I noticed almost everybody here agrees that all AI is bad, and anything produced by AI is slop. and refuse to use any software made in part or in whole with AI or help of AI? Please mention your background and usage of AI with your answer.
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lmao, honestly from what i’ve seen lemmy is very much pro slop – and it’s been quite disheartening. i’ve mostly just stayed on mastodon lately cause i don’t have the bandwidth to fight with people who say “but local models!” … nah fuck that. LLM’s are a racist, fascist, anti-human, anti-social, anti-intellectual, regressive, inefficient, ecoterrorist, counter-revolutionary, class traitor technology. Even with open weights / open models ran locally, it still only reduces peoples capacity to learn, create and build community. It still pushes us as a society apart. There are technologies that can be up lifting and constructive, but this isn’t one. There is no reason to chase more lines of code, or more pages in a book – instead chasing to better understand, better communicate, better organize together. Every “leftist” person on lemmy who is pro local llm’s, is just excited about the technology and that leaves very little room for organizing and utilizing this unique time where there could be a non-partisan reason to organize against the oligarchs and fascists who are in power in much of the world right now.
I dabbled with AI usage for a while, ran some local models, would try whatever was the current best for when there was a project that I didn’t really want to put the effort into learning about–and I found it was just always regressive and annoying. I’d brick hardware, or my context would get so big that the output would continue to become more sloppy. I started just going back to reading documentation, and it was just always easier. It was always easier to just grep for whatever I needed. Whenever I’d go back to simply trying to understand the problem and just fucking read, I’d feel almost like a haze being lifted. I think this is the point where I realized, most complaints that people have with software etc are already solved issues that most “tech” refuses to implement or has enshitified. So instead of just solving the problem in a predictive / deterministic way, we are instead being sold a technology that will burn incredible amounts of fuel, will requires incredible amounts of resources all to what–search through my email? More slowly than what was developed in the 70’s would. Then I read ‘Blood in the machine’ and ‘End times fascism’, watched ‘ghost in the machine’ and read more most and articles… The sheer mass amount of violence and suffering created is unimaginable.
I think my stance is mostly, even without the ethical issues – what use would this technology even have? Why would I want a computer to do the learning and creating, when I could instead enjoy the work of my friends, and enjoy creating something for others; while building a community. and community is the #1 way to curb fascism. also my computing is more and more evolving into something more similar to permacomputing. My music and art taste has always been more into finding & connecting with artists locally, or at least artists who I can actually interact with and understand. Outsourcing this things to a machine would not bring any joy.
Why do we need to justify our options? It is OK to not like a technology that is killing the world? A technology where we have movies of it taking over the world and murdering the human race. A technology that has yet to turn a profit despite trillions of dollars funnelled into it.
Please mention your background and usage of AI with your answer.
No, why don’t you justify your want for destroying the planet and species.
why don’t you justify your want for destroying the planet and species.
With respect, when people argue like this, my brain automatically interprets everything they stand for and believe in as wrong.
Correct way to argue:
“Here is a self-serving reason WHY IT BENEFITS !!YOU!! to do/not do the thing I am asking you to do or not do. It BENEFITS YOU to take my advice.”
Incorrect way to argue:
“I am literally Jesus Christ. I am the arbiter of all morality, and I am God in living flesh. If you do the bad thing, you’re going straight to Hell. You’re harming the environment and also killing babies by doing the bad thing.”
Global warming has been around for a lot longer than AI. Now we’re having a conversation about Global Warming instead of AI. This can go on forever. A better argument is “AI makes YOU dumb over time, because YOU grow to rely on it,” or “AI is a liability FOR YOU because when you create something with it, you don’t know if the end product was made with stolen data.”
I think it is more considerate to talk to people this way, because it shows that you care about the person you’re trying to convince, and you want what’s best for them.
There are a lot of software developers on Lemmy.
AI is being pushed as a software development tool. It tends to remove the fun part of our jobs (coding, debugging, optimizing) and relegates us to the shitty parts (code review).
We don’t like that.
Personally I find I’m able to focus on high level design problems which I enjoy a lot. I still enjoy crafting elegant solutions to unique problems, but at least in my current job, most code is trivial and feels tedious to write by hand. Also, LLMs generate better code than some of my coworkers. Most of the slop I’ve had to deal with this year is in 20+ y/o codebases, and none of it was generated by LLMs.
It’s because we are adults, so we already have better skills than a general LLM. We learned to read, write, and research in school. While I personally didn’t go to art school, many people did, and they developed skills that allow them to make better art than a general use art AI.
To us, AI is just wasting our time, because it does what we can already do but worse.
Children are in an unfortunate trap, where they need to spend years producing work that is worse than the LLM to eventually be able to develop the skillset to surpass the LLM. Buying into the idea that it makes your work faster or easier is a trap. You’ll be permanently dependent on it.
we already have better skills than a general LLM
Can you read a thousand pages of tech documentation and find every reference that could be relevant to the issue you’re having in minutes? Then no, you don’t always have ‘better skills than a general LLM’. Humans are better at some things. Computers are better at some things. Use the right tool for the job.
