I have to imagine if I met any random academic, there is a good chance that would be the case
Coding landed on the right solution pretty early with this: Use whatever tools you want, but you're responsible for what you publish.
I work on protein design, and generative AI for proteins is very capable of helping us make medicines, but if take some half baked garbage output and inject it into someone and they die, I'd still be held responsible. I have to filter out a lot of junk and test that the designed protein works the way they're supposed to work. I have to be responsible for my usage of AI.
Same for anyone. If AI helps you re-phrase hard to parse sentences and you've verified the re-phrasing accurately describes what you're trying describe, then that's just making science is more accessible. If you're using it responsibly, that empowers the reader and the writer by enabling communication.
I'm unimpressed by the anti-AI arguments, and I think they should be more honest. I grew up with online piracy arguing ideas can't be owned, so I'm unimpressed by the intellectual property arguments, and I seriously doubt the vast majority of people care about this. I'm sure artists care when they lose work, and I'm sure people who consume the art care when direct garbage output is used -- but be mad about that if that's what you're mad about. Be mad about CEOs who are willing to cut corners and produce shabby products using AI. Be mad about the capitalists incentives, and work to fix them instead of being mad when someone who'd've gone without has a good-enough picture.
Also people have never cared about the environment and the impact of AI is vastly overstated. Running an existing model isn't any worse for the environment than gaming, and training them produces tools that can be useful as a coding package, like numpy for language. Are they bad for the environment? Yeah, everything is bad for the environment, but I didn't see this level of outrage about bitcoin and people still like to pretend plastics recycling works. There is not a meaningful portion of the population that cares about the environment, and anyone who does care knows I'm right.
People aren't actually mad at AI as a tool. People are mad about shabby work and increased spam. People are mad at losing their job when some jackass CEO fires them and being stung along when they apply for a new job. I don't understand why we're taking this "it's the AI's fault" excuse seriously. The more we blame AI, the more legitimacy we give the stupid AI hype bubble, the stupid uses of AI, and the policy outcomes hiding behind AI. If we were brutally honest and insisted that AI has had little substantive effect on the economy (which is what the data actually says), CEOs and politicians would be forced to take responsibility and be held to account for their stupid decisions.
Best I can tell, this anti-AI crap is a distraction and excuse not to talk about workers rights, education, and good democratic systems.
I appreciate your point about personal responsibility for AI output and viewing it as a tool. However, I’m not sure how other things being bad for the environment too negates AI being bad for the environment. How does the level of outrage around an issue correlate to the factual severity of it? Also, AI is bad for the environment and it’s pretty clear
Unlike AI, Bitcoin wasn’t being so rabidly adopted and the (US) government wasn’t issuing EOs to prevent regulation.
My point abut the environment was more that people don't have perspective on how good or bad it is. The thing you linked had to go to multiple image and video generation to be 3hrs of microwaving, and I think it's pretty clear to anyone text is cheaper. For the same amount of time, running a microwave is worse than text based chat with an LLM. You can make up your own mind as to whether that's unacceptably horrible, but I think a lot of people would be fine with that level of damage for what they get out of it.
Data centers are a separate issue to me. Those are just stupid. Neither sensible business nor the population at large are going to buy into SaaS and training even more models that have clearly reached diminishing returns is utterly pointless, but again that's more a why are our corrupt politicians taking bribes for this? I strongly agree with the anger at the government for wasting tax payer money and otherwise being a bunch of corrupt bastards -- we need better democratic systems. You cannot consent to being governed if you cannot say no, and our elections don't have a none of the above or lottery option. That makes them illegitimate.
Naw fuck AI
Coding landed on the right solution pretty early with this: Use whatever tools you want, but you’re responsible for what you publish.
This is not the case, there is an abundance of evidence to the contrary.
That is an approach being taken by some, but it's not coding specific and it's certainly not a standard, by any means.
Also people have never cared about the environment.
Some people do, just not the ones who stand to benefit from the decline normally, and those just happen to be the ones who can meaningfully make a difference.
