Comment by dns_snek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dns_snek | Hacker News Reader

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No, your parents spoke out of ignorance and resistance towards any sort of change, I'm speaking from years of experience of both trying to use the technology productively, as well as spending a significant portion of my life in the digital world that has been impacted by it. I remember being mesmerized by GPT-3 before ChatGPT was even a thing.

The only thing that has been revolutionized over the past few years is the amount of time I now waste looking at Cloudflare turnstile and dredging through the ocean of shit that has flooded the open web to find information that is actually reliable.

2 years ago I could still search for information (let's say plumbing-related), but we're now at a point where I'll end up on a bunch of professional and traditionally trustworthy sources, but after a few seconds I realize it's just LLM-generated slop that's regurgitating the same incorrect information that was already provided to me by an LLM a few minutes prior. It sounds reasonable, it sounds authoritative, most people would accept it but I know that it's wrong. Where do I go? Soon the answer is probably going to have to be "the library" again.

All the while less perceptive people like yourself apparently don't even seem to realize just how bad the quality of information you're consuming has become, so you cheer it on while labeling us stubborn, resistant to change, or even luddites.

Personally, I have three use cases for AI:

1. Image upscaling. I am decorating my house and AI allowed me to get huge prints from tiny shitty pictures. It's not perfect, but it works.

2. Conversational partner. It's a different question whether it's a good or a bad thing, but I can spend hours talking to Claude about things in general. He's expensive though.

3. Learning basics of something. I'm trying to install LED strips and ChatGPT taught me basics of how that's supposed to work. Also, ChatGPT suggested me what plants might survive in my living room and how to take care of them (we'll see if that works though).

And this is just my personal use case, I'm sure there are more. My point is, you're wrong.

> All the while less perceptive people like yourself apparently don't even seem to realize just how bad the quality of information you're consuming has become, so you cheer it on while labeling us stubborn, resistant to change, or even luddites.

Literally same shit my parents would say while I was cross-checking multiple websites for information and they were watching the only TV channel that our antenna would pick up.

> Conversational partner

This is the ai holy grail. When tech companies can get users to think of the ai as a friend ( -> best friend -> only friend -> lover ) and be loyal to it it will make the monetisation possibilities of the ad fuelled outrage engagement of the past 10 years look silly.

Scary that that is the endgame for “social” media.

People were already willing to do that with Eliza. When you combine LLMs with a bit of persistent storage, WOOF. It's gonna be extremely nasty.

Gaslight reality, coming right up, at scale. Only costs like ten degrees of global warming and the death of the world as we know it. But WOW, the opportunities for massed social control!

From my perspective, your argument is:

- AI gives me huge, mediocre prints of my own shitty pictures to fill up my house with - AI means I don’t have to talk to other people - AI means I can learn things online that previously I could have learned online (not sure what has changed here!) - People who cross-check multiple websites for information have a limited perspective compared to relying on a couple of AI channels

Overall, doesn’t your evidence support the point that AI is reducing the quality of your information diet?

You paint a picture that looks exactly like the 21st century version of an elderly couple with just a few TV channels available: a few familiar channels of information, but better now because we can make sure they only show what we want them to show, little contact with other people.

<< 1. Image upscaling. I am decorating my house and AI allowed me to get huge prints from tiny shitty pictures. It's not perfect, but it works.

I have a buddy, who made me realize how awesome FSR4 is[1]. This is likely one of the best real world uses so far. Granted, that is not LLM, but it is great at that.

[1]https://overclock3d.net/news/software/what-you-need-to-know-... [2]https://www.pcgamesn.com/amd/fsr-fidelity-fx-super-resolutio...

> [...] My point is, you're wrong.

Image upscaling is not an LLM technology, using current-gen LLMs as conversational partners is highly undesirable for many reasons, and learning the basics of things IS indeed useful, but it doesn't even begin to offset the productivity losses that LLMs have caused by decimating what was left of the signal-to-noise ratio on the internet.

You haven't even tried to address my chief concern about QUALITY of information at all. I'm perfectly aware that you can ask ChatGPT to do anything, you can ask it to plan your wedding, you can ask it do decorate your house, you can ask if two medications are safe to consume together, you can ask it for relationship advice, you can ask it if your dating profile looks appealing, you can ask it to help diagnose you with a medical conditions, you can ask it to analyze a spreadsheet.

It's going to come back with an answer for all of those, but if you're someone who cares about correctness, quality, and anything that's actually real, you'll have a sinking feeling in your gut doubting the answer you received. Does it actually understand anything about human relationships, or is it giving you relationship advice based on a million Reddit threads it was trained on? Does it actually understand anything about anything, or are you just getting the statistically likely answer based on terabytes of casual human conversation with all of their misunderstandings, myths, falsehoods, lies, and confident incompetence? Is it just telling me what I want to hear?

> Literally same shit my parents would say while I was cross-checking multiple websites for information and they were watching the only TV channel that our antenna would pick up.

Interesting analogy, because I am the one who's still trying to cross-check multiple websites of information while you blissfully watch your only available TV channel.

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