AI is incredible for consumption. Using it as an assistant for summarisation and learning I think is fine. But it should stay very far away from creation of anything.
314 karma · joined September 13, 2024
In the meantime, for business communication, I use AI to shorten my text, to make it more concise.
As for the other AI features such as autocomplete, memoji, notification summaries... I'm really not a big fan at all.
Sydney and Melbourne are known to have the best coffee in the world on average. Italian immigrants came over and took what the Italians started and perfected it. McDonald's McCafe was conceptualised and started in Melbourne in 1993, because of Melbourne's strong coffee scene. Australia is the only country that Starbucks failed in, because the coffee here is already too good.
Having said all of this, I still think that about 2/3 of coffee being made by baristas in Sydney is undrinkable. If the beans aren't poor quality or stored incorrectly, the barista will use tap water that is too hard or soft, grind the beans on the wrong setting, over or underextract, overheat the milk until it denatures, not wipe out the previous grind from the portafilter (leading to an ugly, bitter flavour), and do many other little things that ruin the coffee.
I can literally walk into most coffee shops and hear the milk frother "screaming" as the proteins are being denatured. This is the coffee snob capital of the world, and most people still drink terrible coffee without giving it a second thought.
The average consumer doesn't have enough knowledge to have good taste. It's tragic. It sucks. We would have a better world if people cared just a tiny bit more about the things they consume. But they don't, because there isn't enough time and energy in their life to dedicate to truly looking into something.
And this is why I think that there will unfortunately be a demand for AI art. I don't want this to be the case. I hate it. I hope you do too. I hope we all demand higher standards from the art, culture, and goods that we consume.
But as long as people drink bad coffee, they'll read AI slop and recommend it to their friends. It's just how it is.
But the problem with this is that someone could write an agent to mimic a human. And if there is a financial incentive to prove that you're not AI, which there always will be, it is inevitable.
I've considered learning to handwrite to write my first drafts like that. But then I could use an AI to generate realistic looking scans of handwriting.
I guess I could physically mail the originals to a third party verifier. That's what it may come down to for creatives.
They have no concept of how much cheaper medical care can be. They don't realise there is enough for everyone. They are blind to the fact that many other countries care for all of their people for a fraction of the price. The people on this forum live in a strange parallel reality where there is only enough to go around, even though that hasn't been true for a very long time.
So when people ask why they don't provide for the poor or fix their broken healthcare system by introducing single-payer healthcare, they'll speak to you like you're an idiot or a child. "Who is going to pay for that?", they ask, while paying an order of magnitude more for a GP visit than any other citizen of any other nation does. To them, you just have a poor understanding of economics.
I am sure if you did the math, having the occasional empty bus does not hold a candle to the amount of dead mass being dragged along in single-occupant cars.
The wear-and-tear on the road from the sheer volume of cars alone makes them cost more to us as a society than busses.
So regardless of density and passenger volume, busses are incredible.
I think people are quite justified in being skeptical of new technology, especially when the track record has shown that the promised societal benefits often never actually materialise. Worse, still, the money earned from selling the new technology is used to make conditions worse for most people. Big tech has a lot to answer for.
I'd be less skeptical if the values of tech capitalism shifted to become more pro-human. They really haven't, and they probably won't. So for now, consider me bearish on new tech.
To clear it up, I read the article before my most recent reply to you. The very article that you linked mentions that private social networks use moderation centres from poor countries. Did you read the article you linked to me before sending it?
> Because they simply don't work today and at scale. We have new problems today that didn't exist in the past.
So your response is just to throw your hands up and say "won't work". Buddy, let me tell you, we could squeeze out a lot more performance to run social networks if we needed to. The hard part is the moderation, as you correct identified. But private-run social networks use questionable labour to moderate anyway (as per the article you linked).
In the past running a hobbyist social media worked, it can work again.
Mastodon isn't a good example. It's written in Ruby and serves up a heavy React application. A light version of it could be written in something much faster, and served up on something much smaller.
You haven't provided a coherent argument to suggest otherwise. Goodbye and thanks for the discussion.
The issue they are having is moderation, not technical costs. This is the same issue sites like Reddit have. In the article, they even mention that private social media sites use moderation centres from poor countries. That is abhorrent. Not sure why you are advocating for this?
> Spare us your fallacious "back in the old days" argument, we aren't there anymore, we are talking about now.
From my perspective, what is the point of continuing this conversation if you won't address an example in the past where my argument worked?
I'll concede that it doesn't work out a lot of the time. This is not very different from for-profit websites. Also, your number of 9.9/10 is probably pulled out of your ass. I'm note sure what the real number is, but I'd wager it's lower than 9.9/10.
I'm not sure how old you are, but in the early 2000s there were so many community forums; most of them survived. Even if it doesn't, the community can go to another host at some point.
This isn't the counterargument you think it is.
But they were clearly gated, like a nightclub. There were those who were "in" the Jedi Temple or Sith academy, and those who were out. This creates a sort of exclusivity, and people would naturally want to join the Jedi Temple or Sith Academy. They'd have to agree to a set of rules written on a sticky note on the room's wall, and dress the part.
Sometimes all hell would break loose when a Sith Warrior or Inquisitor would come and attack the Jedi Temple. They were legally allowed to do this, as long as people were online to witness it.
It was really interesting how they battled each other with just text chat. They had specified rules where you'd have to type out five action lines (minimum of 5 words) after an attack in order to maime or kill someone. At any point in those five lines, the defender could use 2 lines to repel the attack. To add a complication, the actions had to be coherent with each other.
So it ended up being a lot of;
Sith: Jedi filth! Hiding in your temple, while the universe suffers. I will free them of you!
Jedi: Your oppression ends here, Sith!
Sith: swings lightsaber towards your body
Sith: it connects with your neck
Sith: it cuts through the muscle
Jedi: swings lightsaber at lightsaber (illegal: 4 words)
Jedi: it parries your lightsaber away
Sith: it connects through the bone (illegal: parried)
Of course, these would often devolve into long OOC (out of character) arguments, and this drama would bring in even more of a crowd. It was chaotic, and a whole bunch of fun.
It wasn't just RP fighting though. They would have all the Jedi initiates wear "robes" and hang out in rooms decorated like a Jedi temple. Then the Jedi Masters would conduct lessons and we'd have to memorise the Jedi code.
I still remember the Sith code. I had to memorise it and recite it at random times to the Sith Lords. When I graduated from that, I ended up teaching it myself to several acolytes.
"Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. The Force shall free me."
Pretty fun times.
You edit it manually.
That's it. There are no shortcuts to good prose, except perhaps paying a ghost writer.