Sick of ai being pushed down our collective throats with no choice in the matter.

[chaosmaker]

I find it increasingly threatening to our collective safety, the extent that our current idiocy in westminster is in bed with big tech and forcing ai on us.
I can't delete it from devices. Most social media is now embedding it again with no clue as to what they are hoping to achieve with it.
Children and young teens are increasingly using it to tell all their problems to and thinking of it as a sentient friend.
Nobody seems to be looking long term at how we are deskilling ourselves and trusting a database to tell them what to do when they are engaging with it.
It is possible to go through each whatsapp message and make it private from ai but with conditions. None of which I care about so have made mine private. Also can't search whatsapp for friends or ai does an internet search on them without actually connecting you to them.
WHO is holding all this data and what will it be used for above marketing purposes. I also spend a lot of time unticking the 'legitimate interest' boxes. It's not MY legitimate interest.

In general I think more tech is making us more stupid.
AIBU - no, no we need all the tech we can get
INBU (might have got the acronym wrong) - it's obviously right to be concerned about all this tech 'creep' into the world

They will know your name age address, health issues, fingerprints if you have a police record, photo id, passport details,ni number, dna if you’ve had that researched, etc so when they or someone controlling them decide to reduce the population they can programme a drone to find you and turn you into a puff of smoke - unless the leaders want you as a food grower, careworker or miner . Then you’ll be spared for a life of drudgery.

The parking apps I use don’t have my fingerprints or health issues 😂

Ah but which company designed the parking apps?

This is Luddism

Its happened, we can’t go back only foward. Accepting and adapting is the only way. It can’t be uninvented.

What do we do with the people that don't have those attributes?

We already have neighbourhoods/ small towns dominated by the impact of de-industrialisation since the 1980s where skills and opportunities didn't align and have left zones of poverty where there's no aspiration, and it's very difficult to leave that cycle. And opportunities for adult re-training are a hell of a lot worse than they were then.

Well you couldn’t use this site without AI.
I don’t like the amount of ads I see which are AI generated (interiors, models etc). I don’t know anyone who uses it as a ‘friend’. I do worry how many entry level jobs are now done by AI but I’m sure the same has been said with any new invention and technology- I used to work in publishing and a whole sector (typesetting) was pretty much wiped out overnight when computers and desktop publishing came in.
Also my DD is at uni and using AI to write /organise essays is an issue as AI doesn’t think or reason and
can just be plain inaccurate.
But it is also hugely beneficial. I would (literally) be lost without my satnav. I have a chronic illness and there are developing tools to help. I think the medical field has benefited greatly from AI.

Without wishing to be overly dramatic, I see the growing dominance of AI as the beginning of the end of life as we know it.

Well you couldn’t use this site without AI.

In what way?

AI is a product of the IT industry. Search 'IT failures'. That industry is a crock of shit, and will fuck up massively.

My job is always listed as one of the first to go because of AI (actually LLMs, which is not the same). It's not true. The companies using LLMs instead of humans are now at a disadvantage and have started hiring humans again.

I'd love to see you being dramatic then.

I agree.
I despair of people outsourcing their thinking.

Not saying you're wrong, but we simply can't stop it, any more than people a few decades ago could stop the advent of the internet and email and the fact that if they didn't learn to use them, they wouldn't have jobs. We are going to have to learn to use it and to manage the risks

"Anything that's invented before you're born is just a natural and normal part of how the world works. Anything invented between your birth and when you're 35 is exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you're 35 is against the natural order of things." - Douglas Adams

Certainly rings true for me. Had a smartphone at about 35 and thought it was awesome and have thought that pretty much everything that's come along since is just overcomplicating things.

Well it’s neo-Luddism and has been around since the 90s. People have been saying the same about all manner of technological advances for hundreds of years.

Why oh why did MN do away with that laughing emoji!!?!

Me too. End times for human intelligence, at least.

“Second-hand thinkers”.

(slightly less offensive than the alternative “promptitutes” descriptor!)

Meta openly admits to me that it is data mining!
ChatGPT is very US-centric and gets many localised questions that I ask it completely wrong. In addition its European geography is pathetic, ask it for recommendations for somewhere in city x to have lunch and a) it does not clarify which city x (there are 2 in the country, where I live) and b) either makes suggestions for places that are not open at lunch time, or tries to suggest somewhere 300km away. It is also both patronising and sycophantic in annoyingly equal measures, but does not know what ODFOD means :-)

If properly used, with lengthy trials to ensure it’s getting it right, it has a lot of potential.

