A polemic article that personally insults Hank Green instead of laying out a case. Brain melting AI psychosis indeed.
Thanks, saves time to not read it.
Is he.
People need to chill the fuck out
it’s more fun to flip out over random harmless bullshit than stuff that actually matters though.
How DARE you!
christ this comment section is unhinged
I‘m a little surprised how easy Lemmy goes on a millionaire Youtuber who refuses to take actual responsibility of his actions. Mind you, there are worse things than producing slob but people really believed in that guy. And all he offers is a non-apology first where he stated that he doesn‘t really remember. Followed by saying AI psychosis made him do it. Just be an adult, man. That‘s all I‘m asking.
People really need to stop putting condescending misogynistic white cis hetero dudes who talk confidently on the internet on a pedestal. This shit happens like, every other week.
The whole knitting saga showed that Hank Green knows nothing about the world but he’s ready to confidently spew his very wrong personal notions as facts.
Because in the end, that’s the biggest problem. He always talks with over confident authority. Sure, he puts the whole, this is just my opinion as it exist in my brain, spiel. But hidden as a footnote to the end notes. He acts the part of the know it all dunce. His content is so off putting when you even tangentially know a bit about the topic he is talking about. It highlights all his biases and misinformed opinions and how he enjoys showcasing them at scientific facts.
Then there was that time he made a video with harmful information about trans people and completely wrong facts about HRT. Seriously, about AI is not the first time he’s been a menace.
Him being a cis het white guy is not relevant here apart from general privileges that come with that. Unless you are saying that one with those attributes should automatically be disregarded or disqualified from public participation, or treated as lesser in matters of science, history, current events, etc. That is not a stance I can support. Equality means equality for all. That does mean that privilege should be recognized and often worked against in the name of equity. But cis het white men can still have a seat at the table of public discourse just like everyone else.
If you have a problem with Hank, the things he says or has said, that is fine. Criticism of ideas is great and necessary. Criticizing the societal privilege that he possesses for some inherent traits or his fame and money is also great and necessary too. But reducing an individual to some set of inherent traits outside of their control and criticizing those traits instead of their words and actions is just prejudice.
Edit: Also, I’m interested in what he said about trans people and HRT that you found objectionable. Same for the misogyny. Can you share a bit about that? And maybe a link to the relevant videos? I personally haven’t seen him speak about trans issues in any real detail. And everything that I have seen him say in regards to women and trans people has been generally positive. I’m curious what I may have missed.
More casual misandry
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I can also present give you flowchart of different takes if you’d prefer to keep it private.
It’s unclear from the article what exactly he did wrong. There’s nothing wrong with using AI as long as you triple check the info it gives you.
The main problem we’re facing today with this tech is people thinking it’s magically perfect and can operate without human supervision. Was that what he was doing?
There’s nothing wrong with using AI
Well, that is debatable. For some its using Ai is a problem by definition, its not even about the result. A few issues: a) Ai is unethically trained on data without respecting the original license, b) using Ai (probably even paying for it) supports Ai companies, which in turn are causing the massive issues in the tech price increases.
This is like saying that smoking weed is unethical because of the murderous actions of the cartels who grow and distribute it. You’re problem with AI isn’t with the technology itself nor its use.
You’re problem with AI isn’t with the technology itself nor its use.
I’m not sure about the weed argument, can’t say anything about it. But first, my personal problem with Ai doesn’t matter to this disussion, as I was talking about what people could have an issue with, not about my personal problems. Secondly farming data without respecting the original license, not even linking to the source where it got from is in fact a problem with “its use”. That is an unsolved problem lot of people just ignore, which does not make it less of a problem (it makes it a bigger problem). And that is just a few issues I listed, not even talking about the problems of generated content. There are legitimate concerns using Ai, no matter how you frame it, some just choose to ignore it.
