinely bad, IMO.

3

things like the “patch x out of an image” allows people to express themselves with their own creative works more fully

text-based genai has myriad purposes that don’t involve wholesale generation of entirely new creative works:

using it as a natural language parser in low-stakes situation (think like you’re browsing a webpage and want to add an event to the calendar but it just has a paragraph of text that says “next wednesday at xyz”)

the generative part makes it generically more useful that specialist models (and certainly less accurate most of the time), and people can use them to build novel things on top of rather than be limited to the original intent of the model creator

everything genai should be used for should be low-stakes: things that humans can check quickly, or doesn’t matter if it’s wrong… because it will be wrong some of the time

1
Iferareply
lemmy.world

GenAI is a great tool for devouring text and making practice questions, study guides and summarize, it has been used as a marvelous tool for education and research. Hell, if set properly, you can get it to give you the references and markers on your original data for where to find the answers to the questions on the study guide it made you.

It is also really good for translation and simplification of complex text. It has its uses.

But the oversimplification and massive broad specs LLMs have taken, plus lack of proper training for the users, are part of the problem Capitalism is capitalizing on. They don't care for the consumer's best interest, they just care for a few extra pennies, even if those are coated in the blood of the innocent. But a lot of people just foam at the mouth when they hear "Ai".

-3
lemmy.ca

Those are not valuable use cases. “Devouring text” and generating images is not something that benefits from automation. Nor is summarization of text. These do not add value to human life and they don’t improve productivity. They are a complete red herring.

1

Who talked about image generation? That one is pretty much useless, for anything that needs to be generated on the fly like that, a stick figure would do.

Devouring text like that, has been instrumental in learning for my students, especially for the ones who have English as a Second Language(ESL), so its usability in teaching would be interesting to discuss.

Do I think general open LLMs are the future? Fuck no. Do I think they are useless and unjustifiable? Neither. I think, at their current state, they are a brilliant beta test on the dangers and virtues of large language models and how they interact with the human psyche, and how they can help bridge the gap in understanding, and how they can help minorities, especially immigrants and other oppressed groups(Hence why I advocated for providing a class on how to use it appropriately for my ESL students) bridge gaps in understanding, help them realize their potential, and have a better future.

However, we need to solve or at least reduce the grip Capitalism has on that technology. As long as it is fueled by Capitalism, enshitification, dark patterns and many other evils will strip it of its virtues, and sell them for parts.

2

We once had played this game with friends where you get a word stuck on your forehead and you have to guess what are you.

One guy got C4 (as in explosive) to guess and he failed. I remember that we had to agree with each other whether C4 is or is not a weapon. Main idea was that explosives are comparatively rarely used in actual killing opposed to other things like mining and such. Parallel idea was that is Knife a weapon?

But ultimately we agreed that C4 is not a weapon. It was invented not primarily to to kill or injure. Opposed to guns, that are only for killing or injuring.

Take guns away, people will kill with literally anything else. But give an easy access to guns, people will kill with them. Gun is not a tool, it is a weapon by design.

1

Lots of AI is technologically interesting and has tons of potential, but this kind of chatbot and image/video generation stuff we got now is just dumb.

30

The reason most web forum posters hate AI is because AI is ruining web forums by polluting it with inauthentic garbage. Don't be treating it like it's some sort of irrational bandwagon.

28
lemmy.zip

I don't hate the concept as is, I hate how it is being marketed and shoved everywhere and into everything by sheer hype and the need for returns on the absurd amounts of money that were thrown at it.

Companies use it to justify layoffs, create cheap vibed up products, delegate responsibilities to an absolutely not sentient or intelligent computer program. Not even mentioning the colossal amount of natural and financial resources being thrown down this drain.

I read a great summary yesterday somewhere on here that essentially said "they took a type of computer model made to give answers to very specific questions it has been trained on, and then trained it on everything to make a generalist". Except that doesn't work, the broader the spectrum the model is covering the less accurate it will be.

Identifying skin cancer? Perfect tool for the job.

Giving drones the go ahead on an ambiguous target? Providing psychological care to people in distress? FUCK NO.

