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Can’t wait for this stuff to have quality of life increases for the average person. So far all I see is that AI has made owning a computer more expensive, made
by amazingamazing 3mo ago
Can’t wait for this stuff to have quality of life increases for the average person. So far all I see is that AI has made owning a computer more expensive, made some jobs redundant, increased spam and distrust with questionable authenticity of content and of course made some Americans very rich.
- jetsetk 3mo agoDownvoters mind to explain?
- evenhash 3mo agoNot everyone works for Evil Corp. I work in the public sector and my work supports public health and safety initiatives. AI has allowed my team to get much more done than we would have otherwise which improves the quality of life of the people in my community. So I would like to counter your cynicism with a “YMMV” depending on who you work for.
- galleywest200 3mo agoExamples?
- BoggleOhYeah 3mo agoHN doesn’t like when you ask for those. Remember, this is the propaganda arm of a VC. Proof is a hindrance to the hype that drives value.
- righthand 3mo agoAre you just automating lab reporting and results faster? That doesn’t exactly improve the health of others, a faster lab does not cure an ailment or provide a better cure. Like cool my lung xray only took minutes to determine if I have a lesion instead of a week or a few days, but I still have cancer.
- gallerdude 3mo agoFor some people, getting lung cancer reported a week earlier will save their lives. More importantly, if you can screen for cancer in a way that takes minutes instead of a week, imagine how accessible this technology will become.
- derektank 3mo agoFaster scans means more scans. More scans means getting scans earlier and tracking abnormalities on scans over time. This can lead to earlier intervention, which means you get treatment for the cancer when it’s stage 2 instead of stage 3 or 4, which maybe is the difference between living a full life and dying young.
- class3shock 3mo agoI work in the public sector and my work supports public health and safety initiatives. What does "support" mean in this context?
- chrisjj 3mo ago> AI has allowed my team to get much more done We often hear this. Likewise to get things done faster. And to get things done cheaper. Almost never to get things done beteer.
- dash2 3mo agoIf it doesn't help average people, why do millions of them pay for it?
- caughtinthought 3mo agoAsk DraftKings?
- MattGaiser 3mo agoGambling has consistently ranked above family for many in human history, so while it hurts a third party, the people involved genuinely believe in it.
- dash2 3mo agoYou'd need this argument to be a lot more concrete as to why AI is like gambling.
- zahlman 3mo agoI actually have seen comparisons of using AI to a gacha game (quotas per time block, elements of chance, sycophancy in the output leading towards addiction or even psychosis in rare cases). But I don't think the argument needs to be "AI is like gambling". The argument only needs to be "humans often behave irrationally and even self-destructively".
- voxl 3mo agoThis is not the argument. It's not a comparison to gambling but a comparison to something that does not materially improve a person's life. Economic expenditure does not equate to human benefit. This is the original argument, and the onus is on THAT person to explain why people spending for AI actually benefit, not the other way around. Perhaps you can ask Claude to explain it to you.
- dash2 3mo agoI think it’s widely accepted that most things are bought because they satisfy people’s needs or wants. Sure, there are exceptions, like drugs or gambling. Is there any reason to think AI is one of them?
- roncesvalles 3mo agoIt has had significant quality of life increases for me. I use LLMs for everything from: - travel and restaurant recommendations. my last few outings have been entirely LLM-advised and they turned out excellent. LLMs seem to have ingested every single Google review, photo, and menu of every business on Earth and can answer very nuanced questions like "is the garlic chicken at <restaurant, city> garnished with coriander?" - fitness, nutrition, accounting, therapy, medical, legal, immigration advice (sure it's not a real professional but you know what, it's pretty fucking close, and any capability gap is made up by having perfect two-way communication which you don't get when talking with a human) - coding (work, side projects, personal tools, documentation & pricing questions, "review this code", etc). - I start reading most articles with the prompt "Summarize this article: <url>". I just started a non-fiction book by pasting into Claude: "There are 12 chapters in the book <book-name>. Can you give me a 2 sentence synopsis of each chapter?". It reduces the "activation energy" hump and screens if it's worth reading at all. - I use the LLM in my Tesla for on-the-fly advice for parking and other things. You can simply ask "what's the best Boba place around here?" and it will give you a decent recommendation. You can also follow up with "does this place have ample parking?". - I use the LLM in YouTube to summarize videos and ask specific questions and/or get timestamps to the parts I care about. If your critical thinking skills are strong then LLM is a literal superpower.
- oblio 3mo ago1. Do frontier lab LLMs make your rent cheaper? Groceries? Healthcare? 2. Do LLMs reduce the loneliness epidemic? 3. Do they reduce population aging in almost all counties around the world? 4. Do they reduce political polarization? 5. Do they bolster democracies? 6. Do they decelerate climate change and general environmental destruction? 7. Do they accelerate sustainability and the circular economy (not circular financing!)? 8. Do they reduce the workweek and give people more free time for family and hobbies? Etc, etc. I would hold off on calling anything a "superpower" unless it solves the hard problems in life. Heck, computers and even the internet barely score better than LLMs when measured against the important things in life.
- roncesvalles 3mo ago