Idk why we have to keep re-hashing this debate about whether AI is a trustworthy source or summarizer of information when it’s clear that it isn’t - at least not often enough to justify this level of attention.
It’s not as valuable as the marketing suggests, but it does have some applications where it may be helpful, especially if given a conscious effort to direct it well. It’s better understood as a mild curiosity and a proof of concept for transformer-based machine learning that might eventually lead to something more profound down the road but certainly not as it exists now.
What is really un-compelling, though, is the constant stream of anecdotes about how easy it is to fool into errors. It’s like listening to an adult brag about tricking a kid into thinking chocolate milk comes from brown cows. It makes it seem like there’s some marketing battle being fought over public perception of its value as a product that’s completely detached from how anyone actually uses or understands it as a novel piece of software.
Probably it keeps getting rehashed because people who actually understand how computers work are extremely angry and horrified that basically every idiot executive believes the hype and then asks their underlings to inplement it, and will then blame them for doing what they asked them to do when it turns out their idea was really, unimaginably stupid, but idiot executive gets golden parachute and software person gets fired.
That, and/or the widespread proliferation of this bullshit is making stupid people more stupid, and just making more people stupid in general.
Or how like all the money and energy spent on this is actively murdering the environment and dooming the vast majority of our species, when it could be put toward building affordable housing or renovating crumbling infrastructure.
Don’t worry, if we keep throwing exponential increasing amounts of effort at the thing with exponentially diminishing returns, eventually it’ll become God!
Then why are we talking about someone getting it to spew inaccuracies in order to prove a point, rather than the decision of marketing execs to proliferate its use for a million pointless implementations nobody wants at the expense of far higher energy usage?
Most people already know and understand that it’s bad at most of what execs are trying to push it as, it’s not a public-perception issue. We should be talking about how energy-expensive it is, and curbing its use on tasks where it isn’t anything more than an annoying gimmick. At this point, it’s not that people don’t understand its limitations, it’s that they don’t understand how much energy it’s costing and how it’s being shoved into everything we use without our noticing.
Somebody hopping onto openAI or Gemini to get help with a specific topic or task isn’t the problem. Why are we trading personal anecdotes about sporadic personal usage when the problem is systemic, not individualized?
people who actually understand how computers work
Bit idea for moderators: there should be a site or community-wide auto-mod rule that replaces this phrase with ‘eat all their vegitables’ or something that is equally un-serious and infantilizing as ‘understand how computers work’.
This is relevant to my more recent reply to you… because it is an anecdotal example of how broadly useless this technology is.
…
I wasn’t aware the purpose of this joke meme thread was to act as a policy workshop to determine an actionable media campaign aimed at generating mass awareness of the economic downsides of LLMs, which wouldn’t fucking work anyway because LLMs are being pushed by a class of wealthy people who do not fucking care what the masses think, and have essentially zero reason at all to change their course of action.
What, we’re going to boycott the entire tech industry?
Vote them out of office?
These people are on video, on record saying basically, ‘eh, we’re not gonna save the climate, not happening, might as well burn it all down even harder, even faster, for a tiny percentage chance our overcomplicated autocomplete algorithm magically figures out how to fix everything afterward’.
…
And yes, I very intentionally used the phrase ‘understand how computers actually work’ to infantilize and demean corporate executives.
Because they are narcissistic priveleged sociopaths who are almost never qualified, almost always make idiotic decisions that will only benefit themselves and an increasingly shrinking number of people at the expense of the vast majority of people who know more and work harder than they do, and who often respond like children having temper tantrums when they are justly criticized.
Again, in the context of a joke meme thread.
Please get off your high horse, or at least ride it over to a trough of water if you want a reasonable place to try to convince it to drink in the manner in which you prefer.
Err, I’d describe your anecdote more as an attempt to reason with it…? If you were using google to search for an answer to something and it came up with the wrong thing, you wouldn’t then complain back to it about it being wrong, you’d just try again with different terms or move on to something else. If ‘using’ it for you is scolding it as if it’s an incompetent coworker, then maybe the problem isn’t the tool but how you’re trying to use it.
I wasn’t aware the purpose of this joke meme thread was to act as a policy workshop to determine an actionable media campaign
Lmao, it certainly isn’t. Then again, had you been responding with any discernible humor of your own I might not have had reason to take your comment seriously.
And yes, I very intentionally used the phrase ‘understand how computers actually work’ to infantilize and demean corporate executives.
Except your original comment wasn’t directed at corporate executives, it appears to be more of a personal review of the tool itself. Unless your boss was the one asking you to use Gemini? Either way, that phrase is used so much more often as self-aggrandizement and condescension that it’s hard to see it as anything else, especially when it follows an anecdote of that person trying to reason with a piece of software lmao.