Running an existing model isn’t any worse for the environment than gaming,
If you ignore the difference in scale and significantly different usage profile, sure?
How many gamers do you think you'd need to equate to a 24/7 data centre serving models, or even a mostly local setup running multiple GPU's at max capacity for a full work day, every day ?
and training them produces tools that can be useful as a coding package, like numpy for language.
Being subjectively useful isn't a good argument against environmental impact, unless you have a good example of something so useful it could practically be compared to the impact.
Yeah, everything is bad for the environment,
Not technically true, but in modern society i kind of agree in general.
but I didn’t see this level of outrage about bitcoin and people still like to pretend plastics recycling works.
The outrage is different because the surface area is different, crypto was semi-niche and didn't have the possibility to actively replace people.
More people are potentially impacted by this so you see more complaints (of varying levels of subjective legitimacy and accuracy).
Plastic recycling is an entirely different conversation but it's always been a scam for the most part, people believe because that's what they are told, repeatedly, and they have no reason to think otherwise unless they look in to it.
People aren’t actually mad at AI as a tool. People are mad about shabby work and increased spam. People are mad at losing their job when some jackass CEO fires them and being stung along when they apply for a new job.
Absolutely agree.
If we were brutally honest and insisted that AI has had little substantive effect on the economy (which is what the data actually says)
Citation? because to my (admittedly amateur) knowledge a large proportion of the US stock market is tied up in shenanigans to do with LLM's and the related resources.
Unless you mean the effect of the outputs that have come from LLM's, in which case , sure, it's probably not much of an impact overall.
CEOs and politicians would be forced to take responsibility and be held to account for their stupid decisions.
That has such a vanishingly small likelihood of happening, there is a huge fucking list of significantly worse shit from recent history and actively ongoing that is being ignored because money.
I highly doubt that "CEO makes line go up for quarter by axing 3/4 of still-needed staff, because they have no idea what they are doing" is getting anyone more than a kickback slap on the wrist.
We should definitely still be trying though, I’m just managing my expectations.
Best I can tell, this anti-AI crap is a distraction and excuse not to talk about workers rights, education, and good democratic systems.
"anti-AI crap" is a broad category, but i agree there is a lot of "Look over here" going on.
That's not LLM specific though , it's the norm at this point.
Honestly, I'm glad you care about the environment enough to criticize me for mitigating the issue. You're right for a lot of points AI is probably a little closer to running a microwave than gaming for pre-existing models, but either is far better than leaving your car idling for the same time. My point was more that people don't seem to have good a sense of the scale of the effect. You're also right that a lot of people are rushing to use more AI in stupid pointless wasteful ways that will cause mass waste for no good reason, but again perspective: the vast majority of people don't agree with the fuckcars communities and there's really no denying that the mass adoption of personal vehicles has been, is, and will continue to be far worse than AI. Unless, perhaps, if some moron hooks an AI up to nukes -- but in that case I'd still be pissed at the moron. I agree that AI sucks for the environment, and it's fair to dislike me mitigating it. My point is more about the consistency of the criticism compared to other things in the discussion of what is worth what.
If someone creates a destroy-the-world button, is only the person who pressed it responsible for the destruction of the world? That's an absurd example, of course, but the point is that you can't just classify something as a "tool" and then leave all outcomes of the existence of that tool as a matter of personal responsibility, that's just cessation of thought. You have to actually think about who is empowered by a tool and in what way. And if a "tool" largely and greatly empowers fakers, grifters, political actors with little respect for truth etc. and the value for most people is largely nil to negative, then I'd say the "tool" is very much part of the problem.
It seems weird to suggest that the supposed legitimacy of the AI hype bubble is caused by anything other than people with a lot of economic and political leverage using that leverage to will something that doesn't really exist into existence. Which isn't that hard given the people they need to convince of its existence are some of the gullible people on Earth, and they do have a product that, while not what they claim it is, does have the veneer of it being that. If a company's shareholders are convinced that AI can replace many of the company's workers (or are convinced that the other shareholders are convinced that it can), then the executives can fire thousands of people and it will just increase the shareholder value. Sure, it will sabotage the long-term health of company, but by that time the locust will have had their payday and moved on to the next grift.
