I’m not an AI techie and I’m not well educated on LLMs/AI in general. The issue I’m having is the dichotomy between how people talk about it. I’ve heard completely opposite ends of the spectrum. From AI is quickly becoming advanced enough to threaten human society, all the way to its a glorified dictionary/search engine that can’t really do much of anything. I know Lemmy has a steep anti-AI slant. But, can someone talk about this in a way I can wrap my head around why the divide seems so big?
I knew a guy in high school that told girls they shouldn’t date him because his dick was so big it would hurt them. You can wax philosophical on his motives if you’d like, but spoiler alert - his dick wasn’t big.
That’s exactly what I think is happening. Remember a few months ago anthropic saying mythos is too dangerous to release until the government as the idiots they are starting believing them and banned them from exporting it, therefore losing them money. Very quickly they came up with fable (ironic name isn’t it) a week or two later saying it’s got the proper safeguards now. Now they’re all trying this marketing strategy asking the gov to regulate them, seemingly because they’re dangerous and not because they’re getting diminishing returns and feel threatened by the chinese competition
Did it work?
The biggest risk I see is Idiocracy. Like, the movie.
Business workers become afraid to do or propose anything without AI signoff. Retail & service workers are told to do what the AI says, the way the AI says to do it, or get fired.
Technology innovator Marshall Brain (RIP) wrote a book in the early 2000s about an AI called “Manna” designed to replace fast food managers:
https://web.archive.org/web/20201204080050/https://marshallbrain.com/manna1
The AI just talks in your ear all day: “Empty one bag of fries into the fryer. You have 6.5 minutes, switch to the sandwich station. Make one Big Burger: grab one patty from the 1/4 pound bin and place it on the griddle… … The fries are ready, turn around and lift them into the drain hopper…”
All day, every day, exactly 8 hours plus mandatory breaks, employees on autopilot listening on ear buds.