25

Whether intentional or not, this is gaslighting. "Here's the trendy reaction those wacky lemmings are currently upvoting!"

Getting to the core issue, of course we're sick of AI, and have a negative opinion of it! It's being forced into every product, whether it makes sense or not. It's literally taking developer jobs, then doing worse. It's burning fossil fuels and VC money and then hallucinating nonsense, but still it's being jammed down our throats when the vast majority of us see no use-case or benefit from it. But feel free to roll your eyes at those acknowledging the truth...

25

Not all AI is bad. But there’s enough widespread AI that’s helping cut jobs, spreading misinformation (or in some cases, actual propaganda), creating deepfakes, etc, that in many people’s eyes, it paints a bad picture of AI overall. I also don’t trust AI because it’s almost exclusively owned by far right billionaires.

24

It would still be a performative post though.

What we need is a circlejerk@ community

-1
piefed.social

He's made the World wake up to the fact that they can't trust the US, so that can be seen as good?

AI isn't that black and white, just like any big technology it can be used for good or bad.

Just like Airplanes

-2
piefed.social

I used that comparison a total of two times (and might use it more), how about refute my argument instead of getting mad at me for using a good comparison twice.

Airplanes emit SHITLOADS of carbon into the atmosphere, they have directly caused the death of tens of thousands of people. Airplanes are heavily used in war and to spy on people. Airplanes are literally used to spray pesticides and other chemicals into the air etc. They can mostly just be used by the rich etc.

Just like with AI, there are many reasons airplanes are bad, that doesn't mean we should get rid of them.

2

A based point of view, Bravo, my dear. Do you know how rare that is? People in here love to think about themselves as free thinkers, when a lot of them are in reality, reactionary at best.

Same for citing renting, landlords and Ai. They are disgustingly evil when used for profit, but they also have their uses. In another comment I'm sure will be downvoted to hell, if not outright buried, I mention the uses of GenAI for translation, text simplification, summarization and studying, yet people got the whole "AI=BAD" as a thought-terminating cliche.

1

I'd welcome actual AI. What is peddled everyday as "AI" is just marketing bullshit. There's no intelligence in it. Language shapes perception and we should take those words back and use them according to their original and inherent meaning. LLMs are not AI. Stable diffusion is not AI. Neural networks trained for a singular task are not AI.

9

I prefer the fine vintage of a M$ = bad post, myself.

Or perhaps even a spicy little Ubuntu = bad post.

5

Doh. I'm always sorted to new, so things don't have this many votes. I should revisit every so often

1
jlai.lu

An AI could be demonstrably 30 times more accurate than a human in diagnosing a cancer on a scan Lemmy would still shit on it because it's an AI :D.

On Reddit I knew that the subject of gun control was not allowed to be talked about. Now I embraced Lemmy and I can't talk no matter what about AI. It's just a taboo subject. Apparently some people want to reject the tech entirely and think it will somehow just magically stay out of their lives. A very naive dream.

So yeah Lemmy. Refuse the conversation, look away, I'm sure it will be fine.

4
grrgylereply
slrpnk.net

Legitimately useful applications, like in the medical field, are actually brought up as examples of the "right kind" of use case for this technology.

Over and over again.

It's kind annoying, because both the haters of commercial LLM in All The Things and defenders of the same will bring up these exact same use cases as examples of good ai use.

7
Tetsuoreply
jlai.lu

May I ask for a link ? Never saw that in the communities I consult. Never. Or at least not above 5 downvotes.

-1

I'll keep an eye out but I don't have votes visible, so can only really tell sentiment from comments.

Aside, but I highly recommend hiding vote counts. They're even more pointless here than they were on redit. They're meaningless noise on the frontend.

4

An AI could be demonstrably 30 times more accurate than a human in diagnosing a cancer on a scan Lemmy would still shit on it because it’s an IA

I think this is an exaggeration.

3
lemmy.world

Thats because platforms like Lemmy and Reddit utilize the bandwagon effect. The upvote/downvote system is inherently flawed because there is no accountability as to why one votes the way they do.

