It perhaps goes without saying that, as long as AI search engines can mistake something as simple as open and closed dates, it is essentially a complex toy, not a real tool!
This exactly reflects my limited experience with AI. I remain interested but I don’t feel it is revolutionary. It is similar to “revolutions” in programming languages. I have generally found that I can do anything in the FORTRAN that I learned in 1964 or its subsequent revisions that can be done in newer languages and those mostly represent someone’s preferences. The exception is for a language like PYTHON for which a highly involved user community has developed useful tools and instruction. Similarly, I have found that AI searches are ultimately no better than old style keyword searches provided one is adequately clever. I certainly don’t bow to AI for its writing ability or supposed superior understanding of complex subjects. Finally, I live to learn and will not surrender my intellect to a machine.
I have never used AI and I’m not sure I ever will need to. I laughed like hell when I read about the attorney who used it for a brief and ChatGPT cited to non-existence cases. I’d be amazed to find they weren’t fired since that had to be malpractice suit in the making.
We are losing so much authentic humanity in favor of the shiny newness of AI. My boys both watch a lot of YouTube and tiktok videos, and I can handle most of even the annoying ones fairly well, but then they get these ones where it's like a list being read off by a disembodied voice and it's flat and has no affect or humanity in it and those ones are just poison for me to listen to. Even when that robot voice is reading off funny tweets or comments, the lack of human nuance, inflection and normal pauses for speech make it supremely unfunny. My kids don't seem to be as bothered by it but I imagine that's because they are immersed in that crap all the time. I find it distressing to listen to for any length of time.
That ad was probably written by AI as well, since Google has laid off so many people. I asked an AI engineer whether he realized he was building the very thing that will replace him. He was aware. But what is one to do now tech jobs are so hard to come by? Tech corporations have to be held accountable, they used to be innovative, now they are just greedy and destructive. Modern robber barons. Every year there needs to be more profit. The same fantastic profit isn’t good enough anymore the next year, more more more profit, each year even more profit than the next. Capitalism has clearly proven not to work.
My son and DIL are middle school teachers. I am very unsettled by how much they rely on AI, especially ChatGPT. They use it in the classroom to answer questions from their class that they can't answer instead of sending the kids to the library to look it up. They teach in well-funded districts that have school and local public libraries.
They are well past the age where I can criticize them for how they do their jobs, I am not (and was not) a teacher. I am very disturbed by this trend; my son told me he expects human teachers to become obsolete someday. I sadly expect that this may be the case.
I hope that's true. The rush to prove AI can take over everyone's job is absurd. How about show how AI can lead to better weather forecasts, or improve health care outcomes instead of Google's ridiculous ad about a dad using AI to write a letter to send to her sports hero (real ad, shown during the Olympics, Substacked somewhere).
I just saw that commercial the other night, while watching the Olympics. I gasped and turned to my husband with an incredulous expression on my face like, “Wut? Who would encourage their child to do that?”. AI is the opposite of human connection. Not cool Google!
Because of traveling and moving, I've missed a lot...but it would definitely feel like cheating if I let AI do my writing. I've never used it. And I dont want to in spite of people urging me to. Rather than enhance and build human skills and talents, I think AI would make us lazier and stupider. Is that a word? I'll have AI rewrite this. 😂 Thanks for the gift article, too. Going there now.
Especially if you think as I did that what the little girl could have done is written her own note and then asked AI for the best way to start training.
The kid knows how to tell her hero what it means to her. She doesn't know unless she lives near a great trainer how to get started.
Anyone who’s had to explain their tech problem to Habib in Bangalore instead of Frank on the help desk downstairs completely understands how much management cares about shoddy work as long as the numbers stay good and customers don’t gripe too much.
BTW, your C-suite people don’t have to call Habib. They get their own personal IT support person, something I know a lot about because I used to be that person before I retired. Your boss is important - he (it’s usually he) makes hundreds of dollars an hour. He doesn’t have time to waste deciphering Habib’s thick accent. You, not so much.
Please understand I’m not blaming Habib for this; he’s just trying to make a living, like you.
