It’s unclear from the article what exactly he did wrong. There’s nothing wrong with using AI as long as you triple check the info it gives you.
The main problem we’re facing today with this tech is people thinking it’s magically perfect and can operate without human supervision. Was that what he was doing?
I mostly agree, but even if LLMs were 100% correct all the time (they’re not), there are still some pretty serious ethical issues surrounding it. It is up to each person to decide if they find that acceptable or not.
Wait, the controversy is that he said something that was maybe AI generated or maybe it wasn’t or maybe his use of AI rubbed off on his talking patterns? I kinda feel like he’s th type that would admit to reading off responses generated from AI.
Just open the article, that will clear your «maybe».
I read it before writing. The article just brings up he said something that sounds like maybe it was written by AI.
apparently he got caught reading AI texts, people became immediately suspicious.
I read the article and the “getting caught part” seems to just be that he said something that seemed like it was possibly written by an AI
im not up on this drama, did people call him out on AI usage excessively or he did himself? if its himself, if he kept quiet he wouldve been able to soften the blow.
He said something that was maybe AI generated or maybe it wasn’t or maybe his use of AI rubbed off on his talking patterns. That’s the drama.
He got caught reading out loud a very obvious AI generated text
The rich white man-?
Untrustworthy???I’m shocked, truly
dont think hes rich.
If there’s a trustworthy human being, hank green is probably up there in top contenders…
@Grok is this true
Alright, so he got addicted to what felt like an easy source of knowledge. Can happen to anyone.
I guess I’m just tired of finding things to be upset about. I’ve lived more than five decades and it’s been outrage after outrage after outrage.
I’m tired, boss.
He’s admitted there was a problem and it got out of hand. If he changes, what’s the huge deal going forward?
We need social safety nets. We need universal health care. We need to kick fascists out of our government. And sure, we need to fix smaller problems, but jesus christ does every last thing have to be drama?
Preach.
We need tolerance. Our society has become so dictatorial, even the most left leaning and liberal ones, we simply cannot tolerate anything we don’t agree with.
Everyone wants to make their own perfect universe where everybody says and does one thing. We should accept each other’s mistakes and faults, and live in more harmony.
Yeah, I feel the response has gotten way out of hand. Sure, I’m not happy about it. But I have some faith Hank will actually reflect on the situation.
he probably needs to take a break from uploading and wait a while.
I’m glad I dont know who he is and I will continue to not know him.
These days it seems like the internet is more pleasant the less influencers you know, and most aren’t worth knowing any further about.
I think the past where people’s awareness of public figures was much more distant was a healthier time. Like knowing the famous athlete or actor, but nothing further about their lives and not feeling like “you know them” because they called our your username or liked your comment and not being able to send them a direct message.
He and his brother created tons of online free science material that was used by several high schools apparently. I found him post all that, but it’s understandable that a lot of people have leeway with him, given that he was a big helper in so many places, and that he got cancer.
I mean, look how hostile Lemmy usually is and how tactful they are being with him, he definitely has built some reputation of being a good guy.
You’re right that most influencers aren’t worth knowing any further, but Hank is one of the exceptions. I wouldn’t even call him an influencer honestly, that’s way WAY too generic of a term for what he’s done. His excitement for knowledge and learning, and spreading the things he learns, has helped a generation with thinking skills and getting them interested in the sciences.
5 decade club reporting 🫡 and I’m tired too.
“If it bleeds, it leads.” Drama leads to clicks, clicks lead to advertising, advertising = money. Same ol’ story, its just super easy now with the internet.
I thought something was up when he had interviewed some random ass AI expert talking about Mythos because he bought into the whole “OMG it’s gone rogue” bullshit.
I’m not a huge fan of the videos he hosts (I don’t like how he cuts every millisecond between sentences), but SciShow is a genuinely good channel and I’m glad he realized he had problems. Wishing him all the best!
I feel like if that was your primary takeaway from that, the entire point was lost on you.
Take away from what?
