People like to say that "AI" is different from crypto in that there are actual useful applications, and that's true. But the vast majority of people you're expecting to come up with those applications are the same people who were just trying to build products on the blockchain.
I kind of understood this, but it's getting clearer to me. The kind of people who build good thoughtful products are going to be disproportionately put off by AI and the surrounding culture, leaving the field largely to scammers and magical thinkers. And the ensuing flood of shit isn't neutral. Actual good stuff gets lost. I really think this kind of hype is bad for real innovation.
i agree with you. I'm worried about the flood of garbage coming.
Get ready for automated police and hiring racism, even more arbitrary health insurance and loan denials, and the general return of social Darwinism.
That's the major thing I see LLMs contributing, along with generally making nearly all written material useless filler garbage.
Yup the inextricable racism.
Also it'll give a lot of cover to deliberate racism; that's my guess.
@misc Totally agree. As if the web wasn't completely kaputt before, now we're being swamped with generated zero-effort, zero-use nonsense all the time.
I'm really thinking hard about the consequences and one of them is that I think the web as we know it really will dwindle in the coming years.
Many knowledgeable people have suggested that blogging will come back, and I kind of hope so, but I think we really don't know what human nature will prefer in terms of *actual* authenticity.
@ftranschel @misc
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AdSense took it away. Google didn't have to start linking only to pages built to serve the ads from another division of the conglomerate. They killed their own golden goose.
@ftranschel I'm more optimistic given how much people seem to want to return to a more small but genuine internet of the early 00s. The internet as we know it might not survive but that aspect, the need for people to share themselves to the world, that won't go away.
@nini Sure, for you and me that might very well be the case. But Instagrammers and TikTokers out there, I'm *not* optimistic...
It's truly amazing to see overhyped tech from a decade ago turn up unheralded in, like, sex toys.
@Dseitz lol wait you can't just leave that there without saying more
I did recently see a voice activated dildo in passing on some social feed.
@misc I think this is true of chatbot style models, their equivalent for visual and sound outputs and anything that is "generalised". However the really niche stuff like protein folding is different despite using fundamentally the same techniques. I do suspect that the cross over in workforce is probably very small though.
@misc Yes. Forbes has predicted a financial crash caused by the adoption of AI (not explicitly AI itself) within 10 years. I've warned work of several exploitable vectors if used for resume/CV evaluation in HR. (Guarantee your resume is #1, always, for any job.)
I appear to be alone at my corporation in being weary of the technology rather than diving head-first. Slapped a co-worker for asking ChatGPT about a specific solution instead of Google about the problem. Wrong answer v. first result.
@xWood4000 @misc Well, I used "Google" in the generalized dictionary sense. I personally use DDG, though did develop some concern over their reversal on the "not filtering your results" aspect. Regardless of the particular reason.
I like stable result ordering. Makes result sets sharable, or, at least, simultaneously experienceable.
This is beautifully said. I have been thinking similarly about writing since AI came on to the scene, but you have put it more succinctly.
To borrow from your quote, “The kind of people who are good writers are going to be disproportionately put off by AI and the surrounding culture, leaving the field largely to scammers and magical thinkers.”
As a designer it's rocket fuel.
It takes maybe a month to design and build a 3d object fully..with full exploration..which is what takes time.
With ai I can do the base design and then quickly get 100 variations and pick the best bits of each. repeat..
The result will be more advanced because you have effectively iterated more. Design quality largely comes down to the amount of iterations.
The designer could do the same thing, mostly, but time is an enemy.
Design will improve.
@LewisHarrington I'm curious what tools you're using... I don't know much about 3D modeling. Do you mean like using image generators for inspiration, or are there purpose built features in your modeling tools, analogous to something like Gitlab Copilot?
I think he's just talking about inspiration. I went looking because, yeah, a workflow that took text and output CAD files one could edit might be helpful.
https://mastodon.online/@LewisHarrington@mas.to/111749728039815654
@misc I use 2d drawing progams like Affinity designer.
This program uses quite simple shapes though.
The results are variable. It's a question of experimenting with the word prompts and using the generated images to photobash to create a design.
Once the 2d aspect is done I will build the output as a 3d model. I use Plasticity mostly to make the model.
I just found Krea a few days ago so it's all new really.
@misc oh yeah this is a point I made at the end of my recent paper -- "working in AI" has a field-specific culture itself and that culture has big problems. This isn't a new point of course re: diversity and exclusion in the field but the way it permeates into newly-formed societal field-specific ability beliefs is an area worth of study and scrutiny imo. We keep DOING this (same evolution in many parts of data science) with reliable bad outcomes
This is a really good insight. I had not thought of "AI" that way before, but you're right.