Ask Lemmy

I know a guy who does that. He used to be smart, but it feels like those antivax who refer to other people instead of using their brain. When he begins to talk about AI results, I zone out, and I'm starting to disregard everything he says, AI or not.

Personally, it's people who get answers from some so-called "book" or "university" or "expert" that grind my gears. Like think for yourself maybe?

I don't think I know anyone who does that.

Tbh I kiiind of do that with everyone. Well, not quite, I take what they say with a big grain of salt and just continue the conversation. A couple exceptions: they are experts in what they're talking about. Or, its some personal experience

Just start asking your 5-year-old for counter arguments, as they are likely to be more valid.

I've gotten my llm using friends to preface it with "the lying liar that lies says" which has in turn led to a sharp upturn in "but also the top link says" and generally helps keep me alert.

I definitely would, yes.

It depends what they ask.

A lot of questions are fairly accurate to ask AI.

Also, some people are smart enough to habe configured their pre-prompt to reduce common issues with AI platforms.

There's a big difference between:

"Hey whats the answer to (esoteric question)"

Vs

"Hey can you find me a paper on (well documented topic)" (and then opening the paper up and reading the actual source)

Using it as a powerful fuzzy search tool with semantic intent is fine.

Its the difference between asking a librarian how to cure cancer, vs asking the librarian to help you quickly find a book on cancer treatments.

I almost kicked a D&D player for asking AI everything at my table. I begged him to ask me instead. He left shortly after for unrelated reasons.

Put simply, YES.

I use AI a ton to find sources for information. Then check sources they used. Just made searching faster for me.

I know only one person who's completely fallen under the spell, but yes.

Though to be fair, I already disregarded most of what he said since he's a reactionary conservative who spends his days pouring right-wing podcasts into his ears at 1.5x. But at least on topics other than politics, he used to be fairly knowledgeable and trustworthy.

But since he's started telling me how impressed he is by how smart Claude is (since it tells him what he wants to hear), I've started disregarding everything he says, regardless of topic.

Yes. I know a few folk who've fallen way down the rabbit hole and believe anything the lying machines spit out. When they would get on their soapbox about LLMs or write very obviously ai-generated messages, I made it clear to them that I wanted to hear their thoughts or nothing at all.

For the most part, I got the latter. My mom actually backed down a bit and uses chatgpt at least more judiciously now, especially after I showed her how it makes shit up about stuff within her knowledge base and explained how it was doing that for everything.

Yes. It's getting to be more of a problem where it's easier not to think. I don't see this trend ending well.

I know whenever I'm at work and someone uses AI to try to answer a question where they are not qualified to validate an AI response, I don't trust anything that person says.

I don't know if anyone I know does this. Im sure most or all use it somewhat but also still use standard searching.

Not totally, but if they ask for an answer or ask AI to do something for them so they dont have to think im suspect.

I think AI can be useful, I use it to help me edit and proof my writing, but I specifically wont let it rewrite my words. I will let it make suggestions for clarity and grammar but thats the limit.

I will use AI to generate a meme level image, but im not going to use it for a presentation or as part of something that would have been a paid element.

I have played with using it to help me prototype some software, but I still read all the code, and I still take the time to understand what its writing.

AI replacing your own thoughts is bad, AI helping you refine and extend your thoughts is mostly ok.

Do you disregard people IRL who you know use a calculator for everything?

If that sounds like a ridiculous question, it's because the use of that tool has become so ingrained in our society that we don't question its use anymore. AI is a new tool and one which can offload a lot of mental work. Such tools have always been controversial. If Plato is to be believed (and that isn't necessarily a given), Socrates complained that writing made men lazy and their minds weak, because they didn't have to exercise their memories and were not taught things, just read facts.

AI is a tool, and it's going to be worked into the fabric of our society, for good or ill. It's also facing a lot of push-back, as have many tools, but that is unlikely to stop it. Will AI make us lazier? Absolutely. That's kinda the point. If necessity is the mother of invention, laziness is the father. So much of human invention is all about ways to not work as hard. Sometimes, this is because we need to improve how we do something, sometimes its because we'd rather be down at the pub sipping a brew while a machine does the hard stuff. Often, it's both.

That said, there is likely to be a lot of pain in the short term as we adjust to the new reality. And it will likely cause another shift in how work happens. Businesses used to have hundreds of people doing nothing but tabulating accounts. Rooms would be full of people just doing math. Now, we have Excel and most of that tedious work is now done by one person at the click of a button. The main problem with the rollout of AI may be one of speed. The same speed which empowers Excel is making the disruption of AI happen at a much faster speed than many of our institutions may be equipped to handle. Or not, there's been some reporting lately that the promises of AI have been severely over-hyped (shocker, AI companies over sold the capabilities of AI, whodathunkit?). We won't really know until we're well past the point of disruption.

So, does it annoy me that people use (and believe) AI to answer relatively simple questions? No not really. Sure, they could take the time to look it up with google, but that is slower and harder. Or they could look it up in a book, which is even slower and harder. Or they could just memorize it and avoid that new fangled writing thing, which is making kids lazy. But, that sort of thing is a dead end. Ai is here, it's a tool people will use. We just need to find a way to educate people about its strengths and limitations. And that is a hard problem, but maybe AI will help us solve it.

Yes. It's getting weird. Had a coworker ask me a question if something was possible. I said yes. He said: no, ai said it wasn't. I didn't understand why he asked me if he knew the answer already lol. They just accept ai as truth, can't take those people seriously.