I’m curious to get a general pulse on how people here view the rapid evolution of AI, specifically on lemmy. On one side, there’s growing interest in local open-weights models, self-hosted setups, and practical developer/productivity tools. On the other, there seems to be a growing list, I can’t keep track of, that are seen as major concerns. I’m not here to pick sides or be biased in one corner. Im genuinely curious what people have to say about AI in general. And maybe it will help me and other get a better handle on how we perceived it in our ever changing world.
Broadly speaking, fuck AI
Just like the damage to our environment, AI is out of control and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. I’ve used it to great effect on personal projects so, also like the environment, I’m part of the problem.
I think LLMs are going to cause massive change, not all of it good.
Ultimately, I’m an optimist. I think in the long run, LLMs are going to enable us to do amazing things that we wouldn’t have been able to do without it. In the short term… I dunno. It’s going to be a rough transition.
I do think the people who think LLMs are going to keep getting better, leading to either some sort of techno-utopia, or kill us all off maybe don’t really understand how they work and what the implications are.
I also think the people who are categorically against AI are making a mistake out of fear, but that’s pretty understandable.
For a point against AI, I think you should consider the way in which LLMs reduce cognition in people.
Arguably it’s not necessary for people to do all of their cognition themselves, but that definitely does make people’s thinking ability weaker. I suppose you could look at it like how when we automated physical labour away from most people - and now most people do not do nearly enough exercise. If we automate thinking away from most people, I feel like that will lead to worse health outcomes as well
Ohh. Yeah. It’s a concern.
People said the same things about TV. I don’t know that they were wrong.
But it is here to stay, and I think it will do more good than harm on balance. The sheer access to information LLMs can provide to someone who knows how to sort fact from hallucination is staggering.
But, yes. I do share you’re concerns. My view is that, at this point, people who don’t make an effort to exercise their minds are already a lost cause. I’m not sure how much worse LLMs can make it.
True… but then, like with obesity, these problems always come back to affect everyone anyway.
I never thought much about cognitive laziness and associated decline before AI came onto the scene, but now I’ve actually been trying to do more thinking on purpose (e.g. doing maths in my head instead of relying on my phone). So I am a bit grateful that AI threw this whole thing into clarity.
We’ve been using AI for decades and while generative AI is widely despised and mostly deserving of that despite, lumping all AI together while calling out the harms is doing a disservice to a lot of useful AI techniques and tools.
Well, they did that on purpose, no? To defect criticism.
To distinguish them I would call the other stuff machine learning, which is what we already called it before, and the LLMs as AI, since that’s what the common people think of when they say that word.
Broadly speaking? Fuck AI, fuck everyone that uses it, fuck everyone that makes it
Fuckin A
Fuckin Amen
I don’t really use it personally (other than times I log in on a work computer, look something up, and Google’s AI search defaults). But I also don’t really condemn it as strongly as others seem to, I guess. It depends on how it’s used.
When it’s used to take work done by humans, then regurgitate its own version of that work to replace those jobs, that’s a problem. If actual artists, writers, designers, engineers, coders, etc. can no longer earn a living after being replaced by AI, we run the risk of complete cultural and developmental stagnation.
But I think my main point of disagreement with a lot of the AI conversations happening here revolves around how we look at waste and environmental impact. Not in the sense that AI isn’t still a problem in those aspects, but that it seems like a very convenient boogeyman for people to blame while ignoring the myriad other wasteful aspects of the world we live in.
Basically, with the environmental impact of data centers and energy costs of hardware in general, why do we focus so much on what that compute is used for, as opposed to addressing those issues in a more comprehensive sense? Does it matter if a data center is built for AI or for any other hosting provider? Or if someone runs a local AI model on their PC, is that any more detrimental to the environment than someone who plays video games for several hours each day?
I feel like there are lines that people who claim to primarily care about the environment are afraid to draw, when it’s easier to pin the blame wholly on AI. So if someone says that they used AI to help make their spreadsheets cleaner, to translate a website, or to summarize the content of a book, I don’t really jump straight to blanket criticism. Otherwise I’d have to take the same criticism towards people who host a plex server, who play MMOs, or who run Lemmy instances.
“Rapid Evolution” = recursing the same algorithm to juice ever diminishing returns out of the parlor trick at ever greater costs.
When you realize it’s just a big average sentence machine starts to make a lot more sense when and where to use it. I think it should be used as an exact problem solver not a general one. Government regulations can’t come soon enough because unlike previous tech this one has the ability to deceive and if it gets access to resources we will be in direct competition with the AI.
Sources for a good chunk of my view points: Spanish prime Minister wondering why AI not treated like nuclear tech at a global level interview with him https://youtu.be/p6XvTconhwQ
AI panel debate, Nate soares and Roman Yampolskiy stand out on this discussion about the inevitable risks we are walking towards with very little action. https://youtu.be/OhOmLqR5nN4
Artificial intelligence is good at doing boring repetitive tasks or point out things for a human to look at when there is too much data for us to scrutinise.
If you do not have the skill to verify the output you are almost certainly getting garbage out of it.
The fact that they cram AI into everything is because they are throwing AI at the wall and seeing what sticks. Spending millions on a 1% chance that you will make billions makes economical sense if you can afford to lose.
It reminds me of early 90s PCs…
Everyone was convinced if you “knew how to computer” that’s all you needed. Every school bought a shit ton, and kids would get an hour a day to just dick around and play games.
None of the adults understand any of it, so we grew up learning to be thech support for the people teaching it to us.
AI will eventually end up like PCs, it won’t be a magic solution, but it will drastically cut down on available jobs and transfer wealth to the wealthy.
The smart move is to sit it out till someone actually makes it profitable, then we could dump billions into it now. We can’t beat China because their companies actually have to compete with each other.
We should wait till the dust settles over there, then dump the money on copying what they do. Just manufacturing whatever chips design they settle on.
Racing R&D with zero manufacturing just isn’t logical.
AI itself is not bad.
But the unregulated industry, breaking laws all the time, people in charge are literal super villains, mass surveillance, producing even more idiots that I have to depend and interact with, …
Take it away, it is not doing anything we want it to actually do. I only want robots/computers for one thing, and that is to do chores around the house. It doesn’t do that, so I am out.
I refuse to use AI as a tool for anything other than making tools.
I can’t write LISP but I use AutoCAD. I use an LLM to write LISP routines.
I spent MONTHS looking for a way to catalog my plant collection. Tried a dozen open source projects and none did what I wanted it to do. So I used Claude to make a simple database website…and it was able to add a ton of pipe dream features.
Nothing I make is for sale and I don’t claim it as my own. They’re tools for ME to use. And the important part is that once the tool is done, the LLM gets closed.
It works for basic tasks like correcting grammar, sorting lists, etc, but it makes too many mistakes when you try to use it for a complex task.
My opinion is well… I’m sure it may have some use, but I see it pushed in the dumbest and least useful ways. It is fundamentally incapable of creating art in any shape or form. Use it to summarise things? I don’t trust it enough to correctly summarise the text. Use it to write/reply to emails? I’d myself just feel insulted if someone sent me a generated email. Why should I expect someone to read a text I didn’t even bother to write?
I feel like it’s making people dumber. I keep getting screenshots of Google ai summary from people as if that’s the answer and they’re confident in it. I keep finding those are not correct. For me, ai has created more work because I can no longer trust my colleagues statements.
malicious compliance - take what they say as accurate then pass the buck back when shit hits the fan
The small help it gives does not equal the vast evil done to the environment, communities, and actual makers and creators.
to be fair im kinda feeling this with everything. ai, social media, plastic everything.
