AI

It's been two months since my last update. I've been busy. I guess. Or lazy. Hard to say.

I do know that I'm struglling again with motivation. I don't seem to be able to move like I used to. I'm a bit stuck behind the screen. I tend to lose myself in Youtube (mostly Shorts) or doomscrolling Reddit. I am aware of these habits and I have a bit more power to disengage with them and for this I am grateful. Else I'll lose myself.

My best friend told me recently he's lost desire to do anything but watch Youtube. I hear him loud and clear. I've been able to remove myself from social media¹, but I haven't been able to kick the Reddit habit. There's a lot of utility in Reddit and Youtube, and they are designed to keep you on that site. Much like AI chat is designed to keep you engaged and on that site. Our shorter attention spans are klilling us slowly and we don;t even notice it.

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1. I recognize that Reddit is often referred to as social media, though I don't agree with that, it's more of an unstructured message board. Now that I wrote that, social media is a collection of unstructured message boards… fuck.

Here is an article posted on the Seeker. I beleive that there are three camps regarding AI and AI Use.

1. The first is that AI is cool and the greatest thing ever. I find that these people have the talent to create on their own, but for some reason find this better.
2. The second is that AI is terrible and should be called out as such on sight. I find that these people cannot see any benefits to using AI and that it's terrible for everything. People, the planet, resources, etc.
3. The third group has really bad FOMO. They love, hate, or are indifferent to AI but are so afraid if being left behind (posisbly again) that they latch on to the technology.

I see a need to be familair and loathe to use it. I see the merits for AI and I also see that people shut off their brain when they use it. I am requently reminded some variation of this image back in the 90's:

Shamelessly stolen from here

And as I type this out, Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht on the latest Diggnation video podcast are espousing Apple for not jumping on the AI bandwagon early enough (rather, at all). :(

I really want to stop talking about AI. I really want the bubble to pop.

Here is an article about how students are effectively being trained to write worse to not get flagged as AI generated. This is beyond ridiculous.

On sify.com we have article about humans needing to clean up AI slop. How quaint. If we need to clean up the slop, how is this worth it, especially since our next generation of humans is writing worse?

Thankfully Kagi is here to help us (for the time being) determine what is generated by AI and what isnt. The site seems to be geared towards kids, though I have the thought that everyone could benefit from it.

This is a topic that I have experience with. I have in the past attempted suicide… A few times. I had issues with low self-worth and codependence. These issues were bleeding all over the place and kind of it contirbued to who I am now. The last attempt was the closest I came to success, I had the motiviation and the plan. I was talked down. I am grateful for being talked down. I am grateful because that low was the solid foundation I needed to rebuild myself.

Techdirt posted this article and I recalled that one of my kids was chtting with Character.ai. I had spoken with them before when news broke a couple of years ago that a mom was suing Character.ai for her son's suicide, allegedly aided by a Character.ai personality. Sure, that was likely the trigger. Still, the thoughts of suicide likely existed well in advance of AI's involvement.

I can only speak for my experiences. My self worth was low, low enough that I convinced myself that death would actually be a benefit for my monkey sphere. I sat with those thoughts for decades with minor attempts until that summer morning when I made too much noise and was talked out of it. I had tied my self worth to validation of others and in my weakest moment, I almost gave in to my ego.

I had not intended to share this much and wanted to direct you to the article.

Ai is pretty shitty and I don't know many people who love it. Still, it seems to be the latest scapegoat in a long line of scapegoats for personal decisions. The thing about suicide is that it's mostly a solitary act. Mostly.

I was really excited for this article via Slashdot about the UK planning to cut animal testing by leveraging AI.

On the first read this seems an excellent way to utilize AI to save the lives of animals. Then you consider the current electricty and water needs that AI consumes to generate results for ChatGPT. Then you consider that AI tends to hallucinate. Also factor in that AI is only as good as it's source data. Oh! It's also reported to be black box that it's innerworkings are unknown. That last one is a stretch. Someone has to know how it works, it was programmed after all.

So save the lives of some animals at the expese of the planet. The animals get to live a little longer. This does not count the lives or quality of life for the humans that will undoubtedly "benefit" from the AI testing. With the current AI tech being prone to error, I would hesitate to use any products tha were AI tested, kind of like I tend to shy way from animal tested products. The plan does not include complete reliance on AI though, as it aims to reduce testing on dogs and non-human primates.

I have the thought that this plan is kinda like a real life trolly problem. Save the animals or save the planet... I'm not smart enough to figure out how to save both.

For a topic I am sick of I seem to come across it a lot. XDA reports that the DRAM and NAND prices are spiking and they don't trust the industry's reasons for it. RAM and SSD prices have dramatically increased and the common discourse seems to be the collossal needs of AI. AI is already thirsty and using up energy and water at a scale that is unsustainable and reports of OpenAI buring through cash and losses that could solve world hunger problems seem like we (as a poeple) are making decisions that actively go against our best interests and longevity.

There is good news though. Some awesome people have created a learning tool that helps everyone learn to spot AI. This is a great idea and I am going to have my kids go through this game with me and hopefully we can all improve our critical thinking skills.

A few days ago there was a thread on X, as reported by PC Gamer about Tim Sweeny (of Epic fame) calling for the removal of an AI reporting tool in digital storefront. This is a bad idea and I would like more places online (and in real life) notify users (and customers) that AI was used to create the product. I already shy away from obvious (to me) AI generated products and I don't like using AI powered services.

As someone who is not atristically talented, I like the idea that I can get art (and story or descriptions) generated quickly for my D&D setting. I am tempted though. If I had the time, I would draw more and get better so that I can have the art and write more so that I can have the story. Not onluy does this build better skills, it's all human generated. Sadly free time is not something I have a plethora of due to my inability to say no.