potustheplant comments on Linus Torvalds shares his thoughts on Anti-AI coding rules

[–] potustheplant@feddit.nl 7 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (7 children)

The comparison between AI and compilers is kind of stupid though. When you program in a given language, you're writing out the entire logic and behavior of your program. Not to mention that the compiler is a deterministic machine, it will always behave in a certain manner and produce predictable results. On the other hand, using AI, you just write a sentence. Then it "creates" a whole bunch of code that will not always be the same, even if you always use the same model and prompt. Not to mention all of the detrimental effects AI has, cognitively speaking, when you start to rely on it. On top of this, all AI models were trained on unfathomable amounts of stolen information.

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[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works -2 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

cognitively speaking

That's not what the damn study says.

People who wrote an essay with an LLM did not show signs of having having written it themselves, on account of, they hadn't. Just like I couldn't tell you the remainder of a long division I put in a calculator, because it went straight to a mantissa. I didn't lose the ability to to math. (At worst, I don't wanna, now that I have a calculator.)

The only long-term aspect of this study was a dozen people coming back months later and switching sides. So even pretending it's asking the right questions, the tabloid interpretation should expect to see the brain-only essayists fumble it and the LLM essayists sharper than ever. But that's plainly not what happened.

They didn't even measure essay quality. It was just about EEG activity, incidental recall, and self-reported degree of ownership. But that nerd shit doesn't get clicks, so every fucking headline is like Does chatbot is brain damage?! or Permanent cyber-psychosis ten minutes!! or If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. It is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only the semblance of wisdom, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much while for the most part they know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom they will be a burden to their fellows.

Oh sorry, that last one was Plato arguing against the detrimental cognitive effect of books.

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[–] potustheplant@feddit.nl 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (5 children)

You constructed an entirely fictional argument about a study that you quoted. That's not what I was referring to. It's a pointless discussion though. None of these AI companies are financially sustainable (except for the shovel sellers, obviously).

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[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works -2 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

Feel free to name whichever study you think says what y'all keep repeating, because I haven't seen that shit. Every time I go searching for some dire evidence of dain bramage from spicy autocomplete, it comes back to one of three poorly-designed studies that fail to distinguish this new tool from any other tool and categorically do not match their pearl-clutching news coverage.

It’s a pointless discussion though.

This is bad faith. Pivoting to unrelated criticism is pretense. You can't make some damning claim, glibly dismiss an effort to explain you're mistaken, and then gallop toward some other topic entirely. That's working backwards from a conclusion and failing to update your beliefs.

No shit these companies are boned. Local models will survive and proliferate on their demonstrable merits. Decentralized development will continue, if nowhere else, among the unceasingly horny randos doing image and video stuff.

We will in fact have to live with programs that can program, but thankfully, using one won't give you a lobotomy.

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[–] potustheplant@feddit.nl 3 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Feel free to name whichever study you think says what y’all keep repeating, because I haven’t seen that shit.

This names a few. Also, I can speak from personal experience and from what other people using AI tell me. It does indeed negatively impact your ability do the thinking on your own. If you don't feel that impact, maybe in your case there wasn't much to lose in the first place :) If you "haven't seen this shit" then maybe you should take off the blindfold.

This is bad faith. Pivoting to unrelated criticism is pretense.

Not at all. It's just another very relevant part of the argument. The stealing machine is power and money hungry af and it's not being fed. It will die.

failing to update your beliefs.

Beliefs are unrelated. It's the reality of these companies' numbers. Show me at least ONE of them that isn't selling hw and is profitable.

Decentralized development will continue, if nowhere else, among the unceasingly horny randos doing image and video stuff.

Were is this decentralized development you speak of? Also, training an AI to create porn is pretty different than one trained to do coding, writing, research, etc.

We will in fact have to live with programs that can program, but thankfully, using one won’t give you a lobotomy.

Talking about facts as if you knew the future, lol. Is that way Coreweave is going down the drain? It won't give you a lobotomy but it will make you dumber and also use any data you provide it.

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[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works -1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

That article mentions five papers, three of which are the exact poorly-designed studies I already referenced. The last one is literally the one you just dismissed.

The math exam one pretends that yanking away a trivializing tool for the home stretch of an exam renders people "less able"... instead of just surprised and unmotivated. We'd observe the same effect if some students had a calculator yanked away, without warning, for the last three questions. This is the most blatantly confounded study, and it does not stop articles from screaming 'ten minutes with a chatbot will melt your brain!'

The cancer one says doctors had access to a tool that made them much better at detecting tumors, but then we took that away and hey look they got marginally worse at eyeballing the charts. Like that's the important part of this story. People stopped practicing an expert ability, for months, and got slightly worse at it! How unique! Naturally the article summarizes this small and temporary dip by saying doctors "lost their ability to detect cancer independently." Like the devil sucked it out their ear.

The other two are interesting but disagree with each other on the part that matters. The fake-news study says AI helps people spot bullshit (positive, surprising) without them learning that skill independently (neutral) but leaves them feeling confident they have (genuinely terrible). Except the data workers survey says users don't feel like they're thinking critically when using an LLM, and lacked confidence in the model's output. You could pick at the assumption 'the model is usually right except in my area of expertise, but... that's pretty god-damn far from the article's claim that "their critical thinking skills deteriorated." That's simply not what it fucking says.

The stealing machine

Fuck copyright.

Beliefs are unrelated.

You believe the chatbot is rotting people's brains despite the people doing the studies explicitly telling you otherwise. Pretending I was referring to these doomed companies, immediately after calling that tangent unrelated, is why the pivot is bad faith. You're suddenly talking about something else, therefore my ongoing disagreement must also be a defense of that, somehow. It's "so you hate waffles."

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[–] potustheplant@feddit.nl 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 child)

Your read on the whole thing is so skewed that I see no point in continuing the conversation. You want to believe that the stealing machine that is fucking up people, the world and the entire economy is good. Fine, it's stupid but you're free to be as stupid as you want. It's still economically a sinkhole and it will die. So have fun while it lasts I guess.

If this whole technology is so wonderful, why hasn't a single non-hw company been able to make a profit? And what will happen once they have to pay for all of the information they used? Food for thought, my genius friend.

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[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works -1 points 3 weeks ago

Fuck me - listen to the people who wrote the studies. They say these shrill articles are wrong. What they found is not what you keep parroting. If you can't engage with that correction, except by calling anyone who disagrees with you stupid, what good are your precious cognitive abilities?

I am also saying these companies are fucked. Do you understand that? Can you not handle when someone only says you're wrong about one specific thing? Nothing I am saying is about profit. You made a claim about how tools affect people's minds, and I am trying to treat you like honestly believe it.

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