NeonSnake4d ago

Serious ask:

I need a crash-course in AI.

Context: my line manager has been asked to evaluate the use of AI at work. He's come to me to ask if I want to help, as he knows I hate it (and he does too), but I'm...vaguely aware...that not all things that are called "AI" are equal.

(like, the "AI" of NPCs in a game is not the same as the "AI" used to create the type of image we generally call "slop", right?)

We want to make sure we're armed with decent knowledge, because we don't want people to say "Oh, ignore them, they're just haters" if we're talking about something that maybe isn't the "bad" kind of AI (if such a thing exists - I don't know enough to be confident right now)

At the moment, *to the best of my currently limited knowledge*, our AI usage is pretty much limited to people using Gemini to create emails and transcripts of meetings.

(I hope that makes sense)

Show threadcuan_knaggs4d ago
@neonsnake as you've alluded to "ai" is a very vague term. but most commonly it now means llm-as-a-service. all the other "ai" types: general automations, machine learning, ... have their place and should be used as needed. an LLM (large language model) is a a statistical model of language tokens (not words but that's close) that is used to generate a statistically plausible response to an input
Show threadcuan_knaggs
@neonsnake so if you care about the text you produce being more than statistically plausible you should avoid it. that's just the very basic technical view, the social, political, environmental, and ethical issue would take much longer. i recommend the book "the ai con" as a starting point
Mar 22 at 9:30amWeb
Show threadNeonSnake4d ago

@mensrea So, I'm "reasonably" aware of the arguments against LLMs (with undoubted huge blind spots), in as much as I know that the output is questionable at best, and I have a base level of understanding of the ethical and social issues with it (which is why I don't like it).

I'm more worried that I'm going to have a reflexive "AI! NOPE!" reaction to something - you and someone else have both mentioned "machine learning" as something potentially useful, but I'm not sure I know what that is?

Show threadcuan_knaggs4d ago
@neonsnake so LLMs are a facet of machine learning, which is a facet of data science, ... . but because you're looking at the expanded tool kit, you can find better tools for the job. that only holds true if you're looking at a technical problem though. if the problem is "writing emails better" you have a cultural problem and no tech is a solution
Show threadcuan_knaggs4d ago
@neonsnake and i forgot to mention the legal unknowns of copyright, liability, and so on of any generated text