The main problem with the output of LLMs is people not checking results, but there are ethical problems with the effective use of it too. Especially if you’re you’re dealing with the major platforms, who have shown no qualms allying themselves with fascist governments, surveillance capitalists, or just generally being cavalier about workers rights. (And obviously extracting value from the commons and renting it out on a scale never before seen, but that’s the obvious one.)
I would say the same thing about hosting services on AWS. The corporate world does it because it just makes financial sense, but all they care about is outputs. I expect better from individuals who are trying to send a message.
According to the article, he used terminology associated with LLMs when answering a question.
He denies that he was reading an AI generated answer and instead says that he just uses LLMs too much and it bled over into his speech.
AI is literally destroying the environment. How the FUCK do so many people not realise this. The data centres use massive amounts of water, their owners refuse to use renewables, they take up space on the power grid so it becomes impossible to build new housing, etc ad nauseum.
My God.
Lawns take up more water than all the datacenters. Golf courses take up more water. Get a fucking grip. You better not be complaining about water usage with the flesh of vulnerable individuals still stuck between your teeth because animal ag consumes an order of magnitude more water, emits more greenhouse gasses than all transportation combined, and gives NOTHING back but death and destruction.
Animal Ag gives us valuable food. Sure there are better alternatives out there but it literally gives us something we need to live.
Animal ag consumes more food than it produces. It is a method for investors to refine cheap, plentiful, safe, and sustainable plant food into a harmful, addictive, expensive luxury product. Many of the costs are hidden from the consumer in the form of subsidies.
Western meat consumption has multiplied several fold in the last couple of generations. There is no “need” to that, there is only “want” and pure addiction.
To say it gives nothing back is simply a lie though. It literally provides one of the most important things people need. Food. Just because it’s an inefficient method does not mean it provides nothing.
And fucking golf?
Oh I’m well in agreement with that one. Huge waste of water for a sport that is almost always reserved for rich people to enjoy.
Keeps Trump away from the “launch nuclear missiles” button.
Yeah and so is animal agriculture…
Except you need food to eat, you don’t need AI.
I have this feeling the vast majority of lemmy sells their labor to the most evil fucking corporations on the planet.
We live in an economy engineered to isolate us and make us work building up these empires for crumbs to be able to survive while slowly selling our souls sway. It’s depressing.
You don’t need animal products to live, but I don’t disagree with your point about food. At least it’s actually for people.
AI is only for extracting the last bit of marrow from the bones of workers before making them completely obsolete.
Except you don’t need to eat meat, you’re just justifying the destruction you like. That’s not to say that AI is anything close to as relevant as food, but the point still stands, meat production is destructive to the environment.
Something can be both useful and also destructive. Pretty sure people have done the maths and to approach the levels of efficiency that say meat has you’d be consuming a lot more calories. Similarly actual milk is better than soy milk.
This isn’t to diss people that make the choice, but your quality of life will be worse, so yes I count that as those meat products being necessary, in spite of the environmental damage. I think there are better ways to fix that. Diversifying the meat industry, lowering food waste, etc. What seems more interesting at the moment is lab grown meat, since it has all the pros with none of the cons, except cost.
And I’m “pretty sure” that you are talking about what you WISH were true, not what you KNOW is true. Unfortunately, many people in this forum actually know what IS true, and you are so far off the mark, you would be humiliated if you actually grasped it.
Animal ag consumes more food than it produces!! JFC people! We grow several times more plants than humanity can possibly eat, and then we refine it through the bodies of vulnerable individuals and murder them. THAT’S NOT FOOD, that atrocity.
Anyone who consumes animals and bitches about AI’s water use is a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Useful_idiot – but for whom?
It is food, get off your high horse if you plan on convincing anyone to back you. Topics and opinions are more nuanced than you want and people can’t easily get boxed.
Yes I’m aware the food industry is one of the least efficient industries out there. No I don’t think pure abolition is realistic or useful, as the products that come out of it can’t be replaced, you can adjust your diet to get proteins and such from other places, but beans and nuts are going to rack up your calories a ton compared to meat.
