We have been thinking about something someone said on a podcast “AI isn’t a tool. It’s a lack of one.” and we agree wholeheartedly.
LLMs, ML and GANs etc aren’t tools. Tools expand creativity, skills, and knowledge etc, they solve problems because they were created by people that understand them.
All ‘AI’ does is make creativity suffer and make people lose their skills and knowledge. Even small things like being able to speak/understand other languages now have gone to ‘AI’ translation instead of learning those languages, that’s a travesty.
Tools are an extension of abilities. ‘AI’ makes us an extension of itself, thus those that use it are the tools of ‘AI’ instead, to be used by a machine that is a glorified predictive text algorithm, and that’s really sad, any way it’s looked at.
So we recommend throwing away these not tools and starting to learn, build back confidence, knowledge, skills, a joy for creating, even if it’s difficult at first. It’s better than letting a glorified predictive text algorithm steal all those things, and lose them to it.
I’ll probably regret commenting.
I’m not an AI fan; current iterations seem like investments looking for problems to solve.
That said, « big loom » replacing hand-weaving or « big washing machine » replacing laundry on a rock in a river certainly eroded skills that became less relavent. I don’t know that it disqualifies them from being devices that can facilitate or do work.
Yes, among all the valid criticism of ai, this doesn’t feel like it. More like “let’s find a definition for tool that excludes AI” (and not even bother checking if it applies to other tools as well)
I got the same impression reading this. The current business around LLMs is terrible, truly abhorrent, but the technology has its uses.
Can’t disagree. All of “AI” and its supposed qualities can pretty much be chalked up to the suspension of disbelief in the techbros’ sales pitch. Because it can’t really do any of the things it’s hyped to, unless you’re willing to drastically lower your expectations of the result.
I keep comparing “AI” to Magic Eightballs and Tamagotchis — toys, not tools. And I guess that’s the allure that draws users to the dysfunctional algorithmic versions in the first place. That and the fairly natural language they use.
And then the quick slide begins into having the bullshit machine plan your vacation. Sure, you ended up out in the sticks with the whole family, none of the sights you were promised actually existed, nor did the B&B you thought you booked …but it was an experience, right? And then you let it do more important stuff.
But “AI” is neither a tool nor a toy. It’s a confounding nothing machine with an addictive interface. As one of the “AI” critical blogs say in its tagline, “it can’t be that stupid, you must be prompting it wrong”. So keep up prompting until it gets a response more than 50% right.
In that sense it is more related to slot machines than to any tool out there. It works on our hope against hope and probability that if we chuck enough pennies at the machine we will get a payday. But the house always wins.
