As I’ve said elsewhere, I’m a little older. I hear a lot about AI. I’m just trying to figure out what’s “good” AI, what’s “bad” and if there’s even a difference. I do know that there’s the whole stealing content to train AI bs going on, but is it deeper? Is there such a thing as good AI? Just trying to learn so I can be better person
All AI is machine learning. Taking many inputs, running them through a series of tests, and using the result to make a decision. Most everything digital you interact with does this in some form or another.
‘AI,’ the marketing fad at the moment, means LLM machine lerning models, which are the ones that can respond in a human-like fashion, but these have limits around the math of linguistics, and there’s other parts built around verifying accuracy of the model output. This type is built on a newish method of training called the transformer model.
None of these are inherently good or evil. Just another part of a toolset someone could use to solve a problem with a computer. There are social issues around how they are used, and who is making/using them. Tech companies are aggressively pushing their new toy out to market, and there aren’t any consumer protection agencies prepared for this. At enterprise scale, many data centers need to be built, and strain will be added to the electrical generation companies / power generation facilities to feed these data centers.
My personal gripe with the whole situation is how local governements are handling this. Taxes are being waived for new constructions, electric supply companies are raising residential rates, all the would-be checks and balances are being paid off so this can all be rammed through. Even my local union has sunk us into it, we’re onboarding apprentices faster than we can train them, we’ll have several hundred more members just to maintain these things. Everyone’s being promised “money.”
All of this is done without any guarantee, no one can say how money will flow from untaxed data centers into the city funds, and all of this demand could evaporate overnight. Companies are being sold a black box that they plug into the wall, and it generates revenue. Everyone’s running skeleton crews, because “AI will eliminate the human workforce,” but all the business reports show that AI isn’t doing much, just that fewer workers are being pushed harder.
I’m mostly pissed at my union, who will not share any info with us, but have admitted to just seeing short-term dollar signs while knowing that if this works out in favor of the tech companies, this is going fuck up the local economy, and put major pressure against the organized workforce across all trades and sectors.
The ceo of nvidia (the company that makes all the ai chips and cards) is touting robotic ai slaves as the next step. The company rekindled their commercially failed physics simulation package recently in order to make this happen. They call it digital twinning at the moment but their example application is an ai powered robotic humanoid-ish dishwasher.
It’s worth keeping in mind that from the perspective of economic effects, ai in the workplace is functionally slavery. You command the ai to go do something that is intended for humans to do and only have to pay the barest minimum in order to cover the costs.
This is different from mechanization like the cotton gin or printing press because in order to accommodate those developments, the entire process of growing cotton or outfitting a copy shop had to be changed.
To use nvidias example of a robot dishwasher, the same effect could be achieved (and is achieved in some establishments) with specifically dimensioned plates, a conveyor belt system and some simple industrial automation to load and run the dishwashing machine.
That would be the mechanization equivalent of a cotton gin or printing press.
Spending trillions to develop the technology required to replicate the effect of a person standing in front of a sink scrubbing plates all day is just inventing the mechanical negro.
So, ai is bad.
But you don’t need to worry about it because you can’t do anything about it.
Here’s a fairly well researched and entertaining video about ai and some of the downsides.
Long story short, in my opinion, there’s isn’t a good AI. The things it sets out to do, it does poorly, and there’s ethical, bodily, environmental, and mental concerns with it.
There is good AI, because LLMs are not the only type of AI.
I’m not that well informed on the specifics of the topic but I would say that AI has a lot of potential to do good in medical applications. I believe there was quite a bit of research into detecting various forms of cancer earlier and more reliably by using neural networks.
AI has shown to be more detrimental than beneficial. If you overlook the over dependence on it, especially among children. The light pollution of their centers and crowding out water and electricity in small towns. The cost increase of electronics for just a plan to buy it all out. It just does things so poorly that the most modest of competent people out perform it.
It has been established that LLMs (aka “AI models”) have been trained using copyrighted data without the consent of copyright holders.
See:
I think AI is in a similar place as GMOs were 10 years ago. The technology isn’t inherently problematic but the main companies rolling it out seem to be doing so during a banner drop where the banner screams “I’m evil and I intend to burn this place to the ground.” We shouldn’t trust them because they’re practically telling us not to in the same breath they use to promote their products. I would say most of the main models available to the public fall under this boat.
Just like GMOs this doesn’t mean that there’s not some cool AI research being done, for ex. special models run by researchers to improve diagnostics or look for new antibiotics. It remains to be seen whether the cool stuff will have been worth whatever it is we lose.
Hmm, this is a topic that has been debated for years, I guess instead of writing my own summaries, it’s great to link you to some resources, outlining why modern AI (“LLM”/“GPT”) is controversial:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model#Safety
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model#Societal_concerns
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChatGPT#Limitations
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_slop
Note that some issues apply only given certain output (e.g. hallucinations), some depend on the usage (the decision to generate and publicize AI slop is made by human operators), whereas some issues are always present (e.g. huge environmental impact).
Regarding the there being a difference between good and bad AI or not: Some people argue that it’s always bad, some are bit more nuanced, some are competely blind/ignorant to the problem. Only those in the middle camp would necessarily see a difference.
do you mean types of ai as there is not a whole lot of difference. its actively under development and each one is trying to one up the other. granted some like grok are just reskinned and hyped of others. AI can give both good and bad results which is why it has to be used from a critical perspective. One has to evaluate and validate the response before using.
My opinion
The good: Large Language AI models are a really useful tool.
The bad: harms the environment, steals people’s work, and can be easily misused
