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> The thing that I appreciate most is that the company is that it "walks the walk" in terms of distributing the benefits of AI. Cutting edge models aren't reser

> The thing that I appreciate most is that the company is that it "walks the walk" in terms of distributing the benefits of AI. Cutting edge models aren't reserved for some enterprise-grade tier with an annual agreement. Anybody in the world can jump onto ChatGPT and get an answer, even if they aren't logged in. I would argue that there are very few benefits of AI, if any at all. What it actually does is create a prisoner's dilemma situation where some use it to become more efficient only because it makes them faster and then others do the same to keep up. But I think everyone would be FAR better off without AI. What keeping AI free for everyone is akin to is keeping an addictive drug free for everyone so that it can be sold in larger quantities later. One can argue that some technology is beneficial. A mosquito net made of plastic immediately improves one's comfort if out in the woods. But AI doesn't really offer any immediate TRUE improvement of life, only a bit more convenience in a world already saturated in it. It's past the point of diminishing returns for true life improvement and I think everyone deep down inside knows that, but is seduced by the nearly-magical quality of it because we are instinctually driven to seek out advantags and new information.

ookblah 1y ago
i don't really understand this thought process. all technology has it's advantages and drawbacks and we are currently going through the hype and growing pains process. you could just as well argue the internet, phones, tv, cars, all adhere to the exact same prisoner's dilemma situation you talk about. you could just as well use AI to rubber duck or ease your mental load than treat it like some rat-race to efficiency.
- vouaobrasil 1y ago
  True, but it is meaningful to understand whether the "quantity" advantages - drawbacks decreases over time, which I believe it does. And we should indeed apply the logic to other inventions: some are more worth using than others, whereas in today's society, we just use all of them due to the mechanisms of the prisoner's dilemma. The Amish, on the other hand, apply deliberation on whether to use certain technologies, which is a far better approach.
i000 1y ago
[flagged]
- vouaobrasil 1y ago
  Nobody decides, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't discuss and figure out if there is an optimal point. Edit: And I think you might dislike automobiles if you were one of the people living right next to a tyre factory in Brazil, which outputs an extremely disgusting rubber smell on an almost daily basis. Especially if you bought your house before the factory was built, and you don't drive much. But you probably live in North America and don't give a darn about that.
  - i000 1y ago
    I think this is pretty much how many Amish communities function. As for me, I prefer making decisions on how to use technology in my own life on my own.
    - vouaobrasil 1y ago
      Of course that makes sense. But for instance, with SOME technologies, I would prefer not to use them but still sort of have to because some of them become REQUIRED. For example: phones. I would prefer not to have a telephone at all as I hate them with a passion, but I still want a bank account. But that's difficult because my bank requires 2FA and it's very hard to get out of it. So, while I agree in prinicple that it's nice to make decisions on one's own, I think it would be also nice to have the choice to avoid certain technologies that become difficult to avoid due to their entrenchment.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
christiangenco 1y ago
> I would argue that there are very few benefits of AI, if any at all. What it actually does is create a prisoner's dilemma situation where some use it to become more efficient only because it makes them faster and then others do the same to keep up. But I think everyone would be FAR better off without AI. Personally, my life has significantly improved in meaningful ways with AI. Apart from the obvious work benefits (I'm shipping code ~10x faster than pre-AI), LLMs act as my personal nutritionist, trainer, therapist, research assistant, executive assistant (triaging email, doing SEO-related work, researching purchases, etc.), and a much better/faster way to search for and synthesize information than my old method of using Google. The benefits I've gotten are much more than conveniences and the only argument I can find that anyone else is worse off because of these benefits is that I don't hire junior developers anymore (at max I was working with 3 for a contracting job). At the same time, though, all of them are also using LLMs in similar ways for similar benefits (and working on their own projects) so I'd argue they're net much better off.
- vouaobrasil 1y ago
  A few programmers being better off does not make an entire society better off. In fact, I'd argue that you shipping code 10x faster just means in the long run that consumerism is being accelerated at a similar rate because that is what most code is used for, eventually.
  - simonw 1y ago
    I spent much of my career working on open source software that helped other engineers ship code 10x faster. Should I feel bad about the impact my work there had on accelerating consumerism?
    - vouaobrasil 1y ago
      I don't know if you should feel bad or not, but even I know that I have a role to play in consumerism that I wish I didn't. That doesn't necessitate feeling bad because the reaction to feel good or bad about something is a side effect of the sort of religious "good and evil" mentality that probably came about due to Christianity or something. But *regardless*, one should at least understand that because our world has reached a sufficient critical mass of complexity, even the things we do that we think are benign or helpful can have negative side effects. I never claim that we should feel bad about that, but we should understand it and attempt to mitigate it nonetheless. And, where no mitigation is possible, we should also advocate for a better societal structure that will eventually, in years or decades, result in fewer deleterious side effects.
simonw 1y ago
"I would argue that there are very few benefits of AI, if any at all." OK, if you're going to say things like this I'm going to insist you clarify which subset of "AI" you mean. Presumably you're OK with the last few decades of machine learning algorithms for things like spam detection, search relevance etc. I'll assume your problem is with the last few years of "generative AI" - a loose term for models that output text and images instead of purely being used for classification. Are predictive text keyboards on a phone OK (tiny LLMs)? How about translation engines like Google Translate? Vision LLMs to help with wildlife camera trap analysis? How about to help with visual impairments navigate the world? I suspect your problem isn't with "AI", it's with the way specific AI systems are being built and applied. I think we can have much more constructive conversations if we move beyond blanket labeling "AI" as the problem.
- vouaobrasil 1y ago
  1. Here is the subset: any algorithm, which is learning based, trained on a large data set, and modifies or generates content. 2. I would argue that translation engines have their positives and negatives, but a lot of them are negative, because they lead to translators losing their jobs, and a loss in general for the magical qualities of language learning. 3. Predictive text: I think people should not be presented with possible next words, and think of them on their own, because that means they will be more thoughtful in their writing and less automatic. Also, with a higher barrier to writing something, they will probably write less and what they do write will be of greater significance. 4. I am against all LLMs, including wildlife camera trap analysis. There is an overabundance of hiding behind research when we really already know the problem fairly well. It's a fringe piece of conservation research anyway. 5. Visual impairments: one can always appeal to helping the disabled and impaired, but I think the tradeoff is not worth the technological enslavement. 6. My problem is categorically with AI, not with how it is applied, PRECISELY BECAUSE AI cannot be applied in an ethical way, since human beings en masse will inevitably have a sufficient number of bad actors to make the net effect always negative. It's human nature.
  - simonw 1y ago
    Thanks for this, it's a good answer. I think "generative AI" is the closest term we have to that subset you describe there.
8note 1y ago
hiding from mosquitos under your net is a negative. the point of going out to the woods is to be bitten by mosquitos and youve ruined it. its impossible to get benefit from the woods if youve brought a bug net, and you should stay out rather than ruining the woods for everyone
- vouaobrasil 1y ago
  Rather myopic and crude take, in my opinion. Because if I bring out a net, it doesn't change the woods for others. If I introduce AI into society, it does change society for others, even those who don't want to use the tool. You have really no conception of subtlety or logic. If someone says driving at 200mph is unsafe, then your argument is like saying "driving at any speed is unsafe". Fact is, you need to consider the magnitude and speed of the technology's power and movement, which you seem incapable of doing.