From that video, it discusses more than just the fear mongering. It talks about how it works and why we don’t understand it and why we can’t really peer into the net and understand why it generates what it does.
Cognitive surrender for productivity?
when he messed up was when he pissed off the crochet and knitter crowd. 😂
I can understand why this technology would be particularly addicting to hank.
His whole persona is answering questions like “what color flower do bees like the most” with the kind of enthusiasm that shows his curiosity and deep passion for science. So a machine where you can put in those sorts of questions and get an almost instant answer would be very addicting.
For what he’s trying to do, it’s not even a horrible use-case. But as someone is a ready to go to the mat on fact checking, he’s definitely not anywhere near arduous enough about it.
He’s not treating it like aunt marge. You wouldn’t make a tv show around finding out truth, then go ask your aunt Marge and not follow up on her answers.
AI for general information gives you approximate directions at best, maybe you got a wikipedia page and maybe you’re reading 297 regurgitations of some asshole that didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about on reddit who got reposted over and over.
The best way I’ve seen it put is that ai is the perfected form of the wisdom of the masses. It’s 90% right 90% of the time. But the most important part is the last 10%.
90% is good enough for most things in your day to day life that have no consequences. But it’s like people have forgotten what it was like before smart phones.
Back when your best chance of a good answer was asking who ever was in hear shot if they knew and just accepting that as good enough. You never treated it as fact just as the best answer your going to get at the moment.
For anything important you would go to the damn library.
It’s 90% right 90% of the time. But the most important part is the last 10%.
No LLM model system card claims such high rate as 90%. Fable claims in its system card, what, 40% hallucination rate?
But when I get fixated on something, I want the correct answer. I’d hate to learn the wrong answer and repeat it to someone - I’ve done that before and I hate it. That’s why I avoid AI on principle. I want the right answer and AI won’t give that to me about things I know about so I won’t trust it on things I don’t know about.
This is the thing about LLMs and their users I genuinely don’t get. Like, objectively, being able to input plain speech into a computer and get an almost immediate, detailed, 95% accurate answer is incredible. Genuine technological marvel.
But 95% accuracy is functionally useless for all but the most basic, unimportant tasks. Outside of a coding context (a big exception, to be clear), are people really satisfied with that?
If you can confirm it, it doesn’t matter what percentage is correct.
When solving computer problems, using an LLM to guide you to the correct answer doesn’t even need 95% accuracy. Every step it gives you have to execute manually, so if something is hallucinated you will notice really quickly. And if by the end your problem is solved, then all the hallucinations didn’t matter.
Let’s be honest, most sources online are not 100% accurate. Even before LLMs, find any random article about something you’re an expert in, and there was a good chance you’d spot some inaccuracies. Most of the time, those inaccuracies aren’t a big deal, and when they are, you should be consulting an expert for those.
For me personally, I would rate AI accuracy at about 75%. And for some of my use cases, that’s a pretty decent starting point. Things with no consequences, like trying to quickly find the relevant console command for the game I’m playing. I can get instant feedback on whether it gave me correct info, and if not then I hit Google.
I would never trust AI, at least in its current state, to tell me the truth for anything of consequence.
The majority of human history at all levels of science, philosophy, and mathematics. The best you could ever hope for was 95%. Hell you were lucky to break 90% accuracy.
Because the only people you could ask questions was the people in the room with you right then and there or the people you could actively physically go ask.
If you were extremely lucky you could write to someone who MIGHT know more. Or may there’s a book about it that someone knows exists.
95% can and frequently is very much over kill for almost everything anyone will need for their day to day life for random trivia or even most important work.
Very few fields need more than that, and few still is it a matter of life or death.
The part that people fuck up is not being open to learning more and being corrected.
ah yes, hank green who spent an entire video chastising the citizens of ireland for being ignorant of the amoc.
dude never even bothered to think people called it something else there.
hes always been a self-satisfied, arrogant knob
Had to Google AMOC?
