Id rather have some schmuck on the internet tell me what to think
I didn’t go through 8 years of grueling computer science and engineering education to ask an AI to do my fucking job.
Yeah, thats what interns are for!
But your a cyborg. Wouldn’t asking an AI just be like asking your pet dog to do a trick here?
That’s racist
I’d rather have someone tell me that they’re literally into shit than that they’re an AI “artist”
Okay but have you considered I don’t care how I get my job done as long as the paycheck keeps coming.
as the paycheck keeps coming.
How are you not comprehending yet that the reason investors are investing in those datacenters and models is because the shared business goal is to eliminate jobs for humans (so they can get all the profit of the business)??
Okay but have you considered the brain is a muscle that needs exercise to stay healthy and functional and offloading “thinking” makes your brain weaker?
The brain is a giant glob of electric fat.
You really think people offloading their job while they do other things is ruining their brain? Lmao what do you think the impact of forced automatable labour is doing 40 hours a week
You use your brain at work? Ppffff. Overachiever.
Yeah, why would I train my brain repeatedly, for the majority of my life to ponder on and create almost exclusively on corporate bullshit that enriches other people? I’m thinking the bare minimum at work and getting my brain work maximized on my days and hours off. I’m not conditioning that fucker to be an office drone, I’m conditioning it to be a fireman astronaut inventor artist dog walker like 5 year old me wanted.
Okay but have you considered I only apply my brain to fun and exciting problems, and the ones at work get the clanker?
Yeah fuck the planet!
Just like you use the rest of your muscles only for fun and exciting tasks.
Exercise yes. Daily 8hr forced deathmarch, not so much.
Of course, that’s why I sum my spreadsheets by hand with pen and paper and then enter the total back into the sheet
Using software versus typing in “do the whole thing for me” has some differences, maybe a little nuance is an important thing here. Maybe…
You jest but I’ve seen people do this because they didn’t want to use their brain to discover the most basic functions of excel
Do you tell yourself that as you get out your compass and paper maps on the way to a new city.
Land navigation is an important skill. You wouldn’t let such an important skill atrophy would you?
Honestly, navigation is an insanely satisfying skill to work on. Navigation without GPS fills an instinctual bucket that makes no sense to me. Letting it atrophy is a big failure in becoming a functioning adult imo.
I actually agree, I just feel it’s the same hyperbolic argument every time a new technology makes something else (situationally) obsolete.
Knowing how live off the land was once common. It can still be useful. It is even fun for some (to learn, if not do). Yet… Here we are with a vast majority of our population devoid of those skills. It will keep happening.
This is complicated by the fact that to gain advantage (or just maintain relevance) in a complex and changing society, you need to be learning the new skills that leverage new technology. Yet systems become more complex, specialized roles are needed, and we simply can’t learn it all.
Enter the database of all information and a technology capable of quickly searching and extracting information with relevant context. Learn to use it to your advantage, or don’t…
I think its more, roles that didn’t need specialty skills are being removed by a very dumb tool that dumb people think is amazing. It seems amazing if you dont understand the thing you are asking it to do.
Living off the land is a great example. I grow ~10% of my food in a large garden, mostly tomatos, apples, pears, and peppers. Most people dont know how hard and specialized it is to do this. When we lost power for a week 2 years ago, we were totally fine. Provided food to our neighbors, no issues. Because of our time spent learning how to grow and preserve food.
I’d argue allowing the offloading of the simple specializations AI can handle makes an overall more useless person.
I have a small garden, know how to grow crops, and grow hydroponics as a hobby (I have off grid solar, battery back up, and could upscale operation if needed).
So I do get where you’re coming from.
I also have an offline information repository and off line local LLM that could help someone (with less skills than me) maintain/upscale or build a similar system, as well as provide many other skill sets I don’t have or am less competent in.
So the technology is useful to those who know how to use it.
(I have a strong science and medical skill set, and a hobby level skill set for network/computer science, electrical work, and gardening… So ymmv. Point being, I use all tools and skills available, and if something happens to me, the LLM is better than nothing for those that don’t, and can greatly accelerate learning new skills if used correctly, even a relatively stupid open weights model is like a super search engine that can translate language (and tech speak to normy).
It’s one of those things I know is hard to explain. Similar to the covid pandemic, I kept saying “I want to read the papers 10 years in the future”. I want to know what happens after the hype and actual science of the impact something has becomes available.