And calling someone a useful idiot is bold while you’re taking the pressure off of the ai industry which is not producing something useful for people (unlike meat which in spite of the failings of the industry is still helpful*) to say “but what about this other thing?!”. We can deal with both, but one of those is definitely worse than the other and it’s the one that we have existed without for thousands of years.
it’s the one that we have existed without for thousands of years.
We have had neither for more than a few decades. Animal ag as it exists today did not exist when I was born. There is several times more biomass in humans and farmed animals than all the wild land animals combined. This has not been going on for thousands of years, that is utterly uninformed and frankly amazingly unobservant.
You have no idea what you are talking about, but you’re soooo confident. It’s pointless to continue, you’re going to keep making shit up because you are unwilling to process the feelings that come up when you consider that you might be wrong. Which, I am sure you can appreciate, would put blood on your hands.
but beans and nuts are going to rack up your calories a ton compared to meat.
Where are you even getting this?? This is bonkers.
If you are getting enough calories from whole food plants, you are necessarily getting enough protein. If you eat nothing but rice, and you are getting enough calories, you are necessarily getting enough protein. “Protein” is a bullshit marketing angle. You are a victim of marketing.
Plants are nutrient-dense and calorie-poor. This is what you want for health. Animal flesh is exactly the opposite, plus contains things that actually kill you. The more meat a human eats, the younger a human dies and the more major diseases a human experiences. Just google: “meat all cause mortality” and educate yourself A LITTLE TINY BIT.
So if I grind up your children and eat it, they become “just food” and you should get off your high horse. If my industry changes the climate and you burn and freeze, it’s “just food” and you should get over yourself. It’s like saying, “It’s just a joke, brah!” It’s a childish attempt to evade responsibility for the consequences of your choices.
The things you are saying are so utterly uninformed, but you’re so confidently incorrect. It’s maddening. We both know for certain that you have never researched animal ag. Why are you trying to advance arguments when you know you have never researched it? What is motivating this stupid, arrogant behaviour?
We can deal with both, but one of those is definitely worse than the other
The worse one is animal ag, by orders of magnitude!! Fucking do some research. Animal ag produces more climate change effects than ALL TRANSPORTATION ON EARTH COMBINED. Data centers don’t even move the needle beside that. It’s wildly hypocritical to criticize people’s private AI use on the basis of water consumption while you consume animals. If you actually gave a shit about water use, you’d be looking to your own easily changed behaviour first. But this is just a conditioned response founded in ignorance. It’s piling on and superstition. As soon as the subject of AI leaves your mind, you stop giving a single shit about water usage.
Username checks out.
My hoa forces us to water our lawns in a drought when it’s illegal to.
Celebs have planes and yachts they use on a whim.
The entire internet now uses some form of ai.
So you first. Get offline and go live in the fucking woods.
Like I said, if they can fix that problem, then I’m fine with it. The resources it currently consumes is the reason why I kind of detest 4K and 8K AI videos. But I also kind of detest 4K and 8K TVs and monitors. We don’t need that many god damn pixels. Unless you’re a bird of prey, 4K is a complete waste of electricity.
There are ethical problems about using the fruits of stolen labour to enrich yourself.
I mostly agree, but even if LLMs were 100% correct all the time (they’re not), there are still some pretty serious ethical issues surrounding it. It is up to each person to decide if they find that acceptable or not.
I disagree with the moral panic about AI stealing things. They’re not Xerox machines. It does exactly what humans do except faster. Before AI, this YouTuber was reading a bunch of stuff, “stealing” things from it, and putting it back together in a different way, just like AI, except he actually understands what he’s reading.
I am concerned though about the resources it uses. But I don’t see that as an ethical issue. That’s more of a logistical issue. If they can make AI that doesn’t drink up Lake Michigan and doesn’t make the electrical grid scream, then more power to it.
