There are practical uses for it, but realistically it is only advancing the destruction of the planet and disproportionately affecting poor and working class people's livelihoods first, so no there is no good thing.

I think it could help with medical research. But for the average person, it's (incorrect) search results and plagerism machine only.

For information based things, absolutely.

Something that people don't seem to understand is that there's a difference between AI and GenAI.

And that within GenAI, there's low cost stuff like text and graphics, and high cost like video and audio.

And that with tools developed with GenAI often do not use GenAI when it is run.

AI is super useful and you use it in a bunch of applications already without even realising it. The camera that interprets speed signs and displays them on your dashboard = AI. Spam filters = AI. Google translate = AI.

If a business is using AI agents to make purchases through, like at a drive thru or something, you could theoretically prompt it in a way that it gives you everything you want for free.

No, not really. It's a tool for the ultra-wealthy to masturbate with, that's all. "AI" isn't going to pay your bills or fill your pantry. It was never designed to benefit you, the majority of people who built it don't even grasp what challenges you need addressed let alone have solutions. The very nature of the tech is to harm the middle and the poor. It's the ultimate Veblen Good, a tulip trap for the 21st century.

I use it for doing tedious work as a programmer.

Note that it's not replacing anyone, it's just making me more efficient.

My recent usage (jargon warning) was to get it to monitor metrics from seven hosts while I scheduled heavy work loads on the hosts to find bottlenecks.

I'm working on some applications that use LLM's for some features, and everything you run yourself is 100% free:

https://circutforge.tech/

Source: https://git.opensourcesolarpunk.com/

You can use ChatGPT to find the lowest price on a given item you need. That is objectively a good thing, one just has to weigh the ethics of it.

Using local llm on your computer is ok. There are great open source tool out there :

• Comfy ui
• Anythingllm

I'd say I've definitely found some use for AI. Mainly programming stuff that's outside of my comfort zone but where I still understand what's happening.

For example I had it make a bash script I can run to terminate all of my VR programs and relaunch them for when SteamVR crashes instead of manually clicking all the tiny Xes and doubleclicking all the icons.

I could have leaned how to do it myself, but I don't really want to spend 2 hours troubleshooting windows bash scripts I won't use again, especially since I still know what's happening in the code, I just couldn't write it myself

I have two practical use cases where I haven't found a better and more time efficient alternatives that LLMs:

1. I can paste a huge log file and have it summarize where it went wrong (and often how to fix it)
2. It can give me a simple introduction to any topic and provide practical examples. (I don't want to learn Javascript, but I still want to understand the broad strokes of how AJAX works)

I really do think we as individuals should just wholesale throw it in the bin, the only people who should be using it are teams of workers like scientists/medical staff where it can unequivocally have a big benefit which helps everyone and is thus worth it.

But even then usage should go through a vetting process, so it's justified and not going to lead to worse results.

https://www.fighthealthinsurance.com/

One use would be as a tutor like how it's used for Project NOMAD. However, you could argue it's not a super strong use case as the information could still be researched yourself.

I have found it to be useful when learning a subject like math and I need more practice exercises on a topic when I've run out of them from a book. I also may use it to create quizes for assessing my own understanding of a subject.

Im autistic so I use it to help me navigate certain social situations I wouldn't understand otherwise, its helping me reflect more on my behavior and helping me change myself for the better.

Don't get me wrong I still have an actual therapist and doctor and I don't use it for everything just when I get confused in public.

I used it for generating my profile picture here on Lemmy and don't see anything wrong with that.

as someone who started a substack recently, having the AI image generator make cover art is a nice convenience as I neither have the time to do it myself or the cash flow to hire someone. I'm not going to use stock images because then I'd get watermarks and The AI gen is slightly more professional seeming.

There is a youtube channel that uses AI to illustrate it sci/fi fantasy narrative about a multiversal extraplanar setting called "The Archive In-between" which uses a dreamlike retro aesthetic which really fits well with AI generated imagery. Most people who are fans agree this is a FANTASTIC use for AI.