Artificial Intelligence In Our Lives

[splifingate]

I'm all-in for saving the backs of those who regularly break theirs in common labor.

What I can't stomach is the loss of the bespoke perspectives of those who have found themselves reticent to actually share their thoughts.

 

[HouseLannister]

Those brainless acronyms existed long before AI

I only use Latin acronyms, e.g. A.M. and P.M., i.e. the best acronyms.

 

[indefinite]

I can see this quote applying to the field of art and whatever's related, but I do not see how this ties into our lives.

Not a day goes by where I don't appreciate AI for how it makes life easier.

 

[BotchQue]

Two points:
First, more to the “robotics doing housework”; this was on ABC News this evening, and it was pretty eye-opening to me:

Video David Muir reports on technological advances of China's humanoid robots

With the global race for artificial intelligence and robotics technology in full swing, David Muir takes a closer look at the humanoid robots being built in China.

abcnews.com

Chinese robotics

Second point (and more an observation from EweTube): they’ve made major changes to their algorithms recently, and have been “recommending” many posts to me about the “new” ‘26 and ‘27 vehicles, but they’re all AI-generated and nowhere close to what’s coming out (admittedly, some of the vehicles looked killer), they are also AI-narrated, and us dummies can usually spot them during the video of the car being driven away from the camera… with nobody in the vehicle. What I can’t understand is, WHY? These fake videos will not gain any deposits, view numbers may be collected, but to what end? I just don’t understand it.

EDIT: @eyoungren, who mentioned an IT graduate son, and HVAC student daughter: have your son apply for a job in Civil Service; most of our IT folks were brilliant, hard-working, and once they had 6 to 12 months of experience, they were hired away by actual IT orgs with the appropriate paychecks (6-figures). This was true at least up to six years ago, when I retired.
Regarding your daughter, I don’t think robots will be replacing HVAC techs anytime soon (although the above video gives me pause), but fixing HVAC in the blazing Sun in AZ, when you’re not really interested in HVAC, sounds like a financially-secure but very unhappy career. Not sure what to tell you about that.

 

[Siliconguy]

EXACTLY, and typically companies when they decide to ship your jobs out, will give you a little parting gift, and then expect you to get out of their hair.

That's what happened to the industries of the Rust belt when those jobs were shipped to China. That's what happened to me when Clinton, Gore and Babbitt decided that mining jobs were too dirty and shut down as much of that industry as they could. They did the same thing to lumber industry.

It was a brutal process. Now it's beginning to happen to the Learn to Code crew. All you can do is be flexible. I jumped from mining to a chemical plant that produced polysilicon. Now that is shutdown too. The plant that was state of the art in 2010 can't meet current quality standards. The company was owned and run by Norwegians so it's not just an American MBA problem.

Whether we end up with an UBI system or the Butlerian Jihad comes early I can't say. Maybe the government will legalize drugs and let the 'deaths of despair' cut the population. Birthrates are already falling like a stone. It's going to be an interesting time in accordance with the ancient Chinese curse.

 

[edubfromktown]

I use Copilot at work.

Been using ChatGPT, Claude and duck.ai at home for a while and quite often hit the free processing limit on them.

Rolled my own AI/LLM (qwen-2.5-coder 14b with an Open Web UI front end) on an M1 Studio MAX base model (32GB/512 GB) and it works surprisingly well.

 

[BSDnostalgia]

Your all purpose android will do you laundry for you, besides entertaining you in a variety of ways, silly.

As the world population levels, then declines, the number one need that humanity will have is affordable devices, (possibly shaped like androids if that makes you more comfortable), that will provide physical care for the elderly and disabled. It is a tricky problem, though. Any android strong enough to lift you off the floor is also strong enough to accidentally injure you. "A robot may not injure a human being or allow a human to come to harm." Easier said than done.

The problem that AI has now solved is not clearly connected to this need. We don't need the robot to listen to what we said and then restate our unfounded opinions back to us authoritatively. We need the robot to safely help us off the floor. (In some areas, this is the single largest reason for fire engine dispatch. Something like 15-20% of 911 calls.)

 

[redheeler]

Also, 404 has a piece today titled "Software Developers Say AI Is Rotting Their Brains"
Link

...more and more people are becoming disillusioned with the promise of code generated by large language models.
“We're being told to use [AI] agents for broad changes across our codebase. There's no way to evaluate whether that much code is well-written or secure—especially when hundreds of other programmers in the company are doing the same,” a UX designer at a midsized tech company told me.


Tech companies have also been bragging about their “tokenmaxxing,” or how much money they’re spending on AI tools instead of human employees.


...the adoption of AI tools they see internally isn’t voluntary or organic. Developers say they are either explicitly ordered to use AI tools or heavily pressured to use them.

It's inevitable we're going to see a decline in software stability and security from the companies pushing this mindset. Especially security.

 

[redheeler]

I use Copilot at work.

Been using ChatGPT, Claude and duck.ai at home for a while and quite often hit the free processing limit on them.