Now of course, this sort of thing has been happening since long before LLMs and the like were a thing, but a key difference is that before, there's been at least some connection between the executives' and shareholders' fortunes and the company actually doing something, given workers at least some leverage to gain and enforce their rights. But now the existence of AI allows them to keep up the pretence that workers have no leverage at all for a good while, so so much for workers' rights. It's not actually AI doing this of course, but the existence of a strategic weapon is still a problem even if the weapon is never deployed and even if it's just a box of firecrackers and pinball machine parts. And that's putting aside all the ways AI is being used as a tactical weapon, undermining education and democracy.
AI doesn't have to be directed to make the world a worse place. That's a choice made by people. There are tools that don't have good applications (e.g. nukes), but AI certainly isn't one of them. Blaming the tool when you should be blaming the people gives the people an out. Shall we ban hammers because they can be used as weapons?
You're basically making a "if only people would just..." argument, but people are not going to "just". There's no world out there in which "AI" (again, using a pretty strict definition) exists, but there is no search results polluted to the brim with slopsites, idiots using AI as though it was a reliable source of information, automated propaganda, moguls trying to gaslight the world into thinking workers and artists have no leverage, deepfake porn, chatbots encouraging suicidal thoughts etc. etc. So you need to weigh the costs and the benefits. And the cost-benefit analysis of AI looks considerably different from the hammer's.
Well, I say all that, but it's not as though I believe the world can't be made a better place. If we can set up society so that these bad behaviours aren't incentivised to begin with, it would mitigate some of the worst problems associated with AI (though I would argue that such a society wouldn't waste its resources on such a worthless application of the technology in the first place). But when is that going to happen, tomorrow? Worse yet, AI empowers the people who don't want society to change in that way far more than it does the people who do. So until we finish fixing society with our hands tied to our backs, we'll just have to suffer through all of AI's problems, and for what? So you can feel smug about misunderstanding a sentence in a scientific paper, because you were in no position to determine whether the rephrased sentence an AI ejaculated accurately conveyed the information in the original sentence, because if you were, you wouldn't have needed the sentence to be rephrased in the first place?
If you believe there's no world in which the majority of people are thoughtful and well intentioned, I don't think we're on the same page regarding what would make the world a better place. AI, like all technology, enables people who exercise their agency. I'm saying "if only people would just" blame the actors instead of the technology we might be able to have the benefits of the technology and hold the actors accountable for the detriments they create. I understand your argument that there are always going to be bad people, but I believe in holding people accountable for their actions.
AI is a god damn programming package that the whole world has decided to flip out over when there's only been like five niche applications for it. I don't get it. Why do I have to lose a programming package because everyone - for no real reason - started blaming it for the reason they're assholes to each other as if they hadn't been jerks to each other before. It's stupid.
Most people are thoughtful and well-intentioned. But one, the minority that isn't are enough to cause a lot of problems, and two, not all problems associated with AI are caused by bad intentions.
You say that we should just blame the people for how they use AI, but aside from that there's not always a person to blame or the people causing the problems are often effectively invisible, people are already being blamed, there's just nothing to make them care. So how do you propose we hold them accountable? The law? I mean, there's not a whole lot of political will for that right now, but even if there were, a lot would be difficult to encode into law and even more difficult to meaningfully enforce.
Also, having to hold people accountable is also a cost that needs to be weighed against the basically non-existent benefits.
AI is a god damn programming package
No, it's not. Other than a few specific products, it's not marketed like that, it doesn't have an interface that suggests that it's that and its functionality (or veneer thereof) isn't limited to that. What a strange thing to say.
Why do I have to lose a programming package because everyone - for no real reason - started blaming it for the reason they’re assholes to each other as if they hadn’t been jerks to each other before. It’s stupid.
