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> the useful things it does It's weird how AI-lovers are always trying to shoehorn an unsupported "it does useful things" into some kind of criticism sandwich
by myhf 1y ago
> the useful things it does
It's weird how AI-lovers are always trying to shoehorn an unsupported "it does useful things" into some kind of criticism sandwich where only the solvable problems can be acknowledged as problems.
Just because some technologies have both upsides and downsides doesn't mean that every technology automatically has upsides. GenAI is good at generating these kinds of hollow statements that mimic the form of substantial arguments, but anyone who actually reads it can see how hollow it is.
If you want to argue that it does useful things, you have to explain at least one of those things.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- schwartzworld 1y agoIt's bad at - Actually knowing things / being correct - Creating anything original It's good at - Producing convincing output fast and cheap There are lots of applications where correctness and originality matter less than "can I get convincing output fast and cheap". Other commenters have mentioned being able to vibe-code up a simple app, for example. I know an older man who is not great at writing in English (but otherwise very intelligent) who uses it for correspondence.
- const_cast 1y agoThose applications are actually abysmally rare - it's just that we've created a society where businesses are just... allowed to externalize all costs. Being wrong or lying is almost universally bad and unproductive. But making money has nothing to do with being productive - you can actively make the world worse and make money. Ask RJ Reynolds.
- schwartzworld 1y ago> Being wrong or lying is almost universally bad and unproductive Sure, but there are cases where rightness isn’t a thing. Don’t get me wrong I’m not an AI Stan, it has real problems, but it’s also not going anywhere. Eventually the bubble will pop and we’ll see which applications of AI turned out to be useful and which didn’t.
- petralithic 1y ago> doesn't mean that every technology automatically has upsides Who said "every technology?" We're talking about a specific one here with specific up and downsides delineated.
- Semiapies 1y agoAnd they're always desperately insisting that won't go away and you can't escape it. It stinks a lot of Big Lie techniques.
- lif 1y agoThis ship is unsinkable! -Aitanic
- int_19h 1y agoIt is extremely good at translating things from one language to another. Even if nothing else comes out of the AI bubble, this thing alone is a massive upside.
- SpaceNoodled 1y agoSure, LLMs seem to be really good at outputting things that aren't trivially verifiable by the user.
- joquarky 1y agoBrainstorming.
- gitaarik 1y agoIt's just a summarizing search engine. Instead of you manually looking up multiple pages and reading them and coming to some conclusion that allows you to move to the next step in the process, you can let the AI do that manual work for you. But you shouldn't expect it do take over your actual thinking, because it doesn't actually think. So it's just another tool in the toolbox that can be useful for some applications, but not for all. If you use it for the appropriate tasks, it can be very helpful. If you try to do everything with it, you'll be disappointed.