this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2026
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Ye Power Trippin' Bastards
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This is a community in the spirit of "Am I The Asshole" where people can post their own bans from lemmy or reddit or whatever and get some feedback from others whether the ban was justified or not.
Sometimes one just wants to be able to challenge the arguments some mod made and this could be the place for that.
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I would disagree. It's not like the tool is working of it's own volition, in a vacuum. There's still a person there; instigating, directing and reviewing. Scoff if you're so inclined, but "prompt engineering" is a real skill with measurable impact on the quality of the result.
The fully automatic espresso machine, therefore, is not a good analogy. You load the coffee and press the button. It doesn't matter how hard you push the button, or from which angle. You don't direct the machine as it requires clarification, and once the coffee is made you can't in any way change the outcome. It's wholly different from using AI as a tool.
I'm a realist, and recognize the sentiment of anti-AI consumers isn't going away in the next decade. It's already implemented, and I'm not going to attempt to argue it should be removed - instead, continue the thought and implement it thoroughly, rather than isolate the scrutiny to a single tool in the chain.
By that token I would play the role of the user by deciding the beans, the water, and the fineness of the grind, but the machine did the rest by actually initiating the actions, tamping the beans, pressing the water and determining the length of time. My input is a trivial part of the machine's output, similar to selecting a model and (if within your control) setting some sampling parameters. At best you're providing educated guesses into guiding the output.
Fair enough. So if you chose bad beans, ground them poorly, and used dirty water - you are responsible for how the coffee turned out, no? So you can't attribute the quality entirely to the machine that simply heated up the water and poured it over the grounds. In both cases it's a team effort; the better the user, and the better the machine, the better the outcome.
I still believe you have more control over the final product in using AI, though, because you decide when it matches the vision directing you to make whatever it is you're making. The coffee machine is one shot, unless you're going to continually pour out the pot and try again until the quality matches your aim.
Nothing in the physical and digital realms is directly analogous, that's been discussed to death since the original Napster era.
The comparison in my mind is more about the competance of the person involved. In either case with AI or an automated coffe machine any average person could viably manage passable output. Take the tool away though and a large portion of those same people wouldn't know where to start. In those cases the machine is primarily responsible for the output. It's also likely that the output is in some way sub-optimal. To claim 'I made this' when, stripped of the automated machine the user would be helpless, is dishonest.
I would agree with you on it being down to the competence of the person involved in the process. However, if you were to take these qualifications and apply them to other professions then I think you would find few, if any, of them actually exist.
Like how many architects can design massive structures without CAD? How many physicists can do quantum mechanics without the machines that enable particle collision? How many astronomers can study the cosmos without their telescope? How many accountants can balance the books of corporations without a computer?
Yes, AI enables people to do things that they otherwise wouldn't be able to do, but that's why it's such an incredible innovation! I understand that Lemmy is comprised of people who feel strongly that they alone are deserving of creation because of the amount of study, practice and effort they've put into their skills, but disparaging others because it's become easier feels like gatekeeping. I think it should be celebrated that more people can share in my passion for software development, not upset that my skills are essentially trivialized.
Maybe this is truly, deep down, an expression of ego?
How many of the same would an unskilled amateur be able to produce comparable results from?
If the user doesn't understand the work being done then at some point the skill is lost. If every coder alive simply stopped their studies then in order to properly know what was being output from the AI we would essentially need to reinvent the wheel.
Offloading human skills into a machine owned by a small group of absurdly wealthy individuals risks dependence on them. Long before AI systems existed we passed on skills and knowledge from master to apprentance (or whatever title is appropriate to a field) with the master supervising and correcting the work of the new workers. Forgoing that passage of learning by simply asking for a given result from a machine... I picture the scene from Idiocracy where a clerk is selecting from a picture menu at the hospital.
You're not wrong, at all. The only correction I'd like to make it that no one is beholden to use the machines owned by the absurdly wealthy. I much prefer to use the open weight models on local hardware. It's a privilege that I relish.
We should have apprenticeships. We should have on the job training. We should have a lot of things, but we don't. Barring a complete overhaul of society I don't see any of that changing. Pandora's Box isn't closing , and the genie isn't going back into the bottle. Instead, we have to deal with reality as it is, so I embrace it rather than fight it, and make the most of it.
We were headed towards Idiocracy long before the advent of AI.