Comment by amarant
9 hours ago
I don't understand this line of reasoning. How are you hindered from doing any of those things? What part of "AI can now do X" makes it so you can't also do X?
9 hours ago
I don't understand this line of reasoning. How are you hindered from doing any of those things? What part of "AI can now do X" makes it so you can't also do X?
Fewer people aren't staring into their phones or talking to them -- makes your social antennas pick up automatically on not wanting to disturb them (lest you draw their ire for not having the social antennas long enough to pick up on the fact they're "busy and don't want to engage with you" like a gymrat with AirPods to signal they're there to pump in peace and quiet listening to their favourite playlist, not talk to strangers). Happened to me already many times just with people scrolling their phone instead of talking and not wanting to talk in particular either, not to me at least. And no -- I am not talking about bothering strangers in the gym etc, I am talking about sitting at the lunch table where half of the people look into their phones -- they aren't actually interested in talking, it turns out.
Our devices have now increased the distance _between_ us -- it's not about _you_ being able to "do X" -- talking to others is not _you_ doing it, it's you _and the other person_ doing it _together_. You can't be doing anything together consentually when the other person is in the habit of talking with their AI, or doomscrolling for that matter.
Social people will be fine, I think this tech is far more important for lonely people who for any reason don't get to socialize much (if at all), this is especially common in older people. These people might not have any other alternatives.
> I think this tech is far more important for lonely people who for any reason don't get to socialize much (if at all), this is especially common in older people.
Uhm, those lonely people need to get out and start talking. How is this going to help society? This is going to make it worse.
Oh that kid is kinda quite and sad? Throw him an iPad. Oh that adult is kinda bored and wandering aimlessly? Throw him into a casino. Oh that adult is kinda lonely and feels like they don't have anyone they can talk to about their life? Give them LLM companionship.
Yep, it is over for humanity. People simply don't understand externalities.
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There are still lots of social people. I found a lot of people actually do want to talk but are just shy.
I spent a few weeks at a hostel last year. It was always kind of depressing and tense in the shared kitchen, just this heavy silence.
I don't feel comfortable around strangers, so I solved that problem by just saying hi to everyone.
Most people didn't respond much, although most of them smiled and the tension was eased. But a few of them struck up conversation and we ended up making friends.
I ended up making like, ten new friends in two weeks. And then a bunch of them ended up becoming friends with each other as well.
This is an individual solution to a systemic problem. On a personal level, it is possible to solve such problems, but generally no, the ship has sailed quite some time ago (I personally think cars are to blame).
Even if you do it, you are still swimming against the current.
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We're yet to see how this plays out, but a competing business model for creative work is emerging, where it's delegated to chatbots. Naturally, this would result in less creative work for humans.
I'm no longer writing code from scratch, as I used to do before. So, very soon, it will be "AI can now do X" makes it so I can't also do X? Same with many creative works. Radio music already sounds so plastic. I lost interest in crafting my text drafts because I can just dump some ugly text and get it refined by AI.
You no longer have to grow your own food, can go to supermarket, but doesnt stop you from still doing it.
I hope that's not the future of work before UBI gets settled, because almost nobody grows their own food.
I'm confused. It feels like you are saying you did those things as a means to an end.
Like saying I no longer walk because I can drive. I no longer cook because Doordash exists. I no longer play piano because midi exists.
I mean i guess, but it seems like you didn't LIKE crafting the text or coding from scratch, you just wanted the outcome. If we are talking purely about work, I understand that its about being productive and it sucks to have a job shift to something you enjoy less.
But for daily life? I dont see how it changes, maybe its a tech thing where people think about making their daily lives more productive, but most people dont.
The human-ness is not about outcomes only. It is about doing things, thinking, achieving, socializing, sharing, bonding, feeling happy about what you did, using senses for what they evolved fir, recognizing and responding to body signals and being a biological creature. A lot of these is affected by AI.
In a personal context, you're not hindered from doing those things, so you're correct in that regard. The problem is economic and social. The AI is mediocre enough to drive the value of those things way down; possibly to zero. When something isn't valuable, people are less likely to learn it, and in the future it's less likely that anyone will actually have those skills. For example, we've slopped many illustrators out of jobs and essentially made art (an already awful paying career before AI) economically infeasible. AI illustrations kind of suck though, and even when they're technically competent they're kind of soulless. So you might say, ok, I will hire/contract an artist if I care about the quality of my illustration! Ok, but, if artists are being priced out by a machine then how long before there's no real market for finding a human to do it because all the artists gave up and got a job at starbucks and all you have left are amateurs?
This is almost certainly going to bite us in the ass long term, because eventually without human creativity you're just training AI's on other AI slop, or limiting the possible catalogue of styles to "things that existed before AI ruined every creative job". I guess the question is, what kind of future do you want to live in? One where we have a massive abundance of easy-to-create but vaguely worthless artifacts in a society that's completely devalued being good at something? It just sounds really dystopian to me.
"starving artist" is not a new concept
AI doesn't stop creative people from creating. it gives creative people an additional tool with which to create
Then why is it only the least creative people who use it?
> "starving artist" is not a new concept
Exactly, so why make it worse? Why try to automate an industry when the money you make off killing it wouldn't even cover the cost of your research?
> AI doesn't stop creative people from creating. it gives creative people an additional tool with which to create
I can't emphasize enough how much actual creative people hate this shit. Here's a relatively balanced take, although the headline spoils it (How AI Poisons Creativity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeCSzEtZcUw ). Long story short, the struggle is where creative ideas come from. If you automate away the process you automate away the result.
Hasnt this already been thoroughly discussed? Your ability to do X degrades as you offload it more frequently, eventually to the point that you can no longer even vet the quality of the output.
I think the parent is saying now that that is attempting to be applied to "creativity" directly, as opposed to something like a shift of medium, that it threatens many peoples' ability to maintain creative capabilities.
Anecdotally I've already experienced this at work where post-AI we had a junior completely stagnate and a senior with over a decade of experience in the bay atrophy to the point that he had to be let go.
Playing the devil's advocate a little, you say "can't also do", but that implies prohibition, not hindering. Hindering is not total like that.
It's like trying to have meaningful conversations on Twitter. You don't go to Twitter to do things like that. Can you? Sure. It's just not what the format and the conventions (and the people) lend themselves to.
I don't think there's much merit in pretending that human activities are only shaped by hard limits.