One thing I don't get about how "AI" is marketed is this:
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Like the whole fart-shite about “make your own custom movies!” is a soup-to-deez-nutz power-fantasy wankery of tech bros who have a sad that they’re not as cool as “the creatives”.
As for other things, like looking up medical advice, "traditional" search engines on the Internet worked much better than any LLM to get you to trustworthy sources of information.
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One thing I don't get about how "AI" is marketed is this:
Almost no people want to be their own software designer, or their own doctor, or their own lawyer, or their own structural engineer or indeed their own artist.
They want to get advice from trained and experienced professionals and enjoy art and stories and entertainment from great artists.
@thomasfuchs I can't speak for "most people", but I really enjoy not having to rely on other people to do things. Maybe it's the software developer in me, but I like to be as self-sufficient as possible.
I think that at the end of the day, that's what AI promises: I don't need to ask people for help as much. If I need some code written, I can ask the LLM. Or an image. Or a story idea.
I don't want to have to ask another person to do that for me, pay them, and wait for the result, which won't be exactly what I'm after first time, so I'll have to ask them to change it, and wait some more.
With an LLM, I can be self-sufficient.
But as I say, maybe that's the (fully self taught) software developer in me.
It's like when I first started self-publishing, one of the things I did was learn everything I could about the epub file format. I love learning, but I don't want to have to rely on other people to do it.
So from that perspective, when I want to know something, the first thing I'll do is ask an LLM. Then I'll follow that up with my own research, sure, but the LLM is absolutely my first port of call.
So back to your original wording, for myself at least, I absolutely want to be my own software developer, doctor, lawyer, story writer, music and movie producer, and more.
I've been developing software professionally for almost 30 years now, and I can also identify with the 50 and 60-year-old software developers I heard about recently who said that "AI" has reignited their passion and reminded them why they fell in love with the industry in the first place.

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R relay@relay.an.exchange shared this topic
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One thing I don't get about how "AI" is marketed is this:
Almost no people want to be their own software designer, or their own doctor, or their own lawyer, or their own structural engineer or indeed their own artist.
They want to get advice from trained and experienced professionals and enjoy art and stories and entertainment from great artists.
@thomasfuchs but capitalism’s artificial scarcity, protection of knowledge, and monetised exchange has made that extremely hard or expensive: the preserve of the wealthy or well placed, or at least appearance of that, which is largely the same. So an expert on tap, shit as it might be in reality, is very attractive.
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One thing I don't get about how "AI" is marketed is this:
Almost no people want to be their own software designer, or their own doctor, or their own lawyer, or their own structural engineer or indeed their own artist.
They want to get advice from trained and experienced professionals and enjoy art and stories and entertainment from great artists.
@thomasfuchs i think to flip it is "i dont need to be my own lawyer actually i dont need a lawyer at all look at how smart i am gaming the system with AI!"
A lot of people see every interaction with a human as an interaction of leverage but with a machine "it just does what i want immediately!"
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One thing I don't get about how "AI" is marketed is this:
Almost no people want to be their own software designer, or their own doctor, or their own lawyer, or their own structural engineer or indeed their own artist.
They want to get advice from trained and experienced professionals and enjoy art and stories and entertainment from great artists.
Companies would like software designed, structures engineered and medicine and legal and artistic services provided without the cost and bother of having to employ people.
@thomasfuchs -
@thomasfuchs but capitalism’s artificial scarcity, protection of knowledge, and monetised exchange has made that extremely hard or expensive: the preserve of the wealthy or well placed, or at least appearance of that, which is largely the same. So an expert on tap, shit as it might be in reality, is very attractive.
@benjohn LLMs aren’t experts, not even shitty ones.
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As for other things, like looking up medical advice, "traditional" search engines on the Internet worked much better than any LLM to get you to trustworthy sources of information.
If you want to be your own expert for literally everything and never want to learn from or seek out advice from other human beings you are mentally unwell and need professional help.
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If you want to be your own expert for literally everything and never want to learn from or seek out advice from other human beings you are mentally unwell and need professional help.
@thomasfuchs What if you want to be the very best, like no one ever was?
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@thomasfuchs I can't speak for "most people", but I really enjoy not having to rely on other people to do things. Maybe it's the software developer in me, but I like to be as self-sufficient as possible.
I think that at the end of the day, that's what AI promises: I don't need to ask people for help as much. If I need some code written, I can ask the LLM. Or an image. Or a story idea.
I don't want to have to ask another person to do that for me, pay them, and wait for the result, which won't be exactly what I'm after first time, so I'll have to ask them to change it, and wait some more.
With an LLM, I can be self-sufficient.
But as I say, maybe that's the (fully self taught) software developer in me.
It's like when I first started self-publishing, one of the things I did was learn everything I could about the epub file format. I love learning, but I don't want to have to rely on other people to do it.
So from that perspective, when I want to know something, the first thing I'll do is ask an LLM. Then I'll follow that up with my own research, sure, but the LLM is absolutely my first port of call.
So back to your original wording, for myself at least, I absolutely want to be my own software developer, doctor, lawyer, story writer, music and movie producer, and more.
I've been developing software professionally for almost 30 years now, and I can also identify with the 50 and 60-year-old software developers I heard about recently who said that "AI" has reignited their passion and reminded them why they fell in love with the industry in the first place.