I’m extremely skeptical that a tool that offloads basic critical thought and brainstorming will be good for society as a whole. I use it sparingly, but it usually wastes my time. Except for summarizing things it is good at that.
I think it will collapse into normalcy in a few years, and it will be moderately useful. The stealing it does is also a major problem.
As a strange example, I asked Gemini a question similar to my published thesis. It stole directly from my these with no attributions.
it’s not atrophy if it never existed.
The brain is a muscle… really? I wonder where you heard that. Probably a person. Maybe you should fact check that with AI next time.
Noone says that asking a person a question is offloading their thinking. But if you ask AI it is? How does that work?
Uhh… there is an entire sterotype of the sort of people that offload their thinking to others and have been made fun of for it for god… most of history?
The yes-man, lemming, weathervane, sheep, npc, doormat. The list goes on and on. Its been called a load of crap though the ages. But never thinking and just doing what your told or offloading your entire thinking load to others. IS VERY much a thing. LONG before ai.
You seem to be confused. Yes-men were often rather smart. They said yes in a ploy to get what they wanted, like a promotion and higher pay.
Lemmings, sheep and such weren’t necessarily not thinking, they are drawn to being part of a social group and follow it for a sense of belonging. They often spend a lot of time thinking about how to stay part of the group.
Doormats are people who avoid confrontation, and again, they think about it a lot, but find themselves unable to stand up to it.
There are of course people who just have low IQ. But I assume you aren’t belittling them for using AI to help them do what they can’t.
This is something I’m currently struggling with at a new job. The product they’ve crafted is fundamentally linked to AI, insomuch as I literally can’t get the data without prompting.
I’m doing my best to “do difficult things” outside of work to compensate, and I can only hope that’s enough
I recommend getting into Cryptic Crosswords. They give me my cogitation fix. The Youtube channel Cracking The Cryptic has a great masterclass series to get into them, and Minute Cryptic is a good way to dip your toe into the hobby.
It’s funny you say that. It was while doing a regular crossword that just for a millisecond I thought to myself, “Hey I bet Claude could answer that”, that I felt such disgust.
I say this about anything with a motor in it. My muscles are muscles that need exercise to stay healthy and functional, offloading “work” makes my gainz weaker.
have you considered the brain is a muscle
Kinda undermines your point when you start with a completely untrue statement.
It’s a metaphor
But like… in a bad way.
Reminder: the term “bouncing off ideas” was pushed by AI evangelists to get artists to use chatbots.
You brainstorm with the robot. Like you brainstorm with a rubber duck.
A rubber duck doesn’t lie to you and stroke your ego off
A robot doesn’t lie either because lying needs intent. And if a rubber duck doesn’t stroke you ego, well that’s just a bad rubber duck.
The rubber duck doesn’t feed back anything that might affect how you think. It’s more like brainstorming with someone who is both sycophantic and has their own (unthought-though) ideas about how you should do it. At best it’s a waste of tokens because a rubber duck would have worked, at worst it directs your thought process rather than letting you think.
it’s brainstorming with a rubber duck that has the word “yes” written on it
Not really and not always. I had a question about a law that seemingly changed recently. ChatGPT absolutely refused to agree with me that “$X is now legal”. It gave me several sources for more information and examples of government speech on the subject, but just for fun I pushed it to agree with me. Couldn’t make that happen.
meh, that’s just a removable layer on top. the uncensored models are sycophantic as all getout. they have to actively work against that in the frontend.
So when I brainstorm with a person, they are never confidently wrong? And they never have their own ideas on how I should do it.
The assertion was the brainstorming with an LLM was like brainstorming with a rubber duck. It is not, as I’ve outlined in another comment.
Brainstorming with another person can also lead to biases, you’re correct, but your partner is less likely to just agree with your ideas, or to have built in biases that you’re not aware of.
Hard agree. And, uh, disagree.
A handful of employees in a conference room are more likely to just agree. Those same employees will be less agreeable on video, and even less so in the company chat. People will consciously or unconsciously hide their biases in most contexts.
A handful of employees in a conference room are more likely to just agree.
I see you’ve never met my coworkers before! The politest way to describe that sort of gathering would be “a free and frank exchange of opinions”. I quite like them for that. The point is that I know their biases already, so I can adjust for them, and I can be confident that they’re actually trying to achieve the same thing I am, rather than regurgitating a probabilistically derived sequence of tokens that strongly resemble, but aren’t, actual thought.
The biases I’m talking about here are usually more along the lines of preferred approaches to problems, general pessimism or optimism in outlook, and any “oneupmanship” that is known to occur, rather than anything people tend to hide.
