2026-09-19 02:34 UTC
Replies (22)
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@Sibshops@feddit.cl 2026-09-19 03:17
I feel like the AI hype has died and people are trying to prop it up with doomsday scaring.
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@artifex@piefed.zip 2026-09-19 02:55
I’m not pro-AI by any stretch for a huge number of reasons, but in my day job as a technical product manager I have to use a number of AI-powered tools and workflows. Whereas 18 months ago they were a novelty that the bosses were enamored of, today they get real work done and speed up a number of key areas, mainly like fancy automation workflows (which have been around forever). The rate of improvement and capability for certain use cases has been very, very rapid. We do seem to be reaching a plateau though. The tools and models from 6 months ago are just about as good as the ones from today. And China’s models from today are better than the US’s models from 6 months ago, but at a fraction of the cost. So when I hear people talking about the “end of the world”, I think a realistic case for that is that the AI tools that come out in the next few years will be good enough to do a fair amount of white-collar work, and we won’t have a plan in place to deal with all of the now out-of-work people that leads to. Whole classes of jobs in areas like data entry, telemarketing, and customer support will be almost entirely automated out of existence. New classes of jobs will be created, of course, but it’s hard to imagine them existing in sufficient numbers to make up for the losses. And this is just for LLM-workloads. In other areas, other types of AI are already enabling robotic automation of factories and in the near-ish future might make self-driving truck fleets practical. This would be devastating because factory workers and truck drivers make up like 30% of the US workforce – and again, there are no signs of new classes of jobs that could absorb the out-of-work workers, and no plans for a social safety net or wealth distribution. So I’m not worried about a rogue AI unleashing some bioweapon or launching a nuclear attack. I’m worried about a bunch of CEOs deploying barely-acceptable AI to displace millions of workers as soon as it is safe(ish) to do so.
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@Josey_Wales@lemmy.zip 2026-09-19 03:07
It’s what models people have access to and how they use it. If you are not specific and overly broad it a search engine. If you move to the other end of the spectrum it can be incredibly powerful. I tend to build projects with very limited sources for it to draw answers from and use complex instructions to guide how it interacts with the source material. It’s a tool. If you learn how to use it you can become extremely proficient/productive with it. For example, stacks of PDFs may make sense to you and I as repositories of information. But is that the best format for AI to interact with the data? Probably not unless the actual formatting of the information on the page is relevant. I have been converting large groups of sources into databases containing page, line, and text data for groups of references for a given topic. Then you feed it the database and ask it to review and cross reference related lines of text. That serves as your “brain” for questions on a given topic.
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@raman_klogius@ani.social 2026-09-19 03:12
These people are too high on their own supplies.
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@RickRussell_CA@lemmy.world 2026-09-19 04:03
The biggest risk I see is Idiocracy. Like, the movie. Business workers become afraid to do or propose anything withoutqrh AI signoff. Retail & service workers are told to do what the AI says, the way the AI says to do it, or get fired. Technology innovator Marshall Brain (RIP) wrote a book in the early 2000s about an AI called “Manna” designed to replace fast food managers: web.archive.org/web/20201204080050/…/manna1 The AI just talks in your ear all day: “Empty one bag of fries into the fryer. You have 6.5 minutes, switch to the sandwich station. Make one Big Burger: grab one patty from the 1/4 pound bin and place it on the griddle… … The fries are ready, turn around and lift them into the drain hopper…” All day, every day, exactly 8 hours plus mandatory breaks, employees on autopilot listening on ear buds.
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@Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 2026-09-19 04:45
I knew a guy in high school that told girls they shouldn’t date him because his dick was so big it would hurt them. You can wax philosophical on his motives if you’d like, but spoiler alert - his dick wasn’t big.
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@FRYD@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2026-09-19 04:55
Ed Zitron’s podcast Better Offline recently talked about this. There is a small tech community called the Rationalists who believe AI super intelligence is inevitable and it will either accelerate humanity to new heights or kill off the species. These rationalists are actually a very prominent faction within tech and the AI industry. Apparently the language used within top AI firms is largely about the immense danger posed by AI super intelligence if any other group or company were to achieve it first. This creates an echo chamber that makes the people in the industry kind of lose their mind and misinterpret the capability of LLMs. Everyone outside that faction recognizes that LLMs are just unreliable cloud software with limited use cases and that there’s no evidence LLMs could actually lead to any kind of intelligence.