It’s funny you sent this just now. I just spent like 45 minutes trying to get Co-Counsel to make a list of all of the cases in a brief I’m working on. It got confused and couldn’t. I would’ve been done by now if I just used my brain. /shrug
Are you using AI to help you with legal stuff? I don’t think you should use AI for that since it would have data on rules from all sorts of places, and might not be up to date on laws in your place. Or you could train an AI on exclusively the data in your area, but then (1) you’d need hundreds of models, and (2) they would be much less powerful since the training data is a lot less.
CoCounsel is a professional legal service offered by WestLaw. WestLaw is one of the two major legal information companies. They were the ones who transitioned the law from books and brought it online in the 90s. Their dataset is exclusively their databases, which I would guess contain between 90-99% of all American Law ever written.
CoCounsel does exactly what you said in your earlier comment. It scans thousands of legal documents to find exactly what you’re looking for. If I want to find a case that talks about both the 4th amendment during a jurisdictional issue, it can instantly find a case with a a direct quote.
In this case, I asked it to do a multi-step process: find ~50 cases referenced in a specific document, alphabetize them, and add a two sentence summary below each one. That was too much for it to handle at once. It got confused.
I agree with you generally. However can you clarify please when you say “does what we can already do but worse”. Can you please clarify ? What is your use of AI? Software development? Engineering? Architecture? Document editing? General usage and research? Paid and advanced models vs free or simple ones?
Because how you use it with give you a varying set of results.
Not OP and sorry you’re getting downvoted when you’re asking genuine questions and not trolling. Mileage varies with AI. Most people aren’t paying for AI services, meaning that they only work with really dumb models. The people creating slop videos, vibe coding usable and useful apps, using AI to do legal stuff are paying AI companies for tokens or they have expensive GPUs with them. Many companies use AI for work and train general models for specific tasks in-house. They aren’t using ChatGPT available to regular people. That’s why AI content can range from slop videos to really good software patches.
The experience varies a lot depending how you use it. That is for sure. I don’t k ow why some insist otherwise. However in this thread, most thoughtful answers disregard this because they consider a bigger issue with ethical and environmental impact it has.
Several legal, environmental and social reasons I can tell
I agree with you on the environmental and social reasons. The impact here is important. But what about the second part of the question, the usefulness and correct productive usage?
For many people, the cons outweigh the pros, and therefore they can’t even consider them as pros at all.
Yes, this is what I start to understand here from the comments. Most people commenting here signify they care more about the resource usage and impact it has on the world and us rather than its actual output.
What other way would you look at it after weighing the pros and cons ?
No idea.
But not everybody is against ai. I am not. I am about regulating and find ethical approach to AI, which is pretty substantially different. I use ai.
But those advocating against will always have a louder mouth. And it will be useless anyway, since ai is here to stay.
|But those advocating against will always have a louder mouth.
Why do you claim this ?
Because of many, only a few complains usually. And the complainers usually have stronger beliefs (true or false, I am not debating here).
|Because of many, only a few complains usually. I don’t understand that sentence.
What makes you believe that complainers have stronger beliefs?
They know what is right and wrong. So they complain .
They believe they know, of course. Dowsn mean they actually know right.
That applies for both sides. Why do you think that the anti AI people are louder ?
Man, do you even browse Lemmy or are you just an llm bot?
Every post on AI is filled with anti AI people.
I agree, everyone I meet IRL seems to agree on usefulness of AI. Even at work and our clients push forward to using AI to help speed up work. Results (speeding up work) are not always consistent but everyone at work uses it and everyone is happy with it. So it is here to stay.
If you want to convince someone of something, you’ve got to convince them it is beneficial for them to do or not do what you want. Otherwise, it comes off like you’re trying to selfishly impose your own will onto others.
If someone says that AI speeds up their workflow (which they need to live and remain housed), and your response is “but it’s bad for moral reasons” you’re saying that your moral reasons matter more than the other person’s ability to earn money… A better idea would be to try to make them see that an ai subscription is a waste of money and doesn’t actually speed up their workflow.
Lol regulating it just makes it so anthrhopic and openai have complete control and will likely make running local models illegal
Running local models will never be illegal. But maybe regulating ai could help bring down the hardware cost, by limiting scalping and data center uncontrolled growth.
And having cheaper hrdware would bring down the entry barrier costs and help make local ai more widespread
You’ve got a nice idea you should preach more. Government could impose a tax on data-centers bigger than a given threshold. Just like some countries have a luxury tax on some cars. this would make running very big data centers very hard and they would need some workarounds. maybe even have a cap limit on electricity usage in a region or a limitation like this.
Running local models will never be illegal
It’s unethical on so many fronts I’d assume you’re a psychopath if you don’t understand.
because that’s trending, and possibly there’s money involved with people keeping that stance. there are serious issues with ai but in typical liberal fashion, they don’t propose any serious solution except complaining about it in social media.
liberal
All kidding aside, your generic Hexbear isn’t a liberal.