And here we get to the crux of the matter: you are getting some use out of AI that at least in your subjective experience, for now, is positive, and that's all the justification for its existence you need. All the problems in the wider world associated with it, you just magic away with the phrase "personal responsibility" so you can just stop thinking about it. But that's not good enough.
AI is a god damn programming package
No, it’s not. Other than a few specific products, it’s not marketed like that, it doesn’t have an interface that suggests that it’s that and its functionality (or veneer thereof) isn’t limited to that. What a strange thing to say.
No, it literally is a programming package + some data. There's nothing "agentic" AI can do that isn't done just as well by a generic pipeline -- except perhaps ignore garbage information and interface with non-coders. If you're being automated away, it was going to happen anyway.
And here we get to the crux of the matter...
First of all let's not act like my exasperation with the world's stupidity is some sort of lapse in my judgement. I'm getting the ability find algorithms and debug faster to write better code, and occasionally asking it for terms I can search for to find information. That's it. I'm not revealing some deep political bias you can use to ignore my underlying argument.
Honestly I don't understand what's so hard about arguing for labor laws or demanding proper accounting in SEC filings or any of the other zillion things we should've been doing for the last fourty years, but if you'd rather act like fancy program ruined world I guess whatever man. I don't think it's gonna help anyone, but you do you.
No, it literally is a programming package + some data.
What are you even talking about? LLMs, which is mostly what "AI" has been referring to in this conversation, are text prediction systems. You prompt it with text and it tries to predict what text comes next based on its statistical model generated from its training data. Add some cute pre-prompting and wrapping of user input behind the scenes, and you can give it an imperative interface that gives the impression that it's responding to user queries and instructions. The output is entirely too unreliable and the input entirely too imprecise to be valuable to anyone with good intentions, but I digress. The point is that it has nothing to do with programming, other than that if code was part of the training data, the model can be induced to generate text that includes code, and some products exist that have been optimised to generate and interact with code.
"Agentic" (ugh) just means that the model was induced to generate output in a format that the client can parse and turn into actual operations, like deleting a database. I guess that kind of overlaps with what a pipeline or a script can do, but I'm not entirely sure where you're going with that, I'm pretty sure I already made it clear that it's not my view that AI can actually replace workers, just that it can be used to keep up the pretense that it can for long enough to cause harm.
First of all let’s not act like my exasperation with the world’s stupidity is some sort of lapse in my judgement. I’m getting the ability find algorithms and debug faster to write better code, and occasionally asking it for terms I can search for to find information. That’s it. I’m not revealing some deep political bias you can use to ignore my underlying argument.
It's not just that line, everything you've been saying suggests that's what your view is. You've acknowledged yourself that the real use cases of AI are very limited, but despite that insist that that alone is worth dealing with all the problems that come with it, and we should just hold the bad people using it for bad things accountable, as if it were that easy (not to mention that sometimes there is no person to hold accountable, because it's the model itself causing the problem). All for a small sliver of value to you, that in my mind doesn't even exist. How is AI itself not part of the problem here?
Yes, a lot of the problems associated with AI are just worse versions of problems that already existed. Workers getting laid off by the thousands to raise shareholder value, misinformation, assholes on the internet trying to get people to kill themselves for the "lulz" etc. And these problems need to be solved regardless of AI existing. But the existence of AI makes these problems worse and harder to solve. So you'll have to excuse me that I'm not very keen on the idea of letting our enemies have mechanised infantry so we can have a toy to play with.
How does text prediction have nothing to do with programing? And how is executing a series of functions often dependent of previous output not a pipeline? Okay, whatever, we're on the same page that AI doesn't take jobs and is used as an excuse -- that's great.
despite that insist that that alone is worth dealing with all the problems that come with it
No, I don't think the problems should be tolerated.
we should just hold the bad people using it for bad things accountable, as if it were that easy
Yes, this. Do this. No, it's not easy, but it never has been because...
How is AI itself not part of the problem here? ... Yes, a lot of the problems associated with AI are just worse versions of problems that already existed.