I dont know what magical humans you interact with. But the claim someone else doesn’t have a bias you may not be aware of… is fucking wild. People are wildly complex and the chances of you even REMOTELY understanding a fraction of their biases or thought processes with out extreme amounts of exposure and discussion with them is comical at best.
An LLM is infinitely more predictable and obvious in its biases then a human.
I will 100% agree on the people are less likely to just agree with you. Unless they really do not give a shit about the work at hand but then its really obvious.
The biases I’m talking about here are things like their generally preferred approach to solving problems, or how optimistic or pessimistic their outlook on certain classes of problems are. These are things you tend to know about the people you’re likely to brainstorm with, plus you can also be fairly sure that you’re all working towards the same goal. When you’re using an LLM like a partner to do this you can’t know those biases, as they’re externally controlled, you can’t know how they’ve changed since the last time you interacted with it, because the training data may have been updated, and it’s definitely not working towards the same goal as you because it’s not working towards anything, it’s just following statistical patterns in its training data.
I will give you that on average, a human partner is less likely to agree. But there are plenty who will just agree with everything you say. So as humans, we evaluate what kind of partner we have, and treat their feedback accordingly. It’s the same with AI. You could of course tell AI not to be that way if you want.
Does that person have billions of dollars and power over all political leaders to sway a country toward totalitarianism ? No? Thats the difference.
When brainstorming with an AI, you aren’t brainstorming with their CEO. Even Grok can’t do that, no matter how much they try. Amd that is why people don’t use grok. They do have some influence over what the AI says… but they also influence people with news and ads. So both the person and the AI are being influenced by billionaires and companies. The person by many many more actually.
Are you so easily manipulated or why do you think that is always the case?
Everything has the potential of influencing how you think, it is on you how you let that affect you.
LMs also work for that. If there is somebody who just accepts everything the software puts out, that is a problem with the person.
Critical thinking should always be applied no matter where information comes from. But I guess critical thinking is on the downtrend, measured by the amount of people spinning up one scenario in their head, arguing based on just that while ignoring every other possible conclusions.
Brainstorming solo versus brainstorming in a group are very different activities. Your assertion was that brainstorming with an LLM, which feeds back more-or-less like another participant, was the same as brainstorming with a rubber duck, i.e. solo, which it is not.
Brainstorming solo is an exercise in fully exploring your understanding of a subject, and developing new insights or approaches to it. Brainstorming as a group is more about finding a consensus solution or approach. Doing so with an LLM is much closer to the latter, however your “partner” has no actual experience but still presents feedback as though it did, and, critically, has an inbuilt tendancy to confirm your biases. Thinking of that like either solo or group brainstorming will automatically warp your thought processes by encouraging you to stay on certain tracks.
In all fairness I was referring to the op which stated you let the LM brainstorm “for you”. I wanted to get the point across that you can also talk to it like you would to a rubber duck.
But i agree with you that there is a difference between talking to an LM and talking to a rubber duck forvtge reasons you described. It’s its own thing.
But I disagree with your view on brainstorming. I mean when you say it is an exercise in exploring your understanding… Well it can be but this is not all it can be.
When I brainstorm for a project I have an idea but not necessarily all knowledge about all the things I need/want for it. So it can help to gather reference points, technology that fits the project, etc.
And the encouraging to stay on certain track is also true but can be a good thing.
Bingo! Brainstorming is the one thing LLMs excel at. I also use ChatGPT for find words or terms I’ve forgotten or don’t know. Just found “availability heuristic” this morning. (It’s the reason the internet has ruined our perceptions of risk.)
Gonna copy pasta one of my previous comments because it’s relevant again:
I’m going to argue that how you use the lying machine determines if it’s slop, not if you use it.
“Generate a character profile for Alexander the blacksmith.” Slop.
“Ask me questions about Alexander the blacksmith so I can further develop his character.” Not slop.
“Summarize everything I explained about Alexander the blacksmith in the format of a wiki article.” Could be slop, might not be, depends on how diligent you were about not letting the lying machine have creative control. Needs to be reviewed for accuracy of course.
And for the record, I was a DM for years before generative ai was a thing. Running a campaign is ton of work, even with shortcuts. Don’t insult your DM like this.
Can we take a moment to acknowledge that we’re debating which uses for the natural-gas-powered, impoverished-community-polluting, job-destroying, data-mining, genocide-funding nightmare machine are acceptable and our sole criterion is the degree to which we allow it to replace our creativity?