Rolled my own AI/LLM (qwen-2.5-coder 14b with an Open Web UI front end) on an M1 Studio MAX base model (32GB/512 GB) and it works surprisingly well.

Qwen is surprisingly capable! I tried the Qwen 3.5 35B model locally. I think everyone wanting to use LLMs extensively should try running one locally first (and before you say they need good hardware, they don't – even a PowerBook G4 can run a LLM), play around with the settings like temperature and top k, and get a basic understanding of how they work first.

 

[BSDnostalgia]

A different angle on AI in our lives. The news is all over the plan for building a ginormous data center complex west of the Great Salt Lake in northwest Utah. But, the press descriptions are all over the place regarding what it is. I haven't found a definitive description of the project plan online (maybe I should use AI to search for it?) Anybody have a good source? If the press is to be believed, it will be an entire large city's worth of data center, in geographic extent, power, and -- guess what, this is a desert -- water. Anyone?

 

[redheeler]

A different angle on AI in our lives. The news is all over the plan for building a ginormous data center complex west of the Great Salt Lake in northwest Utah. But, the press descriptions are all over the place regarding what it is. I haven't found a definitive description of the project plan online (maybe I should use AI to search for it?) Anybody have a good source? If the press is to be believed, it will be an entire large city's worth of data center, in geographic extent, power, and -- guess what, this is a desert -- water. Anyone?

The problem is we don't really know the long-term effects of something like this in the middle of a desert and can only speculate. The scale they're proposing for this thing is ridiculous.

 

[Arran]

Food for thought.

Excellent article. Thanks.

For a while I've been thinking about how modern AI has shamelessly piggy-backed on the rich body of human knowledge published so far. Pillaging published human experience has been AI's (not so) secret sauce. But as humans are increasingly cut out of the loop (i.e., laid off) and AI's mechanized rehash of that old knowledge churns away and dilutes the well, it feels like the well can only go stale. Then what?

Deep human thought, creativity, ingenuity and insight have kept the well refreshed for millennia - but the AI companies cynically hyping their AI rehash machines are implying that everything that can be known is already known. It's like saying all the songs have been written, all the paintings painted, all the novels penned, all the inventions invented.

Yeah, right.

The fact that so many non-AI companies are uncritically buying into this delusion at speed - no, haste - makes me want to cash in all my "blue-chip" investments and buy a farm that produces honest food that people need.

 

[BotchQue]

A different angle on AI in our lives. The news is all over the plan for building a ginormous data center complex west of the Great Salt Lake in northwest Utah. But, the press descriptions are all over the place regarding what it is. I haven't found a definitive description of the project plan online (maybe I should use AI to search for it?) Anybody have a good source? If the press is to be believed, it will be an entire large city's worth of data center, in geographic extent, power, and -- guess what, this is a desert -- water. Anyone?

I've been following this one closely (I live in Ogden) and no I haven't been able to find a "good source" either; I think that's by design.
The oligarchs are foaming at the mouth to install enough AI to eliminate virtually all paid jobs, and
I'd better stop right there or get banninated from this site for a third time.

At least I can take comfort in the Gov's simple and solid solution, so we're all "Praying for more Rain".

(Quick geography lesson for others: The Great Salt Lake is a body of water that is the "final destination" (they have a word for it that escapes me right now), water that flows into it stays there, it doesn't empty into either ocean nor gulf. When it dries out to less than half its volume, that tells you how much trouble the intermountain west is in.
And, yeah, building a supersize data center just south of it is All Kinds of Stupid.

 

[teh_hunterer]

I use claud ai and chatgpt, for lots of things. For instance, I need instructions to configure or install something Linux, but googling didn't provide the results I hoped for. I also use AI to help write content, be it posts here, or emails for work. Fun parts is to have AI generate images,m both funny and pretty amazing.

I'm genuinely curious, why would you use AI to write posts for us to read?

 

[Analog Kid]

Look at the historical trend of automation in car manufacturing as compared to human employment since the 50s.

Ok:

Looks to me like humans continue to outnumber robots in car manufacturing by a wide margin.

Capitalism is based on a premise, continuous expansion

No it's not. Capitalism is based on the premise that capital should be allocated according to where it provides most value. People spend money on what they need and want most, and the businesses providing thus the businesses providing those goods and services most efficiently accumulate the most capital. There's nothing about capitalism that demands continuous expansion. Expansion comes from the human desire for an ever improving quality of life-- people wanting more, wanting better than their parents had. It's enabled by ever growing worker productivity-- people able to produce more-- which in turn is enabled by improvements in technology.

AI has been in dishwashers and clothes washers and driers for decades, and we've had more time for art and writing because of it. The fact that most people spent that time watching TV instead is beside the point.