I’ve been using Alexa for years, and I’m not the slightest bit worried about her turning into SkyNet and wiping out humanity. Because, frankly, she’s a dumbass. When she can turn the lights on and off without screwing it up I’ll start worrying.
Ironically (or not) ChatGPT and all the other clones are just as much dumbasses as Alexa. They can burp out some intelligent sounding prose, but it often is nonsense.
Writing, especially at an early age, is totally essential to developing your interior thought process, hand coordination, grammar, the whole kaboodle of learning how to learn! To say nothing of expressing your heartfelt thoughts! We already have way too many idiots in this country!
Absolutely correct. A kiddo’s brain is developing and stimulation like this is essential. The whole reason teen suicide has quintupled is kids being kept inside too much and allowed to go on social media and computers in general instead of outside play. We’re literally killing our kids with this BS
About 15 years ago, I participated in a forum for math geeks, and this high school aged kid dropped in, and wanted recommendations to build a CAS (computer algebra system) because he was starting Algebra in school, and he didn't want to actually do the homework.
I argued vociferously that if you want to do anything in the hard sciences, you needed to put pencil to paper and work it out.
He was all "Fuck that, I will always have a computer, so I don't need to know how it works, I just need the right answer".
In the end, I lost that argument, and that kid is probably a VP at Google now.
The law of unintended consequences is coming for AI. And what jobs are left for the vast majority of humanity if robots can read your x-rays and take care of your litigation?
It perhaps goes without saying that, as long as AI search engines can mistake something as simple as open and closed dates, it is essentially a complex toy, not a real tool!
This exactly reflects my limited experience with AI. I remain interested but I don’t feel it is revolutionary. It is similar to “revolutions” in programming languages. I have generally found that I can do anything in the FORTRAN that I learned in 1964 or its subsequent revisions that can be done in newer languages and those mostly represent someone’s preferences. The exception is for a language like PYTHON for which a highly involved user community has developed useful tools and instruction. Similarly, I have found that AI searches are ultimately no better than old style keyword searches provided one is adequately clever. I certainly don’t bow to AI for its writing ability or supposed superior understanding of complex subjects. Finally, I live to learn and will not surrender my intellect to a machine.
AI scares me!! Technology is good, but bad people make it horrible, and dangerous!
I have never used AI and I’m not sure I ever will need to. I laughed like hell when I read about the attorney who used it for a brief and ChatGPT cited to non-existence cases. I’d be amazed to find they weren’t fired since that had to be malpractice suit in the making.
That's what I keep thinking about.
AI is sucking up all of the internet to give us answers, right?
But that means it's sucking up garbage as well as brilliance.
AI can't tell the difference at this stage (as far as I can tell) between the Dunning Kroeger winner and the Nobel prize winner.
We are losing so much authentic humanity in favor of the shiny newness of AI. My boys both watch a lot of YouTube and tiktok videos, and I can handle most of even the annoying ones fairly well, but then they get these ones where it's like a list being read off by a disembodied voice and it's flat and has no affect or humanity in it and those ones are just poison for me to listen to. Even when that robot voice is reading off funny tweets or comments, the lack of human nuance, inflection and normal pauses for speech make it supremely unfunny. My kids don't seem to be as bothered by it but I imagine that's because they are immersed in that crap all the time. I find it distressing to listen to for any length of time.
Bravo Geoff.
That ad was probably written by AI as well, since Google has laid off so many people. I asked an AI engineer whether he realized he was building the very thing that will replace him. He was aware. But what is one to do now tech jobs are so hard to come by? Tech corporations have to be held accountable, they used to be innovative, now they are just greedy and destructive. Modern robber barons. Every year there needs to be more profit. The same fantastic profit isn’t good enough anymore the next year, more more more profit, each year even more profit than the next. Capitalism has clearly proven not to work.
My son and DIL are middle school teachers. I am very unsettled by how much they rely on AI, especially ChatGPT. They use it in the classroom to answer questions from their class that they can't answer instead of sending the kids to the library to look it up. They teach in well-funded districts that have school and local public libraries.
