this post was submitted on 29 May 2026
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People also smashed printing presses when they first arrived.
https://bigthink.com/the-past/printing-press-ai/
True, but printing presses errored in consistent ways and could easily be fixed by someone literate in the language being printed. The only black boxes were the cases containing letter stamps. The smashing was happening because of what was being printed, and not because suddenly statistically relevant portions of the workforce were now unemployed and possibly unemployable. The situation is a bit different...
Not that different than now. Are people pushing back against AI when it's used to accelerate cancer research data? The pushback is when people think it's being used against them, just like the printing press.
People are pushing back against widespread abuse of LLM technology in workflows it's a poor fit for and generates poor results for that are being built on current cost assumptions that are being massively subsidised by those pushing LLM solutions. When they flip to the "profit" stage of the plan and costs go up 5x or even 10x those workflows are going to look a lot less attractive for the poor results they generate. It's also being used as a smoke screen for layoffs it's not really responsible for which isn't helping it's image.
That's more of a management issue rather than an AI issue. When any technology or process improvement is introduced, it is key to be able to measure it so the company can know their roi.
People are really out here defending the billionaire's toys and comparing them to the fucking printing press?
We are so incredibly fucked.
Do you think AI is going to go away? History repeats itself, the Luddites will not win. The people who can best exploit AI will be ahead of those who cannot.
It won't go away, but LLM won't always mean automated-cargo-cult-programming, digital serfdom, climate apocalypse and a financial speculation bubble. At some point, their cost will have to be their actual cost. Bigtech hope is some many are some hopelessly dependent at that point they will pay that cost. Also that there is little competition because few couldn't run at those losses.
But I think at that point, efficient small language models you can own/host, train and use at will, will be a thing. No one wants to be (American) bigtech serfs.
This is consistent with how most people have technology since the PC. They want control of their devices, the ability to use open source software, self host the services they deem critical. I'm no predictor, but I can see AI going the same path as other technologies, and we will get to a more user controlled environment.
Exactly. Right now it is the mainframe era and the billionaire monopolies want it that way. However that is a future not one but them wants. Little tech rebel alliance is the way to go. I'm not interested in big tech's imperial AI.
Printing presses made knowledge more widely available for everyone.
LLMs do the exact opposite.
AI has accelerated cancer research, able to cross reference thousands of studies. LLM's still suck at writing emails though.
So it’s a search tool.
Where are all those AI generated cancer treatments?
Except that it actually sucks at searches and far too often returns false results.
You could have done a quick google search as easily as myself.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41698-026-01276-6
AI is a game changer in oncology.
You haven’t read it, have you.
Hardly a game changer of the magnitude you think of. Moreover, CV is not generative. Pattern matching on X-rays has been common for a while, and has little to do with the current heavily marketed landscape of LLMs for everything.
This is one article. Are you actually interested in learning about the benefit of AI in cancer research? I could post a dozen articles, but would it make a difference to you? Also keep in mind it's only going to get better as the models improve. I suspect your position is more ideological rather than rational.
https://acsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/cncr.70050
And I suspect your position comes from not doing any due diligence on the matter.
Funny that you call mine “ideological” though, since you are the one making claims without any substance, e.g. “it’s only going to get better”. How could you even know? Not even researchers at the very edge do. There have been concerns about the future availability and quality of data. Plenty of researchers have come forward pointing that poisoning a LLM is exceedingly easy. Really, how do you know that “it’s going to get better”? Explain that to me. What do you know that everybody else doesn’t?
How do you even know that AI, as we know it, it’s going to be revolutionary in the near future? Most people only know of technology successes because of survivorship bias, but I’ve been through several revolutions that faded out. How is this one different? And why would you think you’re right, when not even expert researchers are sure?
I've already provided two references. Please feel free to post the link supporting that AI has no influence in medicine.
You haven't answered a single one of my questions.
I'm going to assume that you fell for the hype and know nothing of what you're talking about.
Right. The NIH: National Cancer Institute is nothing but hype now. You need to expand your sources past Instagram.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304383526002569
"AI-powered platforms are now accelerating molecular subtyping, refining risk stratification, and supporting individualized therapeutic recommendations by jointly modeling imaging, tissue architecture, and molecular landscapes. Moreover, emerging virtual cell and mechanistic foundation frameworks introduce a new computational paradigm for simulating cellular responses and drug-tumor interactions, offering predictive insights for treatment design and drug discovery."
Again, CV is not new. Computational biological simulation isn’t new either. More computational power and better algorithms have been a source of significant progress in healthcare for many decades now. If we go back twenty years, protein folding simulation was all the rage, but of course most people outside CompSci hadn’t heard of it.
I call the current AI “hype” because all these advancements have been going on for a while, but most people are catching up only now because they got hooked on marketing material they see on the news.
Anyway, I’m going to paste my message here once again.
Now, are you an AI researcher? What do you know about any of this, exactly?
I have posted multiple references on the use of AI in oncology; you make unsupported claims. 'Plenty of researchers...'. Why not just say 'some people say'.
Thanks. I'm done.
Of course you are.
Good example of what LLMs are great for, making people suffer from persistent Dunning Kruger.
The author of the article is misrepresenting several historical facts.
The pope didn’t try to “ban” printed books, but keep publications under tight catholic control under threat of excommunication. If we were to apply this to the current AI landscape, the “church” would be a number of massive corporations fighting to keep their stolen data “closed”.
Fust wasn’t “chased out” because scribes feared a loss of influence. They already were notaries and bureaucrats, they were doing just fine. The issue was publishing control under the church mandate, which again, correlates to what AI companies are doing right now.