ragequittah

This is something I've thought about as people complain about things like restaurant photos being AI and such. You know what kind of customer this pushes away? The kind that complain about minor details that don't really matter. Might be a net good for many businesses.

Major companies are using these LLMs on their already hardened software and finding countless thousands of security flaws. Is that all theater too? If not then it's very easy to see how these things are dangerous.

I made an AI video of a picture of me when I was about 2. Had a huge smile on my face in the photo so as a lark I made a 5 second video of me laughing. The look in my mom's eyes when I showed her and the way she grabbed the phone from me to look closer was such a good moment.

It's not an alternate reality. I was laughing at the time almost certainly. New ways of seeing old memories really needn't be depressing at all. It's so strange how so many people seem to only see the bad in a technology that can be used in countless different ways.

Windows 11 LTS is a dream to use. Unfortunately I need 25H2 for dumb gaming reasons so I can't use it. It proves Microsoft can make windows properly they just refuse.

When I opened up the old notepad and my add/remove programs was 3 entries long I couldn't believe it.

The problem is they really are the best TVs. I have one sitting next to me that thankfully hasn't been connected to the internet in 5 years. Take the subsidies they give you for being able to spy on you then don't let them spy on you is the better move.

These companies are going too far too fast like we always do as humans, and I agree the negatives aren't going to be pleasant. But there are industries and products out there that we all use currently that have way worse externalities that we just shove to the side in our minds because they've been around since before we could yell on twitter about them. The beef industry is a nutty thing to exist in its current form. Oil and plastics what the hell are we even doing? My guess is if you put your head down and did the research AI doesn't even rank in the top 10 of problematic things that people use daily.

Air travel, everyone having a nice green super watered lawn / golf courses, air conditioning in every home, fast fashion. A single person using AI for their work doesn't even register on the list of offences if you compare it to these things. Driving an ICE car every day for more than 30 minutes is wild. Hell it probably doesn't even use as much power as playing a video game on a good graphics card for 2 hours.

The thing I've resigned myself to is very few people will change anything at all for the greater good of society that gives them even a minor inconvenience. See: COVID restrictions. My honest take is we're absolutely doomed as a species unless we come up with novel solutions to the problems we're facing. And guess what AI is showing itself to be extremely good at in various fields [1][2][3]? It's a pipe-dream hope, but the hope is there. And AI when compared to the decades (sometimes centuries) of oil, beef, coal, whatever else won't even be a pixel on the screen of reasons why climate change is happening for some time yet. And it will highly incentivize mass production/adoption of the cheapest power sources which also happens to be renewables. I understand it doesn't look like that right now as people like Elon make their disgusting data centers, but over time I'd bet on it only because the financial incentive is there.

The discussion is far more nuanced than "AI bad". I understand the horrific aspects of it, but there is plenty of good to be found there too. Accessibility, translation, help with learning disabilities. The list of good outcomes goes on for a long while. It's a powerful tool that can be used for good or ill. In my opinion we need more people with the principles you speak of to be using powerful tools for the benefit of those principles.

[1] https://news.mit.edu/2025/using-generative-ai-researchers-de...

[2] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03819-2

[3] https://www.ipd.uw.edu/2025/12/rfdiffusion2-efficient-enzyme...

>They are poor tools that can't do the things they are claimed to be able to do

This is the one I don't understand the most out of all the gripes. I find it genuinely unsettling how much I've done over the past couple of days (and with little to no mistakes or bugs in the code that I can find) by just broadly asking Astra to do it. I understand why you'd feel the technology sucks 2 years ago, but these days the models are becoming way too good at what they do.

I agree that if it lives up to the hype we're in for major societal upheaval. Existential crisis is a very real part of looking at this tech for what it is. But I also don't see how not using it stops that. It'd be like not ever taking an airplane to prevent climate change and wondering why it didn't work.

The fun is in being able to finish projects you've had rattling around in your head for years but never had time to do. Or researching and discovering things that you'd never bother with previously because the internet has become an impossible to navigate cesspool. Or learning things in a way that is completely customized to your speed and level of knowledge.

I have to hold 2 thoughts in your head at the same time: the technology is empowering at an individual level while also being highly disruptive at a societal level. We're not going to be able to put the toothpaste back in the tube at this point.

