Disliking AI is fine and good. But that is a really dumb argument.
“60 employees who can’t be productive without the internet? And this is progress?”
“60 employees who can’t be productive without computers? And this is progress?”
“60 scribes who can’t be productive without clay tablets? And this is progress?”
Etc.
Edit: LLMs/AI are going to change some things. They are going to make (shitty) coding and various automations much more accessible. They are probably not a revolutionary technology like computers/internet, but that they could be a core part of some people’s workflow is absolutely not unthinkable. It has been shown that there have not, so far, been major boons to productivity on the whole, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have some use cases.
AI is a non essential tool. Anything that a chatbot produces, can and should be achievable by a human with access to the same sources of information. Anyone hired to do a specialist job, who cannot perform without access to AI, should be summarily fired because their output would be indistinguishable from that of their LLM of choice.
In contrast, the Internet (as massive interconnected network), computers, even books, enable humans to deal with information in ways impossible to achieve without them, and help augment us. Reading feeds your brain. Computers are a window to creativity. AI does nothing of the sort, in fact I believe it does the opposite, pushing us to outsource our thinking processes while making us feel smart, undeservedly.
It is an argument against the false comparison I was responding to, no more. Although the fact AI companies can’t seem to create a profitable or finished product even with subsidies, points to other issues I have not addressed
You people are like flat earthers with this AI hatred.
It’s genuinely fascinating and useful. You’re allowed to hate the companies and evil behind it, but the kid in me is still enthralled by this technology.
I’m pretty sure the reason tech employees hate it so much is because it’s an existential threat to their profession. If it wasn’t, they wouldn’t spend so much time talking about it.
In the military we have a maintenance tracking system. It’s electronic. We literally bdo drills for if it goes down and we have to resort to paper backups. And there are paper backups.
Without a computer I could still manage an entire flight line worth of planes, and everything they need. Maintenance, fueling, sorties, etc. What you’re telling me is that this company and lots of companies do not have a contingency for if there is a system failure or other outage.
That seems acceptable? Why? Short of a power outage (and probably not even then unless we can’t Jerryrig a lighting solution) we can do all the jobs required with hand tools. It’s crazy to think that people don’t think this should be a thing.
Yeah, ok. But the military is explicitly supposed to keep functioning when the backend gets nuked literally. Who wants to pay for that kind of redundancy just so that some people can watch Netflix while they’re dying of radiation poisoning?
Hopefully companies relying on other companies like crowdstrike.
What are we paying for if not to have things work and have backups? I have so many questions about the companies you give your money to and what you think you’re getting in return?
Like. I feel like there’s a lot of jobs where email could fail/crash and work could still be done. The whole company shouldn’t just shut down because the AI is down. It shouldn’t shut down because email is down. That’s not just poor planning it’s really poor business practice.
What did they do before the AI? Why (when considering how temperamental LLMs can be) would anyone trust it to such an extent that you’re dead in the water if it fails?
Uhhhh computers and Internet aren’t essential either. But they did speed up a lot of things and make new things possible.
There’s nothing I use AI for that I couldn’t do myself, but AI can do most things faster and a few things better than me (LLMs that is. Image generators do all their things better than me because I can’t art, but I don’t use them at all).
If the Internet is down for a period of time at the office, I would expect that my dev team is able to continue working (assuming they’re not exclusively hitting a third party API). At least for a few hours, if not days. It might not be the same cadence, but I’m not about to send them home.
Computers are a tool; AI is an outsourcing. It’s the difference between a carpentry team not having saws, hammers, etc. and having the carpentry team unable to do work if Jose (the outsourced carpenter) doesn’t come in.
Disliking AI is fine and good. But that is a really dumb argument.
“60 employees who can’t be productive without the internet? And this is progress?”
“60 employees who can’t be productive without computers? And this is progress?”
“60 scribes who can’t be productive without clay tablets? And this is progress?”
Etc.