In this particular case people are just ignorant as to how these new technologies function for example they continue to call them AI when they're not AI they're llms... They have no clue how the technology functions or how it should function and simply go by whatever they read on their feed which on lemmy as you know is nothing good.

3

In this particular case people are just ignorant as to how these new technologies function for example they continue to call them AI when they're not AI they're llms

You're my people 👏

-3
lemmy.ca

Think about your argument for a minute.

I know you think this will harm you and everyone you know, but it'll be much better if you just stay quiet instead of vocally opposing it

When has that ever been good advice?

0
Tetsuoreply
jlai.lu

So everything related to AI is negative ?

If so do you understand why we can't have any conversation on the subject ?

1
lemmy.ca

Did I say that?
Show me the place where I said that. Show it to me.
Come on. Show me the place where I said everything related to AI is negative. Show me even a place where you could reasonably construe that's what I meant.

If you're talking about why we can't have a conversation, take a long hard look in the fucking mirror you goddamn hypocrite.

-1
Tetsuoreply
jlai.lu

First you should chill a bit.

I know you think this will harm you and everyone you know,

So this thing will harm you. But you are not describing AI as only negative ?

You just say AI will harm you and suppose people assume you have positive thing to say about AI

Where is the nuance toward AI in your comment please show it to me.

2
lemmy.ca

You know that things can both harm and benefit you, right? That's the whole idea behind the idiom "the pros outweigh the cons".

If someone is making an argument about the cons of a thing, it's insane to expect them to just list of a bunch of unrelated pros, and likewise it's an unreasonable assumption to believe from that, that they don't believe in the existence of any pros.

I think that LLMs cause significant harm, and we don't have any harm mitigation in place to protect us. In light of the serious potential for widespread harm, the pros (of which there are some) dont really matter until we make serious progress in reducing the potential for harm.

I shouldn't need this degree of nuance. People shouldn't need to get warnings in the form of a short novel full of couched language. I'm not the only person in this conversation, the proponents are already presenting the pros. And people should be able to understand that.

When people were fighting against leaded gasoline, they shouldn't need to "yes, it makes cars more fuel efficient and prevents potentially damaging engine knock, thereby reducing average maintenance costs" every time they speak about the harms. It is unreasonable to say that they were harming discourse by not acknowledging the benefits every time they cautioned against it's use.

I don't believe that you're making a genuine argument, I believe you're trying to stifle criticism by shifting the responsibility for nuance from it's rightful place in the hands of the people selling and supporting a product with the potential for harm, onto the critics.

1

I have to agree here. Injecting ‘nuance’ is an easy way to derail a discussion so that the obvious harms of a thing get obscured. The discussion devolves into emotional reactions to some aspect of the ‘nuance’ and the original point is lost. And nothing changes, which suits the powers that be just fine.

Nuance is a powerful tool for maintaining the status quo by disrupting the conversation. Leave the nuance to the academics.

Effective messaging campaigns require message discipline and dead simple provocative points repeated endlessly for a generation or two to effect change, usually.

2
Tetsuoreply
jlai.lu

It's just as insane for you to expect us to read between the line of a 4 line comment that only present AI as harmful.

If you want to say that AI is both good and bad, that's fine but then say that. It doesn't have to be a book about it. You could have juste said AI can be harmful or good and that's fine. Don't act as if i'm asking for something unreasonable. You said one negative thing in a 4 line comment and feel personally attacked that we are unable to guess what positive thing you see in AI.

1

Your clearly didn't actually read the nuanced take, which is why I didn't provide a nuanced take in the first place.

I didn't expect you to read between the lines.
Rather, I'm shocked that you expect people raising the alarm about something to also promote all the good features of the harmful thing, in the same breath.

Watch out! The Ford Pinto may explode while you're driving it! But wow, what a bargain! You'll burn to death, but you'll look chic in that fantastic modern styling, and the fuel economy is great! Take yours home today for only $8000!

Like can you imagine?