They are well past the age where I can criticize them for how they do their jobs, I am not (and was not) a teacher. I am very disturbed by this trend; my son told me he expects human teachers to become obsolete someday. I sadly expect that this may be the case.
Ask him how well his students did during the Covid lockdown.
They regressed. In Mrs. Mild Jr's Jr's 5th grade class they were acting like 5 year olds instead of 10 year olds.
I think they understand it's an issue, maybe they're facing the inevitable.
That's what I'm hearing from friends with kids as well.
And these children are not my generation with no technology or my nieces with technology.
These are digital natives.
I don't think human teachers can be replaced as easily as it was assumed.
I hope that's true. The rush to prove AI can take over everyone's job is absurd. How about show how AI can lead to better weather forecasts, or improve health care outcomes instead of Google's ridiculous ad about a dad using AI to write a letter to send to her sports hero (real ad, shown during the Olympics, Substacked somewhere).
I just saw that commercial the other night, while watching the Olympics. I gasped and turned to my husband with an incredulous expression on my face like, “Wut? Who would encourage their child to do that?”. AI is the opposite of human connection. Not cool Google!
Because of traveling and moving, I've missed a lot...but it would definitely feel like cheating if I let AI do my writing. I've never used it. And I dont want to in spite of people urging me to. Rather than enhance and build human skills and talents, I think AI would make us lazier and stupider. Is that a word? I'll have AI rewrite this. 😂 Thanks for the gift article, too. Going there now.
I saw that ad and said: "What is THIS bullshit?!?"
Especially if you think as I did that what the little girl could have done is written her own note and then asked AI for the best way to start training.
The kid knows how to tell her hero what it means to her. She doesn't know unless she lives near a great trainer how to get started.
Anyone who’s had to explain their tech problem to Habib in Bangalore instead of Frank on the help desk downstairs completely understands how much management cares about shoddy work as long as the numbers stay good and customers don’t gripe too much.
BTW, your C-suite people don’t have to call Habib. They get their own personal IT support person, something I know a lot about because I used to be that person before I retired. Your boss is important - he (it’s usually he) makes hundreds of dollars an hour. He doesn’t have time to waste deciphering Habib’s thick accent. You, not so much.
Please understand I’m not blaming Habib for this; he’s just trying to make a living, like you.
I find once I tell Habib I'm an idiot, we get along splendidly.
Automated systems on the other hand, have me cursing like a hungover sailor.
Or worse, my father -- whose profanity was legendary.
I’ve been using Alexa for years, and I’m not the slightest bit worried about her turning into SkyNet and wiping out humanity. Because, frankly, she’s a dumbass. When she can turn the lights on and off without screwing it up I’ll start worrying.
Ironically (or not) ChatGPT and all the other clones are just as much dumbasses as Alexa. They can burp out some intelligent sounding prose, but it often is nonsense.
Unfortunately Habib will eventually also be replaced by AI.
Writing, especially at an early age, is totally essential to developing your interior thought process, hand coordination, grammar, the whole kaboodle of learning how to learn! To say nothing of expressing your heartfelt thoughts! We already have way too many idiots in this country!
Absolutely correct. A kiddo’s brain is developing and stimulation like this is essential. The whole reason teen suicide has quintupled is kids being kept inside too much and allowed to go on social media and computers in general instead of outside play. We’re literally killing our kids with this BS
Spot on.
About 15 years ago, I participated in a forum for math geeks, and this high school aged kid dropped in, and wanted recommendations to build a CAS (computer algebra system) because he was starting Algebra in school, and he didn't want to actually do the homework.
I argued vociferously that if you want to do anything in the hard sciences, you needed to put pencil to paper and work it out.
He was all "Fuck that, I will always have a computer, so I don't need to know how it works, I just need the right answer".
In the end, I lost that argument, and that kid is probably a VP at Google now.
And that’s how the Elon Musks of this world are made.
Amen sister! Preach it loudly.
The law of unintended consequences is coming for AI. And what jobs are left for the vast majority of humanity if robots can read your x-rays and take care of your litigation?
Great point!