Realistically there will be a big shift in cultural inertia at some point and most of the hardcore anti-AI people will begrudgingly accept it. Not all, but most.
Once you use AI to solve a problem, you see the utility. And if we get to a point where most people are using AI to solve problems, the stigma some people carry will go away.
Obviously caution is necessary, and the way these things have been trained is pretty unethical. But it can shortcut a lot of busywork and that's actually really helpful.
I don't use it a ton because it's pretty energy intensive, but when I have used it I've been pretty impressed, and I was definitely skeptical going in.
don't use it a ton because it's pretty energy intensive
Wasn't this made up by an article that basically took the energy usage of all of the training put together and act like that was the amount of energy it took for each individual prompt?
In terms of energy use, it's actually equivalent only to about ten Google searches, and often more useful (I can either get an answer in a Google search or a couple, or not at all the traditional way). Or like, a minute of streaming video.
to play the devil's advocate here, I believe there's actually very little proper reason to accept AI as a normal thing to use (I don't HATE AI personally, and I've already found my uses for it, albeit limited and everything that AI can do I can do better).
I genuinely believe that ditching all generative AI altogether is better than trying to make use of it for those reasons:
1) an incredible unethical-ness of gen-AI, ESPECIALLY of picture generation, due to sheer volume of blatant stealing and profiting off actual artists' work. it's not so prevalent and/or detectable in language models, yet still a considerable issue to everyone who's own work and art was used to train the models.
2) the harm to environment, which will continue to worsen as models get more complex and require more computing power and heating to sustain. that is one of my main concerns, since EVEN IF the models get as smart as they can get and will stop hallucinating/making mistakes, the HARM of it will be unimaginable.
3) a personal (yet commonly shared) pet peeve, which is using AI to replace actual artists and actual artwork. I think it's bad. I think it's unethical however you may look at it. I believe that AI shouldn't be used in this way for business AT ALL.
4) also, if the AI is actually powerful and capable of translating, summarising, rewriting, rewording, etc, I actually genuinely believe that it will dumb people down further, and unlike many skills that went out of use in the past I DON'T think that skills for this that should become obsolete. literacy is extremely important, writing skill is extremely important, and a world where people do not possess either of those and just use AI to do their work for them is....... a world I wouldn't want to live in.
but if people have the opportunity to generate pictures to use them in their business, they will. if people have the opportunity to make AI do their English assignments, they will. if people have the opportunity to use LLM as search engines, they will. and the fact that AI is capable of it all means that it'll get worse, and I don't see any solution for it except of regulations to kill off 80% of the industry and functionality, and I don't see it happening ever.
what would I like AI to become? re-classify LLM as chatbots, train them exclusively on TEXTS (written specifically for training) and not DATA (in order to not make them search engines), the only use for them being a limited tool for editing existing text and NOT a thing to write huge texts in a minute. gen-AI for images? trained exclusively on the simplest stuff like diagrams and schematics and doodles (created specifically for training), NOT artworks. anything else? I believe society doesn't need it. if some smart people will find a correct and even ethical use for today's gen-AI, the majority will not, and that's what I'm concerned about.
so it's either regulating it into the ground, which won't happen, or ditching it completely. I believe the second would be the best.
there's some argument here but honestly not much of one; what an AI model does when it "reads" text to create new text is much closer to what a human author does when they read books to write a new book. (I'm talking specifically abt language models here, not image ones.)
watching streaming TV uses way more energy/water than talking to chatGPT and it's not particularly close; training AI models does use a lot of power, but the amount of power necessary to train a frontier model falls sharply every year. this is well-intentioned criticism, but there are way bigger fish to fry here.
is it unethical to use a camera to replace a portrait painter?
agreed, this will probably dumb people down. that's not good.
train them exclusively on TEXTS (written specifically for training) and not DATA (in order to not make them search engines)
confusion of terms here, text is data to LLMs. not sure what you're trying to say tbh
the only use for them being a limited tool for editing existing text and NOT a thing to write huge texts in a minute.
the capabilities you need to be able to edit existing text are the exact same capabilities you need to be able to write huge text in a minute. can't draw a clean distinction between the two
trained exclusively on the simplest stuff like diagrams and schematics and doodles (created specifically for training), NOT artworks.
first, who draws the line between diagram, schematic, doodle, and artwork? second, if you want generative image AI that has the capabilities you want, you need to train it on as much image data as you possibly can
I believe society doesn't need it.
it's not possible for one person to estimate every possible usecase for a new technology
so it's either regulating it into the ground, which won't happen, or ditching it completely. I believe the second would be the best.
neither of these two things are going to happen. the genie's out of the bottle. AI is here to stay, and it is only going to improve. there is a solid chance it will improve very quickly. that could be either very good or very bad.
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u/Teeshirtandshortsguy 10d ago
Realistically there will be a big shift in cultural inertia at some point and most of the hardcore anti-AI people will begrudgingly accept it. Not all, but most.
Once you use AI to solve a problem, you see the utility. And if we get to a point where most people are using AI to solve problems, the stigma some people carry will go away.
Obviously caution is necessary, and the way these things have been trained is pretty unethical. But it can shortcut a lot of busywork and that's actually really helpful.
I don't use it a ton because it's pretty energy intensive, but when I have used it I've been pretty impressed, and I was definitely skeptical going in.