Fuck AI

The core problem with "AI" is the same as any technology: capitalism. It's capitalism that created this imaginary grift. It's capitalism that develops and hypes useless technology. It's capitalism that ultimately uses every technology for violent control.

The problem isn't so much that it's useless to almost everybody not in on the grift.. . The bigger problem is that "AI" is very useful to people who want to commit genocide, imprisonment, surveillance, etc. sloppily, arbitrarily, and with the impunity that comes from holding an "AI" as responsible.

The potential usefulness of AI seems to depend largely on the type of work you're doing. And in my limited experience, it seems like it's best at "useless" work.

For example, writing cover letters is time consuming and exhausting when you're submitting hundreds of applications. LLMs are ideal for this, especially because the letters often aren't being read by humans anyways--either being summarized by LLMs, or ignored entirely. Similar things (such as writing grant applications, or documentation that no one will ever read) have a similar dynamic.

If you're not engaged in this sort of useless work, LLMs probably aren't going to represent time savings. And given their downsides (environmental impact, further concentration of wealth, making you stupid, etc) they're a net loss for society. Maybe instead of using LLMs, we should eliminate useless work?

Think of AI as a mirror of you: at best, it can only match your skill level and can't be smarter or better. If you're unsure or make mistakes, it will likely repeat them. Like people, it can get stuck on hard problems and without a human to help, it just can't find a solution. So while it's useful, don't fully trust it and always be ready to step in and think for yourself.

With A.I., it’s on me if I’m duped. What’s the use in that?

That's the fundamental insight right there.

If you write an email having your name in the sender address or if you sign something with your name, people expect you to be responsible for the content. Outsourcing the content creation to AI does not lift this responsibility. If the AI makes a mistake or if the tone is off, it's still on you.

For the tasks that LLMs are actually decent at, like writing letters, the idea is that you save time even if you're knowledgable enough to do it yourself, and even if you still need to do some corrections (and you're right that you shouldn't use AI for a task that you're not knowledgable about - those corrections are crucial). One of the big issues of LLMs is that they are being sold as a solution for lots of tasks that they're horrible at.

If you are skilled at task or knowledgeable in a field, you are better able to provide a nuanced prompt that will be more likely to give a reasonable result, and you can also judge that result appropriately. It becomes an AI-assisted task, rather than an AI-accomplished one. Then you trade your brainpower and time that you would have spent doing that task for a bit of free time and a scorched planet to live on.

That said, once you realize how often a "good" prompt in a field you are knowledgeable in still yields shit results, it becomes pretty clear that the mediocre prompts you'll write for tasks you don't know how to do are probably going to give back slop (so your instinct is spot on). I think AI evangelist users are succumbing to the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect.

AI is the finest bullshitting machine ever created.

AI is like your own personal con artist.

This is the simple checklist for using LLMs:

1. You are the expert
2. LLM output is exclusively your input

All other use is irresponsible. Unless of course the knowledge within the output isn't important.

Literally all I use it for is to take my emails, which can be a bit rambling, and tighten them up a bit… maybe adjust the tone. But the content is all 100% me. In experimenting with them, I know how often they’re wrong; I don’t trust a single LLM.