I’ve seen a lot of sentiment around Lemmy that AI is “useless”. I think this tends to stem from the fact that AI has not delivered on, well, anything the capitalists that push it have promised it would. That is to say, it has failed to meaningfully replace workers with a less expensive solution - AI that actually attempts to replace people’s jobs are incredibly expensive (and environmentally irresponsible) and they simply lie and say it’s not. It’s subsidized by that sweet sweet VC capital so they can keep the lie up. And I say attempt because AI is truly horrible at actually replacing people. It’s going to make mistakes and while everybody’s been trying real hard to make it less wrong, it’s just never gonna be “smart” enough to not have a human reviewing its’ behavior. Then you’ve got AI being shoehorned into every little thing that really, REALLY doesn’t need it. I’d say that AI is useless.
But AIs have been very useful to me. For one thing, they’re much better at googling than I am. They save me time by summarizing articles to just give me the broad strokes, and I can decide whether I want to go into the details from there. They’re also good idea generators - I’ve used them in creative writing just to explore things like “how might this story go?” or “what are interesting ways to describe this?”. I never really use what comes out of them verbatim - whether image or text - but it’s a good way to explore and seeing things expressed in ways you never would’ve thought of (and also the juxtaposition of seeing it next to very obvious expressions) tends to push your mind into new directions.
Lastly, I don’t know if it’s just because there’s an abundance of Japanese language learning content online, but GPT 4o has been incredibly useful in learning Japanese. I can ask it things like “how would a native speaker express X?” And it would give me some good answers that even my Japanese teacher agreed with. It can also give some incredibly accurate breakdowns of grammar. I’ve tried with less popular languages like Filipino and it just isn’t the same, but as far as Japanese goes it’s like having a tutor on standby 24/7. In fact, that’s exactly how I’ve been using it - I have it grade my own translations and give feedback on what could’ve been said more naturally.
All this to say, AI when used as a tool, rather than a dystopic stand-in for a human, can be a very useful one. So, what are some use cases you guys have where AI actually is pretty useful?
LLMs do not understand things. They spit out random words, guided by a fancy algorithm.
Yes, that’s why it’s called artificial. It’s not true intelligence, it’s not natural intelligence, it’s artificial, it’s not real. Artificial is a synonym for fake in this case. LLM are fake intelligence, and anyone with some real intelligence can see it’s fake. It’s one of the issues AI developers have. To make the fake better, it needs exponentially more energy and data, exactly because it doesn’t have understanding.
“if only a human can do something, it requires intelligence”). If this is the bar (which is set absurdly low)
That always reminds me of the troubles the park rangers had in securing garbage, because “There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists.”
This definition is based on a false equivalency (specifically: “if only a human can do something, it requires intelligence”). It only proves that the task didn’t require a human. Humans thinking they’re so special
Hence why goal posts keep shifting. There are enough people that want to keep the special feeling. I’d say that self delusion is pretty human but LLMs can fake that pretty well too.
LLMs do not understand things. They spit out random words, guided by a fancy algorithm. -AlexanderESmith
Yes, that’s why it’s called artificial. -SlopppyEngineer
Something being artificial has no affect on it’s qualifications of being - or not being - anything else. In this case: intelligent. I grant that it’s artificial, but it’s not intelligent, so it’s not AI. It’s… artificial non-intelligence.
And holy fuck, you started by trying to tell me I was moving the goal posts, you just strapped them to a rocket and blasted them to another planet.
Hence why goal posts keep shifting.
My posts haven’t moved an inch in 30 years. Every time some dumbass tech bro tries to sell AI (and this is - by far - not the first time) I’ve told people it’s bullshit because they didn’t create an intelligence; they just developed a shitty algorithm and slapped an AI label on it.
I can’t continue this “debate” with you, since you’re not conducting your end of it in good faith. You’re making emotional arguments and trying to tell me they hold water for a technical definition. I guess your username checks out.
That’s why we have a list of words and abbreviation with their definition in our sales and specifications. That way we can avoid the whole “but I define it as” problem because every customer really likes to redefine the meaning of words, and usually all in a different way.
But yes, let’s hope to never meet in “debate” again. I hate to think what a discussion about “is cultured meat actually meat” would be like.