1
chunesreply
lemmy.world

lol, you literally put words in the original commenter's mouth:

I know you think this will harm you and everyone you know, but it'll be much better if you just stay quiet instead of vocally opposing it

and now you're incredulous about something similar being done to you? lame

1

AI BAD, TRUMP BAD, CLIMATE CHANGE BAD, GENOCIDE BAD, CAPITALISM BAD, LIBERALS BAD, FASCISTS BAD, NAZIS BAD, INCELS BAD, CEOs BAD, LANDLORDS BAD, VIOLENCE BAD, CHILD SEX TRAFFICKING BAD.

Now where are my upvotes?

3
lemmy.world

Ek sal dit nagaan, dankie vir die voorstel! Ek het van Suid-Afrika af geïmmigreer toe ek 4 was, so ek kan dit redelik goed praat, maar my lees- en skryfbegrip is nie-bestaande, so ek gebruik Google Translate om te help lol.

2

Wait to power tripper db0 sees this. Crying that their ai photos in all their coms are cringe

2

Back in my day, PAC-Man ghosts stayed perfectly still, exhibiting no behaviour at all and that’s how we Lemmy people liked it!

0
frogreply
feddit.uk

Yeah. I hate the naming of it too. It's not AI in the sense how science fiction saw it. History repeats itself in the name of marketing. I'm still very annoyed with these marketers destroying the term "hover board".

5
atopireply
piefed.blahaj.zone

AI includes a lot of things

The way ghosts in pacman chase you is AI

1
frogreply
feddit.uk

There is a distinction between video game AI and computer science AI. People know that video game AI isn't really AI. How LLM is marketed by using terms like "super intelligence" is deception.

5

The broadest definition of AI i have found includes both video game AI and machine learning

The point i was trying to make was that LLMs are still AI, even if their marketing is misleading

3

Don't you dare try to tell someone that though, they will be personally offended for some reason.

2

True. Now shut up and take my upvote! Jo need for arguments; all has already been said.

-2
sh.itjust.works

The LLM shills have made "AI" refer exclusively to LLMs. Honestly the best ad campaign ever.

11
infosec.pub

The LLM shills have made "AI" refer exclusively to LLMs.

Yes, I agree and it's unacceptable for me. Now most people here are also falling in the same hole. I'm here not to promote/support/standing with LLM or Gen-AI, I want to correct what is wrong. You can hate something but please, be objective and rational.

-2
lemmy.ca

Language is descriptive not prescriptive.

If people use the term "AI" to refer to LLMs, then it's correct by definition.

1
sh.itjust.works

Not really, since "AI" is a pre-existing and MUCH more general term which has been intentionally commandeered by bad actors to mean a particular type of AI.

AI remains a broader field of study.

3
infosec.pub

I completely agree. Using AI to refer specifically to LLMs does reflect the influence of marketing from companies that may not fully represent the broader field of artificial intelligence. Sounds ironic to those who oppose LLM usage might end up sounding like the very bad actors they criticize if they also use the same misleading terms.

2
sh.itjust.works

This hype cycle is insane, and the gross psychology of the hype obscures the real usefulness of LLMs.

2

As a non-English main, Deepl is useful for my locals (and for me). It's just how it's implemented. Still being open-minded, yeah, the extensive resource usage is bad for the earth tho, wishing there would be optimization.

2
lemmy.ca

I don't get to decide if the marketing terms used by the companies I hate end up becoming the common terms.

If I stubbornly refuse to use the common terms and instead only use the technical terms, then I'm only limiting the reach of my message.

OpenAI marketing has successfully made LLM one of the definitions of the term AI, and the most common term used to refer to the tech, in public spaces.

1

If I stubbornly refuse to use the common terms and instead only use the technical terms ...

That's where your role takes part as someone who knows the correct term. I myself often teach my close ones about tech and its terms in my field. I don't want to normalize using wrong terms in a technical discussion. It's just depending on us to teach what's right or just being comfortable what is already wrong and doing nothing about it. Activists are educators as much as they are advocates.

1
lemmy.ca

It doesn't matter what you want, I'm just describing how language works.

If everyone says a word means a thing, then it means that thing. Words can have multiple meanings.

0
sh.itjust.works

AI remains a broader field of study, an active field of study which tons of people are invested in, and they use AI to refer to the broader field of study in which they're professionally invested.

