this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2024
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Fuck AI
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A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
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This is a strawman argument. AI is a tool. Like any tool, it's used for negative things and positive things. Focusing on just the negative is disingenuous at best. And focusing on AI's climate impact while completely ignoring the big picture is asinine (the oil industry knew they were the primary cause of climate change more than 60 years ago).
AI has many positive use-cases yet they are completely ignored by people who lack logic and rationality.
AI is helping physicists speed up experiments into supernovae to better understand the universe.
AI is helping doctors to expedite cancer screening rates.
AI is powering robots that can do the dishes.
AI is also helping to catch illegal fishing, tackle human trafficking, and track diseases.
Obviously by AI they mean stuff like ChatGPT. An energy intensive toy where the goal is to get it into the hands of as many paying customers as possible. And you're doing free PR for them by associating it with useful small scale research projects. I don't think most researchers will want to associate their projects with AI now that the term has been poisoned, though they might have to because many bigwigs have been sucked into the hype. The term AI has basically existed nebulously since the beginning of computing, so whether we call one thing or another AI is basically personal taste. Companies like OpenAI have successfully attached their product to the term and have created the strongest association, so ultimately if you say AI in a contemporary context a lot of people are hearing GPT-like.
Let's instead make an honest attempt to de-poison the term, rather rhat just giving in. It is indeed like saying "All math bad" because math can be used in bad ways.