it’s getting to the point where I notice people say it a lot, especially IRL now for whatever reason recently.
And for clarity I’m not in research or anything, so these people just mean ‘LLM/image gen’, not utilities like OCR or (usually not) transcription.
Some have argued it’s just more efficient (which I can kind of get), while others think you’re actively hindering your intelligence somehow.
On the first point:
I’ve tried it occasionally to see how it compares to my own skill, and while it produces a functional result, it’s always very derivative work to the point where you can find things with the exact same names of other ‘public’ (but not libre) works, and often isn’t the ideal solution to what it targets. So I can see how you can get things out of it, but it never felt really that profound to me.
But for the second… isn’t this supposed to be the tool for people to do things they aren’t experienced in? If anything, you probably need to be able to understand how to write pertaining to the task so the token probabilities are biased toward writing from that area.
And even then, if all you end up doing is prompting AI, then wouldn’t you ultimately serve no purpose outside of being glorified QA?
I guess I’m trying to figure out what exactly non-users would be ‘falling behind’ in that affects them more than those who use AI?
AI/ATS has worsened job prospects thats for sure.
They think AI is as life changing to our society as the internet is as steam engines were long ago. They’re trying to promote its use because it doesn’t have a good specific use for day to day. If anything AI has made the internet MUCH worse, there’s so much AI Slop media on youtube and similar that I don’t look at much new stuff anymore because of it.
Ai is more like adding lead to gasoline; it does stuff we could already do ever so slightly better, but for an immense and irreversible cost.
i wouldn’t say better, a better analogy, is cheaper gasoline, with worst results than more expensive gasoline.
You’ll fall behind in the race to the lowest IQ as they all turn their thinking over to AI and get lazier while you continue to exercise your brain.
Fuck 'em.
its already been shown HS and college grads have even poorer reading writing skills due to it.
It’s a desperate marketing strategy based on the classic “peer pressure” technique. “Everyone’s doing it. You don’t want to be the only one who isn’t.”
Kinda like that statement about no one being able to go a day without using it. Its weird and does not hold water logic wise. This seems to be the same, it is just a desperate sales tactic from people who put to much of themselves into the tech. Sunk cost and all that.
However the over use of AI seems to be a great way of being wrong faster.
people who can afford to pay for LLM tokens are always going to be fine as tokens get more expensive. this is just a thinly veiled way to say an increasing amount of people are going to end up poor and completely fucked as AI pushes all of the resources upwards.
Blindly trusting google results when copy/pasting into the terminal is sketchy. Doing that with AI is even worse.
Go ahead and blindly follow the LLM, have fun.
It’s very similar to learning how to use a computer in 1995. I’m just old enough to remember meeting these people.
There is this thing, which, supposedly, can help you do your job better, it’s being pushed by management, and it is sometimes expensive, often confusing, and obsoletes the skills you spent years to acquire.
Fast-forward 30 years, and it’s very, very, very difficult to find people to talk to who still argue computing doesn’t belong in the workplace, and that using a computer isn’t essential for virtually all work.
The reason it is difficult to find these people, is because they were left behind.
I’m going to rip my balls off
They mean that they have lost all ability to think for themselves.
Gonna be the odd one out here so I’m gonna start with this. The companies that push AI and the way they are powering large models you’d use only is to the detriment of working class people and the planet.
That being said it’s a tool and a useful one. It makes mistakes and it’s not as smart as a person but it can make certain tasks much easier and faster. It’s like having a fleet of interns ready to rush through something. It makes certain kinds of office tasks much much faster. So if you don’t use it and your coworkers do suddenly it looks like you’re the weak link.
I’ve found a lot of uses for it myself. Of course I always need to double check and correct it which takes time but that is often easier and faster than starting from scratch.
They think there’s some skill necessary to use LLMs for some reason
If like you can’t drive a car, that makes it harder to find a good paying job.
My experience of a decade in corporate US companies:
Quantity > Quality; no matter what the marketing line says. People who speak a lot in meetings and send a lot of emails are regarded as better at their job, substance is only somewhat relevant. And LLMs are great at producing lots and lots of well sounding slop.
Levergism. To get what you want in the world you need power to get power you need leverage to the keys to power.
For working class folks that tends to be in the form of withholding labor, providing labor both of which are dictated by supply and demand. So learning a specialty in an in demand field or getting/making tools or skills that make you more demand is common technique. (Organizing with others to be noted also a huge way to do this)
They are arguing that learning AI is like learning to drive a forklift or an excavator. Like sure you could use a shovel or set up pullies but it’s just faster and thus more valuable to use those tools.
The difference being we don’t actually know what tools and varients of those tools actually make sense. So it’s like saying you need to learn to use motors to a 1900s factor worker.
This is so spot on. VFD’s revolutionized manufacturing, but telling that to someone in the 1900 would have been crazy.