Oh right, it’s the famous Gulf Stream we rely on and are all worried about of late. Am in Ireland…
exactly. he spent 30 minutes calling the irish ignorant, but the words “gulf stream” never tickled his neurons.
the extra-irony is that up until the last 10-15 years, “gulf stream” is what everyone in the usa called it, too. hank’s just so tech-pilled he can’t see anything else.
US here. Never heard it called anything but gulf stream.
US here. I remember when it changed, probably 20-25 years ago. (Tho, of course it was gradual and localized and I’m only one data point.) I was an undergrad, and not in my first year.
IIRC, it was because “gulf stream” was a little ambiguous, because there’s a lot of gulfs many of which contain oceanic currents / stream. But, if someone in the U.S. or EU says “gulf stream” they are always talking about AMOC.
I really don’t get it. It’s so easy for me not to use AI 99% of the day, same as not using social media. I cannot understand why people get addicted to it so easily.
What are you using it for during the 1%??
Personally I’ve found that ai is fantastic at pulling files off my phone cause I’m a lazy shit… Iv trained it so that when I tell it “do the thing” it pulls all the pictures off my phone and backs them up.
It’s fun, whimsical, and while I could do it a host of other ways. This is just more fun.
Which is honestly kinda what I see as one of the better use cases for local models. Sure you could do the same thing with a script, or by hand.
But it’s not as /fun/ as having a little robot butler that slings one liners from various cartoons that you don’t have to prepick as it enacts your will.
I’m on your side, but replace AI or social media with “meth” in your argument and see how that logic works. (Becoming easily addicted to something vs. avoiding something [because using it would rapidly become addictive])
He seems fairly prone to ego stroking, which internet goers would typically label as narcissistic.
Kind of the target audience for the sycophant machine
See the knitting debacle… where SciShow put out an episode about the science of knitting which was poorly researched and it was clear that they had consulted zero knitters.
I’ve always really liked SciShow - to the point I’ve assigned some episodes to my students - but it’s just embarrassing when it would have been trivially easy to hit up Ravelry and run the video past people who won’t call yarn “string.”
some of the recent episodes were quite sloppy. they just stuck to the original format.
What’s scary to me is that Hank Green is a rationale, intelligent person with time, money, resources, etc. Everything someone could want to be successful at their passion. And in this case, the passion is literally explaining science. If his own family has to have an intervention on his AI use (which it seems like they did?) after he denied reciting AI prompts on video despite being caught red-handed (which it seems like he did?) what chance do normie script kiddy vibe coders have? Is this the future? Addicts with rotting brains and AI psychosis leading the planet to destruction?
The allure of outsourcing your mental load to a chat bot designed to tell you exactly what you want to here is too much. Everyone’s getting high off their own supply.
It must feel godlike to manifest your will simply by speaking it. I can understand why that would addict people. This is exactly why they are pushing it so hard - they know it has this effect, people will demand it, they will fight for it. They will give over their enterprise and their personal lives to it, the way a drug or gambling addict gives over everything they have to it.
With that kind of impact - especially early on, before people realize they’ve been taken - they can build enough momentum to corner all compute.
No longer can we gather or organize without our names attached, without our intent scanned and analyzed, our location tracked, or our wallets closed. We will have to drink our verification cans, and we will have to be nice to Trump, or else they will see what you wrote on your iPad Cloud or your Google Pixel Light and then they will debank you, like waking up from the Matrix. “Go woke and go broke” was always a premonition about control.
I keep those power fantasies to my brain because I can tell the difference between a daydream and reality. I don’t care what AI could make me feel, I am never going to use it for anything if I’m aware of it.
Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better
When gen AI hits a job market that doesn’t exist thanks to AI, I wonder what’s going to happen.
Glad he’s recognizing the problem and trying to get help. Instant gratification is a hell of a drug.
I only started paying attention to him recently, but I could swear he had a little meltdown in a video hating AI and had to calm himself with his word association game. Maybe I’m thinking of his brother.
Here’s Hank’s response on Reddit.
Reddit blocks me. Can anyone post it here?
I gotcha:
Three things to start:
I’m mortified that I have let so many people down and I think I understand how that happened.
I’m going to change things about how i make stuff.
