Comment by altmanaltman
3 days ago
I don't really like the assumption that anyone who uses AI to, say, write an essay, is not the "kind of person who can think."
And using AI to replace things you find recreational is not the point. If you got paid $100 each time you lifted a weight, would you see a point in bringing a forklift to the gym if it's allowed? Or will that make you a person who is so dumb that they cannot think, as the author is implying?
As capable as they get, I still don't see a lot of uses for these things, myself, still. Sometimes if I'm fundamentally uninspired I'll have a model roll the dice, decide what I do or don't like about where it went to create a sense of momentum, but that's the limit. There's never any of its output in my output, even in spirit unless it managed to go somewhere inspiring, it's just a way to let me warm up my generation and discrimination muscles. "Someone is wrong on the internet"-as-a-service, basically.
Generally, if I come across an opportunity to produce ideas or output, I want to capitalize on it for growing my skills and produce an individual and authentic artistic expression where I want to have very fine control over the output in a way that prompt-tweak-verify simply cannot provide.
I don't value the parts it fills in which weren't intentional on the part of the prompter, just send me your prompt instead. I'd rather have a crude sketch and a description than a high fidelity image that obscures them.
But I'm also the kind of person that never enjoyed manufactured pop music or blockbusters unless there's a high concept or technical novelty in addition to the high budget, generally prefer experimental indie stuff, so maybe there's something I just can't see.
Yeah, that makes sense. If people don't see uses for AI, they shouldn't use it. But going out of the way to imply that people who use AI cannot think is pretty stupid in itself imo. I am not sure how to put this, but maybe to continue with your example, I like a lot of indie stuff as well, but I don't think anyone who watches, say, Fast and Furious, cannot think or is stupid, unless they explicitly make it the case by speaking, etc.
So my issue is that you shouldn't dismiss AI use as trash just because AI has been used. You should dismiss it as trash because it is trash. But the post says is that you should dismiss it as trash because AI was involved in it somewhere so i feel that's a very shitty/wrong attitude to have.
I actually do think that people who prefer content of fidelity over content of intent are making a mistake, yes. I don't think they're incapable of thinking, I don't care to apply any virtue labels to this preference, but they are literally preferring not to think.
LLMs can only produce things by and for people who prefer not to do the work the LLMs are doing for them. Most of the time I do not prefer this.
Like, there was a 2-panel comic that went around the RPG community a bit back where it was something like "Game Master using LLM to generate 10 pages of backstory for his campaign setting from a paragraph" in the first panel and "Player using LLM to summarize the 10 page backstory into a paragraph" in the second. Neither of these people care for the filler (because they didn't produce or consume it) so it's turned the two-LLM system into a game of telephone.
The same person could use a forklift at work, and lift weights manually at the gym.
Just pick the right tool for the job: don't take the forklift into the gym, and don't try to overhead press thousands of pounds that would fracture your spine.
I notice you make no concrete defense of the value of having an AI write an essay for you.
I’m not trying to claim AI-written essays are inherently “valuable” in some grand philosophical sense... just that using a tool doesn’t automatically mean someone can’t think.
People use calculators without being unable to do maths, and use spellcheck without being unable to spell.
AI can help some get past the blank-page phase or organize thoughts they already have. For others, it’s just a way to offload the routine parts so they can focus on the substance.
If someone only outsources everything to an AI, there’s not much growth there sure. But the existence of bad use cases doesn’t invalidate the reasonable ones.