I think that it's an astute observation. AI wouldn't need to be hyped by those running AI companies if the value was self-evident. Personally I've yet to see any use beyond an advanced version of Clippy.

My top reasons I have no interest in ai:

• if it was great, it wouldn’t be pushed on us (like 3D TVs were)
• there is no accountability, so how can it be trusted without human verification which then means ai wasn’t needed
• environmental impact
• privacy/security degradation

If AI truly was the next frontier, we wouldn’t be staring at the start of another depression (or a bad recession). There would be a revolution of innovations and most people’s lives would improve.

AI has become a self-enfeeblement tool.

I am aware that most people are not analytically minded, and I know most people don't lust for knowledge. I also know that people generally don't want their wrong ideas corrected by a person, because it provokes negative feelings of self worth, but they're happy being told self-satisfying lies by AI.

To me it is the ultimate gamble with one's own thought autonomy, and an abandonment of truth in favor of false comfort.

Had the exact same thought. If it was revolutionary and innovative we would be praising it and actual tech people would love it.

Guess who actually loves it? Authoritarians and corporations. Yay.

It's advertising. It's shoved in your face so you use Copilot instead of Google.

I setup a brother all in one printer for my mother in law and it wanted to install software that loads at startup that pops up constantly with their printer toner sales and marketing.

As someone (forgot which blog I read it on, sorry) recently observed: if AI made software development so much easier, we'd be drowning in great new apps by now.

Some of the older lemmings here will remember what it was like when every company wanted to make a website, but they didn’t really have anything to put in there. People were curious to look at websites, because you hadn’t seen that many yet, so visiting them was kinda fun and interesting at first. After about a year, the novelty had worn off completely, and seeing YetAnotherCompanyName.com on TV or a road side billboard was beginning to get boring.

Did it ever get as infuriating the current AI hype though? I recall my grandma complaining about TV news. “They always tell me to read more online.” she says. I guess it can get just as annoying if you manage to successfully ignore the web for a few decades.

I've been wondering about a similar thing recently - if AI is this big, life-changing thing, why were there so little rumblings among tech-savy people before it became "mainstream"? Sure, Machine Learning was somewhat talked about, but very little of it seemed to relate to LLM-style Machine learning. With basically all other innovations technology, the nerds tended to have it years before everyone else, so why was it so different with AI?

The 0.001% have stolen $76,000,000,000,000 from US workers alone in the last 40 years.

AI is just a way for them to burn money rather than allow the poors to have a raise.

Long ago, I'd make a Google search for something, and be able to see the answer in the previews of my search results, so I'd never have to actually click on the links.

Then, websites adapted by burying answers further down the page so you couldn't see them in the previews and you'd have to give them traffic.

Now, AI just fucking summarizes every result into an answer that has a ~70% of being correct and no one gets traffic anymore and the results are less reliable than ever.

Make it stop!

A couple years ago I read a news article written by a woman who had just left her silicon valley career because she was one of the people forerunning the implementation of AI and it terrified her and she saw how bad it was and the long-lasting implications on society and she bailed out due to conscientious objections.

LLMs are a really cool toy, I would lose my shit over them if they weren't a catalyst for the whole of western society having an oopsie economic crash moment.

Exactly.

TL;DR

4 layers of stupidification. The (possibly willfully) ignorant user, the source bias, the bias/agenda of the media owner, then shitty AI.

AI should be a backup to human skill and not a replacement for it. It isn’t good enough, and who knows when or if it will ever be at a reasonable cost. The problem with the current state of AI is that it’s being sold as a replacement for many human jobs and knowledge. 30-40 years ago we had to contend with basic human bias and nationalism filtering facts and news before it got to the end user, then we got the mega-media companies owned by the ultra wealthy who consolidated everything and injected yet more bias with the internet and social media but at least you got provided with multiple sources, now we have AI being pushed as a source that can be programmed to use biased sources and/or objectively wrong sources that people don’t even bother checking another source about. AI should be used to find unique solutions to medical research, materials design, etc. Not whether or not microwaving your phone is a good idea.

They want it to be the next step in controlling and raping the masses. That's why they're shoving it down our throats.

I suggest keeping your mouth closed tightly, and not engaging in any way with it. We should all see these early reports of the most vulnerable amongst us becoming obsessed with their AI relationships as a huge warning--red banners and klaxons sounding. Run! RUN! Run far away and stay there.

Canva just announced the next generation of Affinity. Instead of giving us Linux support, while Affinity is “free” now they crammed in a bunch of AI to upsell you on a subscription.

This is some amazing insight. 100% correct. This is an investment scam, likely an investment bubble that will pop if too many realize the truth.

AI at this stage is basically just an overrefined search engine, but companies are selling it like its JARVIS from Iron Man.

I don't know if the printer analogy is a good one but I'm down with what you're saying. The rise of GUI in the early days really did push printing in extreme ways