@GrahamDowns @thomasfuchs *See point 2
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One thing I don't get about how "AI" is marketed is this:
Almost no people want to be their own software designer, or their own doctor, or their own lawyer, or their own structural engineer or indeed their own artist.
They want to get advice from trained and experienced professionals and enjoy art and stories and entertainment from great artists.
@thomasfuchs And when it comes to art, leaving aside the "enjoy art from great artists," we/they want the experience of creating art (great or otherwise) for themselves because that's part of what art is.
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One thing I don't get about how "AI" is marketed is this:
Almost no people want to be their own software designer, or their own doctor, or their own lawyer, or their own structural engineer or indeed their own artist.
They want to get advice from trained and experienced professionals and enjoy art and stories and entertainment from great artists.
@thomasfuchs Exactly! If I have bad experiences with doctors, I want better doctors, not cynically replace them by unreliable technology
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@thomasfuchs Exactly! If I have bad experiences with doctors, I want better doctors, not cynically replace them by unreliable technology
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@thomasfuchs And when it comes to art, leaving aside the "enjoy art from great artists," we/they want the experience of creating art (great or otherwise) for themselves because that's part of what art is.
@flashesofpanic agree
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Like the whole fart-shite about “make your own custom movies!” is a soup-to-deez-nutz power-fantasy wankery of tech bros who have a sad that they’re not as cool as “the creatives”.
@thomasfuchs (That sentence is art.)
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R relay@relay.mycrowd.ca shared this topic
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@thomasfuchs I can't speak for "most people", but I really enjoy not having to rely on other people to do things. Maybe it's the software developer in me, but I like to be as self-sufficient as possible.
I think that at the end of the day, that's what AI promises: I don't need to ask people for help as much. If I need some code written, I can ask the LLM. Or an image. Or a story idea.
I don't want to have to ask another person to do that for me, pay them, and wait for the result, which won't be exactly what I'm after first time, so I'll have to ask them to change it, and wait some more.
With an LLM, I can be self-sufficient.
But as I say, maybe that's the (fully self taught) software developer in me.
It's like when I first started self-publishing, one of the things I did was learn everything I could about the epub file format. I love learning, but I don't want to have to rely on other people to do it.
So from that perspective, when I want to know something, the first thing I'll do is ask an LLM. Then I'll follow that up with my own research, sure, but the LLM is absolutely my first port of call.
So back to your original wording, for myself at least, I absolutely want to be my own software developer, doctor, lawyer, story writer, music and movie producer, and more.
I've been developing software professionally for almost 30 years now, and I can also identify with the 50 and 60-year-old software developers I heard about recently who said that "AI" has reignited their passion and reminded them why they fell in love with the industry in the first place.

@GrahamDowns @thomasfuchs it’s fine if you want to be self-sufficient but it’s weird/sad to attribute this simply to being a software engineer. there’s nothing innate about software engineering that makes it any less collaborative than any other field
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@thomasfuchs What if you want to be the very best, like no one ever was?
@wizardfrag @thomasfuchs did he stutter?

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One thing I don't get about how "AI" is marketed is this:
Almost no people want to be their own software designer, or their own doctor, or their own lawyer, or their own structural engineer or indeed their own artist.
They want to get advice from trained and experienced professionals and enjoy art and stories and entertainment from great artists.
@thomasfuchs (given time, don't we mostly want to do some art?)
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If you want to be your own expert for literally everything and never want to learn from or seek out advice from other human beings you are mentally unwell and need professional help.
@thomasfuchs and yet that requires seeking advice and learning from another person, something they've demonstrated an inability to do.
which is by no means a disagreement from me.
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@GrahamDowns @thomasfuchs it’s fine if you want to be self-sufficient but it’s weird/sad to attribute this simply to being a software engineer. there’s nothing innate about software engineering that makes it any less collaborative than any other field
@davidcelis @thomasfuchs sorry, I didn't mean to imply it that way. I think the software developer in me is what makes me want to learn as much as possible about as much as possible, which translates to me wanting to be able to do as many things as possible.
I like collaboration as much as the next person -- my team is amazing, we talk about everything, we have lots of arguments, we pair and mob program often -- but I also like to be as self-sufficient as possible in the sense of not needing to rely on or wait for people.
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@thomasfuchs What if you want to be the very best, like no one ever was?
@wizardfrag @thomasfuchs
People can help you do that -
R relay@relay.infosec.exchange shared this topic