Poll: Are you for AI or against AI?

Are you for AI or against AI?

3 points | by andrewstuart 6 hours ago

6 comments

  • nistiminic 17 minutes ago
    This is a weird poll. AI is a tool and would be like to asking whether I am for or against screwdrivers.

    I'm voting against because:

    LEGAL: there's still some legal stuff that we need to figure out. If an AI company argues they can download pirated books and use it for training data, what's preventing them to use the same fair use argument for your code? There are probably contracts preventing this? What happens if there's a breach of contract? You're going to spend years in court proving damages?

    PRODUCTIVITY: AI is impactful. So were computers and the internet. If I provided you with a graph plotting productivity vs time and I removed the labels on the time axis. Would you be able to point out where computers, internet, etc... provided a jump? It will increase productivity but not as much as advertised.

    FINANCIALS: I could be wrong but the valuation just doesn't make sense to me. If history is a guide then the jump in productivity isn't as high as advertised. There's probably an increase. I think there's an overestimation of money saved by companies buying those subscription. The money invested into AI will not be recouped by companies buying increasingly expensive subscriptions. Therefor I think they'll pivot from being a productivity multiplier to selling ads.

    I'm not anti-AI. I just don't see it making a profit when it's solely used to increase productivity. At least not a profit with current levels of investment. I think the only way to recoup current investments is to pivot to something that sells ads.

  • tliltocatl 4 hours ago
    I'm very pro-AI and i think LLMs are an important technical step in achieving it (even if in the end it might turn out that LLMs helped achieve AI by showing how not to do it). But they suffer from premature commercialization. I'm very much against trying to sell them as the ultimate solution to everything. And another issue, not related to the technical aspect, is that business practices of certain self-styled "AI companies" calls for guillotining of their upper management.
  • fixedprog 6 hours ago
    I like to use AI for research and learning about new topics, and for occasional code snippets.

    I'm not completely sold on the "agent" thing yet, although I do admit they can be pretty fun to use.

  • rzzzwilson 5 hours ago
    What do you mean by "AI"? The LLM stuff we have now or real AI, ie, HAL 9000?
    • andrewstuart 1 hour ago
      HAL 9000 obviously. It’s all people are talking about.
  • stephenr 5 hours ago
    I'm against people continually referring to spicy autocomplete (aka LLMs) "AI".

    You people do know that the I in AI stands for "Intelligence" right?

    • defrost 4 hours ago
      Only recently.

      I'm a traditionalist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NaOlhYFBO9g

      • stephenr 2 hours ago
        I believe even impregnation by bogan is still considered "natural".
        • defrost 1 hour ago
          Fair comeback, but there's still enough Artificial Insemination going on to make a hill sized lube slide with the leftover.

          Disturbingly, a good number that attend a B&S Inseminators ball are off the traditional bogan scale (even allowing for cashed up bogans) .. arriving in limousines (albeit some rented) or private aircraft after graduating from some elite private school or another.

          Traditionally it's a multiday paddock bash that begins with tuxedos and ballgowns, and morphs through food dye, lube, straw, burning cars, and a lot of not rated for televison behaviour to end in chaos.

          All so asset rich multi millionaire nepo babies can swap keys and combine harvesters and pass on the thousand+ acre farm to another generation.

    • aurareturn 4 hours ago
      I find LLMs more intelligent on average than many people.
      • stephenr 2 hours ago
        I think either you don't know what intelligent means or you're hanging around extremely dim people.
  • uejfiweun 6 hours ago
    I'm for AI the technology. Who doesn't want cool sci-fi future tech? But I'm against AI being co-opted by our dear leaders to end white collar work and lock us all in a permanent underclass.
    • akagusu 1 hour ago
      This outcome was predictable and expected, but people opted to pretend it didn't exist. Now we will all face brutal consequences.
    • andrewstuart 6 hours ago
      I’m for AI in a big way, but I’m against the future in which your ability to program a computer is only with the permission of the AI companies.

      Lose your account, lose your ability to program.

      • aurareturn 4 hours ago
        Local models?
        • andrewstuart 1 hour ago
          These will be made by the same companies won’t they?

          And once they’re valuable they won’t be giving them away any more will they?