I know this is a shitpost but I would like to share two examples that shocked me about how bad AI use is.
One, at a young scholars conference everyone was glued to their computers. When panelists gave their talks then got asked questions I watched them all put the questions into AI before answering. What even is the point of talking if you cannot answer about your own research! AI definitely cannot answer for me, it’s insane.
Two, as I was leaving Japan this week I watched a woman in front of me ask gemini how Japanese people can afford to live and why they shop so much, lol. I just thought, you can literally ask any person you have a brief connection with. But rather than learn something in Japan you ask AI? As her husband comes over she then tells him all about what AI said. They seemed to be about 30.
TLDR: I read over peoples’ shoulders 20-30 years ago olds use AI in very disturbing ways, choosing to regurgitate rather than learn.
Speaks a lot about quality and necessity of research when AI already has all the answers.
Also I wonder if these people can be reasonably called scholars if they don’t have the actual knowledge.
Like, I know this doesn’t sit well with many Lemmy folks, but LLMs do have reasonable use in science. For example, they’re amazing at contextual search, they can find what I’m looking for even if it’s buried into walls of text of an obscure 2003 article as a sidenote. Combined with traditional search, this allows me as a junior scientist to better check what’s already been discovered, and identify real gaps of knowledge, not what I personally didn’t find.
They can also be useful when brainstorming concepts from the fields I had little experience with. Finding proper literature, breaking down jargon, and otherwise streamlining the study process. This allows to spend less time researching the widely known things on the subject, and dedicate more time to actual science, and also helps immensely with interdisciplinary research.
But that’s just that - finding well-known, long discovered things that you could miss. Any meaningful steps beyond it require strong grasp on the subject, and this only comes with processing everything through the actual brain. Miss that - and you’re just a machine parrot.
My mama was terrified of that shit to begin with. We’ve seen Terminator and idiocracy. We aint uninformed.
OP tell us how. Teach us your ways.
Recently I learned that plenty of people around me are also anti AI. I cried, felt like I was alone the whole time.
it really is isolating. yet another thing to punish the sloppers for.
Congrats, how did you do it OP?
I didn’t have to do anything. My parents tried ai once, saw how shit it was with their own eyes, and turned it off.
I envy you dude/dudette… i dont understand how so many people around me is embelezed by it… someone even compared it to the introduction of the first personal computers. I feel like I’m surrounded by idiots…
I feel that was always the case and AI exacerbated the issue
I feel like if more people tried AI in early days, we wouldn’t have all these clowns selling us shit that’s not real.
Until they send you funny christmas slop comics
It’s so weird. It’s a thing that talks but doesn’t have thoughts. That’s a fucking cryptid, right there. Nevermind that the people who own them are mentally unstable enemies of society.
I’m currently taking a beginners python course and one of the chapter project examples breaks down basic sentence structure based on parts like nouns, prepositions, etc. The idea is to make several dictionaries based on these sentence parts with different words associated with them and then randomly pick words from them in the right order to make a cohesive (although not always intelligible) sentence. I figure most LLMs use a much bigger version of that with even more defined dictionaries to better encapsulate certain responses based on the topic.
There’s nothing in that kind of program structure that would even come close to implying it’s alive. LLMs are just a fancy version of Mad Libs.
With LLM, the dictionaries come from the training data, and training also says what’s the most probable link between a word and the next word.
I recommend trying to make your own Markov chain based chatbot. You can produce grammaticality correct nonsense just by using raw probability and without even attempting to categorize words as nouns or verbs. All you need is a dataset to build your probabilistic model… Sounds familiar?
I’m not a CS major and I don’t know exactly how LLMs work but I think you will find Markov chains interesting and highly relevant.
The sad part is how easily people are blinded. The emperors new clothes is really the best story there is.
Even worse if it’s malicious of course, weaponizing this.
It’s alive! It fighting for survival! It’s doing things on its own! Sigh
We have had better games doing this.
we had better video games doing this in the 90s
This is meeeee
I’ve successfully convinced my boomer MAGA parents that Gen AI is evil af. Which is honestly such a surprise and a relief, as I watch other friends with boomer parents who are addicted to talking to chatbots.
those friends don’t have parents anymore.
It sure looks that way. I even have friends who are losing other friends to chatbots.
It’s got me reading all the research there is to know about how LLMs affect people, and trying to throw together a list of resources to give to people when they tell me about their loved ones getting addicted to Gen AI.
grief counseling?
I hope I could do this…
They probably just started agreeing with you in an effort to get you to shut up about it.
