Unpopular Opinion

I am not an expert but I know more about llms than the average end user. Let's go through everything.

• AIs are going to be forever incompetent

  Ai already isn't incompetent in proper use cases and is improving. HOWEVER when llms are used in inappropriate ways such as far customer service, or legal advice, which they frequently are, they are and will most likely remain harmful and incompetent. They're great for finding and predicting patterns and processing large amounts of data. The problem is that the people in charge of llm companies are forcing them in everything possible, even when they clearly have no reason to be used for certain things, which causes a ton of issuesm

• AIs cannot create new things

  This is a gray area. It technically creates new things but you need to remember that llms are not humans, what an llm is doing is compiling what it has in its database and regurgitating it back up to be used. When an llm "creates" an image what you're looking at is bits and pieces of its stored data. Llms do not have the capacity to create anything on their own without this base data. If an llm didn't have it's training, it would be a paper weight. This is where this argument comes from.

• AIs cannot do very simple tasks

  Entirely incorrect, it can and does many things. As stated before, it's great at processing large amount of data. It's extremely useful for researchers. People have found new planets with llm technology. However most end users only see llms when they are forced to interact with them, and in many of those situations, the llm is being used for something completely inappropriate for an llm, which does make it come off as completely useless. If the people responsible for pushing and deploying llns were not doing this, and were deploying them responsibly and ethically, I'm quite confident there would be far less hate for them.

• AI will replace my job

  Without knowing what your job is I can't tell you that but they can and have displaced many people's jobs, and has been a massive bane especially in the art and tech industry

• AI will bring mass surveillance

  Ai is already used frequently for mass surveillance.

• AI can produce deepfakes that are 100% convincing

  It's already alarmingly close to being able to do this

• AI can be superpersuasive, manipulative

  There are many cases of it doing this. Ai psychosis would not be a term if it didn't happen frequently enough to need a term

Llms can both be helpful and incredibly destructive. When it's used properly it can be a major boon, and when it's used incorrectly, or maliciously, it can and has destroyed lives.

Those datacenters are also extremely harmful to the communities they are built in. They make people's utility bills spike dramatically, cause immense harm to the environment, and yes, they do use up and pollute a massive amount of freshwater. They are also extremely loud and can cause sounds in frequencies we can't detect but can and do cause people to get ill. I encourage you to look up everything I've said here to confirm for yourself.

Anything can be both helpful and harmful. Uranium can be refined into fuel for very clean and efficient energy.... It can also be used to make bombs that are powerful enough to end life on earth. A hammer is great for driving nails into wood, but it can also be a murder weapon. Something can be both helpful and extremely harmful at the same time.

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

Isn't the water just recycled back into the system?

Not localy. They use evaporative cooling. The water goes into the atmosphere. Eventually it'll rain down someplace, maybe someplace useful, maybe not.

It is reasonable to believe A) AIs are a poor substitute for a human at most jobs, and B) company management is still going to replace people in search of short-term profits, even at the expense of long-term stability.

Those two things are not contradictory.

Second, "AIs cannot create new, original things" is not the opposite of "AI can produce deepfakes". That would be like saying every shuffle of a deck of cards is functionally unique (true), therefore I invented a new card game (false).

I don't know enough to be sure that AI can't be useful for something, or that data centers are definitely bad for the environment. I certainly think they are, but I could be wrong. I don't hate them for that probable but unconfirmed notion, I hate them because the corrupt system is pushing them hard, simple as that.

You will never know enough about the world to identify every scam and trick that comes your way for what it is, but you can often identify clear scammers and tricksters, and when you do, you should immediately refuse anything related to them out of an abundance of caution. I'd rather turn down a good idea from a bad person than fall for another trick just because I couldn't specifically prove how and why it's a trick. If the idea is good, it'll come around again from someone more trustworthy than a tech billionaire, and they'll be able to properly explain why it's good.

As far as I'm concerned, everything that anyone worth over $10 million says, does, or creates is at least partially evil. It's better to assume that than waste time splitting hairs as the world burns due to their actions.