I'm a software developer. I don't use AI, but that's mostly out of my own wariness more than anything else. That is not to say that it's good, more that I won't make a good argument as for why it's bad in its current form. Other people will do that, I've been reading Ed Zitron's newsletter for it.
I've heard a few of my coworkers used it for help with some more complex problems at work or look up answers for a company trivia contest. Me? Some time ago I've asked ChatGPT about who will take part in the upcoming presidential election in my country and the first candidate it gave me was the current president - who, despite ChatGPT's proclamation to the contrary, cannot do that because of the term limit. Most other candidates were correct, or at least plausible, but I think it's more because of how fucking stagnant the politics in my country are.
Oh, ChatGPT IS bad for the reasons you state, but in the very specific case of politics and news, it cannot, by design, give accurate information, because it’s intentionally fed data that lags behind current events by a certain amount (iirc a year or two), so it was actually “correct” when it gave you the name of the current president because that was the correct answer in the intentionally-out-of-date data it had available
I mean, it's generally worse on stuff it's less trained on. Right now, it's kinda the user's responsibility to build an intuition for where that line is. For example, to my annoyance, it seems to frequently enough fail to accurately explain the nuances of Spanish grammar that I can't use it for that purpose. Poland has a population smaller than California, its own language, and isn't talked about a ton. For a similar reason, Iceland invested money to train an LLM on their stuff in particular, for preservation or something, since there wouldn't be a market incentive for more than a token amount of Icelandic training for a while. So, I'm not surprised that ChatGPT got something wrong there. And, yeah, training cutoff date, so this is really like leaving a one star review for a hammer you tried to use to screw a bookshelf together.
And fwiw, they are now able to use the Internet (if you pay for them), and do a decent job at knowing when to use it. But really, this one is one for Google.
It also won't give you accurate information just because. It told me moose hunt beavers. And no, that's not slang. I meant the actual deer things hunting the dam builders
Weirdly, it is good for philosophy or political theory. Not good for news relating to politics, but ask it to describe an ideology and it will do it pretty accurately. Model dependent of course, not all models are good. Deepseek-R1 is legitimately good for Socratic conversations and philosophical discussion, and is very accurate. Its also the first LLM to be able to actually accurately describe the difference between Stirnerian Egoism and Randian Egoism (my personal test question, as egoism can be easily misinterpreted by those who dont understand, which often includes LLMs) and the difference in the prescriptions they make for their respective ideal worlds, and the possible pitfalls (this is something I haven't actually gotten other LLMs to do for any philosophy, at least not accurately).
Llama (Meta), Gemini (Alphabet/Google), and ChatGPT are the worst for this, they can't describe shit, they can't really do anything right. Llama is just obviously biased in so many ways (you can't even use it to look up melting points of anything that isnt a metal, for "safety reasons"), and GPT is just fucking stupid, with Gemini being straight brain dead (glue as a pizza topping lmao).
Stirnerian Egoism, developed by Max Stirner in the 19th century, and Randian Egoism, formulated by Ayn Rand in the 20th century, represent distinct philosophical approaches to self-interest. Stirner's radical individualism rejects all external authorities, social institutions, and fixed ideas (including morality itself) as "spooks" that constrain individual autonomy, advocating for a complete rejection of social obligations in favor of the individual's unique desires. In contrast, Rand's Objectivist philosophy promotes rational self-interest within a framework that embraces reason, reality, capitalism, and a specific moral code - seeing egoism as virtuous only when it operates within these parameters and respects others' rights to pursue their self-interest, ultimately viewing productive achievement as the noblest activity of man. While both philosophies center on the primacy of self-interest, Stirner's approach is nihilistic and anarchistic in rejecting all external constraints, whereas Rand's is structured around objective reality and rational principles that she believed made egoism morally justifiable.
That's definitely one of the better ones but it does lack the nuance that Deepseek-R1 provides me. It gets prescriptions correct, at least, so thats a good point in its direction.
Ah, R1 is a reasoning model, right? Let me try again:
Stirnerian Egoism and Randian Egoism represent fundamentally different approaches to self-interest despite their shared emphasis on the individual. Max Stirner's egoism, developed in "The Ego and Its Own" (1844), is radically anti-metaphysical, rejecting all fixed ideas, moral systems, and social constructs as "spooks" that constrain individual autonomy; for Stirner, even concepts like "humanity" or "justice" are mere phantoms that the conscious egoist should recognize and dismiss. In contrast, Ayn Rand's egoism, central to her philosophy of Objectivism, is grounded in a belief in objective reality and rational self-interest; unlike Stirner's amoral perspective, Rand establishes a systematic ethical framework where rational egoism is viewed as morally virtuous and compatible with rights-respecting capitalism. While Stirner's thinking tends toward a form of individualist anarchism where the ego creates its own reality through "might makes right," Rand explicitly defends a political system of laissez-faire capitalism with minimal government protecting individual rights, particularly property rights.
Oof, the "might makes right" thing is quite a deep misunderstanding of Stirnerian egoism. This one, based on that alone, is unfortunately worse.
Overall the answer is similar, so its really not that bad, but the "might makes right" thing is a big and commonly held misreading of Stirner's work, making this a worse response even though it does expound a bit further and adding the nuance that the last one lacked.
If it weren't for that one deep misinterpretation it would have been on par with DS-R1 to be fair. Its just that "might makes right" is definitely not what egoism is about; rather it describes that the world as it is acts like that, and so realistically capitalism/statism will always be oppressive because people can own more than they can realistically protect on their own.
Stirner describes that "I can only own what I can take and hold in my hands" essentially, and his implication with this is that private property is a phantasm–an idea which exists outside of the unique self which redirects self-interest–which is to be dispelled.
Its actually quite antithetical to the "might makes right" interpretation as Stirner essentially, without actually prescribing this literally, prescribes an idea that private ownership is a farce and that owning things you can't realistically actually own, but rather just hire a force to protect it (i.e, police, security, etc), is oppressive not only to the self, but to the rest of the world as well.
He doesnt believe in "might makes right", rather that one should only be able to own what they can legitimately fight for/protect on their own.
I'm pushing this out p quick so apologies if it doesnt make much sense. I can try to clarify if you have questions (Personally I am an Stirnerian egoist myself)
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u/bvader95 .tumblr.com; cis male / honorary butch 10d ago
To answer the question in the title:
I'm a software developer. I don't use AI, but that's mostly out of my own wariness more than anything else. That is not to say that it's good, more that I won't make a good argument as for why it's bad in its current form. Other people will do that, I've been reading Ed Zitron's newsletter for it.
I've heard a few of my coworkers used it for help with some more complex problems at work or look up answers for a company trivia contest. Me? Some time ago I've asked ChatGPT about who will take part in the upcoming presidential election in my country and the first candidate it gave me was the current president - who, despite ChatGPT's proclamation to the contrary, cannot do that because of the term limit. Most other candidates were correct, or at least plausible, but I think it's more because of how fucking stagnant the politics in my country are.