My biggest concern whether people are for it or against it is that they don’t think it’s Skynet, or Data from Star Trek. It’s just a big dumb machine, a gigantic MENACE matchbox computer.
They literally stole the training data. Everything after that is fruit of the poisonous tree.
It does exactly what humans do except faster.
This makes it sound like it can do anything humans can do, but you’re actually wrong in a lot of different ways. Generative AI is a reconstruction machine. It takes the things it “knows” (because they don’t know anything, they’re just lots and lots of coefficients in giant matrices), and attempt to reconstruct from an incomplete data point.
They are actually a lot closer to Xerox machines than they are to humans. If you train gen AI on one thing, it will only know that one thing, and it will only recreate that one thing. It could never do more than that. Humans just do not fundamentally work that way. Like, if you want to say most stories are recombinations of other stories, fine, but that is wrong. There is an origin that was created by a human. Not everything is stolen.
There are many, many issues with gen AI, from the resources it uses, to its use in surveillance, to the fact that it is still wrong on fundamental ideas. It’s just kinda shit technology and the people that think it is awesome are usually the dumbest fucking morons I have ever met, and that is terrifying. Man, just learning the math and science behind it and how it works should be the bar, but none of them know how it fucking works or why it cannot improve without using more and more resources.
My complaint is at least before the individual stealing the idea and recombining it was the one getting paid.
Now that’s just a SaaS that benefits a handful of overvalued superscalers. They get to sit on their horde of data and charge for access.
Alright, so he got addicted to what felt like an easy source of knowledge. Can happen to anyone.
I guess I’m just tired of finding things to be upset about. I’ve lived more than five decades and it’s been outrage after outrage after outrage.
I’m tired, boss.
He’s admitted there was a problem and it got out of hand. If he changes, what’s the huge deal going forward?
We need social safety nets. We need universal health care. We need to kick fascists out of our government. And sure, we need to fix smaller problems, but jesus christ does every last thing have to be drama?
It depends what you define as drama.
I would say this is just about him breaking his community’s trust in him, and people let him know that. So now he’ll need to work to earn it back.
It isn’t really drama, but I can understand why people would feel a bit betrayed when they find out this person, who presents themselves as a science communicator, was heavily using a machine that is well known for hallucinations and spreading misinformation.
Additionally, Hank himself has said he is deeply concerned about the effects of AI on the climate crisis, the consolidation of economic power, and the way it was trained. Him heavily using it can makes it feel as though he doesn’t care about that stuff as much as it initially appeared. And given his community includes a lot of people heavily worried about the climate crisis, consolidation of economic power, and the theft of artists’ work, I think them being angry at him is understandable and expected.
Of course, hopefully he now steps back and reflects on this, and then comes back better. But that couldn’t happen without someone calling him on it first.
Yeah I’m with you. I’m disappointed, but everyone will disappoint you in some way some times. Hell I’m disappointed in myself plenty of the time.
I agree, we try our best, but we’ve got to focus on the truly existential issues.
Preach.
We need tolerance. Our society has become so dictatorial, even the most left leaning and liberal ones, we simply cannot tolerate anything we don’t agree with.
Everyone wants to make their own perfect universe where everybody says and does one thing. We should accept each other’s mistakes and faults, and live in more harmony.
Yeah, I feel the response has gotten way out of hand. Sure, I’m not happy about it. But I have some faith Hank will actually reflect on the situation.
he probably needs to take a break from uploading and wait a while.
Taking breaks is not what creators do anymore after a backlash as it kills the channel. He will keep posting stuff. Maybe even ride the anti AI wagon for engagement. He‘s a content creator through and through.
Hate is an easy way to engage users, that is why most news channels use it as a hook when formatting articles.
I’m tired of it too.
5 decade club reporting 🫡 and I’m tired too.
“If it bleeds, it leads.” Drama leads to clicks, clicks lead to advertising, advertising = money. Same ol’ story, its just super easy now with the internet.
I’m glad I dont know who he is and I will continue to not know him.
