>The net utility of AI is far more debatable.
I'm sure if you asked the luddites the utility of mechanized textile production you'd get a negative response as well.
I'm sure if you asked the luddites the utility of mechanized textile production you'd get a negative response as well.
What does AI get the consumer? Worse spam, more realistic scams, hallucinated search results, easy cheating on homework? AI-assisted coding doesn't benefit them, and the jury is still out on that too (see recent study showing it's a net negative for efficiency).
There's a reason that AI is already starting to fade out of the limelight with customers (companies and consumers both). After several years, the best they can offer is slightly better chatbots than we had a decade ago with a fraction of the hardware.
Oddly enough, I don't think that actually matters too much to the dedicated autodidact.
Learning well is about consulting multiple sources and using them to build up your own robust mental model of the truth of how something works.
If you can really find the single perfect source of 100% correct information then great, I guess... but that's never been my experience. Every source of information has its flaws. You need to build your own mental model with a skeptical eye from as many sources as possible.
As such, even if AI makes mistakes it can still accelerate your learning, provided you know how to learn and know how to use tips from AI as part of your overall process.
Having an unreliable teacher in the mix may even be beneficial, because it enforces the need for applying critical thinking to what you are learning.
> Oddly enough, I don't think that actually matters too much to the dedicated autodidact.
I think it does matter, but the problem is vastly overstated. One person points out that AIs aren’t 100% reliable. Then the next person exaggerates that a little and says that AIs often get things wrong. Then the next person exaggerates that a little and says that AIs very often get things wrong. And so on.
Before you know it, you’ve got a group of anti-AI people utterly convinced that AI is totally unreliable and you can’t trust it at all. Not because they have a clear view of the problem, but because they are caught in this purity spiral where any criticism gets amplified every time it’s repeated.
Go and talk to a chatbot about beginner-level, mainstream stuff. They are very good at explaining things reliably. Can you catch them out with trick questions? Sure. Can you get incorrect information when you hit the edges of their knowledge? Sure. But for explaining the basics of a huge range of subjects, they are great. “Most of what they told you was completely wrong” is not something a typical beginner learning a typical subject would encounter. It’s a wild caricature of AI that people focused on the negatives have blown out of all proportion.
I also use them to help me write code, which it does pretty well.
IDK where you're getting the idea that it's fading out. So many people are using the "slightly better chatbots" every single day.
Btw if you only think chat GPT is slightly better than what we had a decade ago then I do not believe that you have used any chat bots at all, either 10 years ago or recently because that's actually a completely insane take.
To back that up, here's a rare update on stats from OpenAI: https://x.com/nickaturley/status/1952385556664520875
> This week, ChatGPT is on track to reach 700M weekly active users — up from 500M at the end of March and 4× since last year.
You're looking at the prototype while complaining about an end product that isn't here yet.
Getting people to associate the luddites as anti-technology zealots rather than pro-labor organization is one of the most successful pieces of propaganda in history.
Source? Skimming the wikipedia article it definitely sounds like most were made up of former skilled textile workers that were upset they were replaced with unskilled workers operating the new machines.
> They had nothing against mechanized looms, they had everything against the business owners using their workers talents and knowledge to build an entire operation only to later undercut their wages and/or replace them with lesser paid unskilled workers and reduce the quality of life of their entire community.
Sounds a lot like the anti-AI sentiment today, eg. "I'm not against AI, I'm just against it being used by evil corporations so they don't have to hire human workers". The "AI slop" argument also resembles luddites objecting to the new machines on the quality of "quality" (also from wikipedia), although to be fair that was only a passing mention.
Interestingly....
..... the fact that luddites also called for unemployment compensation and retraining for workers displaced by the new machinery, probably makes them amongst the most forward thinking and progressive people of the 1800's.
[0]: https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/rethinking-the-l...
Luddites weren't at a point where every industry sees individual capital formation/demand for labor trend towards zero over time.
Prices are ratios in the currency between factors and producers.
What do you suppose happens when the factors can't buy anything because there is nothing they can trade. Slavery has quite a lot of historic parallels with the trend towards this. Producers stop producing when they can make no profit.
You have a deflationary (chaotic) spiral towards socio-economic collapse, under the burden of debt/money-printing (as production risk). There are limits to systems, and when such limits are exceeded; great destruction occurs.
Malthus/Catton pose a very real existential threat when such disorder occurs, and its almost inevitable that it does without action to prevent it. One cannot assume action will happen until it actually does.
The loom wasn't centralized in four companies. Customers of textiles did not need an expensive subscription.
Obviously average people would benefit more if all that investment went into housing or in fact high speed railways. "AI" does not improve their lives one bit.
This sort of “other people were wrong once, so you might be too” comment is really pointless.