It has nothing to do with AI. Literally every problem "associated" with AI is just a pre-existing problem repackaged. They're hiding behind an excuse and for reasons I do not understand you're buying into it, making yourself look like a Luddite, and letting them claim to be on the side of historical progress. You and I both know it's nonsense to let them claim that, but rather than be dismissive of the technology and critical of the people you're blaming it:
But the existence of AI makes these problems worse and harder to solve.
Only if you buy into the idea that it's something we have to move the world for. You claim you can see how little an effect it has had, but you simultaneously seem to think it's a big bad demon. AI has done very little in any direction. Aside from all the hype, the actual effect good or bad has been marginal. Something like 3% of job cuts occurred due to automation, and I'm not even sure if that's lower or higher than on a normal year.
You want to complain about data centers, fine, but complain about political corruption and talk about how we shouldn't centralize power in singular mayors rather than full consensus councils, or how we need multi-candidate ranked lottery voting systems with recall mechanisms, or how we should heavily tax political donations and political advertising and use a portion of those funds to provide the public with factual information campaign ran with a similar ranked lottery electorate consulting with technical experts, or how we should regulate or socialize utilities. -- None of it's easy, but if you want a world worth living in that's the work you have to put in.
Screaming regulate AI leads to politicians creating internet ID laws and mass surveillance because you didn't bother to build consensus about what you meant when you said regulate AI and politicians doing as they do took it upon themselves to reinterpret what you think you meant into something that they or their billionaire donors wanted.
How does text prediction have nothing to do with programing?
The large majority of text is not code. To begin with, LLMs being able to generate code was more of an incidental discovery than anything, only then did you get specialised products for that purpose.
No, it’s not easy, ...
That's my whole point: if it's not easy, then you have to justify the cost. And while yes, as you say, behind a lot of the problems associated with AI, there are deeper underlying problems that have nothing to do with AI, but that doesn't mean that AI doesn't significantly add to the problems and the cost to solve them. Let's say you're in conflict with someone, in what situation do you expect that it's easier to resolve by talking it out: when they're unarmed or when they have a gun aimed at you? Same underlying problem, different difficulty in resolving the problem.
Only if you buy into the idea that it’s something we have to move the world for. You claim you can see how little an effect it has had, but you simultaneously seem to think it’s a big bad demon.
I don't understand how this is not getting through. Something can be worthless to one group of people and very valuable to another. If you care about truth, human wellbeing, creating value for society and so on, then AI (as in LLMs and other similar generative AI) is less than worthless to you. If you only care about gaining wealth and power and don't give a damn about what is true or what harm you may be causing to society, then it's the most impactful technology since social media. These two things can be true at the same time. And if you're not aware of all the problems the second group has been causing at a scale that's only possible because of AI, then quite frankly, you've been living under a rock. People getting laid off under the pretense that they can be replaced by AI is hardly the only problem.
Screaming regulate AI
Who said anything about regulating AI? I want nothing short of a third AI winter.
Your point about technology enabling people is well made. While I think it's pretty clear that AI can have positive effects, your point about it's use in propaganda and misinformation is legitimate. Even if I don't think it's the underlying issue, I can't deny that it enables it. That said, this comment chain is long enough that I'm losing the plot. I tried to read back, but I don't know what your stance in all this is.
Screaming regulate AI
Who said anything about regulating AI? I want nothing short of a third AI winter.
I don't know what "a third AI winter" means. I can't tell if you're saying you want AI to die out or if you're sarcastically saying you want an AI nuclear apocalypse or maybe both. If you genuinely aren't calling for regulation, I don't know what you're calling for. Like for regulation -- like gun control -- I sympathize with your concerns; however, there's not a snowballs chance in hell I'm going to advocate for only the government (have you seen governments these days?) to choose who does or doesn't get AI.