Barring profound social change, decisions around AI will be made by the billionaire class. Do you trust them? Do you expect traction when petioning their lawmakers for a redress of grievances or sharing your thoughts with them on the direction of society?
yeah, i know, but all of this you describe seem to be problems in the west, inherent to any big are of the market that see a huge increase in liquidity. i don’t see any of this happening in china and it’s not like they are not adopting AI. they helluva sure do. it’s always something tangential to ai which is discussed, which is totally ok, but then the question ceases to be AI or not AI but rather what the fuck we do it once we realize it’s going nowhere.
I have a solution: ban the technology outright and let open source projects and individuals harvest datacenters for parts
the cia would kill you and your dog before that happens lil bro
Because got enshittified and politicized by Tech Bros.
If you wanna tell me about the usefulness of LLMs, you are are preaching to the choir. I was playing with GTP-J 6B finetunes in 2022. I am quantizing some weights as I type.
However, you can’t look at me with a straight face and tell me everything is okay in this space. It’s a nightmare, a giant scam that is going to implode.
As Lemmy is a refuge for people who see how caustic mainstream social media is, folks are are particularly sensitive to the issues surrounding “AI” too.
It is antisocial and nihilistic technology that makes my hobbies worse and less accessable
I work in software. Just in day to day:
- lazy people are now using AI to slop out meaningless drivel at me rather than taking five minutes to articulate an actual thought
- shit is frequently broken because people surrender their thinking to the LLMs, don’t understand what the agents are doing, and don’t check the work output
Broadly:
- the industry is built on theft and whitewashing of human effort
- fraudulent valuations and circular dealing
- the frontier AI companies are all run by lying sociopaths
- and yet the global economy now hinges on a handful of AI or AI-adjacent companies
- many corporate types are now convinced they don’t need real human labor anymore, and treat the working class accordingly
- AI is an incredible force multiplier for scamming/spamming
- hyperscaler data center build out is mathematically impossible, environmentally ruinous, and harmful to your health
- LLMs are literally making us stupider
I think one under considered point is that no one would care about the drawbacks of AI if they felt like they lived in a country with actual leadership and a real vision for a better future. I think most of us fee like we live in a country full of vampires who are desperately running low on human cattle to feed on.
nah i’d still be mad about low effort low quality garbage that people spew all over from copypasting wrong information they could’ve spent five seconds looking up to vibe-coded projects that work for a minute or two and then crash, to videos with shit scripts and incorrect graphics, or long emails they didn’t care enough to write so i shouldn’t be expected to read.
yeah most things people make are crap because most people aren’t creative professionals but drastically lowering the work it takes to shit in my mouth and eyes has made everything drastically worse.
Lemmy is part of the Fediverse, and generally, people that are part of this space along with the general more libre-focused FOSS community are focused on the ethical, environmental and socio-economic effects of Generative AI than most. Currently, it is that this ‘AI’ space is dominated by big tech companies that are not too kind to open source anyway such as Alphabet Google, Microsoft-OpenAI and Claude, and currently, these affect the internet in the English-speaking space the most, which whatever your position is on the tech itself, you agree that there must be ‘something’ done to stem the tide that comes from in general, big tech takeover of our digital space and AI is a part of their destructive practices. These capitalist companies only exasperate the issue anyway, there is some (hotly debated) would-be benefits, especially in programming spaces and generally the LLM part, I don’t have an educated guess so I am not making one but until I personally think, that the veneer of AI / LLMs as this tech brought from the most complex data-centers of multibillion dollar companies into a technology that everyone can understand what it’s useful and what isn’t, and generally democratizing it. I don’t personally use a lot of AI / LLMs, but being in the programming / writing space will make me bump into it and so I eventually learn some quirks and details through that.
Thank you for your reasonable and thoughtful response clarifying your stance and view.
Tech companies are obsessed with generating code, with the ultimate goal of automating software engineers, a career that’s so far been both high demand and high salary. However, the code LLMs produce is generally worse than human written code, and LLM architected software is universally worse than human architected. There is a gargantuan amount of tech debt building up and oceans of new faults being introduced as executives force developers to push code out faster, code that nobody wrote and nobody reviewed. They’re fucked when prices on tokens rise.
I’ve been a software engineer for over thirty years, with a bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering, and a Master’s in Machine Learning. I love AI, and can’t help but point out how silly all the hate is - even though it gets me nothing but downvotes. People say it’s unethical, but what IS ethical? Certainly not the rare earth electronics built in polluting factories we use AI on, nor the likely dirty electricity used to power them. LLM are wonderfully powerful, useful things and I think they should be embraced - at least until Capitalism itself falls, and our civilizations along with it.
I dont need a reason to not like something. For instance, I have never met you IRL or interacted with you online AFAIK, but I dislike you alot.
