25+ yr Java/JS dev
Linux novice - running Ubuntu (no windows/mac)
So what happens if Russia fires up the chat bot and finds 4 times out of 5, it advocates for a surprise first strike?
I mean today, no one is going to leave that kind of decision to an AI, but tomorrow? When the AI is wired into every system and can coordinate an attack or defense 90% faster than humans?
I swear Asimov wrote a story about that…
I have access to AI integrated with my IDE. It mostly guesses at the line I’m going to write. It probably gets it right 50% of the time.
It also very, very often suggests stuff that works but isn’t very good. Like it offered some convoluted suggested for adding audit fields to Firebase. Ultimately it did suggest the solution I went with, but only after starting down the road of stupid ideas.
Like, if your code base is pretty good and you just need to tweaks stuff that is already good enough that’s one thing. I frequently look at the code base and wonder if it was implemented by someone who really knows Java at all.
I suppose it might be fair to assume a huge technology company would have their shit together, but technically I work for a huge tech company… just not the same core business. Tech enough that we have a whole mess of internal AI tooling to create AIs for specific things.
We can create an AI agent, but we can’t follow simple fucking rest standards.
Anyway it’s hard to quantify, but I get less mileage out of integrated AI tools than I do bouncing ideas off ChatGPT.
You are anthropomorphizing it. It can give truth or falsehood the same as pages of a book or a funhouse mirror.
If you ask me today, “what is the meaning of life?” I might give you an answer. And if you ask me tomorrow, I might give a different one. You have no way of knowing whether I’m correct today, tomorrow, or ever. But if one of those answers, right or wrong, helps you find meaning, it’s still useful. (As a rhetorical point. I’m definitely the last person anyone should look to to find meaning.)
AI is a lot like that. You give it input, it gives you output, and whether you get anything of value depends greatly on what you are looking for.
I’ve gotten some advice on improving some of my writing. And some of the advice I took, some I ignored, and some I modified before using. I think the writing turned out better, and since I largely write for myself I’m pretty happy with that.
I’ve asked it for help programming, and at times it was helpful and other times cost me hours circling around the same old wrong answers, but there’s every chance I would’ve struggled just as much looking online.
The other day my daughter was making a slushie and it was turning out really wet and gross, so I explained to an AI what we’d done and asked if it had any idea why it didn’t turn out. And it turns out, we were using zero sugar soda which doesn’t work—the sugar is necessary. So we added some simple syrup and it turned out perfectly.
And it was much faster and easier than Google. But if the advice had been wrong, nothing of value would’ve been lost.
trying to fit this square shaped solution into circle shaped holes
This exactly. AI is great for certain things. What everyone tries to use it for, like the bullshit in this article, is not great.
It’s not AI that’s lying. The AI is just doing what AI does.
It’s not a lie, it’s just not what most people think it is. There’s a lot of ignorance and a lot of lies about AI.
Was it Google who claimed 25% of their production code last year was written by AI? Microsoft? Anyway, I’m going to call bullshit on that right now. Or they require a curious amount of bullshit code to run their business.
It was an expressway. There were no lights other than cars. You’re not wrong, had a human sprinted at 20mph across the expressway in the dark, I’d have hit them, too. That being said, you’re not supposed to swerve and I had less than a second to react from when I saw it. It was getting hit and there was nothing I could’ve done.
My point was more about what happened after. The deer was gone and by the time I got to the side of the road I was probably about 1/4 mile away from where I struck it. I had no flashlight to hunt around for it in the bushes and even if I did I had no way of killing it if it was still alive.
Once I confirmed my car was drivable I proceeded home and called my insurance company on the way.
The second deer I hit was in broad daylight at lunch time going about 10mph. It wasn’t injured. I had some damage to my sunroof. I went to lunch and called my insurance when I was back at the office.
No one was hitting it. It ran into the tall weeds (not far, I’ll wager). I couldn’t have found it. Had it been in the road I’d have called it in.
I hit a deer on the highway in the middle of the night going about 80mph. I smelled the failed airbag charge and proceeded to drive home without stopping. By the time I stopped, I would never have been able to find the deer. If your vehicle isn’t disabled, what’s the big deal about stopping?
I’ve stuck two deer and my car wasn’t disabled either time. My daughter hit one and totaled our van. She stopped.
That said, fuck Musk.
I’ve already got that without a new browser. I’m good, thanks.
I’m trying to figure out what that means. Like if I were to imagine a wishlist of things AI might do in a browser:
Okay that’s all I can think of off the top of my head. Those would in theory be nice features to have, although I’d be worried about the ability to reliable deliver.
I also think all of that could be offered as a plugin for a regular browser. So I’m at a loss as to what would make the whole browser AI-centric.
Also I’m only reading the quote here, but I’d they are referring to the original vision of the web, it has nothing to do with any of this shit. But if that’s not the original vision being referred to then never mind.
This is one of those things where home users just default to PC = Windows. But apps are all online now. Probably 99% of the time all people need is a browser. Yeah some people think they have to have MS Office or some other niche windows program, but I consider myself a power-user and the only apps I open on my PC are Games, Discord, IntelliJ, VSCode, and then maybe fool around with local AI stuff. Photos and stuff are usually on our phones, but they can also all be backed up to the cloud from a computer easily enough.
I’ve already switched over to Linux because all of that stuff already works. (Caveat: I also have a PS5 for most gaming).
Most people just need someone to install Linux Mint or whatever and they wouldn’t even notice the difference. The only thing really slowing Linux adoption is folks who don’t want to field support calls from their friends and family.
If it’s effective, it will only be for the wealthy. If it’s a mixed bag, the wealthy will decide who gets it. If it’s a placebo or nearly so, it’ll be everywhere and cheap.
See also anti-agathics and other life extensions.
I’m certain that video probably got a lot of likes from folks who didn’t get the irony which is probably why the algorithm associated you watching it with that crowd. (Also I’m really sus about the whole “joking about being a hateful prick” industry, but I’ll assume your assessment is spot on here.)
I would’ve upgraded to 11, but either my computer doesn’t support TPM or I just refused to turn it on. So instead I upgraded to Ubuntu. There are probably better distros but I had a limited about of time to fuck around trying them.
Mint is pretty nice, too. It felt familiar, as a windows user. But I kept installing stuff that broke the updater. So I switched and found it’s me, not the updater, and I just need to do apt update/upgrade and dpkg -i regardless, but anyway now I’m on Ubuntu.
I still have my full windows install on an SSD somewhere if I had an emergency, but I haven’t had any such emergency in about a year.
I think this is probably a really good point. I have no issue with AI generated images, although obviously if they are used to do an illegal thing such has harassment or defamation, those things are still illegal.
I’m of two minds when it comes to AI nudes of minors. The first is that if someone wants that and no actual person is harmed, I really don’t care. Let me caveat that here: I suspect there are people out there who, if inundated with fake CP, will then be driven to ideation about actual child abuse. And I think there is real harm done to that person and potentially the children if they go on to enact those fantasies. However I think it needs more data before I am willing to draw a firm conclusion.
But the second is that a proliferation of AI CP means it will be very difficult to tell fakes from actual child abuse. And for that reason alone, I think it’s important that any distribution of CP, whether real or just realistic, must be illegal. Because at a minimum it wastes resources that could be used to assist actual children and find their abusers.
So, absent further information, I think whatever a person whats to generate for themselves in private is just fine, but as soon as it starts to be distributed, I think that it must be illegal.