These days it seems like the internet is more pleasant the less influencers you know, and most aren’t worth knowing any further about.
I think the past where people’s awareness of public figures was much more distant was a healthier time. Like knowing the famous athlete or actor, but nothing further about their lives and not feeling like “you know them” because they called our your username or liked your comment and not being able to send them a direct message.
He and his brother created tons of online free science material that was used by several high schools apparently. I found him post all that, but it’s understandable that a lot of people have leeway with him, given that he was a big helper in so many places, and that he got cancer.
I mean, look how hostile Lemmy usually is and how tactful they are being with him, he definitely has built some reputation of being a good guy.
You’re right that most influencers aren’t worth knowing any further, but Hank is one of the exceptions. I wouldn’t even call him an influencer honestly, that’s way WAY too generic of a term for what he’s done. His excitement for knowledge and learning, and spreading the things he learns, has helped a generation with thinking skills and getting them interested in the sciences.
I can understand why this technology would be particularly addicting to hank.
His whole persona is answering questions like “what color flower do bees like the most” with the kind of enthusiasm that shows his curiosity and deep passion for science. So a machine where you can put in those sorts of questions and get an almost instant answer would be very addicting.
Only they’re not “answers”. AI does not provide information, it tells you what you want to hear. It even makes up fake scientific papers as “references”. So you think your info is backed up by peer reviewed sources. Nope!
It even makes up fake scientific papers as “references”
Broski, it’s not early 2023 anymore. Thinking models with internet access have been able to provide public sources just for over a year now. Technology evolves; shocking, I know…
The better models absolutely will cite real scientific papers that are relevant to your discussion. It doesn’t hallucinate as a matter of course, it can hallucinate some of the time. You can’t trust what it gives you 100%, you have to verify it. But it very often gives useful answers and information.
That’s just not true.
For what he’s trying to do, it’s not even a horrible use-case. But as someone is a ready to go to the mat on fact checking, he’s definitely not anywhere near arduous enough about it.
He’s not treating it like aunt marge. You wouldn’t make a tv show around finding out truth, then go ask your aunt Marge and not follow up on her answers.
AI for general information gives you approximate directions at best, maybe you got a wikipedia page and maybe you’re reading 297 regurgitations of some asshole that didn’t know what the fuck he was talking about on reddit who got reposted over and over.
The best way I’ve seen it put is that ai is the perfected form of the wisdom of the masses. It’s 90% right 90% of the time. But the most important part is the last 10%.
90% is good enough for most things in your day to day life that have no consequences. But it’s like people have forgotten what it was like before smart phones.
Back when your best chance of a good answer was asking who ever was in hear shot if they knew and just accepting that as good enough. You never treated it as fact just as the best answer your going to get at the moment.
For anything important you would go to the damn library.
It’s 90% right 90% of the time. But the most important part is the last 10%.
No LLM model system card claims such high rate as 90%. Fable claims in its system card, what, 40% hallucination rate?
https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.10791 yep (no Fable score here)
But when I get fixated on something, I want the correct answer. I’d hate to learn the wrong answer and repeat it to someone - I’ve done that before and I hate it. That’s why I avoid AI on principle. I want the right answer and AI won’t give that to me about things I know about so I won’t trust it on things I don’t know about.
You should avoid social media. You aren’t immune to wrong answers here either. You can just read it from another person and carry it with you. Best get offline!
This is the thing about LLMs and their users I genuinely don’t get. Like, objectively, being able to input plain speech into a computer and get an almost immediate, detailed, 95% accurate answer is incredible. Genuine technological marvel.
But 95% accuracy is functionally useless for all but the most basic, unimportant tasks. Outside of a coding context (a big exception, to be clear), are people really satisfied with that?
If you can confirm it, it doesn’t matter what percentage is correct.
When solving computer problems, using an LLM to guide you to the correct answer doesn’t even need 95% accuracy. Every step it gives you have to execute manually, so if something is hallucinated you will notice really quickly. And if by the end your problem is solved, then all the hallucinations didn’t matter.
