@Gargron 💯💯💯 yup totally agree. It's like the Bitcoin and block chain era. Companies are looking for a problem that Gen AI will solve. Machine Learning on its own has better applications.

@Gargron AI is a buzzword. In reality we’re talking high-level applied statistics only now achievable by the computational power we now have at our own expense. Corporations riding this wave will only cause destruction blinded by an immediate need for profit.

@Gargron Sad to see you have this take.

@Gargron I partly agree with you , although I would not be as negative and I certainly see many area where AI is insanely magic and of great value for society.

When it comes to GPT style AI however I think we have to ask ourselves why we should want to delegate creative and joyful work to computers. Expressing our thoughts and feelings using text, still and moving imagery ultimately defines who we are, where we come from and where we will go to. This is hard work for a reason.

@Gargron I've lost count of how many people I've blocked, including people I used to follow, who don't understand just how bad everything to do with generative AI, and AI in general, actually is for the environment, artists rights, and data privacy. It's alarming how many just go "Haha look, funny picture" and then dismiss all the problems out of hand.

@Gargron It’s bad search without the references needed to see how bad it is

@Gargron Agreed about despising companies that sell people's data to train AIs.

How do you feel about companies that just _give_ the data to other companies that use it to train AIs?

@Gargron https://mastodon.social/@hdante/112005788719332437

@Gargron In our company "AI" is now a buzzword as well. And sadly people don't realize that these LLMs that we are now supposed to use are highly unreliable. Just remember the case with the LLM based chatbot that Air Canada used that provided false data, which resulted in a court case that Air Canada lost.

Especially LLMs are a nice tool to - for example - improve your writing or to translate text into foreign languages. But you never should rely on anything from them.

@Gargron

I'm all for using it for pattern recognition, and as a tool of discovery with solid scientific process, with ethical data sourcing and management.

But the stuff that's getting hyped now? If you can't sustain your business model without theft, then your business shouldn't exist.

There is actually amazing important work that uses ML/AI, and it's getting tarnished with the same brush. Which is also tragic.

On my instance, we require a CW for any discussion of AI on our Local Timeline

@Gargron We're nowhere near HAL9000 and we all know how THAT went in "2001".

@Gargron AI is just another tool for capitalists to accumulate wealth and economic power faster and lossless as you don't need workers anymore.

@Gargron

Can we and how do we block all AI from our content on our Wordpress sites?

@Gargron yep 👍🏻 #NoAi

@Gargron There is increasingly room for “the small guy” to tune existing open source models (not using other people’s work) to solve their problems without burning down a rainforest. (See fast ai and Jeremy Howard.) Bubble aside, there is some genuine good in it and hopefully it will come to predominate the bad kind. Unlike crypto where it’s all bad.

@Gargron I suggest you browse “21 lessons for the 21st century” for well-researched analysis of how AI will be beneficial to ordinary consumers, in medical services, food, entertainment, government. The book came out six years ago so it’s not influenced by the current AI craze. The current AIs are crude toys, like the first of any human discovery. AI’s could generate movies for your preferred level of violence, romance and plots. I will pay for an AI to generate good Star Wars movies for me.

@Gargron So far, it’s been more or less a hobby of mine. The programmer and computer scientist in me is more fascinated by how it works internally and what I can make it do than in the output it generates; meanwhile, the creative spirit in me is more interested in what it synthesises out of the large amounts of digital art I’ve created, edited, composited, et cetera, and fed into it.

Point is, these two things don’t have to exist in opposition.

@Gargron I hate it when I realise, that I was chatting with a support bot. Companies try to be more efficient this way, but they should just offer decent phone call support!

@Gargron I dislike that people use the term "AI" for LLMs. It's not at all general artificial intelligence, it's just a smarter box.

@Gargron Interesting phrasing: »I don't respect people who use generative AI.« That will be my favourite contra against AI, together with the political contra that it's meant and already used for surveillance and oppression.

And we talk about AI at the expense of all the other problems that need solving (or solutions that need promoting) in tech.

@Gargron @joncounts

@Gargron 🙌🙌🙌🙌

@Gargron Oppression breeds rebellion

@Gargron As the internet is flooded with AI-generated content, AI could eventually destroy itself (see "model collapse"). I wouldn't be surprised if the AI bubble bursts just like the dot-com bubble did back in 2000.

