Mastodawn

I don't like #AI. I think it's problematic in a lot of ways, that I won't repeat here as I believe you heard these (very much true) arguments 100 times.

But #DuckAI helped me quite a lot yesterday, and I don't know how to feel about that. By curiosity, I made it write #elisp code to create new useful commands for #emacs which will help me in my everyday work (for example `C-c m` now creates a PDF using `pdfmom -k` so I don't have to use a terminal at the same time when I use #groff, `C-c t` adds `/|` before some punctuations signs following French typographic rules, …). These functions are very simple, most of you here could have written them by hand in less time than it took me to write the prompts, but I'm no developer, and don't have the time to become one, unfortunately. They work as intended (I can control that as, again, they're simple things), and I more or less understand them, as the #LLM described them. I even asked it questions to understand some parts of the code, and it answered (correctly it seems; I checked and as far as I can know, its answers seem legit), so I was able to modify them by hand to fine-tune them. One was wrong, but when I sent it the error message, it corrected it and explained the error to me.

It didn't feel like I was relinquishing brain power; in the contrary I learnt things. I could have done that by hand, and I would have learnt far more, but it would have taken months and I don't have months: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

I still think that LLMs are a problem for our societies, but even more so than I thought as it seems to be actually useful in some cases.

hajovonta Jun 15

@emmanuelwald "I still think that LLMs are a problem for our societies, but even more so than it seems to be actually useful in some cases."

I would argue this is true for all technologies. ;)

Emmanuel Wald Jun 15

@hajovonta not necessarily: all technologies pose problems, all have risks, but for most the positive outweighs the negative. It's not the case for AI.

hajovonta Jun 15

@emmanuelwald I don't say I disagree, I just say this verdict is premature.

tusharhero Jun 15

" I could have done that by hand, and I would have learnt far more, but it would have taken months and I don't have months: a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."

no it wouldn't have.

Emmanuel Wald Jun 15

@tusharhero believe me it would have. I tried by hand first, and after an hour I still had absolutely nothing, and I had to stop because, well, I have other things to do. I'm stupid like that.

It would have taken me months, of course not working 8 hours a day on it, but maybe 2 hours a week, having forgot 80% of what I learnt between to sessions. I can't dedicate more time, and even that is a lot if we consider that I will almost never use elisp again… so if I had to write something new I'd have to relearn everything. If I decided to really learn a programing language, sacrificing for it important things of my life, it wouldnt be elisp.

tusharhero Jun 15

@emmanuelwald I can understand what you mean, but once you get the hang of basics (how to define a command, how to add it to a keybinding) it would get easier. Which I think you already understand.

Emmanuel Wald Jun 15

@tusharhero yes I do think i understand the basics. The keybinding part I can even do alone. It's a fundamental problem: as I have absolutely no experience of coding I don't know how or what to search.

Vassil Nikolov | Васил Николов Jun 15

@emmanuelwald wrote:
«But DuckAI helped me quite a lot yesterday, and I don't know how to feel about that.»

May I say that in such a situation I would try my best to not feel dogmatic, not feel fanatical, and not feel puritanical about that.
And not be prejudiced either way.
Etc.

Emmanuel Wald Jun 15

@vnikolov “Prejudiced” would mean that my dislike is unreasonable. When we see the societal and ecological cost of AI, I think my dislike is reasonable, even if it can be useful, or it would be very egoistical.

Vassil Nikolov | Васил Николов Jun 15

Prejudiced—non-prejudiced is independent of reasonable—unreasonable.
A prejudiced attitude to something is an attitude that is not based on one's own assessment of its merits, but on something else, like, for example, blind trust in the opinions of others.

Emmanuel Wald Jun 15

@vnikolov it's not independent, I checked the dictionary (cf. screenshot) before answering you. And the merits are not the question, the societal and ecological cost is, and my distaste is based on studies, not mere opinions.

Vassil Nikolov | Васил Николов Jun 15

I can find another definition, e.g.
"prejudiced" is "based on prejudice"
and
"prejudice" is a "preconceived opinion that is not based on reason or actual experience",
where I read "reason" as "rational analysis",
but that seems pointless to pursue further.

And I never said you yourself hadn't arrived at your opinion without rational analysis, but that also seems pointless to pursue further.

MutoKenji Jun 15

@emmanuelwald could you have an computer scientist in your surroundings that would have helped you ?

Emmanuel Wald Jun 15

@MutoKenji unfortunately no. I think I know no-one who knows what emacs is… except maybe one friend, who uses Linux and is more competent than me, but I don't think he uses emacs (and he's a theologian like me, not a computer scientist 😅)

What I don't like is all youtube video created by ai who are taling about ai