Let’s be honest, most sources online are not 100% accurate. Even before LLMs, find any random article about something you’re an expert in, and there was a good chance you’d spot some inaccuracies. Most of the time, those inaccuracies aren’t a big deal, and when they are, you should be consulting an expert for those.
For me personally, I would rate AI accuracy at about 75%. And for some of my use cases, that’s a pretty decent starting point. Things with no consequences, like trying to quickly find the relevant console command for the game I’m playing. I can get instant feedback on whether it gave me correct info, and if not then I hit Google.
I would never trust AI, at least in its current state, to tell me the truth for anything of consequence.
The majority of human history at all levels of science, philosophy, and mathematics. The best you could ever hope for was 95%. Hell you were lucky to break 90% accuracy.
Because the only people you could ask questions was the people in the room with you right then and there or the people you could actively physically go ask.
If you were extremely lucky you could write to someone who MIGHT know more. Or may there’s a book about it that someone knows exists.
95% can and frequently is very much over kill for almost everything anyone will need for their day to day life for random trivia or even most important work.
Very few fields need more than that, and few still is it a matter of life or death.
The part that people fuck up is not being open to learning more and being corrected.
im not up on this drama, did people call him out on AI usage excessively or he did himself? if its himself, if he kept quiet he wouldve been able to soften the blow.
He got caught reading out loud very obviously AI generated text
seems like the 1st reason, that made sense. i dont follow him at all, other than scishow(which sparingly follow). im guessing the other channel kurtz really put a sour taste in people interested in sci-talk channels and became sensitive to AI-usage in any sci-talk channels.
He said something that was maybe AI generated or maybe it wasn’t or maybe his use of AI rubbed off on his talking patterns. That’s the drama.
And then he admitted he has been using it too much, to the point it’s been unhealthy for him. He’s been using it to generate notes, in an attempt to be more “productive”. It’s got to the point where he said himself that he isn’t sure what his process (with regard to researching and writing for videos) is anymore, which raises questions about the accuracy of the information he gives.
Yeah, but it still begs the question of if the statement that sparked all of this was itself generated or not. I definitely use AI myself in research but in the same way I use Wikipedia, like a starting point. Its tough to imagine a content creator who likely has a whole team of professionals that he pays just letting it go to waste. Maybe his team has become overly reliant on AI and instead of calling them out he’s chosen to take the heat.
In the end it’s a worthwhile discussion to have for the young and weak willed on the issues of AI usage , kinda similar to the discussion on social media usage or just internet usage all together.
What’s scary to me is that Hank Green is a rationale, intelligent person with time, money, resources, etc. Everything someone could want to be successful at their passion. And in this case, the passion is literally explaining science. If his own family has to have an intervention on his AI use (which it seems like they did?) after he denied reciting AI prompts on video despite being caught red-handed (which it seems like he did?) what chance do normie script kiddy vibe coders have? Is this the future? Addicts with rotting brains and AI psychosis leading the planet to destruction?
The allure of outsourcing your mental load to a chat bot designed to tell you exactly what you want to hear is too much. Everyone’s getting high off their own supply.
Those who are the most vulnerable to fall for the cult are a) those who have no safeguards or experience and thus don’t see the signs that it is a cult, and b) those who see the signs and know for a fact it is a cult, but think themselves they can outsmart the cult.
His overconfidence is the reason he is leaning so hard into AI. Because he thinks himself knowledgeable and smart enough to always know better than the AI slop. He is the perfect mark to fall for it.
rational*
It must feel godlike to manifest your will simply by speaking it. I can understand why that would addict people. This is exactly why they are pushing it so hard - they know it has this effect, people will demand it, they will fight for it. They will give over their enterprise and their personal lives to it, the way a drug or gambling addict gives over everything they have to it.
With that kind of impact - especially early on, before people realize they’ve been taken - they can build enough momentum to corner all compute.