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@blitzen@lemmy.ca 2026-09-19 05:53
The people claiming it’s humanity ending are all directly involved in the AI companies. One take is that they are the ones that know the most about. My take is they are financially incentivized in making sure their investments grow in value.
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@Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2026-09-19 06:08
its already here, mass surveillance under various “camera” companies/tech companies, Mass layoffs due to AI, inability to get jobs due to AI.
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@jabjoe@feddit.uk 2026-09-19 06:51
May I recommend : www.dreamingagainstthemachine.com
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@dropdrip@lemmy.ml 2026-09-20 03:55
There’s blood on their hands. Either they keep the hype up or go to jail regardless of any of their statements being true or not.
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@MrOtingocni@lemmy.world 2026-09-20 04:00
‘Sensationalist hooey, cooked by superstitious yokels seeing phantoms of their own imagining.’
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@Mulligrubs@lemmy.world 2026-09-20 04:15
It’s been reported a few times that Ukraine is already using AI for drones. The human operator chooses the target, the AI takes over and eliminates the target. Is that “just an LLM”? Seems more capable than that to me. But, I don’t know if this is actually true or just a claim to frighten.
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@zbyte64@awful.systems 2026-09-20 02:39
Here’s an idea: don’t use unsafe software where safety is needed.
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@zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 2026-09-20 05:29
I’ve heard a few explanations for the “AI will kill us all” narrative. AI techies are in a cult. They genuinely believe this stuff because they’re crazy. It makes the AI sound powerful and impressive, which is ultimately good for the AI companies. They’re starting to face competition from open-weight models, so they want to scare politicians into crafting regulations. They think that they will be able to influence the regulations to favor them and squeeze out their competition. And, of course, there’s It keeps people talking about AI. Because whatever you do, don’t quit talking about AI, because if you quit talking about it, the line might go down! And the line going down is very, very bad.
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@flying_sheep@lemmy.ml 2026-09-19 16:09
In addition to what everyone else said, I’ll tell you why I don’t think that what we have currently can become some runaway superhuman intelligence: All “AI” people are talking about are basically “just” LLM wrappers: tools built to run a LLM in a loop while giving it access to the ability to write and run code. This gets pretty powerful, since you can do a lot programmatically (including monetary transactions), but has a fundamental limit: LLMs are trained ahead of time. And that’s a very cost intensive, long process. Beyond that, the LLM has only a context window of finite length. So there are no long-term planning capabilities. While running after being trained, the LLM can only condense knowledge into a summary and then re-read it, a lossy process that might introduce mistakes in “understanding” and will make any prolonged task degrade over time. And even if they figure out how to make the things actually self-modify and learn things, you can’t give every session that ability, since that’ll vastly increase the storage and performance requirements. Do sessions with that ability will be closely monitored and limited. So I don’t see any space where an evil AI could emerge, even when factoring in an essential possible future improvement to the technology.
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@spacegoat@lemmy.world 2026-09-20 01:18
Whatever. Ban all these people from employment and public assistance. Make them starve
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@fodor@lemmy.zip 2026-09-20 06:46
They are lying about their fear. That’s all they can do. Stop believing any claim of theirs. Stop being manipulated. They are snake oil salesman. They sell vaporware. Don’t fucking buy it.
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@Halcyon@discuss.tchncs.de 2026-09-20 06:56
„Computers are still computers are still computers and will only do what a human being programs them to do, and people are stupid. Stop assigning them agency. Say that “Microsoft created an automatic hacking program which was inadequately contained.” Assign the blame CORRECTLY, because you cannot blame a computer, it’s doing exactly what it’s programmed to do. OpenAI is a dead slab of metal and electrons arranged to mimic a human face and if you refuse to see that then you’re as brain-dead as any chunk of silicon.“ chaosfem.tw/@theogrin/117299179832324445
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@Star@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2026-09-20 07:13
AI use is like drug-use. One of its effects is hopium. These people are effectively high on their own supply.
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@h0tbeef@lemmy.zip 2026-09-19 14:31
Look up “rationalists” and “zizians” It will quickly become clear to you that the dichotomy is caused by one side being completely off their fucking rockers.
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@WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.today 2026-09-20 07:30
Oh how I would love for AI to actually start rapidly self-improving.