@Gargron

@Gargron The Current AI reminds me of FTTC (Fibre to the cabinet) broadband being sold as "Fibre" which is now causing confusion as they're rolling out actual Fibre to the premises.

So when we get the next generation of AI that's actually a bit more intelligent are we going to get the whole "That AI thing we sold you last week, yeah that's not really AI, how about our new shiny really is AI this time?)

@Gargron I believe much of it is for short term profits. Companies know they can always rehire humans back and because of the potential desperation for jobs at that time, they will offer low pay, creating even more disparity between humans. Humans need to get ahead and stop supporting AI sellout companies. Delete accounts and be loud about it so the companies hear it. Humans need to work together on this one. This time it’s not political.

@Gargron "I feel the same way about the Apple Vision Pro. I'm going to struggle to keep a straight face if I see people using the Apple Vision Pro out in public."😂

@Gargron chatgpt: It's understandable that you have reservations about AI. It's a complex topic with various ethical concerns, including data privacy and job displacement. Balancing the benefits and risks of AI development is crucial for responsible innovation.

@Gargron

@Gargron I feel there are good use-cases, but it seems to be applied as if it’s an uni-hammer and everything is a nail. At some point there will be a realisation, I bet, and disillusionment. Then, the ones who applied it efficiently will continue raking value while the ones with a firehose will quickly fall. Like dot-com.

@Gargron Folks said similar about steam engines. With as much justification. They enriched some and killed others. And yet .....

@Gargron It's not even AI, that's just a marketing misnomer. Interesting algorithms, but no intelligence.

@Gargron AI is just complicated computer programs - no matter what claims are made these programs cannot become complex creative or intelligent - they are purely derivative - they can analyze, predict(?) and regurgitate quickly and will replace the work of many people but the real horror will be when people in power give these AI programs the power to make autonomous decisions based on half baked algorithms - and in a real world all algorithms are only ever half baked and facile.

@Gargron 💯

@Gargron Excellent post. I’m only familiar with it from the point of view of a writer-researcher. I wrote a separate thread about my experience (probably too long, multiple posts) which in my inexperienced way backs up what I read in your thread and (I hope) expands it a bit. https://mastodon.social/@VirginiaLady16/112014635702749149

@Gargron On a personal level I really enjoy generative AI. On a societal level I think it needs to be handled carefully and regulated so people aren't put out of jobs, or so that there's a safety net if your job is affected.
I've been trying out chatgpt and it's hilariously bad at certain tasks and gets a lot of details wrong in the domains that I know a lot about.
It's nice to have black-and-white hot takes, but reality is gray.

@Gargron I fully agree with one exception:

I’ve found the generative fill in Photoshop quite useful when I’ve needed to expand a photo (for example), such as turning a landscape into a portrait image or adding a bit of extra room where I’d want to crop something - things like that. Thats the only “AI” stuff I’d actually miss.

All of the rest of it is hell and can burn in a fire though. 🤣

@Gargron
#AI is another gimmick of the capitalist utopia of endless upward profits. If we project ourself in the future who do you think the capitalist system will keep exploiting? The machine or the human? The capitalist system will always fall back in profiting from human labour. And yes jobs will be lost but AI will not be the cornerstone of the capitalist system.

@Gargron Could not agree more!

@Gargron Oofff. I hope you never used Google Translate because I wouldn't want you to lose your self-respect.

What a dumb take.

@Gargron robber barons gonna rob

@Gargron I agree with all of this

@Gargron
It's just another episode of capitalist bullshit that promises better but it will be worse as usual apart from ceo pay

@Gargron The bit I can't figure out, by the time the companies are peddling AI doing everything... What are we even going to be getting out of bed, or staying alive for?

@Gargron

The goal of every technological advancement has always been to work smarter and not harder. Progress always has meant to achieve more results, better results, faster results, with less effort, and less cost.

To that end, we cannot unlearn and uninvent AI anymore than we can the splitting of the atom. But we can decide what AI will be used for or we can fight it every step of the way and a small group will decide for us.

We will need universal basic income (ubi) along the way.

@Gargron

Maybe creating more effective spam and stealing digital art aren't all people are doing with AI.

*Looks at users with #disabilities making use of generative AI to give themselves speech/hearing/vision capabilities they didn't have before.*

Maybe we shouldn't draw profound character judgements from a person's use of software.