I’m just describing how language works.

No you're not. And you're not as smart as you think you are.

If everyone says a word means a thing

It's not literally everybody, and you know it, and you also know that LLMs are not the entire actual category of AI.

1

That is beyond pedantry.

That is how language works. Word definitions are literally just informal consensus agreement. Dictionaries are just descriptions of observed usage. Not literally everyone needs to agree on it.
This isn't some kind of independent conclusion I came to on my own; I used to think like you appear to, but then I watched some explanations from authors and from professional linguists, and they changed my mind about language prescriptivism.

If you say "AI" in most contexts, more people will know what you mean than if you say "LLM". If your goal is communication, then by that measure "AI" is "more correct" (but again, correctness isn't even applicable here)

2
sh.itjust.works

If people use [slur] to refer to [demographic] that does not make it correct by definition.

1
sh.itjust.works

So are you saying that a slur (for Black people, for example) is linguistically "correct by definition" ? And it actually describes members of the demographic?

1

A slur is still a word.
I know youre trying to trap me in some stupid gotcha, but idk what you think that'd prove.

What would you consider "linguistically correct" if not "follows grammar rules and conveys the intended meaning"?

If I say something absolutely heinous about your mother, does it stop being valid English just because it is morally reprehensible and fallacious? Of course not.

1
infosec.pub

It's partially correct but AI don't always mean it's LLM. Etymology is important here. Don't normalize illiteracy.

0
lemmy.ca

This is how etymology works.

Do you think all the words we use today meant exactly the same thing 300 years ago?
No, people used it "incorrectly" and that usage gains popularity, and that makes it correct.

What you call illiteracy is literally how etymology works.

1
infosec.pub

Just to clarify, do you personally agree that LLMs are a subset of AI, with AI being the broader category that includes other technologies beyond LLMs?

I come from a technical background and have worked in AI to help people and small businesses whether it's for farming, business decisions, and more. I can’t agree with the view that AI is inherently bad; it’s a valuable tool for many. What’s causing confusion is that 'AI' is often used to mean LLMs, which is inaccurate from a technical perspective. My goal is simply to encourage precise language use to avoid misunderstandings. People often misuse words in ways that stray far from their original etymology. For example, in Indonesia, we use the word 'literally' as it’s meant — in a literal sense, not figuratively, as it’s often misused in English nowadays. The word 'literally' in Indonesian would be translated as 'secara harfiah,' and when used, it means exactly as stated. Just like 'literally,' words should stay connected to their roots, whether Latin, Greek, or otherwise, as their original meanings give them their true value and purpose.

2

Depending on context, jargon and terminology change.
In this context, I'd agree that LLMs are a subset tech under the umbrella term "AI". But in common English discourse, LLM and AI are often used interchangeably. That's not wrong because correctness is defined by the actual real usage of native speakers of the language.

I also come from a tech background. I'm a developer with 15 years experience, and I work for a large company, and my job is currently integrating LLMs and more traditional ML models into our products, because our shareholders think we need to.
Specificity is useful in technical contexts, but in these public contexts, almost everyone knows what we're talking about, so the way we're using language is fine.

You know it's bad when someone with my username thinks you're being too pedantic lol. Dont be a language prescriptivist.

1
frogreply
feddit.uk

Why the hell are you being downvoted? You are completely right.

People will look back at this and "hover boards" and will think "are they stupid!?"

Mislabeling a product isn't great marketing, it's false advertisement.

1
Grimyreply
lemmy.world

AI is an umbrella term that holds many thing. We have been referring to simple path finding algorithms in video games as AI for two decades, llms are AIs.

2
infosec.pub

Yes LLMs are AI, who don't agree with this is stupid, sorry. But saying AI means LLM is wrong. Kindly take a look on my reason here why I always against to language misusage https://infosec.pub/comment/17417999. You English speakers sometimes make things harder to understand by misusing terms like 'literally' or using 'AI' to mean only LLMs. Language is meant to clarify, not confuse, and this shift in meaning can lead to misunderstandings, especially when talking about technical concepts.

