ExtremeDullard

And it's not what you think.

Beyond everything that's wrong with AI as it's currently deployed - i.e. the fact that's basically owned and run by nefarious surveillance capitalists in bed with fascists, and it's mostly used to replace honest people and things with cheaper mediocrity - what's wrong with the technology for me finally clicked in my head today.

My first - indirect - encounter with AI was a few years ago - quite a few years in fact, come to think of it. I went to a forum for mechanical keyboard enthusiasts and asked whether someone remembered some obscure folding full-size keyboard I used to own back in the 90s. I lost that keyboard years ago and I'd been trying to identify which brand / model it was for years. I figured if anybody knew what it was, it would be one of that forum's dwellers.

So I described the keyboard as best I could, and someone immediately came up with the correct device. Wow! I had been looking for so long, and just like that, this man gave me the answer! I thanked him profusely and told him he had a good memory. "Nah" he said, "I just asked AI."

That instantly deflated me. This guy really hadn't done anything other than forward my question, and that elusive keyboard of mine was one question away in some search engine. I should have been excited to finally find out what it was, but somehow instead it felt hollow and totally pointless all of the sudden.

Fast forward a few years, the same thing happened with my builder the other day: I asked him if he could build a boardwalk in the backyard, so my disabled wife could go get some fresh air safely. I started explaining what I wanted and sketching things on a piece of paper. At some point, he simply got on his feet, whipped out his cellphone, shot a picture of the backyard and asked ChatGPT to draw a boardwalk to my specifications. And in 2 seconds flat, it came up with a photo of the finished thing. And for the second time, it felt totally hollow, and the whole project felt meaningless. It was what I wanted for sure, but it's now how I wanted it - if that makes any sense.

And today at work, I was playing with a model on a powerful server we just bought, to evaluate how to use AI locally for coding purposes, and at least avoid running cloud services from fascist America. And yeah, it works: it produces code that, if not very good, is plenty good enough if I'm very careful, particularly for the amount of time it takes to spew out the code.

And it felt completely, utterly hollow.

And then it hit me: my job as a traditional software engineer is coming to an end. I'm very senior, so I'll be among the last ones the chopping block, but I'll get the chop alright. And it's okay: I've been obsoleted. It's fine. It's progress. It came quicker than I anticipated, but fundamentally I have no issue with that.

But here's what's bothering me: there's no effort needed into anything anymore. You get what you want with zero effort and zero sense of accomplishment. So what's the point of anything really?

I'm a lazy SOB, so I love the idea of getting shit done without lifting a finger. But somehow everything has become so effortless that it leaves me empty. Kind of like asking a computer to solve a crossword: it'll be done in less than a second and it'll be super efficient, but it makes the crossword pointless.

For instance, I'm a fan of 360 photography. I take pride in reworking the nadir in all my shots (don't ask...) AI could clean it up in seconds and probably do a better job than me with Gimp. But what's the point? I don't want to do that! It's tempting, but then I'd be totally disinterested in the photo after AI is done cleaning it up. So I do it myself.

Likewise, if I have a technical problem, I'll look for the answer the traditional way, with a search engine. I know I could probably ask Google's AI thing and it would probably give me the right answer rightaway, but then what would I have learnt? And more importantly, what's the point of learning anything if the answer is always there? So I refrain. And yet it's tempting...

AI makes everything pointless and bland, and it leaves me empty and not wanting for more.

The other thing is this: I know people say our jobs won't disappear, they'll change: we won't code anymore, we'll direct a machine that codes for us. We'll apply our experience to guide a machine that will do the grunt work for us. It's like we'll all have the equivalent of a very dumb university student with the entire world's knowledge at their disposal, pissing code for us and talking too much, but never complaining.

But you know what? I'm not interested in doing that. It's fucking boring to me - the same way I would find my professional life completely boring if I had an actual university student code monkey I could legally give orders to. I simply have no interest in doing that.

I do marvel at the technology that underpins AI, and what it can do is fascinating - even in its current, completely fucked up and dumb-as-a-brick state. I've done AI work in the 80s, so I appreciate how far we have come, and I never thought I'd see anything like that in my lifetime. And I totally get that people are excited by the technology. But me? I find the whole thing intensely uninspiring. Impressive, yes, but boring to tears.

Just like the proverbial horse carriage driver, I've been obsoleted by cars. And again, it's fine: it's progress. I get it. And yes, as a good, experienced horse carriage driver, I could probably recycle my career and become a decent car driver for the few years I have left on the job. But I'm simply not interested. If the horses are gone, I'm plain and simply bored out of my mind, however good the cars are.

That's my beef with AI. That's what I realized today: it's a bright future I'm utterly indifferent to, that holds zero excitement for me.

And quite frankly, considering the tidal wave of it that's hitting the entire world right now, it left me quite depressed for the rest of the day. So I hit the bottle tonight. It's one of those days I guess...

Oldie but goodie.

This is the second time it's happened, but this time the phantom pain came first.

I think I hurt my back digging a hole in the yard this weekend. It felt like I had just stretched a muscle or something. But this morning, I woke up to extra-spicy phantom limb pain in one foot - electric shocks, which is unusual, because I don't normally get it like that - and later in the day, my buttock on that side started throbbing like proper sciatica.

I went see the doc and she doesn't believe I can get phantom pain before getting sciatica. I'm not sure I believe it either, but it can't be a coincidence. Also, just like last time, my buttock seems okay now, but the phantom pain isn't going away...

Have you experienced this sort of thing too or is it in my head?

First time seeing a “NO META GLASSES” sign in the door of a shop! I’m not surprised… and I expect we might see more of these kind of things in the years ahead.

#Meta #MetaGlasses #AR #privacy #surveillance #Vermont

(From Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@danyork/116511753802210926)

When your lived experience with limb loss becomes part of your job, where do you draw the line?

I restacked my old pile of wood that I had to pull down because I couldn't think ahead if my life depended on it.

But this time, I paid some attention to the quality of the layup. So all in all, I'm happier to see that thing when I look out the window now. Yes, somehow stuff like that that shouldn't matter matters to me...

All the ice is gone now, but the water is still around 0C. So I put a wetsuit on and... it's too buoyant for swimming. I'm gonna have to get me a weight belt.

So, not great, but at least it's nice to be in the water.

A Georgia man said Wednesday that he was traumatized by severe medical neglect at a problem-plagued jail in Atlanta that led to the amputation of his fingers and lower legs.

Rashaad Muhammad was arrested in August and taken to the Fulton County Jail, where medical staff failed to provide antibiotics and other medical supplies he repeatedly told them he needed, his lawyers said. Less than two weeks later, his condition had deteriorated to the point that he could no longer stand and he was taken to a hospital, where he was ultimately told the amputations were necessary to save his life.

I have special feet and these are my new special boots. And they're awesome!

It took the shoemaker over 6 months to make them, but they're perfect. Someone's gonna be hiking everywhere soon 🙂

Yes, I know, they're just shoes. But they're something special to me. Today is a good day!

The Verge tries Splatica, which uses Insta360 cameras, Antigravity drones, and Gaussian splats to help creators easily reconstruct real-world scenes in 3D.