Gonna copy pasta one of my previous comments because it’s relevant again:
I’m going to argue that how you use the lying machine determines if it’s slop, not if you use it.
“Generate a character profile for Alexander the blacksmith.” Slop.
“Ask me questions about Alexander the blacksmith so I can further develop his character.” Not slop.
“Summarize everything I explained about Alexander the blacksmith in the format of a wiki article.” Could be slop, might not be, depends on how diligent you were about not letting the lying machine have creative control. Needs to be reviewed for accuracy of course.
And for the record, I was a DM for years before generative ai was a thing. Running a campaign is ton of work, even with shortcuts. Don’t insult your DM like this.
I’m going to argue that how you use the lying machine determines if it’s slop, not if you use it
Which is ironic of Lemmy to agree with OP because it is also here in Lemmy, where i learned about making the correct prompt to get the best out of AI!
There should be a way to acknowledge two things being true at the same time, but that way was never discovered on Lemmy.
“AI is mostly bad” and “AI can be useful at times” are both true statements. You sacrifice nothing by acknowledging both, and thinking you have to pick between the two is, ironically, mentally lazy af.
Most people agree that there are legitimate applications for LLM technology, like in the medical field. This comes up every single thread.
Then you have trillions of dollars of investment on the promise of eroding worker power, and letting capital enunciate itself without labour. That’s what it’s essentially all for.
The “legitimate” uses of the technology are not even a passing concern for investors except insofar as they can point to it to excuse their grift.
What is the legitimate use for LLMs in the medical field?
Like medical research, discovering drugs, folding proteins. There’s also evidence they can be used to help analyse x-rays.
LLMs don’t do those things. Do you know what an LLM is?
Rightrightright, I mean they can help with that stuff by churning though large sets of data or by statistical analysis to look for early signs of cancer, etc.
I’m not a researcher and I don’t use them myself, but I know a thing or two about how LLMs work. Could be you could school me though if you know a lot.
I’m just saying the models used in medical imaging and protein folding, to use your examples, are not LLMs, but very different dedicated medical imaging models or protein folding models. Still falls under the overarching umbrella of AI/ML, but not really any more relevant to language models. LLMs also aren’t a very relevant tool for big data or statistical analysis. Even with an agent harness, they could be used to write scripts that a human could also write, but couldn’t directly do any sort of reliable statistical analysis.
Oh OK I wasn’t aware of that. Actually I wondered as I was writing my comment how an LLM would compare to more tightly fitted model.
Well there goes my one example. Is there anything they’re legitimately good for? I’ll admit they seem good at finding “fuzzy” connections, and their text and image generation capabilities are impressive even if they aren’t my cup of tea—mostly because of the externalities.
You say most people believe this, but I see many people every day for weeks now claiming Linux is vibecoded now. Why? Three stories: 1) months ago LLM use was not outright banned in kernel development 2) Linus admitted to using LLMs in an experimental branch to find and patch bugs 3) a recent shift in attitude happened, toward LLM-driven PRs because there were too many, and the reaction from Linus and the other maintainers was to raise the bar for submitting PRs to reduce the chance of slop wasting people’s time.
All of this was a series of level headed responses and course corrections which at no time was indicative of anything more than LLMs are useful sometimes. Yet people all over Lemmy are saying shit like “Linux is all in on vibecoding”. Besides that issue, I’ve seen and been involved in many conversations where idiots will say that any use of AI is super unethical and unacceptable. The binary thinking on this issue is strong on here.
Ah well I agree I would Linux love maintainers to take a more principled stance against LLM contributions given all the negative externalities of the technology as it exists today.
there’s a strong case to be made that there is no way to use the current “frontier” models ethically because of how they were trained and who their patrons are. I would love to see that acknowledged.
So you are on the side of binary thinking, in the end. Cool.
What makes you think that? I am on no side. I’m just trying to be objective. Everything I said is factually borne out afaik.
Also
you are on the side of
binary thinking
Lol now you’re just playing with me, very funny ;p
You thought you were being subtle but if your response to an extremist viewpoint is “yes they make a good point” you’re not getting it but you do seem to want to definitely take a side.
“I’m just being objective but your point isn’t worth addressing while the thought process you take issue with is totally valid”
I’m not trying to be subtle, I’m trying to be open. Clearly we’ve each got our opinions and I think I’ve been very upfront with mine. You’re right I don’t think being against this technology qualifies as an “extremist” position anymore then being against cloud computing or Nvidia are extreme takes.
Anyway you didn’t even try me. I’m elsewhere in this thread talking about the legitimate uses for LLMs. Not everything is as black vs white, clanker vs luddite, as you’re making it.
“Asbestos is extremely toxic” and “asbestos can be useful and irreplacable at times” are both true. So are “lead is poisonous” and “tetraetillead is an effective anti-knocking agent, lead in solder stops tin whiskers from forming, and lead paint is pretty”.
Also that’s how racism got normalized again, after getting closer to putting it back into the cemetery of history. And so is every LGBTQ±phobia you can name. Or even better: the tobacco industry, the alcohol industry, and the gambling industry all promote “responsible use” of their products.
Are you seriously considering people on the internet should start acknowledging nuance? Smh.
I just want to be angry and right - and personally insult you; even though I know nothing about you outside of a sentence or two that I just read.
It is sad that your comment’s second half is 100% accurate for seemingly most users
Using it as a tool to speed up your own work is completely different from passing off its work as yours or using it to do someone else’s work
Right… do you think I disagree?