And that the threshold is not zero?
That’s not the subject at hand, but on that side tangent I agree with you.
You will not survive the winter.
Slop is slop no matter how you use it.
If I lose access to my slop machine, I’ll get over it the same way I got over netflix. I’ll be fine.
The kinds of people you’re assuming I am though, they’re fucked.
Is that artist in the room with us?
Right but, I’m not trying to be rude but, the anatomy on this is off. The right wing is not right. So, it’s kind of an…interesting example to use.
What does it take to become an expert on pegasus anatomy? Is there much demand for the skills?
Asking for a friend.
There should be a way to acknowledge two things being true at the same time, but that way was never discovered on Lemmy.
“AI is mostly bad” and “AI can be useful at times” are both true statements. You sacrifice nothing by acknowledging both, and thinking you have to pick between the two is, ironically, mentally lazy af.
“Asbestos is extremely toxic” and “asbestos can be useful and irreplacable at times” are both true. So are “lead is poisonous” and “tetraetillead is an effective anti-knocking agent, lead in solder stops tin whiskers from forming, and lead paint is pretty”.
Also that’s how racism got normalized again, after getting closer to putting it back into the cemetery of history. And so is every LGBTQ±phobia you can name. Or even better: the tobacco industry, the alcohol industry, and the gambling industry all promote “responsible use” of their products.
I think LLM is more like weed though, if we are making an apt metaphor.
MJ is useful in many ways, has medically recognized therapeutic benefits, is fun recreationally. But, it is unadvised to habitually use it all day, and can be harmful if you do.
For both LLMs and marijuana it’s not the use of it that is bad, because there are positives, it’s the over use and abuse of it.
Most people agree that there are legitimate applications for LLM technology, like in the medical field. This comes up every single thread.
Then you have trillions of dollars of investment on the promise of eroding worker power, and letting capital enunciate itself without labour. That’s what it’s essentially all for.
The “legitimate” uses of the technology are not even a passing concern for investors except insofar as they can point to it to excuse their grift.
What is the legitimate use for LLMs in the medical field?
Like medical research, discovering drugs, folding proteins. There’s also evidence they can be used to help analyse x-rays.
LLMs don’t do those things. Do you know what an LLM is?
Rightrightright, I mean they can help with that stuff by churning though large sets of data or by statistical analysis to look for early signs of cancer, etc.
I’m not a researcher and I don’t use them myself, but I know a thing or two about how LLMs work. Could be you could school me though if you know a lot.
I’m just saying the models used in medical imaging and protein folding, to use your examples, are not LLMs, but very different dedicated medical imaging models or protein folding models. Still falls under the overarching umbrella of AI/ML, but not really any more relevant to language models. LLMs also aren’t a very relevant tool for big data or statistical analysis. Even with an agent harness, they could be used to write scripts that a human could also write, but couldn’t directly do any sort of reliable statistical analysis.
Oh OK I wasn’t aware of that. Actually I wondered as I was writing my comment how an LLM would compare to more tightly fitted model.
Well there goes my one example. Is there anything they’re legitimately good for? I’ll admit they seem good at finding “fuzzy” connections, and their text and image generation capabilities are impressive even if they aren’t my cup of tea—mostly because of the externalities.
You say most people believe this, but I see many people every day for weeks now claiming Linux is vibecoded now. Why? Three stories: 1) months ago LLM use was not outright banned in kernel development 2) Linus admitted to using LLMs in an experimental branch to find and patch bugs 3) a recent shift in attitude happened, toward LLM-driven PRs because there were too many, and the reaction from Linus and the other maintainers was to raise the bar for submitting PRs to reduce the chance of slop wasting people’s time.
All of this was a series of level headed responses and course corrections which at no time was indicative of anything more than LLMs are useful sometimes. Yet people all over Lemmy are saying shit like “Linux is all in on vibecoding”. Besides that issue, I’ve seen and been involved in many conversations where idiots will say that any use of AI is super unethical and unacceptable. The binary thinking on this issue is strong on here.
Ah well I agree I would Linux love maintainers to take a more principled stance against LLM contributions given all the negative externalities of the technology as it exists today.
there’s a strong case to be made that there is no way to use the current “frontier” models ethically because of how they were trained and who their patrons are. I would love to see that acknowledged.
