Artificial Intelligence In Our Lives

[Charlie Bonesx]

Absolutely correct. The problem (I think, anyway) with AI lies far beyond what it is doing with the environment & automation of work.

AI reliance is fundamentally affecting human to human relationships, interactions, and understanding. The profound effects of AI on youth development may not be fully realized for several more decades. It is altering fundamental views of reality.

Idiocracy was a comedic warning as to what human society can devolve into when pure thought and creativity are willingly given up for convenience. AI is a wonderful tool in the right context, but it is also extremely dangerous if it takes the place of human intelligence, which it seems primed to do (with younger crowds… perhaps not so much these forums).

My opinion, of course.

idiocracy was one of the most accurately predictive films ever made

 

[one more]

IOS? If so I don’t see this setting. Is that only for the newest iPhones?

Yes, iOS and iPadOS with iOS 26 running on anything from iPhone 15 Pro onwards, as Apple Intelligence requires a minimum of 8 GB of RAM.

 

[BarredOwl]

I don't have a problem with AI in the workplace. I just have a problem with employers using it to cut corners.

Greatly succinct. From my perspective, it extends beyond just the workplace. Runny jelly is runny jelly and lazy slop is lazy slop.

 

[Parowdy]

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.

In your world, you do not see AI generated ads and pictures? Interesting.

 

[Apple Knowledge Navigator]

I think a lot of people, general public, are still trying to figure out what AI actually is. The promise is far removed from reality.

Those us more tech-literate will know that the term simply refers to the high speed of modern machine learning, pattern recognition. Therefore, ‘AI’ should be good at analysing and evaluating data - tasks which could save people a lot of time. If I had to guess, it’s this benefit that is obscured by all the nonsense that looks better on a sales pitch…. Videos of alligators fighting kangaroos and writing the perfect resume.

You give AI a creative task however, and all you’re going to get is a result without conscience. It may be profound and even scary, but on a moral level every human being knows that it doesn’t command respect because it hasn’t been built from human consciousness.

This is where I somewhat respect Apple’s approach. Yes they’ve been late to the game and stumbled, but they’re taking a slow and more careful approach, and I appreciate that to the literal unloading of features from other companies.

 

[turbineseaplane]

This is where I somewhat respect Apple’s approach. Yes they’ve been late to the game and stumbled, but they’re taking a slow and more careful approach, and I appreciate that to the literal unloading of features from other companies.

Amazingly, Apple are benefiting from making mistakes, being behind and having an inability to execute in this area.

 

[Huntn]

yeah it's going great so far 🤣

To be clear, it’s not going great for specific reasons.

 

[Huntn]

Yes, iOS and iPadOS with iOS 26 running on anything from iPhone 15 Pro onwards, as Apple Intelligence requires a minimum of 8 GB of RAM.

I have a 13, I stay behind on purpose.

 

[Black_Mage]

For instance, I need instructions to configure or install something Linux, but googling didn't provide the results I hoped for.

Hey there's a good idea. That's a much better solution than relying on a hostile online Linux community for help.

 

[Black_Mage]

A co-worker was telling me that her daughter was having health problems and she didn't know what was wrong. It occurred to me later to tell her to try giving A.I. all the symptoms and giving the results to her doctor. A.I. + a medical professional sounds like a great way to get a good diagnosis.

 

[Howard2k]

I use it often, every day. Both for work and personal use.

But for those people who don't wish to use it, don't. No skin off my nose. People don't have to use computers either. Or the Internet. These things are all optional.

There were always people worried that computers would kill jobs. Or that the Internet would kill jobs. Or that electricity would kill jobs.

The world adapts and goes on.

AI will be a revolution, and some people will (by rights) still live in the dark ages. Each to their own.

 

[funwithstuff]

Good to see some moderate responses here. Not all AI is useless, but used badly, it can produce some pretty crappy outcomes.

If anyone is curious about how this applies to the creative industries, I wrote a book that tries to strike a balance between the two extremes: https://aiforcreativeproduction.com

 

[spamabyss]

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.

I have a friend who works in construction in a mid sized eastern German town. Not exactly the bleeding edge of the tech revolution. They were able to reduce an office clerk to a half-time position through the use of AI (writing quotes, accounting/bookkeeping, etc.).

In my work I have contact with many people looking for work. Among them are many whose departments have been decimated, at least under the pretext of implementing AI.

So yes, it's definitely already replacing jobs, just that we are not sharing the profits with everyone so we can all work less, as people had hoped in the past century. (In 1930, John Maynard and Keynes wrote his famous essay "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchilden", predicting that by 2030 technological progress would reduce the working week to around 15 hours.)

 

[maflynn]

all the symptoms and giving the results to her doctor. A.I. + a medical professional sounds like a great way to get a good diagnosis.

Provided the doctor is receptive to hearing the suggestion of what it could be. In my experience, many doctors largely ignore patient's attempts to self diagnose

 

[Luftkopf]

The thing that gets me is the LLMs amplify two of the worst characteristics of humans.

Firstly, starting with a solution and not a problem. I see this so often. People don't rationalise their problems and then work out the most appropriate solution. They start with an LLM as a solution and find problems that fit it. This inevitably leads to both not solving the problems they actually have and creating more expensive ones in the process.

