I see generative AI on the web the same way I see forever chemicals in the real world. The effects may not be immediately apparent but they are poisoning mankind. Those who acquired knowledge and skills in the before era will be fine, but newer generations won't have the same reference points to tell reality from fiction. They will search for "baby peacock" on Google and have no reason to believe the actual birds look any different to what they're shown. I find that sad somehow.
I agree, AI can be an good thing though we can't forget about the human brain!
@harljo.uk Where have I said that AI can be a good thing? I don't think we agree.
@Gargron @harljo.uk IMHO talking about Generative AI I agree with you, but AI is also a good thing.
It is a powerful, useful and in some cases necessary tool IF used properly.
My opinion is that AI is great to deal with things, is a danger as you say when deal with people (the "generative" part).
I think the problem is the word "intelligent" after the artificial part.
AI is NOT intelligent, is a great tool to look for patterns and associations, but is not intelligent, it doesn't understand things.
@thefwguy @Gargron @harljo.uk ai is good for electricity vendors and oilmen that's for sure!
@wonofone @Gargron @harljo.uk AI is way bigger and interesting than chatGPT.
Big LLM are the ones who use an insane amount of energy for something IMHO useless. But AI is not only that, teach yourself about edge AI for example and how AI is used other than the stupid chatGPT and similar.
AI for the masses is the problem, where too many use AI for "content", I hate that, content is for humans and should be created by humans.
AI has many more useful things that can do.

@thefwguy @wonofone @Gargron @harljo.uk

The problem is the term 'AI'. It is way too vague. Whenever I bash genAI, some idiot pops up mentioning how it could advance medicine. As if doctors need all our music, writings, landscape photographs or cringe fan art to cure cancer... This is a confusion and hate that parasitic 'AI' devs with their buzzword PR can be thanked for.

@krautdragon @thefwguy @wonofone @Gargron @harljo.uk machine learning has been helping to advance medicine for tens of years. it would mischaracterize its contributions to claim otherwise
@feliks @thefwguy @wonofone @Gargron @harljo.uk OK too bad he didn't claim otherwise? I swear you smart caricatures must have some bad case of genAI defense tourette. We get it now - to advocate for human protection against bad AIs is lowest prio. It's much much more important to never ever insult the 'good AIs'. Good neither him nor I did that?
Or... good luck with adding big tiddy anime girls, cooking recipes, fantasy books, and furry art into your medicinical AIs? 
@krautdragon @thefwguy @wonofone @Gargron @harljo.uk "genAI" is included in advancing medicine. you should research the role of LLMs in e.g. drug design, molecular design, and retrosynthetic analysis. your final mischaracterization shows that you don't understand what you are talking about
@feliks @thefwguy @wonofone @Gargron @harljo.uk And yet again another IT guy insisting an artist simply must be too stupid to "understand". I am long aware that there's AIs built from exploiting creatives and then there's various AI built from various other data used for science. But even if we say "abusive genAIs", dorks come along telling us Midjourney is not abusive and should be seen like a fellow person. :') I'm just tired of these games man.
@krautdragon @thefwguy @wonofone @Gargron @harljo.uk the exploitation of artists by not rewarding them accordingly is horrible and similar to the damage done to the clickworkers of foreign nations. it's always the same game: if you can be exploited you will. so reddit wasn't including any content creators in their deals. i see your pain and would prefer you and others to live without it. however i would also prefer you to not play down the advances that machine learning brings
@feliks @thefwguy @wonofone @Gargron @harljo.uk Yeah, if you already insist so much for the honor and feelings of dead inanimate tools already, then I don't want to imagine how many online fights you start in defense of the honor and feelings of creative human beings! 😳
@krautdragon @thefwguy @wonofone @Gargron @harljo.uk it is less about the tools and more about the value they provide for society
@feliks @thefwguy @wonofone @Gargron @harljo.uk omg, you mean medicinical AIs can bring immense value for humanity? I never considered!
@feliks @thefwguy @wonofone @Gargron @harljo.uk Also you cannot reward artists properly for genAI anyway. It's like letting a few naive individuals sell the land of millions of people, forever. For paychecks that must be worse than Spotify's.
@krautdragon @thefwguy @wonofone @Gargron @harljo.uk what do you believe would be a better implementation?
@feliks @thefwguy @wonofone @Gargron @harljo.uk In an ideal world, where the impossible can be real? Outlaw data sell-out "deals" that are only there to greenwash inherently predatory products as "ethical". And just keep creatives data out of that shit. I dunno why loosers are sooo desperate for funky colorful deepfake generators. But well. It would be also fine to simply guarantee that such generators are set back, easily poisened and stay extremely limited and primitive.