People who post AI screenshots in reply to a question

[Runnersandtoms]

I see this all the time and it drives me mad. On a Facebook page or elsewhere someone asks a question about how to do something, or asking for people's advice or experiences of something.

Someone else puts the question into Google and posts a screenshot of the AI response. 🤦🏻‍♀️

A) presumably the person asking also has access to Google/ChatGPT etc
B) they are looking for people's actual experience of the thing
C) AI information is frequently incorrect so is often followed by someone who actually has experience of the thing contradicting it

If you don't know the answer to something or don't have experience of it, SCROLL ON BY. It's not necessary to reply to everything. Also it's not necessary to use AI for every little thing.

Yes I agree.

God, yes, this. Every time I see a lengthy reply prefaced by 'Chat GPT says....' I think, 'well, yes, OP could just ask Chat GPT herself if she wanted to know what some robot with no empathy thinks.'

I'm sure ChatGPT also probably agrees.

People do it on MN all the time.

It also burns up a furious amount of energy. Which is one thing when AI is accelerating gene research, and quite another when people are fannying around putting any old shit it.

I also don’t understand why people are doing this. Anyone can access ChatGPT if that is where they want to ask a question.

Anyone using AI as a search engine needs a head wobble. People are absolutely oblivious to the environmental damage caused by AI and the effect these data centres have on humans.

AI search engines will only contribute more to the massive rise of functional illiteracy we are seeing.

AI should be saved for serious research purposes (not asking ChatGPT how long they need to cook some chicken nuggets) and only as a very last resort.

The human race will AI itself out of existence.

Drives me mad. Especially if you're in a subject specific group and ask for an ID for something and someone answers 'download the so-and-so app'. No thank you, I like being part of a community where we share knowledge and have discussions.
If we all only googled things or used AI then we'd completely lose all of the communities that we have, and many of those are already online

Completely agree - saying that - just started reading an incredibly lengthy and complex post about some sort of trick or treat scenario and found myself wishing they’d run it through an AI agent to summarise it 😞

But yes absolutely those AI generated “solutions” are very irritating and incredibly pointless

As a side note, I'm in a bit of a niche professional specialism. There used to be plenty of information/community online around it, and whilst I wouldn't rely on the internet, it was useful for chewing over ideas and hearing fresh perspectives.

AI churned out websites for popular questions has destroyed this. Any slightly niche question in an already niche field gets bumped back to the most generic AI answer on a website designed to get hits.

It's ruining the internet for ad revenue.

I know, it’s such a weird thing to do. We all have the internet.

My line manager does loads of “work” using AI and waxes lyrical about it to all
and sundry, I’m not against AI at all, but you can tell from a mile off that he uses it extensively (the fact there was a compliment in an email to me was a huge giveaway!) and I also think it’s fucking stupid to walk around your place of work basically telling everyone you can be replaced by a computer…

Oh yeah, there's this project at work that requires a huge investment in good comms, rallying the masses, great explainers etc

And the project manager just churns out AI word salad documents which are as bland as fuck every time.

It's SO cringe, and it's also doing the opposite of a good job.

2 separate issues here IMO.

I don't find Google AI responses useful and prefer to scroll a bit more and choose my own information sources.

However I do believe anyone using social media to ask lazy questions they could have googled the answer to themselves deserves such an abrupt and passive aggressive response.

I'm not talking about questions where personal experience and opinions are useful. More asking the local Facebook page 'anyone know what time the butcher on Station St closes?', or coming onto a 200 post Mumsnet thread about Russell Brand and asking 'who is Russell Brand?'.

But you don't really need AI to answer very simple questions, two minutes on local Facebook, Wikipedia etc will do that.

I think that the true AI (like the automatic answers which pop up at the top of the page when you try to Google or look anything up) are the real pests. And it's everywhere, as though we are being taught to use AI as a first response to every single problem in our lives. Almost as though they WANT us to learn to be stupid.

I find this deeply irritating as well. I can only think that it's people who eagerly want to give advice on something but don't have any experience or knowledge themselves already.

It's a real sign of wisdom to accept when you aren't the best person to give a good answer, and thus to stay silently in the background and allow those in a better position to give advice or empathy.

The problem is that the people who swear by AI and how amazing they think it is don't seem to realise how utterly obvious it is that it's been used, and how fake it (not unexpectedly) sounds.

EBay has been spoiled by their pushing people to use AI to write their item descriptions. If I'm looking at a used armchair, I want to know the condition, material, dimensions and whether it smells of smoke, dogs or farts. What I don't want is flowery waffle about how it will add a touch of understated style to my living room, enable me to take the weight off my legs and be ideal for use by everybody in the family or guests, whether watching TV, reading or having an afternoon snooze.

AI is great when it takes grunt work from humans and does basic boring, painstaking, onerous, predictable digital tasks for us. When it comes to communication, creativity or wise advice, I want a human, please.

100 agree, totally pointless.

Unless they're specifically asking you personally, if you think it's a stupid/pointless/boring question, why would you not just ignore it and scroll on by?

Just like you presumably don't read and engage on every single MN thread, but rather look at the titles and pick the ones that interest you and leave the ones that don't for other folk who are interested in them?

Almost as though they WANT us to learn to be stupid.

This. The way it is being pushed upon us makes it feel very deliberate but even those doing the forcing, or those following on at least, are going to find themselves out of work, unable to find a human to attend to their physical needs and unable to speak to people in real life. I can't help but wonder what their end game is, it feels like it's about more than money.

I do ignore those and scroll on by.

But if someone else does helpfully google the answer they could have googled themselves and copy/pastes the result, I don't think anyone should be offended by it.

AI is now more than bright enough to work out that the biggest problems on this planet are being caused by humans. It may well decide to step in and take over.