Secondly, a little bit of knowledge is dangerous. I am a domain expert in a couple of quite distinct areas. I've seen people try and encroach on them "amplified" by an LLM. They are quite embarrassing really because the LLM does a half-arsed job of them at best, sometimes abhorrently bad. Because the results are quite convincing sounding, the people doing it don't actually understand enough to be able to qualify that they aren't good. And then they get pissy with me when I tear the answers to bits. I have to assume that is the case for many other domains. You really can't beat experts with years of experience. And you aren't going to have any of those in the future if you give people these tools because they stop people from actually learning and play on our instant reward traits as a species.

I don't think I've found a use case I'm happy with yet. Thus I shall continue to not use them.

I wouldn't call myself an expert in my field, but I do have a couple of decades of practical experience in it. AI gives answers that look good if you don't have a clue, but are hilariously wrong if you have a reasonable working knowledge of the job.

I'm a draftsman who works mostly on residential projects, and am getting my certification to do thermal performance assessments on house plans. Ask an AI a question about thermal performance regulations, or any building regulations in general really, and you'll get answers that look good and coherent, but reference codes and standards that are 100% fiction. Ask for more detail, and it will confidently tell you what is in those codes and standards to quite a bit of detail, which is funny because they don't exist outside of the LLM’s hallucination.

 

[Saturn1217]

I think AI as a query tool had the potential to be extremely useful and help us handle the ever growing amount of data in our lives.

Imagine a user trying to find a book they want to read on Amazon. (And to be clear I mean a book written by a human being). It is impossible for a person to read through every book that exists on Amazon and find the books that has exactly the list of criteria I’m in the mood for right now. AI could have solved that problem.

In software engineering documentation used to be a huge headache at every company I ever worked. You could take the time to document stuff but someone finding it later and it staying up to date was always a struggle. Adding our documentation to our own internal LLM basically solved this problem. If you also use ai to query slack you basically have all the company historical knowledge at your fingertips.

We COULD HAVE FOCUSED on this use case. Having AI help humans manage the vast and ever growing amounts of human generated content. But no. Instead everyone leaned into the generation of new content by AI that now threatens to make it EVEN HARDER for people to handle the deluge of content while also making us redundant in any job that a person might actually want to do. We basically took a tool with great potential and decided to use it in the worst way possible.

 

[mike.coulter]

Really I think the issue at the moment is the fact that AI appears to be a commercial exercise, rather than an exercise in improving peoples lives.

Something like that saying online, I want an AI to do my cleaning and house work so I can do art. Or something like that.

 

[YankeeSR23]

Maybe I’m giving them too much info but I’m using ChatGPT to help me pay down my credit card debt. I gave it my card balances, the APRs and how much I can pay every 2 weeks and asked it what’s the best way to pay it off while also saving up for the iPhone Ultra; it gave me a game plan and I’m following it and by mid November of this year I should be 100% debt free. I already have 1 card paid off, the next will be done in mid June and then I tackle a big one that’ll be the biggest obstacle and the final card will take a couple weeks. If all goes according to plan I’ll go into 2027 with no debt and I can finally start saving some money in my HYSA.

 

[maflynn]

Really I think the issue at the moment is the fact that AI appears to be a commercial exercise, rather than an exercise in improving peoples lives

I'm not defending AI, but when a company is burning through billions for their AI infrastructure, there cannot be any other option but to commercialize it and try to make money.

 

[jerryjohnson]

That makes a lot of sense; AI must be developed in a measured and orderly manner.

 

[turbineseaplane]

So yes, it's definitely already replacing jobs, just that we are not sharing the profits with everyone so we can all work less, as people had hoped in the past century.

Just that one small problem!
😔

 

[turbineseaplane]

Maybe I’m giving them too much info but I’m using ChatGPT to help me pay down my credit card debt. I gave it my card balances, the APRs and how much I can pay every 2 weeks and asked it what’s the best way to pay it off while also saving up for the iPhone Ultra; it gave me a game plan and I’m following it and by mid November of this year I should be 100% debt free. I already have 1 card paid off, the next will be done in mid June and then I tackle a big one that’ll be the biggest obstacle and the final card will take a couple weeks. If all goes according to plan I’ll go into 2027 with no debt and I can finally start saving some money in my HYSA.

May I suggest you not even consider an iPhone Ultra until you can pay for it with cash on hand, after being fully debt free?

It's far more important (by orders of magnitude) to have cashflow and debt under control than having a new iPhone.

 

[YankeeSR23]

May I suggest you not even consider an iPhone Ultra until you can pay for it with cash on hand, after being fully debt free?

It's far more important (by orders of magnitude) to have cashflow and debt under control than having a new iPhone.

I understand what you’re saying, but I have everything planned out. I had money saved aside for this device and I’m only taking $50 from each check to cover the cost. By the time the device is released it’ll already be paid for; I’ve been saving for this device even before I had a debt repayment plan. I have everything under control and planned out.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Seeing so many of these types of posts 😔

 

[Huntn]

Seeing so many of these types of posts 😔

View attachment 2630269

AI psychosis, I like that, a subset of Capitalist psychosis, blinded at the prospect of abundant $$$ flowing your way. 😐