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.

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!

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.

AI got tons of money from investors they will eventually want ROI… this why they are trying to force it down our throats

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Most things are nothing more than smoke and mirrors to get your money. Tech especially. Welcome to end stage capitalism.

I was reading a book the other day, a science fiction book from 2002 (Kiln People), and the main character is a detective. At one point, he asks his house AI to call the law enforcement lieutenant at 2 am. His AI warns him that he will likely be sleeping and won't enjoy being woken. The mc insists, and the AI says ok, but I will have to negotiate with his house AI about the urgency of the matter.

Imagine that. Someone calls you at 2 am, and instead of you being woken by the ringing or not answering because the phone was on mute, the AI actually does something useful and tries to determine if the matter is important enough to wake you.

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.

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.

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.

Most obviously OpenAI is still burning money like crazy and they also start offering porn AI as everyone else. 🤷‍♂️ Sometimes the current AI is useful, but as long as the hallucinations and plain wrong answers are still a thing I don’t see it eliminating all jobs.

It’s unfortunate that they destroy the text and video part of the internet on the way. Text was mostly broken before, but now images and videos are also untrustworthy and will be used for spam and misinformation.

Like my parent's Amazon Echo with "Ask me what famous person was born this day."

Like, if you know that, just put it up on the screen. But the assistant doesn't work for you. Amazon just wants your voice to train their software.

To be fair, the internet was fucking everywhere once the dotcom bubble kicked off. Everyone had a website, and even my mum was like "Don't bother your dad, he's on the internet" like it was this massive thing.

Those trying to sell it are trying to figure out where it's most useful. In one way, I think it's an amazing technology, and I also wonder how it can be best used. However, I can't stand it being pushed on me, and I wish I could easily say no. Acrobat Reader is particularly unbearable with it. Trying to describe a drawing?? Ughhh. Waste of space and energy like nothing else.

Dealers give drugs for free until you're hooked...

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.

The more you use AI the more data you are providing it.

1. They want data in the hope they can train their data centre hosted LLM's to be accurate enough to take many jobs.
2. If they achieve this, and make every company and country dependent on their LLM, they rinse, and the former middle class is as fucked as the working class have been since 1980's de-industrialisation. You're either made redundant, or your job can now be done by a long line of redundant people.

It is a race to the bottom.

At least, this is one possible outcome. There is a decent chance their data centre hosted LLM's just won't be accurate enough for mass deployment.

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.