No longer can we gather or organize without our names attached, without our intent scanned and analyzed, our location tracked, or our wallets closed. We will have to drink our verification cans, and we will have to be nice to Trump, or else they will see what you wrote on your iPad Cloud or your Google Pixel Light and then they will debank you, like waking up from the Matrix. “Go woke and go broke” was always a premonition about control.
I keep those power fantasies to my brain because I can tell the difference between a daydream and reality. I don’t care what AI could make me feel, I am never going to use it for anything if I’m aware of it.
Things are going to get a lot worse before they get better
We’ve been saying that for decades. When does it get better?
Well you see it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
When gen AI hits a job market that doesn’t exist thanks to AI, I wonder what’s going to happen.
IMO we are still quite a long way off from it, but if/when it does become prevalent it will depend on how fast the greedy capitalists deploy it. If they do it fast enough there will be too many displaced with little to lose, which will lead to revolution.
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I thought something was up when he had interviewed some random ass AI expert talking about Mythos because he bought into the whole “OMG it’s gone rogue” bullshit.
I’m not a huge fan of the videos he hosts (I don’t like how he cuts every millisecond between sentences), but SciShow is a genuinely good channel and I’m glad he realized he had problems. Wishing him all the best!
I feel like if that was your primary takeaway from that, the entire point was lost on you.
Take away from what?
From that video, it discusses more than just the fear mongering. It talks about how it works and why we don’t understand it and why we can’t really peer into the net and understand why it generates what it does.
But those are basic concepts of LLMs that I knew about. They explain that and they say “omg scary” which, to me, is just marketing through fearmongering. It’s been a few months since the video and you can see: Anthropic and ChatGPT are now competing on how “rogue” their models are. It’s so tiring.
His audience is diverse, I’m sorry if it can’t cater to only what you need, but I don’t think that’s doable. Just because you don’t derive value, doesn’t mean others don’t.
I never said others didn’t. You’re the one that assumed I didn’t see the value because I didn’t understand the video.
I’ve been getting from interacting with LLMs…with doing more and more and more and more…is not healthy for me or good for the world. It is careless, and has disconnected me from where people are on this.
I think this is very honest and we shouldn’t give someone shit for speaking up.
For me it’s just another disconnected millionaire Youtuber. But he‘s kind of blaming AI or rather his relationship with LLMs for this dilemma instead of actually reflecting on himself. If he thinks simply abstaining from using LLMs will establish a connection to the people he‘s dead wrong and will likely fall back on AI in no time.
This. AI and more generally algorithm dependence is an addiction and watching him struggle with it the past few years has been heartbreaking. Watching him try to bargain and rationalize an objectively misanthropic technology that grew out of a sphere that he was a major role in and did begin as an objectively beautiful attempt at building community and healthy dialogue is very disappointing. I don’t hate or judge him. He tried to do something beautiful. He just didn’t understand the Faustian bargain he made in the process. The systemic forces turning his work into poison.
I don’t judge him for wrestling with it. I’m sad for him. I’m sad for a lot of us. We’re all working in a system that’s slowly killing us to some degree or another. There is no ethically clean life in a system predicated on greed, gluttony and lies. His optimism may have slipped into delusional, but it beats the crushing cynicism that comes with naked realism.
I don’t think that we should lose hope, but the future can’t look like this. His Icarus moment shouldn’t be the end of his journey. I hope he finds himself and begins planting new seeds even if none of us ever live to see the shade of the trees that grow from them.
I mean, we are all going to die. In fact it’s the fear of that that built these AI systems. If you want to go against them then accept death and extinction as our future.