Complexly’s AI policy is public and well-considered and adhered to by the whole team, I think it’s worth reading! (Complexly is the non-profit that makes Crash Course and SciShow and a bunch of other shows that I do not write for.)
The thing that everything we do is based on is that you know that what I’m saying are my thoughts coming from my brain in the way I decide. I have made that harder and I’m sorry. I have been relying too heavily on AI as a research aid. It can be very useful for this task, giving me access to a lot of papers I didn’t know existed really fast, but I think that has been to the detriment of my work because it has not given me the freedom to find all of my own ways into and around a topic.
But, for clarity, the origin of claims in my videos are not “ChatGPT’s said this.” I have been using AI to locate papers and other resources for learning about topics. You are still getting my takes based on what I read, know, and learn.
I think what people have said in this thread about me diluting myself is spot on. Ultimately, what I am most scared of is ruining myself for people, but I have not been managing my impulses well. You need to know that my words are mine. I don’t think that this hasn’t been true, but I’ve been moving so fast that my own process isn’t actually clear to me and I want to have it be a guarantee moving forward.
What I can’t guarantee, though, is that we will agree about this technology or what to do with it. I think that’s good. We need a lot of kinds of folks critiquing this technology.
I’m not a pure AI-hater, which people in the AI industry know, so when I say that the way these models were trained deeply disturbs me, that lands differently.
When I say that I think that the speed at which these companies are trying to consolidate economic power should freak out everyone in the world, that’s coming from someone who has “nuanced takes.”
When I say I worry about the climate impacts of this rollout, that is not me saying, “I don’t think this tech should ever exist” it’s me saying, “for god’s sake please don’t make our biggest problem worse.”
It is very likely that you (the reader) and I disagree on how or even whether AI should be used. I think it makes sense for that disagreement to exist. But I have also always believed that my audience is more likely to be right than I am. You know what this feels like in a way I can’t. And I am so sorry for diluting myself in this way and harming the thing that we have all built together.As for the “why don’t you just make less! No one is making you do this!” I’m not sure that’s how I work. I’ve been feeling the pressure of “Oh, I have this little video idea, I need to get it out real fast so I can get to the more important stuff” and I create when I feel that pressure.
But making more things does not make me make better things. It does not make the big thing that we’ve been doing for 20 years better. I know that I can manage myself more effectively.
I want to make videos like the one I made yesterday on hankschannel where the writing was the whole thing and I felt it all the way down and have been so enriched by people’s responses to it. And sure, I’m probably going to make dumb unscripted straight to camera thoughts videos sometimes. And then I’ll play connections.But mostly I need to come to terms with the fact that the level of dopamine I’ve been getting from interacting with LLMs…with doing more and more and more and more…is not healthy for me or good for the world. It is careless, and has disconnected me from where people are on this.
I was talking about this with Katherine last night and she did not pull any punches. Frankly, neither did John. Neither of them think I’ve been being healthy. I need to readjust.SO - what changes.
Expect less hankschannel. It may need to pause for a while.
It may be that Hankschannel comes back with writing and research support. It may be that it comes back with just way fewer videos. I am going to spend this time finishing a video I’ve been working on for ages that I think really really matters.
2. SMUSH and 4x3 are getting paused as well. If there are bugs, there are bugs. I have backlog of 4x3 boards right now and, frankly, writing them is usually a solace to me, but if we run out, I am not going to worry about that…so if it just reverts to a static board one day…that’ll be that.I do deeply want to support good store and complexly in whatever way I can, so there may be some stuff on that front. But the reliance on me has always been risky, so we need to build for that as well.
I’m very sorry for harming the thing this is all based on.
Three things to start:
I’m mortified that I have let so many people down and I think I understand how that happened.
I’m going to change things about how i make stuff.
