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AI - The Good The Bad The Ugly

Is AI good or bad?

  • Good - 10x productivity

    Votes: 20 27.0%
  • Bad - Touch Grass bro..

    Votes: 21 28.4%
  • Both - I hate it but I use it

    Votes: 33 44.6%

  • Total voters
    74
Just curious what you guys think? I just got downvoted into oblivion on Reddit for the AI graphic.

I'll reply before reading what others have to say, just so my answer won't be influenced. I suspect that my response will be too long to hold most of our forum users' attention.

AI offers HUGE potential for mankind. For me, personally, it's helped me with a better understanding of complex physics problems. I'm no astrophysicist, nor am I a common layman. There are few traditional books for people at my level, and AI is a huge help. It also helps me when it's your birthday and I want to send you a picture of a raccoon drawn in a Dali-esque style.

For real researchers, AI is already helping solve protein folding problems, developing cancer treatments, antibiotics, and disease detection. It's real, it's now, and people are benefitting.

Before we all grab our torches and pitchforks and storm the datacenters, let's take a quick look at other technologies that humans have feared.

150 BC: Plato, Thamus, and Socrates all criticized writing because it would create forgetfulness.

100 AD: The development of water mills were met with a period of widespread anti-mill agitation. The fear was mills would displace workers and disrupt economies.

1400 AD: The printing press threatened manuscript production and access to written information. Dangerous and heretical ideas could easily spread among the population.

1500 AD: Rifling in firearms was feared to disrupt the existing paradigm. Many thought rifles took too long to load, and precision aiming wasn't necessary in warfare of the time.

1600 AD: Galileo's use of a telescope and mathematics got him sentenced to house arrest for the remainder of his life.

1700 AD: Advances in textile manufacturing created fear among workers regarding their livelihoods and how they would spend their time. The result was many mobs destroying machinery. This fear eventually devolved into the Luddites of the early 1800's.

1800 AD: It was feared the telephone would weaken social interaction and invade privacy.
The bicycle was feared to be too dangerous, conflict with horse traffic, and cause ladies problems.
Automobiles were thought to be unsafe, a hazard to horses and pedestrians, and a disruption to commerce.
Recorded sound was thought to be a threat to live performers.
Photography was thought to invade privacy, be deceptive, and in some cultures, steal souls.

I don't have a crystal ball but I'm intrigued by the tangential benefits that datacenters might provide. We can all agree that we have an existing power generation and distribution problem in our country. ALL the big AI companies are investing in the development of new power sources. The most interesting are Meta's, Google's, Amazon's, and Microsoft's agreements to build advanced reactors. Small nuke plants can not only be economical and reduce CO2 emissions, but they will eliminate the wildfire risk associated with our existing distribution networks. Look at your electricity bill. Here in CA, the cost of the electricity is miniscule compared to the cost of delivery. This AI revolution not only provides direct benefits, but indirect benefits to society as a whole.
 
The monopoly is real and the disrespect of their customer is real. I only have one Windows box and it's only for gaming, and I still weigh if I should just delete that partition all the time because most of my games run on Linux fine. Leaving the problems with their programs themselves alone, why does it act like I just installed windows every time there's a major update and acts like I'm a bad person for not buying subscriptions to OneDrive and Office? Why is office a subscription in the first place? Why is there bloatware and advertisements that you can't uninstall? What's up with that horrific landing page full of ads and paid "news" garbage? Why does it show me ads when I'm simply looking for a program that I installed in the search bar? Why is it just so ugly? Some of that stuff can be turned off or uninstalled but a lot can't be fixed. The entire experience sucks I'm sorry but I absolutely hate it. That's not even getting to the underlying operating system or program functionality. There's a reason Mac OS chose Unix to build on. I'm not an apple fan either but when osX first came out it was really nice. 20 something years later and it has many of the same problems. it is personal haha I've been using their products since DOS in the 80s and experienced it get progressively worse and worse. A lot of good it's even done them what with "not laying off" 25% of their company. I'm sure the vast majority of these issues were a result of upper management and not their core staff but the problems still exist and are perpetuated by the monopoly. If MacOS wasn't relegated to proprietary hardware I think we would be in a very different position today.
You would be surprised how much of the infrastructure ran on Unix back in the day. 🤫 We would avoid that section of the datacenter on tours lol.

After 40 years of Microsoft-induced trauma, I think you might benefit from Microsoft's new 'AI therapy' chatbot. Just don't tell it you're considering switching to Apple. Remember Microsoft helped keep Apple alive back in 1997, imagine how much worse your Windows trauma might have been without that intervention. 😎
 
You would be surprised how much of the infrastructure ran on Unix back in the day. 🤫 We would avoid that section of the datacenter on tours lol.

After 40 years of Microsoft-induced trauma, I think you might benefit from Microsoft's new 'AI therapy' chatbot. Just don't tell it you're considering switching to Apple. Remember Microsoft helped keep Apple alive back in 1997, imagine how much worse your Windows trauma might have been without that intervention. 😎
Oh I'm not an apple guy I'm much more obnoxious


 
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