Idk why we have to keep re-hashing this debate about whether AI is a trustworthy source or summarizer of information when it’s clear that it isn’t - at least not often enough to justify this level of attention.
It’s not as valuable as the marketing suggests, but it does have some applications where it may be helpful, especially if given a conscious effort to direct it well. It’s better understood as a mild curiosity and a proof of concept for transformer-based machine learning that might eventually lead to something more profound down the road but certainly not as it exists now.
What is really un-compelling, though, is the constant stream of anecdotes about how easy it is to fool into errors. It’s like listening to an adult brag about tricking a kid into thinking chocolate milk comes from brown cows. It makes it seem like there’s some marketing battle being fought over public perception of its value as a product that’s completely detached from how anyone actually uses or understands it as a novel piece of software.
Probably it keeps getting rehashed because people who actually understand how computers work are extremely angry and horrified that basically every idiot executive believes the hype and then asks their underlings to inplement it, and will then blame them for doing what they asked them to do when it turns out their idea was really, unimaginably stupid, but idiot executive gets golden parachute and software person gets fired.
That, and/or the widespread proliferation of this bullshit is making stupid people more stupid, and just making more people stupid in general.
Or how like all the money and energy spent on this is actively murdering the environment and dooming the vast majority of our species, when it could be put toward building affordable housing or renovating crumbling infrastructure.
Don’t worry, if we keep throwing exponential increasing amounts of effort at the thing with exponentially diminishing returns, eventually it’ll become God!
Then why are we talking about someone getting it to spew inaccuracies in order to prove a point, rather than the decision of marketing execs to proliferate its use for a million pointless implementations nobody wants at the expense of far higher energy usage?
Most people already know and understand that it’s bad at most of what execs are trying to push it as, it’s not a public-perception issue. We should be talking about how energy-expensive it is, and curbing its use on tasks where it isn’t anything more than an annoying gimmick. At this point, it’s not that people don’t understand its limitations, it’s that they don’t understand how much energy it’s costing and how it’s being shoved into everything we use without our noticing.
Somebody hopping onto openAI or Gemini to get help with a specific topic or task isn’t the problem. Why are we trading personal anecdotes about sporadic personal usage when the problem is systemic, not individualized?
Bit idea for moderators: there should be a site or community-wide auto-mod rule that replaces this phrase with ‘eat all their vegitables’ or something that is equally un-serious and infantilizing as ‘understand how computers work’.
You original comment is posted under mine.
I am going to assume you are responding to that.
… I wasn’t trying to trick it.
I was trying to use it.
This is relevant to my more recent reply to you… because it is an anecdotal example of how broadly useless this technology is.
…
I wasn’t aware the purpose of this joke meme thread was to act as a policy workshop to determine an actionable media campaign aimed at generating mass awareness of the economic downsides of LLMs, which wouldn’t fucking work anyway because LLMs are being pushed by a class of wealthy people who do not fucking care what the masses think, and have essentially zero reason at all to change their course of action.
What, we’re going to boycott the entire tech industry?
Vote them out of office?
These people are on video, on record saying basically, ‘eh, we’re not gonna save the climate, not happening, might as well burn it all down even harder, even faster, for a tiny percentage chance our overcomplicated autocomplete algorithm magically figures out how to fix everything afterward’.
…
And yes, I very intentionally used the phrase ‘understand how computers actually work’ to infantilize and demean corporate executives.
Because they are narcissistic priveleged sociopaths who are almost never qualified, almost always make idiotic decisions that will only benefit themselves and an increasingly shrinking number of people at the expense of the vast majority of people who know more and work harder than they do, and who often respond like children having temper tantrums when they are justly criticized.
Again, in the context of a joke meme thread.
Please get off your high horse, or at least ride it over to a trough of water if you want a reasonable place to try to convince it to drink in the manner in which you prefer.
Err, I’d describe your anecdote more as an attempt to reason with it…? If you were using google to search for an answer to something and it came up with the wrong thing, you wouldn’t then complain back to it about it being wrong, you’d just try again with different terms or move on to something else. If ‘using’ it for you is scolding it as if it’s an incompetent coworker, then maybe the problem isn’t the tool but how you’re trying to use it.
Lmao, it certainly isn’t. Then again, had you been responding with any discernible humor of your own I might not have had reason to take your comment seriously.
Except your original comment wasn’t directed at corporate executives, it appears to be more of a personal review of the tool itself. Unless your boss was the one asking you to use Gemini? Either way, that phrase is used so much more often as self-aggrandizement and condescension that it’s hard to see it as anything else, especially when it follows an anecdote of that person trying to reason with a piece of software lmao.