Just additive
Reminder: the term “bouncing off ideas” was pushed by AI evangelists to get artists to use chatbots.
Why do they only draw the unicorns female. I’ve never seen unicorn dong.
That’s because you’re unattractive to unicorns.
This hurt my self esteem more than I ever expected it could
:(
Doubt
if you’d like to change that, e621 has tons of examples.
Oh my. You weren’t kidding. I searched unicorn and yeah, teems of examples.
Also interesting...
Lots of examples of furry art with equine-anatomically-correct dong. Animal genitals on anthos is a common red line for platforms that are furry-tolerant but not furry-friendly.
I fucking love e621, almost anything is allowed, and if you don’t want to see something then just put that tag in your blocklist. The tagging system is robust as fuck, and bad tagging (like you’d see on literally every other platform) is socially unacceptable.
I was just reminded of Robot Unicorn Attack looking at this post.
Great mobile game
But like… in a bad way.
Okay but have you considered I don’t care how I get my job done as long as the paycheck keeps coming.
Okay but have you considered the brain is a muscle that needs exercise to stay healthy and functional and offloading “thinking” makes your brain weaker?
Okay but have you considered I only apply my brain to fun and exciting problems, and the ones at work get the clanker?
have you considered the brain is a muscle
Kinda undermines your point when you start with a completely untrue statement.
You use your brain at work? Ppffff. Overachiever.
Do you tell yourself that as you get out your compass and paper maps on the way to a new city.
Land navigation is an important skill. You wouldn’t let such an important skill atrophy would you?
Honestly, navigation is an insanely satisfying skill to work on. Navigation without GPS fills an instinctual bucket that makes no sense to me. Letting it atrophy is a big failure in becoming a functioning adult imo.
I actually agree, I just feel it’s the same hyperbolic argument every time a new technology makes something else (situationally) obsolete.
Knowing how live off the land was once common. It can still be useful. It is even fun for some (to learn, if not do). Yet… Here we are with a vast majority of our population devoid of those skills. It will keep happening.
This is complicated by the fact that to gain advantage (or just maintain relevance) in a complex and changing society, you need to be learning the new skills that leverage new technology. Yet systems become more complex, specialized roles are needed, and we simply can’t learn it all.
Enter the database of all information and a technology capable of quickly searching and extracting information with relevant context. Learn to use it to your advantage, or don’t…
I think its more, roles that didn’t need specialty skills are being removed by a very dumb tool that dumb people think is amazing. It seems amazing if you dont understand the thing you are asking it to do.
Living off the land is a great example. I grow ~10% of my food in a large garden, mostly tomatos, apples, pears, and peppers. Most people dont know how hard and specialized it is to do this. When we lost power for a week 2 years ago, we were totally fine. Provided food to our neighbors, no issues. Because of our time spent learning how to grow and preserve food.
I’d argue allowing the offloading of the simple specializations AI can handle makes an overall more useless person.
I have a small garden, know how to grow crops, and grow hydroponics as a hobby (I have off grid solar, battery back up, and could upscale operation if needed).
So I do get where you’re coming from.
I also have an offline information repository and off line local LLM that could help someone (with less skills than me) maintain/upscale or build a similar system, as well as provide many other skill sets I don’t have or am less competent in.
So the technology is useful to those who know how to use it.
(I have a strong science and medical skill set, and a hobby level skill set for network/computer science, electrical work, and gardening… So ymmv. Point being, I use all tools and skills available, and if something happens to me, the LLM is better than nothing for those that don’t, and can greatly accelerate learning new skills if used correctly, even a relatively stupid open weights model is like a super search engine that can translate language (and tech speak to normy).
It’s one of those things I know is hard to explain. Similar to the covid pandemic, I kept saying “I want to read the papers 10 years in the future”. I want to know what happens after the hype and actual science of the impact something has becomes available.
I’m extremely skeptical that a tool that offloads basic critical thought and brainstorming will be good for society as a whole. I use it sparingly, but it usually wastes my time. Except for summarizing things it is good at that.
I think it will collapse into normalcy in a few years, and it will be moderately useful. The stealing it does is also a major problem.
As a strange example, I asked Gemini a question similar to my published thesis. It stole directly from my these with no attributions.
Exercise yes. Daily 8hr forced deathmarch, not so much.
The brain is a muscle… really? I wonder where you heard that. Probably a person. Maybe you should fact check that with AI next time.
Noone says that asking a person a question is offloading their thinking. But if you ask AI it is? How does that work?
Of course, that’s why I sum my spreadsheets by hand with pen and paper and then enter the total back into the sheet
You jest but I’ve seen people do this because they didn’t want to use their brain to discover the most basic functions of excel
Using software versus typing in “do the whole thing for me” has some differences, maybe a little nuance is an important thing here. Maybe…
Is that artist in the room with us?
I’m alright with that, as long as I can wear a chicken costume.
Baby Brent?
Hehe, Guzzetta.
(“guz” in my language is “butt cheek”, “guza” is “butt”)
deleted by creator
Could we get the message across without the kink-shaming?
That completely disregards the humiliation fetishists. Way to kink shame.
No. It is required. (seriously, why is everything being shoe-horned into “kink shaming”?)
You brainstorm with the robot. Like you brainstorm with a rubber duck.
Bingo! Brainstorming is the one thing LLMs excel at. I also use ChatGPT for find words or terms I’ve forgotten or don’t know. Just found “availability heuristic” this morning. (It’s the reason the internet has ruined our perceptions of risk.)
