this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2026
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Workers should learn AI skills and companies should use it because it's a "cognitive amplifier," claims Satya Nadella.

in other words please help us, use our AI

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[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (3 children)

AI isn't at all reliable.

Worse, it has a uniform distribution of failures in the domain of seriousness of consequences - i.e. it's just as likely to make small mistakes with miniscule consequences as major mistakes with deadly consequences - which is worse than even the most junior of professionals.

(This is why, for example, an LLM can advise a person with suicidal ideas to kill themselves)

Then on top of this, it will simply not learn: if it makes a major deadly mistake today and you try to correct it, it's just as likely to make a major deadly mistake tomorrow as it would be if you didn't try to correct it. Even if you have access to actually adjust the model itself, correcting one kind of mistake just moves the problem around and is akin to trying to stop the tide on a beach with a sand wall - the only way to succeed is to have a sand wall for the whole beach, by which point it's in practice not a beach anymore.

You can compensate for this by having human oversight on the AI, but at that point you're just back to having to pay humans for the work being done, so now instead of having to the cost of a human to do the work, you have the cost of the AI to do the work + the cost of the human to check the work of the AI and the human has to check the entirety of the work just to make sure since problems can pop-up anywere, take and form and, worse, unlike a human the AI work is not consistent so errors are unpredictable, plus the AI will never improve and it will never include the kinds of improvements that humans doing the same work will over time discover in order to make later work or other elements of the work be easier to do (i.e. how increase experience means you learn to do little things to make your work and even the work of others easier).

This seriously limits the use of AI to things were the consequences of failure can never be very bad (and if you also include businesses, "not very bad" includes things like "not significantly damage client relations" which is much broader than merely "not be life threathening", which is why, for example, Lawyers using AI to produce legal documents are getting into trouble as the AI quotes made up precedents), so mostly entertainment and situations were the AI alerts humans for a potential situation found within a massive dataset and if the AI fails to spot it, it's alright and if the AI incorrectly spots something that isn't there the subsequent human validation can dismiss it as a false positive (so for example, face recognition in video streams for the purpose of general surveillance, were humans watching those video streams are just or more likely to miss it and an AI alert just results in a human checking it, or scientific research were one tries to find unknown relations in massive datasets)

So AI is a nice new technological tool in a big toolbox, not a technological and business revolution justifying the stock market valuations around it, investment money sunk into it or the huge amount of resources (such as electricity) used by it.

Specifically for Microsoft, there doesn't really seem to be any area were MS' core business value for customers gains from adding AI, in which case this "AI everywhere" strategy in Microsoft is an incredibly shit business choice that just burns money and damages brand value.

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[–] saimen@feddit.org 16 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Eeh didn't you pay attention in economy 101? If you generate more supply than demand that's a you problem. The free market will take care.

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[–] BioDriver@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago

AI can absolutely be useful. But it’s been wildly oversold and the actual beneficial use cases are not nearly as profitable as the marketing around it

[–] sturmblast@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago (6 children)
[–] dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago

Hey, I like my 3D TV. Every once in a while I manage to find a pirated video that's in 3D and it's pretty neat. And unlike the current avalanche of generative/LLM bullshit, I can turn the 3D off, and when I do it works just fine as a perfectly ordinary TV, and in no way does it nag me incessantly to turn it back on.

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[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago

can't keep what you never had you corrupt piece of shit.

[–] Ruigaard@slrpnk.net 13 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Isn't there plenty of research it's the opposite of a cognitive amplifier, people get cognitively lazy using ai.

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[–] systemglitch@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago (4 children)

I got deepseek to run short roleplaying adventures that are surprisingly fun and engaging. It's an amped up choose your own adventur, so for this application, the future is bright.

Not a single other llm can do this in any way approaching acceptable.

And it still lies and makes shit up, but in a fantasy world, the can let it pass unless it is trying to rob me of experience lol.

When it can do long sessions and entire careers instead of detailed one offs it'll have found its niche for me. Right now, it's just a fun toy, prone to hallucinations.

I can't believe people use these things for code...

[–] 5too@lemmy.world 11 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Right now, it’s just a fun toy, prone to hallucinations.

That's the thing though - with an LLM, it's all "hallucinations". They're just usually close to reality, and are presented with an authoritative, friendly voice.

(Or, in your case, they're usually close to the established game reality!)

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[–] HertzDentalBar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Well you already lost that or rather never actually had that. You all pushed a broken and incomplete product you need to find a use not us...

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[–] Photonic@lemmy.world 10 points 2 months ago (5 children)

Do something useful

What do you mean, that using ChatGPT for a recipe for eggs, sunny side up without any seasoning or toppings and burning up the electricity of a moderate household for a week with my query isn’t useful?

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[–] zebidiah@lemmy.ca 10 points 2 months ago (3 children)

Honestly, this is the most reasonable take I have heard from tech bros on ai so far... Use it for something useful and stop using it for garbage!

Ai has a million great uses that could make so many things so much easier, but instead we are building AI to undress women on twitter

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[–] DylanMc6@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)

We need an American Zelenskyy who would save us from the oligarchs.

[–] Baggie@lemmy.zip 10 points 2 months ago

Like a president but good?

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[–] zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 2 months ago

I hereby revoke my permission.

[–] Amberskin@europe.pub 9 points 2 months ago

They don’t have that permission

[–] nothrone@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Buddy, I hope you will lose social permission to keep your head attached to your body. All your heads on spikes, is what I dream of.

[–] redlemace@lemmy.world 9 points 2 months ago (2 children)

To be honest, I did tried a couple of AI's. But all I got where solutions that would never work on the stated hardware. Code full of errors and when fixed never functions as requested. On any non-technical questions it's always agreeing and hardly (not at all actually) challenging any input you give it. So yeah, i'm done with it and waiting for the bubble to burst.

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[–] OrteilGenou@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

Citizen developers of the world, disband!!

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