you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 4 points 3 weeks ago (34 children)

It's a tool, use it where it works and don't where it doesn't.

  • source
  • hideshow 34 child comments
  • [–] 26 points 3 weeks ago* (8 children)

    That saying (or, dare I say, thought-terminating clichΓ©) glosses over the consideration of risks and costs that result from its uncritical usage. No sane person should trust it without serious reservations just because it fits the purpose, and that's true whether or not it bears the latest combination of letters peddled by tech bros. It's a dangerous, irresponsible mentality. It's a tool the same way a sledgehammer made out of plutonium is a tool.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
  • [–] 9 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

    Plutonium sledgehammer sounds fucking awesome though

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] 8 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

    Pretty effective because of its high density, too. It's a shame it's brittle and would give you heavy metal poisoning.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    As ways to die go that also sounds pretty rad

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] -3 points 3 weeks ago

    I mean in an old nuclear bomb that's pretty much the situation. Use a conventional explosive to slam some plutonium like a sledgehammer and nukes have proven to be a strong deterrent when a country had them. Still a tool with a use case

  • source
  • parent
  • [+] -6 points 3 weeks ago

    Your comment is a sweeping statement that is thought terminating itself.

    No sane person should trust it without serious reservations just because it fits the purpose

    Using a tool for something it’s intended for automatically involves some thought process. And this thought process also involves its limitations and potential for danger.

    Your criticism stems from your dislike for AI and your opinion that it’s generally not useful. An opinion that is shared widely here, but with little to no proof at all.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 7 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    It’s a tool, use it where it works and don’t where it doesn’t.

    But that doesn't work with the people creating AI as they are totally dependent on the believe that AI can do absolutely everything (and an artificial general intelligence is just moments away...) to justify they insane investments. So they will make up a million stupid narratives why some people are "actually" not using AI as it obviously can't be because of AI shortcomings...

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 7 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    People probably say that about asbestos too.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] -3 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Of course, it still has uses. Just not in home insulation.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago

    Your comment is so fit for purpose, displaying such a massive willful ignorance about the world in general. Because the biggest problem with asbestos wasn't using it for home insulation. It killed millions of workers in manufacturing plants and mines. Its biggest industrial use case was for electrical insulation of high voltage transmission lines. Where it also killed hundreds of thousands of technicians in the us alone. Before that it was used for lamp wicks. Where it killed at least a couple of millions more over a century. Today, asbestos kills 250 thousand people a year, 12 to 15 thousand in the us every year.

    I supposed any tool can be considered useful if you're ignorant enough about it or if you're willing to lie without remorse.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] 6 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    If a tool costs more to be made than the equivalent of buying every single person on earth a loaf of bread every single day for 300 days, only for it to have niche uses, that only helps what is possible with already existing tools, is it worth it?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 3 points 3 weeks ago (13 children)

    Na, fuck that shit. Just don't use it.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 13 child comments
  • [–] -1 points 3 weeks ago (12 children)

    Why? Do you have that feeling towards other algorithms?

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 12 child comments
  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago (9 children)
  • [–] -1 points 3 weeks ago (8 children)
  • [–] 4 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

    Usually the ones that accelerate the destruction of our planet, perpetuate sexist and racist biases, pray opon the weaknesses of how our minds work, exploit the underprivileged, devalue humanity and artistry, are annoying and overhyped, I think you get the picture.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 7 child comments
  • [–] -2 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (6 children)

    So which algorithm is that? If you're hinting at manipulating the populace because in fact they are easily programmed via social network manipulation. Yeah anything done maliciously is of course bad but I think that comes down to the use of the tools and not the intrinsic nature of the tools themselves. Algorithms are just math, it's the will of the individuals wielding them that is corrupt and that seems to be your actual chief complaint.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 6 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

    I did not say that. You, like everyone else that says "its just a tool and technology is neutral", should read more books about ethics, politics and sociology. Everything we do is political. Nothing is "neutral".

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 5 child comments
  • [–] -1 points 3 weeks ago* (4 children)

    I'm not saying the use cases that some have chosen for certain tools is neutral. Their behavior is indeed bad and should be called out. Ai for instance is at it's core just a mathematical structure that has no intrinsic behavior, same for the concept of algorithms for social media or algorithms for drones or algorithms for the internet. Yeah some people use the internet to cause a lot of harm or even guide the outcomes of nations but is it the fault of html, CSS, and JavaScript? Not really. The problem is some companies, some people, some government officials and their choices.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 4 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    Firstly "AI" is a meaningless marketing term. And LLMs are fundamentally flawed. And especially anything by OpenAI/Anthropic/Meta/xAI should be avoided as they have shown zero regard for the actual negative impact of their products.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
  • [–] -1 points 3 weeks ago* (2 children)

    Sure, you know the term existed long before it became a financial buzz word right? Anyways in which sense are LLMs or NNs fundamentally flawed? I still believe your chief complaint is about the actions of people and not some mathematical structure much in the same way arguments about engagement algorithms on social media platforms is more about people and their choices than C++ or a binary tree.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    You know that it was a financial buzzword from the very beginning? I'll leave you with a reading suggestion: 'The AI con" from Timnit Gebru and Emily Bender. The latter also has various lectutes online about the topic.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
  • [–] 0 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

    How would you prefer people talk technology that allows machines to think, learn, and perform tasks that usually require human intelligence?

    We could encode some behavior with mechanical automaton but we can encode far more behavior and more complex behavior with electronic computers. There's no known strict limit beyond computation to the complexity of behavior we can encode. Now with a fully digitized fruit fly brain one can theorize about a fully digitized human brain. What would we call this if not artificial intelligence? How about other models that encode approximate behavior to human level intelligence?

    The term has linguistic meaning and isn't just marketing nonsense like calling food products all natural. That said there's definitely been a ramp up of people calling essentially if-else chains artificial intelligence, lots of abuse of the term.

  • source
  • parent
  • [–] -2 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

    Pmuch this.

    How do they feel about machine language translations? It's been "AI" (ML model) since the late 90's.

    Traffic prediction?

    Medical scan data processing?

    And so so many more specific uses of ML models that have been a part of daily life for literal decades.

    Call out LLMs specifically.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment