Instance banned from awful.systems for debating the groupthink

Post in !techtakes@awful.systems attacks the entire concept of AI safety as a made-up boogeyman
I disagree and am attacked from all sides for "posting like an evangelist"
I give citations for things I thought would be obvious, such as that AI technology in general has been improving in capability compared to several years ago
Instance ban, "promptfondling evangelist"

This one I'm not aggrieved about as much, it's just weird. It's reminiscent of the lemmy.ml type of echo chamber where everyone's convinced it's one way, because in a self-fulfilling prophecy, anyone who is not convinced gets yelled at and receives a ban.

Full context: https://ponder.cat/post/1030285 (Some of my replies were after the ban because I didn't PT Barnum carefully enough, so didn't realize.)

47 comments

The old school tech guys are super anti-AI. I think it’s the usual refusal to keep up with new tech.
I’ll admit, I was in the same basket, until I heard a professor speak about it at my son’s university. They were talking about university concerns of students cheating with AI, and one progressive professor told us about how she encourages its use. She said now that pandora’s box has been opened, the best thing she could do to best prepare them for the real world was teach them to use it properly to improve their workflow, rather than try to ban its use.
There was more to it, but at the end of the talk I realized I’d made the mistake of writing it off. I made the exact same mistake a lot of these tech guys are now, and underestimated how fast it’s advancing. I messed with AI a couple years prior, wasn’t impressed, and let that form my opinions. When I tried it again, I couldn’t believe how much more impressive it was than before. Then I stayed with it, and I couldn’t believe how fast I was watching it improve every single month. If you’re not working with it regularly, you really cannot understand how fast this is moving.
Realizing this was similar to the invention of the digital calculator, I tried to spread the word to the old farts that the abacus would soon be dead. But none of them want to hear it. Saying anything positive about AI will get you slammed with downvotes and bans, and lots of lectures like ‘I tried it two years ago, and it was a joke.’ It was shocking to me, how many Luddites are in tech.
Screw’em. Let them get left behind. Can’t drag someone into the future who wants to be stuck in the past. It still has a long way to go, but I’ve started using it to speed up my workflow. Even with the mistakes it makes, it’s worth it for how fast I can now get through the blank page phase of a project. No more boiler plate work slowing me down. It probably won’t become sentient in my lifetime, but damn if it isn’t an incredibly useful tool.
- If the curtain catches fire, then pandora's box has already been opened and you might as well start spraying gasoline around the room. No point trying to fix problems when we can just accept that the room is on fire and start preparing to be fireproof.
  AI is a shitty attempt at a shitty thing. If it improves your work, then your work was REALLY bad. If it gets better, then it will be a GOOD attempt at a shitty thing. Your work is STILL really bad, but now you have a machine to make things you claim credit for. It will never be a good thing.
  AI is a technological fire pit, and you are blindly walking into the flames so the other char-grilled victims don't leave you behind. Let me put out the damn fire.
  
  When you realize later that the world has left you behind, I want you to think back on this nonsense you posted.
  
  I said this stuff about crypto. I say the same things to the same people with the same confidence. Why should it end any different?
  
  Because this is new tech. Not a Ponzi scheme.
  Seems you’re still struggling to adequately assess emerging technology.
  
  It's the same people picking up new technology and telling else to get on board or be left behind. People with a good understanding of technology and society point out the obvious flaws. Then everyone who jumped on the bandwagon starts calling everyone who didn't jump with them a Luddite who is going to be left behind.
  Meanwhile, you have people stealing the work from artists without compensation. You have a rampant misuse of computing power to meet the needs of the new technology. You have features forced on people who want nothing to do with it. You have countless people using the technology to get a cheap cash-grab, then hopping on to do it again. You have people using the technology to commit legitimate crimes, using the slow speed of legal definitions to get away with it.
  This is nothing new. We've been here before. I'd like to move on.

47 comments