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Comment by Starlevel004 | Hacker News Reader

I laugh every time somebody qualifies their anti-AI comments with "Actually I really like AI, I use it for everything else". The problem is bad, but the cause of the problem (and especially paying for the cause of the problem)? That's good!

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I laugh every time somebody thinks every problem must have a root cause that pollutes every non-problem it touches.

It's a problem to use a blender to polish your jewelry. However, it's perfectly alright to use a blender to make a smoothie. It's not cognitive dissonance to write a blog post imploring people to stop polishing jewelry using a blender while also making a daily smoothie using the same tool.

This is basically the "I'm not evil, it's just a normal job" excuse. Like with any moral issues there will be disagreement where to draw the line but yes if you do something that ends up supporting $bad_thing, then there is an ethical consideration you need to make. And if your answer is always that it's OK for the things you want to do then you are probably not being very honest with yourself.

Your response assumes the tool is a $bad_thing rather than one specific use of it. In my analogy, that would be saying that "there is an ethical consideration you need to make" before using (or buying) a blender.

It's not as one-dimensional as good vs bad. Transformers generally are extremely useful. Do I want to read your transformer generated writing? Fuck no. Is code generation/understanding/natural language interfaces to a computer good? I'd have to argue yes, certainly.

I cry every time somebody tries to frame it one dimensionally.

I cry every time someone uses the f-word in their writing for no apparent reason.

I'd rather read "fuck" than "f-word". The latter is like eating dumplings for lent because surely $deity won't see the meat in there.

Cultured people have no need for such words in public discourse so I'd rather not see either of them or the need. People are judged by the words they use.

The usage of those words is to accurately convey the speaker's emotion. If you don't see any use in that then that's your problem.

There are far better words availble than to use those often referred to as "gutter talk".

Cultured people? I'd certainly argue that words which people feel are "uncultured" strictly DO have a use case.

It's as if you're saying "smart people only color inside the lines." Take a step back.

Why laugh? Why can't a tool have good and bad uses, and why can't one be disappointed about the bad uses but embrace the good ones?

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