By that logic most media consumption is unethical. Almost anything out of a major studio is made with the abuse of, underpayment of, and often even outright theft from small artists. I think a much better solution than not using them is to take all the money they made from it and redistribute it as universal basic income, then make the models 100% free to use. Cat’s outta the bag, at this point I just wanna see the little guy get paid.
By that logic most media consumption is unethical. Almost anything out of a major studio is made with the abuse of, underpayment of, and often even outright theft from small artists.
Now we’re on the same track. My goal is if we can’t solve these problems entirely, at the least not contribute to the further exploitation and enclosure of our commons.
This is one of the reasons I think copyright is a dead end — it’s a tool of the enemy.
The models aren’t making money and they aren’t going to, though.
So you are on the side of binary thinking, in the end. Cool.
What makes you think that? I am on no side. I’m just trying to be objective. Everything I said is factually borne out afaik.
Also
you are on the side of
binary thinking
Lol now you’re just playing with me, very funny ;p
You thought you were being subtle but if your response to an extremist viewpoint is “yes they make a good point” you’re not getting it but you do seem to want to definitely take a side.
“I’m just being objective but your point isn’t worth addressing while the thought process you take issue with is totally valid”
I’m not trying to be subtle, I’m trying to be open. Clearly we’ve each got our opinions and I think I’ve been very upfront with mine. You’re right I don’t think being against this technology qualifies as an “extremist” position anymore then being against cloud computing or Nvidia are extreme takes.
Anyway you didn’t even try me. I’m elsewhere in this thread talking about the legitimate uses for LLMs. Not everything is as black vs white, clanker vs luddite, as you’re making it.
Because utilitarians are amoral. In fact, the AI ethics “intellectuals” are usually utilitarians, as seen with “Longtermism” and “Effective Altruism.”
You need to realize that your stance is not going to be enough.
But utilitarianism is a moral system. How can it be amoral…? Its by definition a moral system. You could put fort the argument that it can sometimes reach immoral conclusions, but calling it amoral is just… mixing things up at best and being disingenuous at worse.
Pointing to a moral horizon in the future where things “balance out” is a tool to dismiss moral distinctions in the current, lived context.
Just because someone making such an argument identifies as a utilitarian doesn’t mean all utilitarians make flimsy arguments.
That’s true, but it’s my answer to the question about how it can be amoral. That’s how.
While funny, the hero could have done both: save them and register them as organ donors.
And let them push even more booze and junk food through those precious organs??
Because it’s not about persons or beings, it is about accounting towards a goal.
Are you seriously considering people on the internet should start acknowledging nuance? Smh.
I just want to be angry and right - and personally insult you; even though I know nothing about you outside of a sentence or two that I just read.
It is sad that your comment’s second half is 100% accurate for seemingly most users
I know right? Get a load of that guy. Nuance. psh, shaw. This is the internet! We only do extremes and horny posting round these parts!
Using it as a tool to speed up your own work is completely different from passing off its work as yours or using it to do someone else’s work
Right… do you think I disagree?
Just additive
I’d much rather be sitting in a cuck chair directing a robot to fuck somebody I have no interest in fucking myself.
Having no interest in thinking is kinda sad
Being unable to comprehend what you read and projecting that inability to comprehend outside of your biases is kinda sad
At least you recognize your own failings, that’s the first step to improving!
Was great talking to you, I’ll see you around next time I have a coffee to order.
Shouldn’t you be delegating those routine tasks to your AI? Or is it not smart enough to figure out a drink order?
Things are sad… let him huff glue, hater.
Could we get the message across without the kink-shaming?
No. There are way too many kinks and it becomes a constraint on discourse.
Sorry, no can do. The analogy is too perfect and it pulls double duty of helping get the dude-bro crowd on board with disliking LLMs.
If you’ve got any ideas for messaging that accomplish both tasks as well as comparing using AI to being a cuck, we’re all ears.
No. It is required. (seriously, why is everything being shoe-horned into “kink shaming”?)
Letting insinuate the initiative is on robot? but in reality, you need to order or command it to brainstorm right? not to mention answering back for clarity and feedback. Opposite of cuck who have no choice in that matter ?
You do know that cuckold kink they don’t just quietly sit in the corner right? They’re a participant
OK so it’s like you’re chilling in the cuck chair but every once in a while you make a suggestion to the bull on how to plow your wife.
Honestly that’s even worse. It’s just kind of sad. You might be able to retain some dignity by sitting in the cuck chair looking indignant but this is being an active participant in your own obsolescence.
Why use lot thought when few thought do trick?