Edit: LLMs/AI are going to change some things. They are going to make (shitty) coding and various automations much more accessible. They are probably not a revolutionary technology like computers/internet, but that they could be a core part of some people’s workflow is absolutely not unthinkable. It has been shown that there have not, so far, been major boons to productivity on the whole, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have some use cases.
AI is a non essential tool. Anything that a chatbot produces, can and should be achievable by a human with access to the same sources of information. Anyone hired to do a specialist job, who cannot perform without access to AI, should be summarily fired because their output would be indistinguishable from that of their LLM of choice.
In contrast, the Internet (as massive interconnected network), computers, even books, enable humans to deal with information in ways impossible to achieve without them, and help augment us. Reading feeds your brain. Computers are a window to creativity. AI does nothing of the sort, in fact I believe it does the opposite, pushing us to outsource our thinking processes while making us feel smart, undeservedly.
One is a deterministic machine on your desk, that you own, to do stuff at your desk.
The other is a nondeterministic thing somewhere else, that you don’t own, to do stuff at your desk.
That’s really an argument against all cloud services, and not LLMs. Although most people do LLMs in the cloud.
And I absolutely agree with the argument. It’s insane to me how much companies will put in someone else’s hands.
It is an argument against the false comparison I was responding to, no more. Although the fact AI companies can’t seem to create a profitable or finished product even with subsidies, points to other issues I have not addressed
That’s fair
So?
Seriously?
This isn’t an anti-AI argument it’s a pro-UBI argument
I was talking about a false dichotomy (before the person I replied to edited their comment to save face)
what are you talking about
You people are like flat earthers with this AI hatred.
It’s genuinely fascinating and useful. You’re allowed to hate the companies and evil behind it, but the kid in me is still enthralled by this technology.
It’s just getting weird at this point.
I’m pretty sure the reason tech employees hate it so much is because it’s an existential threat to their profession. If it wasn’t, they wouldn’t spend so much time talking about it.
Huh.
In the military we have a maintenance tracking system. It’s electronic. We literally bdo drills for if it goes down and we have to resort to paper backups. And there are paper backups.
Without a computer I could still manage an entire flight line worth of planes, and everything they need. Maintenance, fueling, sorties, etc. What you’re telling me is that this company and lots of companies do not have a contingency for if there is a system failure or other outage.
That seems acceptable? Why? Short of a power outage (and probably not even then unless we can’t Jerryrig a lighting solution) we can do all the jobs required with hand tools. It’s crazy to think that people don’t think this should be a thing.
Yeah, ok. But the military is explicitly supposed to keep functioning when the backend gets nuked literally. Who wants to pay for that kind of redundancy just so that some people can watch Netflix while they’re dying of radiation poisoning?
Hopefully companies relying on other companies like crowdstrike.
What are we paying for if not to have things work and have backups? I have so many questions about the companies you give your money to and what you think you’re getting in return?
Like. I feel like there’s a lot of jobs where email could fail/crash and work could still be done. The whole company shouldn’t just shut down because the AI is down. It shouldn’t shut down because email is down. That’s not just poor planning it’s really poor business practice.
What did they do before the AI? Why (when considering how temperamental LLMs can be) would anyone trust it to such an extent that you’re dead in the water if it fails?
Except, unlike computers and the internet, AI is not essential, unless your whole business revolves around it (in which case, good riddance).
Uhhhh computers and Internet aren’t essential either. But they did speed up a lot of things and make new things possible.
There’s nothing I use AI for that I couldn’t do myself, but AI can do most things faster and a few things better than me (LLMs that is. Image generators do all their things better than me because I can’t art, but I don’t use them at all).
If the Internet is down for a period of time at the office, I would expect that my dev team is able to continue working (assuming they’re not exclusively hitting a third party API). At least for a few hours, if not days. It might not be the same cadence, but I’m not about to send them home.
Computers are a tool; AI is an outsourcing. It’s the difference between a carpentry team not having saws, hammers, etc. and having the carpentry team unable to do work if Jose (the outsourced carpenter) doesn’t come in.