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AI's ability of transforming people with no actual domain knowledge into armchair experts is truly fascinating.

adhesive_wombat 3y ago
Every big media "story nexus" generates a large population of apparently completely self-assured experts in whatever it happens to be. Everyone suddenly appears, due to self-selection of those who want to be visible, to have very strong opinions on virology/public health, climate science, energy generation, geopolitics, electoral politics, constitutional politics (not only the US document, to be clear), military strategy, whatever that month's "big story" happens to be. If you don't have an opinion on the story du jour, you don't get airtime, clicks, ad impressions, a buff to a CV, whatever. If you want the airtime, then, you must have an opinion, and it must be novel or contrarian enough to be noticeable. This is nothing new, but it used to be mostly confined to boors at dinner parties, and perhaps the letters page. There were only a few opinion columnists. Now anyone can monetise an opinion. AI is just another tedious episode, but the show will never end.
mdp2021 3y ago
What you are witnessing and the article suggests is probably more a homeopathic ("poison to cure poison") phenomenon of laypeople correcting laypeople. But Arnold Kling is not exactly "layman": > Arnold Kling earned his Ph.D in economics from MIT in 1980. He worked at the Fed and later at Freddie Mac. In 1994, he started one of the first businesses on the Web, selling it in 1999 Maybe he never coded an ANN engine, he is probably following the evolution with interest from his own perspective. And the conclusion is the opposite of "«armchair expert[ise]»" - if anything, it is too underdeveloped: > I do not believe that we know enough to predict with any accuracy which uses of AI will take off and which will prove to be either too trivial (recipe tracking) or too elusive (maybe it’s too much to hope that AI will allow children to escape from school-prison). The best way to find out is to work with it, not to dismiss it
laborcontract 3y ago
Do you find it at all ironic that you wrote this comment likely without having read the article? Sorry but your brand "I'm going to boldly make a statement without reading the article or addressing any of the content in the article" is polluting this site and it's tiresome to have to wade through it on HN. Kling has written publicly for over a decade and a half. What assertions do you disagree with? AI may have given people the ability to be armchair experts about anything but armchair critics are a tale older than time.
- dale_glass 3y ago
  I've read it, my take: It starts well, then quickly goes off the rails. AI can be creative: I agree actually, and IMO AI is just another piece of evidence that the specialness of humans is a tad overblown. And in the end it matters little how a task is accomplished. A calculator doesn't calculate the way we do, yet it still adds. So by the same token I have no problem with the idea that even if an AI is nothing like a brain it still displays creativity. AI is not Google on steroids: Why not? It's a quite flexible tool capable of different tasks, including writing code, poetry and answering questions. No reason why it can't be used as a better Google. AI can understand you as an individual: That's where it's just complete BS. Modern models don't keep persistent state. They don't form human-level connections. That may come in the future, but as far as I know, just isn't a thing yet.
- yellow_lead 3y ago
  Sadly I did read it.

Every big media "story nexus" generates a large population of apparently completely self-assured experts in whatever it happens to be. Everyone suddenly appears, due to self-selection of those who want to be visible, to have very strong opinions on virology/public health, climate science, energy generation, geopolitics, electoral politics, constitutional politics (not only the US document, to be clear), military strategy, whatever that month's "big story" happens to be. If you don't have an opinion on the story du jour, you don't get airtime, clicks, ad impressions, a buff to a CV, whatever. If you want the airtime, then, you must have an opinion, and it must be novel or contrarian enough to be noticeable. This is nothing new, but it used to be mostly confined to boors at dinner parties, and perhaps the letters page. There were only a few opinion columnists. Now anyone can monetise an opinion. AI is just another tedious episode, but the show will never end.

mdp2021 3y ago

What you are witnessing and the article suggests is probably more a homeopathic ("poison to cure poison") phenomenon of laypeople correcting laypeople. But Arnold Kling is not exactly "layman": > Arnold Kling earned his Ph.D in economics from MIT in 1980. He worked at the Fed and later at Freddie Mac. In 1994, he started one of the first businesses on the Web, selling it in 1999 Maybe he never coded an ANN engine, he is probably following the evolution with interest from his own perspective. And the conclusion is the opposite of "«armchair expert[ise]»" - if anything, it is too underdeveloped: > I do not believe that we know enough to predict with any accuracy which uses of AI will take off and which will prove to be either too trivial (recipe tracking) or too elusive (maybe it’s too much to hope that AI will allow children to escape from school-prison). The best way to find out is to work with it, not to dismiss it

laborcontract 3y ago

Do you find it at all ironic that you wrote this comment likely without having read the article? Sorry but your brand "I'm going to boldly make a statement without reading the article or addressing any of the content in the article" is polluting this site and it's tiresome to have to wade through it on HN. Kling has written publicly for over a decade and a half. What assertions do you disagree with? AI may have given people the ability to be armchair experts about anything but armchair critics are a tale older than time.

dale_glass 3y ago
I've read it, my take: It starts well, then quickly goes off the rails. AI can be creative: I agree actually, and IMO AI is just another piece of evidence that the specialness of humans is a tad overblown. And in the end it matters little how a task is accomplished. A calculator doesn't calculate the way we do, yet it still adds. So by the same token I have no problem with the idea that even if an AI is nothing like a brain it still displays creativity. AI is not Google on steroids: Why not? It's a quite flexible tool capable of different tasks, including writing code, poetry and answering questions. No reason why it can't be used as a better Google. AI can understand you as an individual: That's where it's just complete BS. Modern models don't keep persistent state. They don't form human-level connections. That may come in the future, but as far as I know, just isn't a thing yet.
yellow_lead 3y ago
Sadly I did read it.