I constantly wonder what is the societal benefits of AI
It’s really hard to build a coherent pro-AI argument
It’s really hard to build a coherent pro-AI argument
That is horrifying and destroys jobs, removes expertise from the world, and makes our lives worse.
I do not see how AI could be a net positive either.
agree, given that we have a natural tendency to believe what we read - or only comprehend what we believe [1].
[1] https://bear.warrington.ufl.edu/brenner/mar7588/Papers/gilbe...
I thought this piece was realistic and hopeful:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/06/ai-open-ai-anthrop...
I can't control how the world uses AI, but my family and friends have been using it to start new businesses, finally resolve some long-term medical mysteries, and plan trips they wouldn't have otherwise.
finally resolve some long-term medical mysteries
I live in an area with three world-class hospitals, still had to wait 16 months to follow-up with a hematologist about bloodwork.
If we aren't going to fix overregulation, undersupply, and insurance, AI is the best the bottom 80% can do for a lot of medical queries too complex for the time and attention they are allotted with the doctor. I see that as a positive.
I suppose if it says something like "Eat more broccoli" and the suggestion works you can assume the answer is accurate.
But for me it's more likely to say "maybe you have xxxx" and I would still need to see a specialist to do tests like colonoscopies to know?
I suffer from one condition with no cure and little literature and every once in a while I've seen on a related subreddit I no longer read "I'm using AI you guys and this AI SLOP will surely help!!!"
Like, I personally find python pandas documentation unusable because they don't come with examples next to the function definition. (historically at least, maybe they have changed)
So I was left flailing, trying to cobble something together that was even capable of running without error, much less emitting the output I wanted.
Now that an LLM has badly-memorized 80% of the documentation and can generate 3 different attempts in 5 seconds, I'm free to focus on the actual problem I am working on rather than guessing at syntax for something I use less than once a week.
So I see at least the ability to have a on-demand tutor or sounding board, at any time of day, for pennies, to be a boon for anyone who wants to learn a bit or try reaching for something just outside of their current understanding.
I just wonder if the utility merits the resources allocated to it
There is your “pro” argument.
The “con” argument would be all the other ways dynamite has been twisted and used since.
This AI stuff is neither good or bad, it is a tool. The people using it are either good or bad.
No, no that doesn't work. Nobody thinks that.
"Drunk people who do it think that!"
You framed your comment as a 3rd party, not the idiot driving drunk, the above 'argument' doesn't hold water.
Yeah, obviously. It was a sarcastic reply to a nonsense argument of “there are no bad things only bad people”
You quite literally did??
Everything is driven by a stimulator, dumbass. LLMs have one purpose and it’s plagiarism. Downplaying that by saying “someone’s doing the plagiarism” doesn’t make the plagiarism machine okay. Are you this retarded about guns, too?
A nuclear bomb is just a tool, the people who use them are good or bad.
Sometimes tools in and of themselves are bad. They exist exclusively to do bad things and cause only damage, and on scales that are literally impossible for regular people to imagine. The consequences of using the tool are only bad, and last decades if not centuries.
There are no "peaceful" uses for nuclear bombs. We tried, and every proposal failed because they're nuclear goddamn bombs and the literal fallout ruins the environment for generations in fun and unpredictable ways.
A screwdriver or a hammer are tools that are morally ambivalent. The People Grinder 9000 is not, nor is the Copyright Launderer 2000.5 or the IP Theft Machine. Tools designed explicitly to do bad things are in and of themselves bad
Ads needed to sell products
Social media sells lots of ads around content
Content is expensive because you need to revenue share with the people that make it
AI makes content for free
Ad sales margin goes up
Tech companies make most of their money selling ads around content and they needed a way to increase margin so they created a content making machine.
I’ve already seen this in my own behavior where anything even remotely AI-generated makes me tune out completely
Meaningless corporate presentations, most documents used for hiring and job searching, content on business sites that probably doesn't need to be there, etc. AI at least speeds that up given society's reluctance to get rid of it altogether.
I guess it can also be used to speed up rote work that doesn't really feel engaging but needs to be anyway, or as a Google equivalent for people that don't know the terminology needed to find information about a topic.
But at the end of the day, AI is basically the very definition of the lowest common denominator. Or maybe the most average one.
So, if you're not particularly interested in something, know nothing about how it works or have no talent for it whatsoever, AI is almost like magic. If you do know how it works, then it's often laughably bad.
LinkedIn posts never really mattered. But because everyone is now using broadly the same tools and prompts to create LinkedIn posts, the posts matter even less now
Even worse, you are probably lying, you can think of pro-AI arguments but you refuse to give them assent because of bad motivated reasoning?
You are double bad.
it will hopefully eviscerate the petite bourgeoisie and the bohemians.