ookblah 1y ago

i don't really understand this thought process. all technology has it's advantages and drawbacks and we are currently going through the hype and growing pains process. you could just as well argue the internet, phones, tv, cars, all adhere to the exact same prisoner's dilemma situation you talk about. you could just as well use AI to rubber duck or ease your mental load than treat it like some rat-race to efficiency.

vouaobrasil 1y ago
True, but it is meaningful to understand whether the "quantity" advantages - drawbacks decreases over time, which I believe it does. And we should indeed apply the logic to other inventions: some are more worth using than others, whereas in today's society, we just use all of them due to the mechanisms of the prisoner's dilemma. The Amish, on the other hand, apply deliberation on whether to use certain technologies, which is a far better approach.

i000 1y ago

[flagged]

vouaobrasil 1y ago
Nobody decides, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't discuss and figure out if there is an optimal point. Edit: And I think you might dislike automobiles if you were one of the people living right next to a tyre factory in Brazil, which outputs an extremely disgusting rubber smell on an almost daily basis. Especially if you bought your house before the factory was built, and you don't drive much. But you probably live in North America and don't give a darn about that.
- i000 1y ago
  I think this is pretty much how many Amish communities function. As for me, I prefer making decisions on how to use technology in my own life on my own.
  - vouaobrasil 1y ago
    Of course that makes sense. But for instance, with SOME technologies, I would prefer not to use them but still sort of have to because some of them become REQUIRED. For example: phones. I would prefer not to have a telephone at all as I hate them with a passion, but I still want a bank account. But that's difficult because my bank requires 2FA and it's very hard to get out of it. So, while I agree in prinicple that it's nice to make decisions on one's own, I think it would be also nice to have the choice to avoid certain technologies that become difficult to avoid due to their entrenchment.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