2
frogreply
feddit.uk

There is a distinction between video game AI and computer science AI. People know that video game AI isn't really AI. How LLM is marketed by using terms like "super intelligence" is deception.

No one is typing prompts out to NPC asking if dogs can eat chocolate.

1
Grimyreply
lemmy.world

Calling an llm an AI isnt saying it's super intelligent and I don't know of any company that it is marketing it like that. There aren't multiple definitions of AI depending on the industry you are in.

Just read the wiki, it is pretty clear. Something does not have to be "intelligent" to be considered AI, just like a shooting star isn't actually a star. Its an umbrella term that holds many things including video game pathfinding, llms, recommendation systems, autonomous driving solutions, etc.

2

IDK LMAO, that's what I really hate about Reddit/Lemmy, the voting system. People downvote but don't tell where I'm wrong in their opinion. I mean, at least argue — say out loud your (supposedly harmless) opinion. I even added a disclaimer there that I don't promote LLM and such stuff. I don't really care either, I stand with correctness and do what I can to correct what is wrong. I totally agree with @[email protected] tho.

2

I was laughing today seeing the same users who have been calling AI a bullshit machine posting articles like "grok claims this happened". Very funny how quick people switch up when it aligns with them.

-2
lemmy.world

Remember when the internet was treated like AI when it first dropped? People up in arms about internets influence on young people/kids.

This all seems really familiar.

-3
socsareply
piefed.social

Honestly low-key technophobia has always been a major sentiment in otherwise tech-focused parts of the internet and it has always fascinated me.

8

The new thing about this new technology is that it’s taking our jobs away without creating any new ones. I fear the day some stupid higher up decides that a chatbot can do a better job than me.

4

because tech-focused people know enough to realize when new tech is shit

Tech Enthusiasts: Everything in my house is wired to the Internet of Things! I control it all from my smartphone! My smart-house is bluetooth enabled and I can give it voice commands via alexa! I love the future!
Programmers / Engineers: The most recent piece of technology I own is a printer from 2004 and I keep a loaded gun ready to shoot it if it ever makes an unexpected noise.
Security technicians: takes a deep swig of whiskey I wish I had been born in the neolithic.

1

I mean they were right about the internet. The corporations turned most of it into a cluster of competing megamalls that make people anxious while selling them things.

Never mind that even just open a port 443 anywhere in the world will open you up to roving bands of OC scrapers, which feed the next evolution of corp power.

It's not like a bunch of basement nerds made LLMs and now corps are trying to muscle in (like with the internet). This new technology is theirs, from its R&D to now its aggressive rollout across all sectors of the Internet they control.

I don't have much hope for the commercial AI or LLM services that are available to most consumers. I think they're going to enshittify so bad that we're going to need a new word for it.

5
lemmy.blahaj.zone

What kind of selfish, emotionless psychopath do you have to be to legitimately think that libraries being unused, forgotten, and closed is a good thing?

You ever thought about this: maybe if you visited your library in person more often, you'd actually have more friends.

4
piefed.social

I never said that.

All I'm saying is just because The Internet caused library use to plummet doesn't mean Internet = Bad.

0

It might. Like, maybe a little?

Oddly, you're the one kind of lacking nuance here. I'd be willing to oppose the Internet in certain contexts. It certainly feels less and less useful as it's consumed by AI spam anyway.

1

"B-But you don't understand, AI DESTROYS le epic self employed artists and their bottom line! Art is a sacred thing that we all do for fun and not for work, therefore AI that automates the process is EVIL!"

- Actual thought process of some people

-3

Reminder that Lemmy is typically older and older people are usually more conservative about things. Sure, politcially, Lemmy leans left, but technologically, Lemmy is very conservative.

Like for example, you see people on Lemmy say they'll switch to a dumbphone, but that's probably even more insecure, and they could've just used Lineage OS or something and it would be far more private.

-8

I'm a lot more sick of the word 'slop' than I am of AI. Please, when you criticize AI, form an original thought next time.

-8

I find it very funny how just a mere mention of the two letters A and I will cause some people to seethe and fume, and go on rants about how much they hate AI, like a conservative upon seeing the word "pronouns."

-10