Complexly’s AI policy is public and well-considered and adhered to by the whole team, I think it’s worth reading! (Complexly is the non-profit that makes Crash Course and SciShow and a bunch of other shows that I do not write for.)
https://docs.google.com/document/d/14E2JfjNoLdQPSlkyZdCN_8scQlxl4CT1PdZ0iE1IEg4/edit?tab=t.0
The thing that everything we do is based on is that you know that what I’m saying are my thoughts coming from my brain in the way I decide. I have made that harder and I’m sorry. I have been relying too heavily on AI as a research aid. It can be very useful for this task, giving me access to a lot of papers I didn’t know existed really fast, but I think that has been to the detriment of my work because it has not given me the freedom to find all of my own ways into and around a topic.
But, for clarity, the origin of claims in my videos are not “ChatGPT’s said this.” I have been using AI to locate papers and other resources for learning about topics. You are still getting my takes based on what I read, know, and learn.
I think what people have said in this thread about me diluting myself is spot on. Ultimately, what I am most scared of is ruining myself for people, but I have not been managing my impulses well. You need to know that my words are mine. I don’t think that this hasn’t been true, but I’ve been moving so fast that my own process isn’t actually clear to me and I want to have it be a guarantee moving forward.
What I can’t guarantee, though, is that we will agree about this technology or what to do with it. I think that’s good. We need a lot of kinds of folks critiquing this technology.
I’m not a pure AI-hater, which people in the AI industry know, so when I say that the way these models were trained deeply disturbs me, that lands differently.
When I say that I think that the speed at which these companies are trying to consolidate economic power should freak out everyone in the world, that’s coming from someone who has “nuanced takes.” When I say I worry about the climate impacts of this rollout, that is not me saying, “I don’t think this tech should ever exist” it’s me saying, “for god’s sake please don’t make our biggest problem worse.” It is very likely that you (the reader) and I disagree on how or even whether AI should be used. I think it makes sense for that disagreement to exist. But I have also always believed that my audience is more likely to be right than I am. You know what this feels like in a way I can’t. And I am so sorry for diluting myself in this way and harming the thing that we have all built together.
As for the “why don’t you just make less! No one is making you do this!” I’m not sure that’s how I work. I’ve been feeling the pressure of “Oh, I have this little video idea, I need to get it out real fast so I can get to the more important stuff” and I create when I feel that pressure.
But making more things does not make me make better things. It does not make the big thing that we’ve been doing for 20 years better. I know that I can manage myself more effectively. I want to make videos like the one I made yesterday on hankschannel where the writing was the whole thing and I felt it all the way down and have been so enriched by people’s responses to it. And sure, I’m probably going to make dumb unscripted straight to camera thoughts videos sometimes. And then I’ll play connections.
But mostly I need to come to terms with the fact that the level of dopamine I’ve been getting from interacting with LLMs…with doing more and more and more and more…is not healthy for me or good for the world. It is careless, and has disconnected me from where people are on this. I was talking about this with Katherine last night and she did not pull any punches. Frankly, neither did John. Neither of them think I’ve been being healthy. I need to readjust.
SO - what changes.
Expect less hankschannel. It may need to pause for a while.
It may be that Hankschannel comes back with writing and research support. It may be that it comes back with just way fewer videos. I am going to spend this time finishing a video I’ve been working on for ages that I think really really matters. 2. SMUSH and 4x3 are getting paused as well. If there are bugs, there are bugs. I have backlog of 4x3 boards right now and, frankly, writing them is usually a solace to me, but if we run out, I am not going to worry about that…so if it just reverts to a static board one day…that’ll be that.
I do deeply want to support good store and complexly in whatever way I can, so there may be some stuff on that front. But the reliance on me has always been risky, so we need to build for that as well.
I’m very sorry for harming the thing this is all based on.
Thanks for linking that. I wonder how long he’s been using it for. I feel like I noticed at uptick lately in just how saccharine his writing and worldview was getting
Yeah, that new cosmic shore video was really good. I’m kind of disappointed that might be just AI writing.
Was that the recent one about the NASA photos making a short gif? Maybe I’m just too insufferably pessimistic for that kind of thing
That’s the one. Felt like he was going for a Sagan kind of prose, and was half decent. Though it rings a little hollow to me, now.
