Bernie the WordsmithFeb 23
Saying that you do not want GenAI in the #books you read, the things you watch or the games you play is an understandable and NORMAL position. Maybe they have ethical concerns, maybe they love their artist homies. Maybe they don't like the bland garbage that AI generates. Stop framing this like an horde of neoluddites is starting the Butlerian Jihad (would be fun doh) just because they do not want to follow a romance autor who has a computer shitting novels instead of writing them herself.
Show threadBernie the WordsmithFeb 23

Look, we do not have a lot of ways to avoid that shit in the workplace lately. But people like to select their own fun.

Books about AI are fun.

Books made by AI are not.

Show threadBernie the WordsmithFeb 23
And please spare me with the "both sides" argument. Because one of them is trying to force feed things to the other. And one of them has all the money and resources and the other has not. This is not people taking sides. This is people trying for the boot to stop pressing against their face.
Show threadBernie the WordsmithFeb 23

You keep mentioning fear of the machines.

Not about that.

You keep mentioning grammar checking and transcription functionality.

Not about that.

Show threadBernie the WordsmithFeb 23
Look, we get it. AI sounds hot. We read the same science fiction books and it is nice to think that maybe one day LLM technology can be leveraged against oppression. News about fake open models are fun in a sense because every time one of those pops up, some idiot is going to lose millions yadda yadda. But you are missing a very important point here: a permission structure is being built around us, and stopping it is absolutely crucial
Show threadBernie the WordsmithFeb 23
Every time you do a "both sides" stuff between "AI hypers and deniers" you are basically telling me that the person worried about the destruction of their life, their job and the environment has the level of delusion of a person like Peter Thiel, an eldritch horror in a vessel made of flesh that thinks humanity, umm, should not exist.
Show threadFrank HeijkampFeb 23
@berniethewordsmith I am more worried about the absolute mediocre output of ai. For some it might be 'good enough' and that is ok. Please do understand that for most of us 'good enough' is just below our standards. Don't let an ai that is 'good enough' drive your car or have an ai that is 'good enough' do your finances. Accidents will happen and those accidents will be very costly.
Show threadJames TweedieFeb 23

@alterelefant @berniethewordsmith A small recent example that could have ended in tragedy : https://www.surfertoday.com/environment/chatgpt-wrong-tide-times-wales-rescue

Belief in "AI" information is a shortcut to obtaining the Darwin Award....

Swimmers saved after trusting ChatGPT's tide advice in South Wales

The pair were rescued near Sully Island, just off the coast of Swanbridge, an area with the second-highest tidal range in the world. Lesson learned: don't trust AI for tide information.

SurferToday.com | The Ultimate Surfing News Website
Show threadFrank Heijkamp
@MyricaGale
Yes, why would you source official information when you can have ai lie to you?
@berniethewordsmith
Feb 23 at 2:58pmWeb
Show threadBernie the WordsmithFeb 23
@alterelefant @MyricaGale At least in previous iterations of "was online, must be true" you had an actual creative human inventing the bullshit. There was passion in the lie 😂
Show threadFrank HeijkampFeb 24

@berniethewordsmith
When people try to convince the reader that something is true where it isn't, your 'bullshit meter' should be able to pick up on that and say, hold on, that doesn't add up.

It feels like some people are not critical enough towards #LLM's pulling the same tricks as it mimics human text writing. Those individuals probably also weren't too critical about those human generated stories to begin with.
@MyricaGale

Show threadJames TweedieFeb 24
@alterelefant @berniethewordsmith When I was a student in the late 1970s I played with the ELIZA program on the Uni's mainframe system. After the initial phase of 'how does it do that' it became a bit repetitive and tedious. The main fun to be gained from it was introducing others to it and seeing how many thought they were actually communicating with something 'intelligent'. From my (very limited) usage of MetaAI I feel the same process in action (on a larger scale).