christiangenco 1y ago

> I would argue that there are very few benefits of AI, if any at all. What it actually does is create a prisoner's dilemma situation where some use it to become more efficient only because it makes them faster and then others do the same to keep up. But I think everyone would be FAR better off without AI. Personally, my life has significantly improved in meaningful ways with AI. Apart from the obvious work benefits (I'm shipping code ~10x faster than pre-AI), LLMs act as my personal nutritionist, trainer, therapist, research assistant, executive assistant (triaging email, doing SEO-related work, researching purchases, etc.), and a much better/faster way to search for and synthesize information than my old method of using Google. The benefits I've gotten are much more than conveniences and the only argument I can find that anyone else is worse off because of these benefits is that I don't hire junior developers anymore (at max I was working with 3 for a contracting job). At the same time, though, all of them are also using LLMs in similar ways for similar benefits (and working on their own projects) so I'd argue they're net much better off.

vouaobrasil 1y ago
A few programmers being better off does not make an entire society better off. In fact, I'd argue that you shipping code 10x faster just means in the long run that consumerism is being accelerated at a similar rate because that is what most code is used for, eventually.
- simonw 1y ago
  I spent much of my career working on open source software that helped other engineers ship code 10x faster. Should I feel bad about the impact my work there had on accelerating consumerism?
  - vouaobrasil 1y ago
    I don't know if you should feel bad or not, but even I know that I have a role to play in consumerism that I wish I didn't. That doesn't necessitate feeling bad because the reaction to feel good or bad about something is a side effect of the sort of religious "good and evil" mentality that probably came about due to Christianity or something. But *regardless*, one should at least understand that because our world has reached a sufficient critical mass of complexity, even the things we do that we think are benign or helpful can have negative side effects. I never claim that we should feel bad about that, but we should understand it and attempt to mitigate it nonetheless. And, where no mitigation is possible, we should also advocate for a better societal structure that will eventually, in years or decades, result in fewer deleterious side effects.

simonw 1y ago

"I would argue that there are very few benefits of AI, if any at all." OK, if you're going to say things like this I'm going to insist you clarify which subset of "AI" you mean. Presumably you're OK with the last few decades of machine learning algorithms for things like spam detection, search relevance etc. I'll assume your problem is with the last few years of "generative AI" - a loose term for models that output text and images instead of purely being used for classification. Are predictive text keyboards on a phone OK (tiny LLMs)? How about translation engines like Google Translate? Vision LLMs to help with wildlife camera trap analysis? How about to help with visual impairments navigate the world? I suspect your problem isn't with "AI", it's with the way specific AI systems are being built and applied. I think we can have much more constructive conversations if we move beyond blanket labeling "AI" as the problem.

vouaobrasil 1y ago
1. Here is the subset: any algorithm, which is learning based, trained on a large data set, and modifies or generates content. 2. I would argue that translation engines have their positives and negatives, but a lot of them are negative, because they lead to translators losing their jobs, and a loss in general for the magical qualities of language learning. 3. Predictive text: I think people should not be presented with possible next words, and think of them on their own, because that means they will be more thoughtful in their writing and less automatic. Also, with a higher barrier to writing something, they will probably write less and what they do write will be of greater significance. 4. I am against all LLMs, including wildlife camera trap analysis. There is an overabundance of hiding behind research when we really already know the problem fairly well. It's a fringe piece of conservation research anyway. 5. Visual impairments: one can always appeal to helping the disabled and impaired, but I think the tradeoff is not worth the technological enslavement. 6. My problem is categorically with AI, not with how it is applied, PRECISELY BECAUSE AI cannot be applied in an ethical way, since human beings en masse will inevitably have a sufficient number of bad actors to make the net effect always negative. It's human nature.
- simonw 1y ago
  Thanks for this, it's a good answer. I think "generative AI" is the closest term we have to that subset you describe there.

8note 1y ago

hiding from mosquitos under your net is a negative. the point of going out to the woods is to be bitten by mosquitos and youve ruined it. its impossible to get benefit from the woods if youve brought a bug net, and you should stay out rather than ruining the woods for everyone

vouaobrasil 1y ago
Rather myopic and crude take, in my opinion. Because if I bring out a net, it doesn't change the woods for others. If I introduce AI into society, it does change society for others, even those who don't want to use the tool. You have really no conception of subtlety or logic. If someone says driving at 200mph is unsafe, then your argument is like saying "driving at any speed is unsafe". Fact is, you need to consider the magnitude and speed of the technology's power and movement, which you seem incapable of doing.