There was a whole gaggle of people who refused to get it for that and a few other "user friendliness" reasons. And I completely understand it.

>Across all groups of users, taking too long to download pages (i.e. "speed") is the most commonly experienced problem with the web (64.8% of respondents).

>Online retailers especially should take note: 53% of respondents reported that they had left a web site while searching for product information simply because the site was too slow.[1]

It's strange to think about now but roughly half of people in the US didn't have internet in the year 2000. And half of people that had the internet weren't making any purchases. People didn't trust or see much use for the tech back then and it was really hard to convince them.

[1]https://sites.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-1998-04/...

You can also find something uninteresting without brow-beating people about it. Goes both ways. Just giving my experience with it, take it or leave it. The comment I was replying to seemed to wonder why people didn't understand non-engagement with the tech, I gave my reasoning. The cost of engaging is also so slim (and it's freaking everywhere) that it has to be an almost religious aversion to not, which I find quite perplexing in itself.

Personally I generally agree with guardrails for regular consumers. The kind of people who don't want to do things like go into developer options and enable "unsafe" options usually should be protected against installing a random .apk on a device that contains their bank info and whatever else.

I just find it such a fascinating technology. It's finally fun to be a nerd again! For me it's the same feeling as when I was on the internet in the early '90s and was trying to tell people how useful it would be. I don't hold a grudge against anybody who held out until the iPhone came around or whatever it was that got them to finally realize the usefulness, but I still question why it was so hard to convince so many people when the benefits were just plainly obvious.

If you want to avoid the technology go nuts. I just hope you're doing so knowing how important it will be to the future. It's also almost satire how outdated the assumptions of many people who don't engage are. "It mostly lies to you anyway" or "It can't even count the number of letters in a word" are such silly things to say about the technology these days. As is the typical "but it uses so much water!" as the person orders a hamburger.

My gripes mostly come with people who don't engage with it and then spout memes/misinformation (ironic) about AI as if they're experts. Usually akin to "That internet stuff is garbage, pictures take 2 minutes to load!" after everyone and their dog already has broadband.

Humans adapt to change oddly fast. If you saw that video in 2022 you'd be 100% positive you were watching a sci-fi movie.

You can still install your own apps and in my case your own operating system (graphene). The 24 hour wait to activate sideloads indefinitely seems like a non-issue to me.

https://support.google.com/android/answer/17588095

You have to bake the 'lazy dev'/'keep it simple stupid' mentality into your AGENTS.md and / or the skills you're using to design things. It will take things too literally sometimes so you also have to make sure you're being accurate. Best way I've found to use it is make it ask you clarifying questions about what you're trying to build and have it help design the shape of the thing. Then it writes the instructions in a format it understands.

I've had Claude do the same thing where it goes off and spends 100% of my tokens on 3 functions and an ungodly amount of tests / scaffolding that do almost nothing when I gave it an underdeveloped idea.

That was nowhere near what chrome does. This is why I have trouble taking Firefox haters seriously. A 1 time thing that they the haven't done again. Installed an add on that was never enabled or did anything at all unless you went through the trouble of enabling it. Needed you to have the Firefox studies checkbox enabled which all of us who would even care turn off first thing.

Chrome: no blocking ads on websites whatsoever. The comparison isn't even close.

At the same time if it significantly hinders you in everyday life it's nice to have a way to break free of it. I can't take most ADHD medications due to unrelated issues and it's such a shame after hearing / witnessing first hand how much it can genuinely change a person's life for the better.

Strange take. If it's normal to spend 12 hours not eating staring at a screen trying to solve 1 problem and completely oblivious to the outside world then I guess I don't know many normal people.

I highly suggest you read about the subject. This isn't the fringe science you're implying. It's a big reason I was diagnosed by my doctor. And it's often treated quite well by taking ADHD medications.

  “While the estimated 8 million adults in the USA affected by attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) might find it nearly impossible to sit still in a lecture hall or excruciatingly challenging to focus on writing a term paper, these same individuals might find themselves spending hours at a time composing a new song, tinkering with their car, writing computer code, or watching television (Kessler et al., 2006). The term “hyperfocus” (HF) has been used to characterize this state of heightened, focused attention that individuals with ADHD frequently report (Brown, 2005; Conner, 1994; Ozel-Kizil et al., 2016).”[1]

[1]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30267329/ Other reading: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30267329/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12438511/

As odd as it sounds this is correct. Hyper focus is a huge problem with ADHD. You forget to eat and get worse sleep because you're so focused on 1 problem.