BUT - it’s introduced with barely a flicker of checking, but cash strapped organisations, who barely understand it. No one checks algorithms, looks for bias, or ever thinks about whether the outcomes are legally compliant. And there’s no time or funding to do so.

its also incredibly environmentally unfriendly.

I suspect the person that said she’d love to see me being really dramatic is undoubtedly younger as I’m 67 and can place changes into a realistic context. Having worked with mainly much younger people, many with a university education, I was always aghast at how the couldn’t add a column of figures, use punctuation correctly and so on. I recognise that the need for (grammar school) punctuation is dwindling but imagine a catastrophic cyber outage - where would commerce be once the battery on an old calculator had run out? A silly and simple example but think on. We’re placing power in the hands of a few.

I’m 47. And married to an IT Consultant who feels the same about AI as me.

The upside is that he has never been more in demand from companies that have sacked developers in favour of AI-generated code which doesn’t work and needs someone with the skills to find the issue and fix it.

I work in a completely person-to-person field. The in-authentic nature of AI-generated communication sets my hair on end. It may be able to replicate (to a degree) head, but it struggles with heart and I just disengage. Recently looking for some info to help my teenage ND daughter on a forum I’ve been on for years, and know the people and the names etc and was reading a post about a facet of ADHD. It was awkward and I double checked who had posted it - long established poster that I’ve interacted with many times. Directly underneath was a second post which said “I generated this article using co-pilot. The prompt I used was………”. I was so disappointed and disengaged from the discussion immediately. I don’t go there to see what AI thinks of something. I go in search of loved experiences and feedback from professionals in the field.

It's really inconvenient though, if apps are the only app for payment. Some people don't have smartphones. I do, but mine is old and not compatible with apps. You might not have internet, or might run out of data. If you're abroad you might find issues with getting your app to accept your payment card.

This woman won her case eventually, but only after fighting back.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2k0qlpjgk2o

I was very surprised to speak to a group of teenagers who are pissed off with AI

This was a volunteering thing this weekend

I don't really use it if I can possibly avoid it. But I think the fact that it gets a lot of things wrong is an issue. I have had people working in IT tell me that a lot of the problems at the moment are due to things being rolled out before they're actually ready. And certainly not properly tested.

It doesn't feel new to me because I saw some early version in 2016 with a client. I can't remember which programme it was.

But I am surprised that more people aren't just generally irritated by it.

I don't know, maybe no one says so because you get accused of being a Luddite.

I was thinking that as well.
If you want to sell manufacturer's machinery or a car or medication, everything needs to go through safety testing. Different fields have different standards. On top of that, different countries have varying legislation which needs to be fulfilled before something can go on the market.
Lots of items are completely forbidden (plastic straws, toys for babys with detachable tiny parts...) or only available in specific settings, such as chemicals or medication.
AI was set into motion with almost no guardrails, and those who are affected have to take measures after the problem already happened - such as all artists whose work was used in training, people in fake videos / posts are just few examples.

Fake material is now so widespread I would class it as guerilla terrorism by the program creators and releasing companies.

When you can't trust the news, and the news media cannot trust anyone of their contributors, people can unleash heaps of trouble on anyone without reason by generating fake material.
Sure, there was fraud and fake videos or photos before, but the difference is the sheer relentless amount and that it is open to anyone.

Depending on the training material, there is also a lot of inbuilt bias.

Our politicians were incredibly shortsighed and not that bright to permit this software onto the market without any regulation. Yes, the EU is talking about a few things here and there, but it's late and not coherent. The problem is already there.

Additionally, the promise was that AI would help in workplaces which include heavy manual labor, are tough on the body, such as patient care (lifting patients, for example), tough mining work, waste collection, and similar, which also have problems with hiring workforce. Instead AI starts cutting into the office and creative work first.

There should be more focus on using AI or automation in areas where there is a problem retaining workforce or the work is dangerous or often leads to health problems. This can be done by legislation and agreements with the tech companies.

It's also stupid to de-skill oneself. Sure, ChatGPD can do your homework, but you won't have learned anything.

Regarding the environmental impact, Meta & Co are planning mini nuclear reactors to power their servers, so much energy is required.

Ironic that a thread about AI is littered with grammar and spelling errors that either (a) it failed to pick up or (b) it autocorrected incorrectly.