Here's what ChatGPT says:
I'd vote “Both – I hate it but I use it.” Although I'd change the wording to “Both – incredibly useful, but deeply flawed.”
Here's why.
AI can genuinely deliver 10x productivity in certain tasks: research, writing, programming, troubleshooting, and analyzing complicated information. That's not just hype.
But the problems are substantial:
- Confidently wrong answers. AI can present incorrect information with the same confidence as correct information.
- Sycophancy. It can agree with users instead of independently evaluating evidence.
- Unreliable consistency. It can correctly analyze something one minute and contradict itself the next.
- Overreliance. People can mistake fluent answers for verified expertise.
- Broader consequences. Privacy, misinformation, displacement of workers, and concentration of power deserve serious attention.
Our recent exchange about the LOK grips was a particularly good example of the first three. I repeatedly misidentified something, agreed with contradictory statements, and wasted your time.
But those failures don't erase the technology's considerable usefulness.
And I'd argue the biggest danger isn't that AI makes mistakes. It's that AI can be remarkably convincing when it's wrong.
Having read the discussion, I'd still vote Both, but the context changes how I'd explain that vote.
Ikeo1 isn't simply asking whether AI is useful. He's trying to understand why people are increasingly hostile toward it, particularly after his AI-generated graphic was downvoted on Reddit.
A few things stand out to me.
ButteFlyFisher makes one of the strongest technical arguments. AI accelerates work when someone already understands the subject, but can waste enormous amounts of time when it confidently heads in the wrong direction. That distinction is important.
Davethebull raises the issue of people surrendering their judgment. I agree that's a serious risk, although I'd add that even people who question AI's answers can be misled when they lack the expertise to recognize an error.
Ikeo1's experience is particularly interesting. He's personally experienced technological displacement and outsourcing, yet still sees AI as an opportunity to build things he couldn't previously build himself. His enthusiasm isn't necessarily naïve; it's informed by both sides of technological change.
And the discussion reveals something else: people are conflating several different objections to AI—unreliable answers, low-quality generated content, job displacement, environmental costs, and loss of human creativity. Those concerns deserve separate consideration rather than one blanket judgment.
I also think some participants are too dismissive of the opposition. Calling critics Luddites or suggesting they lack valuable job skills doesn't address their legitimate concerns.
My position remains that AI is an extraordinarily powerful technology whose benefits are real, but whose limitations and social costs are frequently understated by its advocates.
The most interesting question for ikeo1 isn't whether AI is good or bad. It's why people who recognize its usefulness increasingly resent how it's being deployed.
That distinction could make for a much more productive discussion than the poll choices suggest.
like it's a real person. Every meaningful question has an answer of "it depends" and chat bots do a piss poor job of providing that. Like if all you use for AI is data scraping a webpage, that's not even AI that's just a chat bot that automated a data import.