This often means that you pay attention to nothing else around you or what's actually important which is where the deficit is.

"Compositors who have adopted Linotype machines are worse than class traitors. They are actively sabotaging the entire trade’s future viability, and have made me ashamed to think anyone in this industry was worthy of the title “printer.”"

"Weavers who have agreed to tend a fourth loom are worse than class traitors. They are actively sabotaging the entire trade’s future viability, and have made me ashamed to think anyone in this industry was worthy of the title “weaver.”"

"Handloom weavers who have adopted power looms are worse than class traitors. They are actively sabotaging the entire trade’s future viability, and have made me ashamed to think anyone in this industry was worthy of the title “weaver.”"

Tale as old as time.

Agreed. All I can say is the conversations I have with AI and the things it's able to do for me are more useful than most any human I've come across. Whether that's 'intelligence' or not is a moot point to me. Consciousness is an interesting debate only because, similar to the natural world, if we declare something like "fish aren't conscious / don't feel pain" that then creates a real problem for the fish if we're wrong.

I wonder if you went back before we had any idea how the brain worked and talked to the smartest people about how neurons work (without giving away that it's a human brain) then asked them all "would such a system be intelligent?" how many would say yes.

The main problem I have with people stating it's not intelligent or conscious is I don't think we even have a good definition of either word that satisfies everyone. Philosophers have been trying (and failing) to elegantly define these things forever and everyone out here proclaiming they've got the definitive answer and this specific thing they're seeing doesn't fit under it.

I always wonder why people generalize AI writing like this. If it's giving you responses like this that you don't like it's as simple as prompting it to give more succinct answers that aren't full of jargon and abstract nouns. I have chatgpt set to 'Efficient (concise and plain)' in the settings which works well to prevent this. And if efficient isn't enough some brief custom instructions will do wonders.

And not really hard to find examples of humans reading text being way more consequential than that. See: the Bible, nazi propaganda, etc.

So I think you disagree with the UN's analysis of things. That's different than the UN doing nothing to address what you're talking about. They say it should be treated as a medical necessity (which is strong wording) when necessary, but to roll it out to everyone isn't feasible or probably even possible in the near term. I appreciate you think it is feasible and have strong feelings about it, but I also suspect they may have done more research than you on the matter.

It's the vocal minority that will care if AI is in a game as well. So long as the game is fun very few people will even have the ability to know let alone care.

This typically doesn't matter at all when it comes to sales. Take the fervent Hogwarts Legacy boycott that was all over the internet for a very long time. That ended with checks notes the first game to beat sales of a Call of Duty or a Rockstar game in 14 years and 40 million+ copies sold. My guess is a similar thing will happen with EA being Saudi owned as well.

The UN suggestions [1] are pretty unambiguous.

"Despite these drawbacks, AC remains crucial to protect populations at increased risk from high temperatures, as well as for refrigerating essential medicines and other health-protecting technologies. In the absence of other options, AC – or another equally effective active cooling technology – should be available to those who need it most as if it were a medical necessity."

[1] https://mb.cision.com/Public/15083/4360202/b9c9bce2cff90dee....

I imagine the cudgel will be when the models are good enough and some moron sets their openclaw to hack a hospital or other critical infrastructure. I feel like we've learned nothing from the ransomware problems of recent history. Are we really saying it's a good idea to throw such capabilities in every emo teenager's hands because freedom?

>Live long and prosper.

Relevant. Star Trek is a post-scarcity society where people invent and create solely for the betterment of humanity. You know what else isn't "free" to create? Game mods. Yet I can go out there right now and download several hundred mods for any game that can be modded for free and most times without even a way to possibly pay the creator. I've also spent 100s of hours of my own time creating mods / helping communities on discord or reddit despite there never being a possible financial gain. I genuinely wonder what the software world / internet would be like if everyone were in it only if their time were compensated with money. Horrible place. We wouldn't be having this conversation right here right now that's for sure.