 

[Analog Kid]

I may be in the minority here but, I see AI (as a whole) as a detriment to self-initiative and intellectualism. I see it devolving interpersonal relationships much worse than social media already has. All of this is encouraging people to be mindlessly lazy. Some will rebuttal with AI can save you time. My retort to that is if the time saved removes emotion, cognitive awareness, initiative, and inspiration, more than seconds and moments have been lost. The road ahead for society does not look good at all, in my opinion.

No more handwritten letters
Phone calls have predominantly been replaced by texts filled with emojis, and meaningless tripe like LOL, OMG, and other brainless acronyms.
Society has become addicted to meaningless drivel and it makes me sad that so many crave it more than sharing and caring with others in meaningful ways like we did 15 years ago.

To be fair, that's not really AIs fault. The phone calls you miss are what started the decline in letter writing, and email killed the post office entirely. Movies killed playhouses. Television killed books. Dylan went electric and killed thoughtful music. Video killed the radio star.

This isn't the first technology that people want to point to as the cause of societal collapse. There are plenty of driven, intellectual people in the world just as there have always been, and there are plenty of dimwitted unmotivated tools just as there have always been-- they're built that way, or raised that way, but technology trends aren't the differentiator. "Sloth" is one of the original biblical sins.

 

[maflynn]

I'm genuinely curious, why would you use AI to write posts for us to read?

I use it as a search engine, to collect and/or summarize data. I also use it to edit my posts on occasion to have them sounding a bit more professional and less awkward.

Oh and on occasion I'll have chatgpt create an image - typically something funny, or poking fun at something - mostly meme like

 

[ProbablyDylan]

Work bought us all Claude subscriptions. It's been working out surprisingly well. Had it make me a digital Rolodex in Rust because Microsoft's contacts features are worthless.

I do not see a world where I get a return on any increased productivity from this technology. It'll enable businesses to do more with less, however, I am not a business. I am an employee of one, meaning I will inevitably be doing more. Not thrilled.

 

[fluxora]

I think AI is amazing as a tool, but worrying as a replacement for thinking itself. I use ChatGPT almost daily for research, summaries and brainstorming, and it genuinely saves time. But I’ve also noticed how easy it is to become passive and accept polished answers without really engaging critically.

 

[Mainsail]

Actually, one of the things I find most helpful about AI is that it can help me troubleshoot. I need to be honest with myself; working with tools day in and day out is not my profession, so getting pointed in the right direction is a huge help. Sometimes, I can actually fix the darn thing. But, what is especially helpful is when it tells me to stop and call a professional. It even looks at my previous queries and can tell me when I am out of my league. Sometimes, I ignore this advise (often to my detriment 😉). For me, it is helpful to know when to stop.....relieves a lot of frustration.

 

[maflynn]

I find most helpful about AI is that it can help me troubleshoot

That's a good point, I've installed Linux (an Arch derivative ) and I've run into some issues, here and there. googling was fruitless, unless I wanted to watch a 20 minute video which may or may not help me. I got the exact steps from claude.

 

[MacDaddyPanda]

I use AI for all kinds of things. Critical thinking, Curiosity banter, assisting with work, like familiarizing myself with all the Linux Server OS CLI commands, Creating things helpful for work, Shopping research for my Model 3, It was very helpful in me finding quality parts for upgrades or replacements of broken parts. It would have been much more tedious finding that stuff on Google search and forums and Reddit. Gemini pointed me to those sources and I was able to find speaker upgrades for example. AI is a tool that is as helpful or unhelpful as ones efforts and attitudes about it. I used GPT/Subscription in the beginning. But Gemini has gotten so much better. Claude is useful at work. Switch back and forth between the two. Grok I only use sparingly.

 

[turbineseaplane]

A different angle on AI in our lives. The news is all over the plan for building a ginormous data center complex west of the Great Salt Lake in northwest Utah. But, the press descriptions are all over the place regarding what it is. I haven't found a definitive description of the project plan online (maybe I should use AI to search for it?) Anybody have a good source? If the press is to be believed, it will be an entire large city's worth of data center, in geographic extent, power, and -- guess what, this is a desert -- water. Anyone?

It's ... "not good", to put it mildly.

This AI data center will be bigger than 2,000 Walmarts and dump '23 atom bombs worth of energy' into the environment every day — and locals are terrified

This project could physically alter the landscape for humans and wildlife

www.yahoo.com

Also, don't miss the reply here from two ladies accused of being "Chinese operatives" by the Billionaire heading this effort.

 

[Pacific1972]

Redirect power from people to AI Data Center

Good news 🫢🤭 (and I believe only possible in USA) 😩

 

[bunce66]

My workplace released Microsoft Copilot for us to use. Most of my group have no use for it. But to their credit, there has been a small, but vocial community of folks who have banded together to figure out how they can use this tool and share their results. Not everything has been a success, but there's been enough positives to keep interest up.

In my world, I see places where AI can improve efficiency, but I don't see it replacing jobs - at least yet.

Co-Pilot is an abomination and the laughingstock of the AI world. Your team should be using Claude or even ChatGPT/Gemini.