#AI #accessibility

@Gargron I have set up filters to guard against AI and so far they appear to be working. Having a system of filters is the best thing about Mastodon.

@Gargron It is ridiculous.

@Gargron hmm..... just to be clear, you say that Generative AI will not benefit humanity in the long term -- Did I get that right?
Or are you more worried about the complexity aspect of AI? things like "How did the AI come to conclusion XYZ?" the answer to which usually is "some inexplicable mathematical logic based on trained data".
Are you worried about incomprehensible complexity or just the existence of AI/Generative? Which is it?

@Gargron It isn't that the consequences aren't apparent. It's that the people making money from it aren't going to stop because of something so unprofitable as ethics.

@Gargron The sad truth, there's no going back. Two choices remain, use it or don't. Neither option is good or bad, it will be about how to move forward.

@Gargron AI = let’s do wacky shit that’s cool to no purpose…. It will never be more useful than finding the prices of potatoes

@Gargron agreed. its net horrible for majority of humanity. and I refuse to be gaslit by hypesters talking up their book position

@Gargron butlerian jihad when?

@Gargron Doesn't matter what we care for, or how honest were are in a given moment, it's not going away.

@Gargron
Bruh to be honest I'm glad I found someone who shares the same opinion as me. The consequences of the "AI REVOLUTION" will be much more than what we anticipate...
Or I'm just paranoid about them after watching a lot of movies.. But still I always firmly belive that an AI can never be able to make choices like us cause sometimes choosing emotions are better than logical stuff. Plus the fact that our data will be used to train such AI's is very concerning.

@Gargron Agreed

@Gargron agreed, though zi think the consequences are pretty easily apparent fit those who know how it works and how it is trained.

@Gargron
the fact that you call it AI means you bought the talking points meme without understanding the tech. There is nothing artificial or intelligent about a Large Language model... it is a tool to sort and transform information... it does nothing you do not tell it to, just because you dont understand the instruction set (they are mostly too damn big for granular understanding) doesnt mean there isnt one... please do despise the companies selling their snake oil

@Gargron I wholeheartedly disagree. The #AI hype is just that, one of countless tech hypes that have made IT what it is today.

But apart from the usual marketing nonsense, AI is here to stay and if I look for example how useful AI is when it comes to debugging or explaining complex code, then I'm more than impressed.

The main thing I dislike is the naming: AI has nothing to do with intelligence, it's just maths being applied to problems in ways that we never imagined before.

@Gargron I bet you wouldn’t have any issue with AI being able to spot a (hypothetical) cancer in your scan, or it having taken a leading role in the development of a life saving medication you might need. Would you?

@Gargron How could generative AI help you make Mastodon a better platform?

@Gargron In order to retain my sanity, I separated in my mind AI *technology* from AI *business*.

AI technology is yes, promising and it's a new kind of machine, that now does interpretation. It changes things.

AI business is composed by either:
- reformed cryptobros, now AI bros
- AI industries peddling regulatory capture (we need $ to contain this beast)
- desperate industries looking for a light at the end of the tunnel
- enshittified industries justifying layoffs

@Gargron personally, it has demonstrated that all my concerns about what would happen if we managed to create a real AGI are completely justified

It'll be a complete disaster

@Gargron Alexa, create a picture of Isaac’s Asimov looking at a picture in an AI’s studio of an AI sad that someone hates AI

@Gargron

“Respect” is a loaded term.

That being said, always use air-quotes around “AI”: https://www.superversive.co/blog/air-quotes-for-ai

@Gargron I use generative AI everyday on Mastodon to add descriptions to pictures so my posts can be appreciated by the blind. 🍸🐈 I nearly never need to correct the generated description and it is often more informative than what I would write🍸😺

@Gargron there is so much more to the field of AI than generative AI. AI research has been done since the 60ies of the previous century. It has brought us so much that people take for granted. It is helping in many fields, from medicine to education to agriculture.

Is generative AI overhyped and bad for the planet? Yes. Should we discount the whole field of AI because of that? No, that’s just a dumb take. I think you are smarter than that.

@Gargron agreed

@Gargron There can be good consequences also. Like people (and not only hollywood and friends) being able to create entertainment.

They maybe want to paint it in a bad color in part because of that.

@Gargron
If it didn't help the 1% to take even more food off your table they wouldn't even fund it.

@Gargron I use it for one thing. Pulling usable info out of obscene amounts of documentation.