If you genuinely don't want regulation, are you just saying it shouldn't have been made in the first place because it enables the evil people more than the good people? I'm not sure that's true in regards to what the actual technology does and I'm not comfortable blaming the technology for the grifts associated with it. Propaganda and misinformation have always been an aspect of class warfare and typically the rich and elite have had bigger budgets and a greater effect. Every single communications advancement has pushed that more and more towards the people, and I think AI will still favor the people over the elites for propaganda - I can literally put Trump's face on a chicken with no skills. Misinformation is clearly a bit more built into the technology, but even with that it gives people access to a lot more information a lot more easily (e.g. finding algorithms or new terms to search). The tech itself seems to favor the people.
You don't seem like the type that'd be advocating teaching kids how to use it, but I actually think that'd be a great idea in some second year coding course or something both to build their resistance to the negatives and to give them more capabilities once people get over the nonsense drama with it.
What do you think we should do about it?
OK, so thus far we've had two major AI winters, where after some excitement over new developments in AI, funding ended up more or less drying up for decades, because it didn't manage to go anywhere. I think a third such an event would go a long way in mitigating the harms from AI, because the AI space is currently very centralised, i.e. most users are very dependent on a handful of companies, and those companies are very dependent on continued investment. Also, running less capable open weights/source models locally has a fairly high barrier to entry and those models would become less relevant over time without the funding to keep up their training.
Thankfully for me, things appear to be moving in that direction.
As for regulation, I don't think I mentioned or alluded to it at all. If anything, that seems more your thing, since you think holding people doing bad things with AI accountable is sufficient. Personally, I do very much think that the world would be better off without these forms of AI. But if there is to be regulation, I would argue it should focus mostly on the suppliers and not so much on the users. Not only because otherwise you end up in an unsustainable game of whack-a-mole, but also because there's not always a user to hold to account. Like, if an AI chatbot encourages someone's suicidal thoughts and they end up doing it because of that, what AI user is to be held to account?
Every single communications advancement has pushed that more and more towards the people, and I think AI will still favor the people over the elites for propaganda
It's the opposite, this is very much a power-consolidating technology. It's not like, say, reading and writing, where nobody can just change the alphabet to become incapable of describing subversive notions or something. With AI, what it's capable of and what its biases are, is very much dependent on decisions of the people training and managing it. And because the cost of training a model the size of an LLM is so high, there are only a few entities that can afford to do that.
On top of that, people with good intentions cannot use AI at scale, because they need to verify all of its output. People with bad intentions, who don't care about the details, only that the waters are sufficiently muddied, can use it at scale. And if they are or are backed by the elite, then they have the funding to use it even more at scale.
I can literally put Trump’s face on a chicken with no skills.
Only because the elite are currently subsidising it for you. Because they want you to accept this technology. Because they know it empowers them more than it does you.
You don’t seem like the type that’d be advocating teaching kids how to use it
I'm pro-education, but to teach someone, there needs to be something that can be taught first.
Truth always moves slower than lies and always for the same reason. Were newspapers a terrible invention for the people because they came with yellow papers or did the good outweigh the bad?
I think we think of AI differently at least in part because I don't treat it as something owned by someone else. It doesn't matter if the rich stop subsidizing it, I can and do run it on my own machine. Sure, I can't train it, but I can't code an entire operating system either and I still think of my computer as mine. There is certainly something to your point about biased training and the costs related to it, but that just seems like reason to favor open source local AIs. It's the same reason I don't use Windows or Apple operating systems -- it's terrible to have that sort of dependency and bias built into your tools. Of-course, I have to admit Linux users are a minority (for reasons I don't really understand), and if all the AI hate basically amounts to an inability to run linux / local LLMs... well, I understand it a little more.
Honestly, good conversation. Don't agree with you, but you definitely widened my perspective.
Why do I have to lose a programming package because everyone started blaming it
I like to imagine a 1950s oil baron saying something like this because laws say he can't dump waste into the river. It's very fun. It's a fun world in my head.
If you believe there's no world in which the majority of people are thoughtful
MAGA:
People who are pro pointing a gun to their head and pulling the trigger, but anti the bullet crushing their skull and killing them. Yeah, I'm sorry, I don't believe in that world.
I'm just waiting for when it becomes obvious that the owners of the compute used for AI models aren't going to make the money from AI.
well put
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