Now see, I like the idea of AI.

What I don't like are the implications, and the current reality of AI.

I see businesses embracing AI without fully understanding the limits. Stopping the hiring juniors developers, often firing large numbers of seniors because they think AI, a group of cheap post grad vibe programmers and a handful of seasoned seniors will equal the workforce they got rid of when AI, while very good is not ready to sustain this. It is destroying the career progression for the industry and even if/when they realise it was a mistake, it might already have devastated the industry by then.

I see the large tech companies tearing through the web illegally sucking up anything they can access to pull into their ever more costly models with zero regard to the effects on the economy, the cost to the servers they are hitting, or the environment from the huge power draw creating these models requires.

It's a nice idea, but private business cannot be trusted to do this right, we're seeing how to do it wrong, live before our eyes.

For those who know

Not all AI is bad. But there’s enough widespread AI that’s helping cut jobs, spreading misinformation (or in some cases, actual propaganda), creating deepfakes, etc, that in many people’s eyes, it paints a bad picture of AI overall. I also don’t trust AI because it’s almost exclusively owned by far right billionaires.

Its true. We can have a nuanced view. Im just so fucking sick of the paid off media hyping this shit, and normies thinking its the best thing ever when they know NOTHING about it. And the absolute blind trust and corpo worship make me physically ill.

The currently hot LLM technology is very interesting and I believe it has legitimate use cases. If we develop them into tools that help assist work. (For example, I'm very intrigued by the stuff that's happening in the accessibility field.)

I mostly have problem with the AI business. Ludicruous use cases (shoving AI into places where it has no business in). Sheer arrogance about the sociopolitics in general. Environmental impact. LLMs aren't good enough for "real" work, but snake oil salesmen keep saying they can do that, and uncritical people keep falling for it.

And of course, the social impact was just not what we were ready for. "Move fast and break things" may be a good mantra for developing tech, but not for releasing stuff that has vast social impact.

I believe the AI business and the tech hype cycle is ultimately harming the field. Usually, AI technologies just got gradually developed and integrated to software where they served purpose. Now, it's marred with controversy for decades to come.

I don't hate the concept as is, I hate how it is being marketed and shoved everywhere and into everything by sheer hype and the need for returns on the absurd amounts of money that were thrown at it.

Companies use it to justify layoffs, create cheap vibed up products, delegate responsibilities to an absolutely not sentient or intelligent computer program. Not even mentioning the colossal amount of natural and financial resources being thrown down this drain.

I read a great summary yesterday somewhere on here that essentially said "they took a type of computer model made to give answers to very specific questions it has been trained on, and then trained it on everything to make a generalist". Except that doesn't work, the broader the spectrum the model is covering the less accurate it will be.

Identifying skin cancer? Perfect tool for the job.

Giving drones the go ahead on an ambiguous target? Providing psychological care to people in distress? FUCK NO.

The problem isn't AI. The problem is Capitalism.

The problem is always Capitalism.

AI, Climate Change, rising fascism, all our problems are because of capitalism.

I mean, it is objectively bad for life. Throwing away millions to billions of gallons of water all so you can get some dubious coding advice.

Yes, any further questions?

Not all that glitters is gold. 🤷