I mean this is quite biased article. My dad is the most basic user ever. Lately he’s thriving just using the simple google ai results and ai features in word. It’s fucking surreal to me a 76 year old man suggesting me to use ai and he says that it made his life way easier.
Ai is a tool. Hating or loving a tool is just fanboyism. Its no different than worshipping (or hating) photoshop.
I’ve never wanted to punch a word in the face until the word “agentic” started popping up everywhere.
I refuse to even pronounce it correctly.
“ajanteek” is probably what I’d say if I was forced to utter such unspeakable trash
Don’t these fart-huffing jackasses understand that I actually need to read my e-mails to plan physical meetings with other flesh-based entities?
It’s difficult for me to fathom how someone could risk their work getting fucked up by non-deterministic software.
To me, it’s not worth the risk or the hassle to set up and babysit a piece of software that might get shit wrong when I can just do it correctly in the first place.
Recently I was having a problem with my banking app and phoned for help. The robot who answered had a helpful suggestion: download the banking app. Then it hung up. I rang back and tried demanding to speak to a human. “All our agents are busy at the moment. Please wait…” While on hold I had a look at the website, and in the small print learned the humans all go home at 6pm. No-one had thought to tell the robot.
When I spoke to a human the next day, she advised me never to speak to the robot, not even to ask for a human. “Don’t say anything, and eventually you’ll be put through.”
Yes, I’m a normal person, and yes, I hate this bullshit. The bank’s human person probably hates this bullshit too, because she has to deal with the aftermath.
(I wrote a letter of complaint and got £50, so it wasn’t a complete bust…)
I want AI agents to just go the fuck away!
I wonder if it’s more like VR.
People don’t like losing control over their technology in reality.
People want to retain control over their technology, like it’s a tool.
Virtual reality removes awareness and agency in the real world.
Same as agents do.
What does this have to do with VR? VR doesn’t remove anything, it’s just a fancy monitor.
a fancy monitor that makes like 1/3 of the people who view it throw up.
Naive question here. If I use ChatGPT or whatever to enhance my resume, do these programs data collect my resume/personal info ?
If you’re concerned about data retention, you’d want to select an inference provider that is listing ‘ZDR’ (zero data retention) as a feature.
For example, a lot of the Chinese open weight models have become quite capable and because their weights are available end up like generic vs brand name medicine where there’s multiple providers serving them with different production conditions.
Because enterprise use will often be worried about data retention or sending data to China, the alternative providers usually offer things like US-only inference or zero data retention.
If you’re not going to use it all that often, a la carte API use is going to be way cheaper than a subscription, probably better results than a free plan with a closed model provider, and give you more control over the process.
yes. if you still feel the need to do this, sanitize your inputs. strip it of all personal data. don’t upload the whole file with metadata, paste the scrubbed text that you want rewritten in with the prompt.
just assume yes
google has been found keeping information on you that they explicitly said they wouldn’t. I can’t recall the specifics. but apply that to any megacorp like this
Almost certainly.
They don’t have to, since it’s not a part of the system that it requires them to hold onto the information, but they all invariably hold onto the information to keep training on it, which includes your personal information.
They are likely not using for selling to other people or anything since that’s not their business model at the moment, but it’s probably finding it’s way into the next version in some capacity.
AI is incredible for research and development. The power it gives you as a software developer is unreal. Outside of that, I really don’t like it.
At some point the ‘build it and they will come’ model runs into a wall of reality, because people don’t do things just because you really hope they will, but because it makes sense for them.
Take digital cameras as an example. They enjoyed a massive boom about 20 years ago as the technology developed. Then the technology became good enough, and phones became more convenient, and now cameras are returning to being a relatively niche and expensive product. Funnily enough, phones are running into the same problem, which is that they are good enough, and people are more reluctant to run out and buy the latest product now.
All of which is to say, I think AI will eventually settle into a market niche, offering useful tools for data analysis, multimedia editing, and coding, to say nothing of other fields I haven’t thought of. I also think that market niche will not be sufficient to sustain the enormous resources being dedicated to the AI industry at present, simply because they’re wildly overestimating AI’s appeal to the public.
Fundamentally, they cost way, way too much to run. LLMs are useful tools (I use them a bit for data analysis and coding help) and the people who use them for that kind of thing might pay the full cost in some form (not as individuals but their companies might). But they’re trying to push them into everything and people who can’t think for themselves and want them to help them write emails and such are not going to foot the bill. Not even close.
I think they’ve realised that forcing universal adoption is the only way that this could work, to get everyone hooked on it then jack up the prices. But regular consumers will never, ever be the ones paying the enormous costs of LLMs. Even companies will start to realise that there is no point paying huge amounts just for everyone to be able to outsource writing emails and basic tasks to LLMs. And short of any huge breakthrough, they are incapable of doing most jobs.
I hold the opinion that if people talk about LLM’s instead of AI they are inherently more understanding of the tool and therefore more qualified to use it.
It’s not difficult to understand. This whole AI bubble is just a push to get enough people, a critical mass, over a threshold that they start paying for the usage. The Bubble was waiting for the money to run out which is what built the bubble. The money is running out and the subscriptions are ready for purchase.
Same as the internet infrastructure bubble in the dot com boom. Thing is, we use the infrastructure now, just took a decade or so.
The software development industry is ready to purchase subscriptions, but no other sectors it seems.
Replace politicans, CEOs and lawyers with AI first…
If all a President has to do is write stupid social media posts I think we found the best starting point
I’m still waiting to hear about the first board member LLM.
When someone proudly express their enthusiasm for AI, I immediately think less of that person.
Or defer to AI, when you ask them a quesiton that can be simply answered or even googled, that doesnt have a AI results. and ends up with a overcomplicated summary that leads to more questions.
Are they not using AI because they are normal, or are they normal because they aren’t using AI?
Breaking news, people don’t worship other people’s idol statues.
Stop normalizing LLMs as productivity machines.
They definitely can be useful as a part of a “productivity machine,” for some people. But yeah, they’re not the whole solution. An LLM alone is much less useful without harnesses and tools.
I suppose one of the difficulties in trying to build a one-size-fits-all thing is that everyone has a different set of use cases and workflows needed for productivity. Each person’s own “productivity machine” might be useless for other people.
Most people (maybe even most tech-oriented people) just aren’t AI-fluent enough to be able to build their own agentic workflows with enough fidelity to actually yield a net-positive effect in productivity. It’s not a user-friendly process for the masses (yet).
