Off My Chest
RULES:
I am looking for mods!
1. The "good" part of our community means we are pro-empathy and anti-harassment. However, we don't intend to make this a "safe space" where everyone has to be a saint. Sh*t happens, and life is messy. That's why we get things off our chests.
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That analogy only works if AI ends up being mostly used for harm. Guns were designed to apply lethal force, so misuse is built into the tool.
AI is closer to something like a spreadsheet or search engine - a general tool that can be used well or badly depending on the user.
If the argument is really about risk tolerance that's fair, but it's a very different claim than saying the tool itself is inherently comparable to a weapon.
My main point there is that when evaluating the impact of some tool, I look at how it is used rather than how it could be used. Arguments like 'if people were to use it like this or that...' are not so interesting to me. What I care about is what the actual impact of a thing is, and for that, the only thing that matters is how people actually use it.
Now, a separate thing is my assessment of how people actually use generative AI, and whether I consider the things they do with it a boon for society. I see:
I don't like these actual things that people are actually using gen AI for. Maybe you see LLMs having different effects and have a different, more positive, assessment. But you cannot separate the assessment of a tool from its users and how they use it, because they're exactly the ones that'll be using it, and they'll use it the way they use it.