AI needs to stop

[email protected]

Yeah, I know how it works, and I also know how different types of AI work.

It's a field from the 50s concerned with making systems that perceive their environment and change how they execute their tasks based on those perceptions to maximize the fulfillment of their task.

Yes, all modern laundry machines utilize AI techniques involving interpolation of sensor readings into a lookup table to pick wash parameters more intelligently.

You've let sci-fi notions of what AI is get you mad at a marketing department for realizing that we're back to being able to label AI stuff correctly.

[email protected]

AI is one of the most powerful tools available today, and as a heavy user, I’ve seen firsthand how transformative it can be. However, there’s a trend right now where companies are trying to force AI into everything, assuming they know the best way for you to use it. They’re focused on marketing to those who either aren’t using AI at all or are using it ineffectively, promising solutions that often fall short in practice.

Here’s the truth: the real magic of AI doesn’t come from adopting prepackaged solutions. It comes when you take the time to develop your own use cases, tailored to the unique problems you want to solve. AI isn’t a one-size-fits-all tool; its strength lies in its adaptability. When you shift your mindset from waiting for a product to deliver results to creatively using AI to tackle your specific challenges, it stops being just another tool and becomes genuinely life-changing.

So, don’t get caught up in the hype or promises of marketing tags. Start experimenting, learning, and building solutions that work for you. That’s when AI truly reaches its full potential.

[email protected]

The fact that you’ve been reduced to blabbering about such mundane things in the style of “the ghosts in pac-man technically had AI” tells us everything we need to know here. Have fun arguing with me in the shower about whether or not current trends are just a result of marketing executives finally being liberated to appropriately label the AI they’ve been using for 70 years

[email protected]

When it comes to the marketing teams in such companies, I wonder what the ratio is between true believers and "this is stupid but if it spikes the numbers next quarter that will benefit me.”

[email protected]

I like this typography, but I don't like somebody pretending they represent everybody.

[email protected]

Artists are legitimately upset because their work is being sucked into a vacuum to train AI without them being compensated or credited. If this was to train a tool that would become a publicly-accessible and free utility to anyone that wanted to use it for non-profit purposes, that would be an easier pill to swallow, but that’s not the case. It’s instead being used for profit by companies that didn’t actually create anything. Whether the artist is “good” or not is subjective.

Copilot being forced into Windows is only one side of it. The other issue was their Recall feature that uses AI. These things are optional now and can be disabled through third party tools and settings, but how long until they’re no longer optional, or they make opting out so convoluted that third party tools and instructions have to change constantly?

The other side of it that I haven’t mentioned is the insane power usage. It’s so high that OpenAI can’t even accurately estimate how much capital they need just to run a business that is already not profitable. It’s the largest amount of funding any startup has ever had to ask for. So in the wake of climate change, AI is a blow torch in a bone dry forest.

An example of AI adversely affecting everyone, even non-users: https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2024-ai-power-home-appliances/

For a field that is not profitable, it requires more capital than anything that has come before it: https://www.cnbc.com/2024/12/27/openai-needs-more-capital-than-wed-imagined-moves-to-for-profit.html

AI returns are dismal: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/10/so-far-ai-hasnt-been-profitable-for-big-tech/

It’s a multi-faceted complaint and doesn’t simply end at the user-facing experience. It’s a waste of capital, a huge weight on an already suffering environment, and it’s entirely out of the hands of the working class. It’s far too expensive for anyone outside of billionaires to run. And all of that for what? Summarizing articles? Making silly imagery and making artists and authors even poorer?

It’s the equivalent of sucking up entire lakes that have been around for thousands of years, all to fill some pools people use maybe once a year.

[email protected]

Plot twist: this image was generated by AI /j

[email protected]

I got a christmas card from my company. As a part of the christmas greeting, they promoted AI, something to the extent of "We wish you a merry christmas, much like the growth of AI technologies within our company" or something like that.

Please no.

[email protected]

The only AI I care about is Neruosama, that shit is funny as fuck. Roasting people left and right.

[email protected]

I saw an advert on the side of a truck the other day for an AI enhanced mattress, of all things!

[email protected]

I think of AI like I do apps: every company thinks they need an app now instead of just a website. They don't, but they'll sure as hell pay someone to develop an app that serves as a walled garden front end for their website.
Most companies don't need AI for anything, and as you said: they are shoehorning it in anywhere they can without regard to whether it is effective or not.

[email protected]

10 years ago everything was "smart" now it's "AI".

Goddamn marketing people.

Bill Hicks on marketing

[email protected]

You can use the warhammer 40k nomenclature of abominable intelligence. I’m not a gaming nerd but find it fitting for fancy statistics in a trench coat.

[email protected]

Fair enough. You'd be surprised how many people don't know you need clean them occasionally and think it's normal for stuff to go terribly wrong really quickly.

I got a new washer relatively recently and it's quiet enough that it's not really audible from the next room unless you tell it to do a really aggressive spin cycle with a big load.

In any case, I think the point of the timed wash features are to make it so your laundry finishes Right when you get home rather than overnight.

[email protected]

Cool story bro. Keep being angry about the meaning of words I guess, if it makes you happy.

[email protected]

It has represented over 1000 people so far.

[email protected]

I think there's specific industrial problems for which AI is indeed transformative.

Just one example that I'm aware of is the AI-accelerated nazca lines survey that revealed many more geoglyphs that we were not previously aware of.

However, this type of use case just isn't relevant to most people who's reliance on LLMs is "write an email to a client saying xyz" or "summarise this email that someone sent to me".

[email protected]

Thanks for the kind words, have fun “leveraging machine learning techniques” to “figure out” how much detergent you need

[email protected]

Probably, but voting isn't supposed to mean, "I agree with what this blurb says." It's supposed to mean, "I think this topic is worth discussing.."

[email protected]

You forgot the phase immediately preceding AI: 3d prints.

I mean, in this decade, I've heard of car and airplanes being marketed as having 3d printed parts.