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But this is the first time there’s been this significant of an impact on one’s mental health(?) I’m unsure. It’s so easy to get caught up in that dopamine hit where you feel like you did something. Its even more frustrating when you’re forced to use it in work regularly, whether directly or indirectly (if you’re coworkers are using it there is an indirect force to use it if you need to stay competitive and keep your job and feed yourself and your loved ones especially if your workspace is not healthy)
Thought experiment: is it better to treat the AI as a contractor (fivver etc) who is doing the task you’re asking rather than thinking of it as something you’re doing? From a mental health perspective A contractor because you are only to talk a out the task and nothing else really. That way it’s work could be more distant and you’re less likely to associate it to your work and boost in productivity?
Well said
Agreed, this is new technology for everybody, we’re allowed growing pains.
Its pretty fucking simple to not use it.
And people could simply not work for major corps.
And they could simply not buy plastic clothes from Walmart.
And they could simply grow their own food.
Etc etc.
I understand where you’re coming from, but you could almost always say this about every kind of mistake every person has ever made, and then sit there wondering why humans ever make mistakes, you know?
Then you’re not critically trying to think and examine the implications of this new technology. And that’s fine, we all can’t do all the things but we can listen to the people around us without being pretentious tools who would say I told you so.
It would also have been simple to not use any technology ever that has had controversy around it
But unless you are actively a lodite hermit living in the woods with no connection to the world. In which case your opinion on the topic doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things since clearly you already have a unhealthy relationship with reality.
Learning to have a healthy relationship with new tech is how to actually deal with shit. Not ignoring it forever as if pandoras box wasn’t open.
It’s not going anywhere, even if the bubble pops and all of it dies. Local models will only become more and more common, the tech will only become easier and easier to run and more efficient and effective.
Even if it devolves into a specialist tool for research and science only. That still is going to be something you will have to come to grips with.
The tech is far far more than just chat bots.
We are about to get hardware built for AI specifically. None of this will go away.
Hank Green has earned the right, with me anyway, to have his point of view heard. And frankly he has more credibility with me than the garden variety pitchfork-wielding anti-AI mob. I think Hank is a person who finds AI interesting and sees upsides as well as downsides. But the aforementioned mob is not interested in anything other than the emotional catharsis of railing against something they hate.
Now ask me if the mob is in the room with us, because it probably is.
His AI use caused him so many problems in his private life that his family had to intervene. His point of view is “This technology has had a negative impact on my life and the lives of the people I care about”.
Your pro-AI spiel is a bit tone deaf here
You don’t actually fucking know him.
That’s probably why he wrote an in depth explanation of what he did, his motive, how it affected him etc.
His public posts on the matter were not made for the people who actually know him.
But they didn’t say anything pro-AI. At most they were anti-anti-AI mob, which is just reasonable, as is with any “mob”. And I read mob here as mindless parrots that keep repeating talking points and hating for the sake of conformity.
Being anti-anti something is being pro-something. That’s the beauty of the double negative.
Also that’s just a very pro-AI user, so the intent can be inferred
That’s… Not how any of that works?! You can be anti chat bot llm, anti anti ai mob hater, and pro llm science and research bot.
There’s more to the tech then just the chat bots the anti ai mob dipshits all seem to think of when llms come up.
That’s exactly how that works lmao. “Anti” means “opposite”, not some neutral third thing
anti-anti-AI ≠ pro-AI, it assumes there’s only anti-AI and pro-AI and nothing in between.
And the wording was clearly about the anti-AI mob as opposed to people who understand the dangers and benefits of AI. It’s similar to the difference between a Gamer™ and a gamer.
You’re conflating two different somethings. Anti-AI mob is not the same as AI. Being against mob mentality doesn’t make you inherently pro AI.
It’s possible to be pro or anti mob mentality and AI in various different combinations.
You’re on Lemmy… any statements about AI, Musk, trump, McConnell, etc that aren’t over-the-top against them will be met with downvotes.
Okay but why would anyone be anything but over-the-top against anything on your list?
I mean, like, everything you listed is dog shit.
That’s what I keep fucking asking, Like how can anyone with half a brain be okay with any of them?
Because sometimes in life there are nuances and it is possible to mention one of those topics in a neutral manner, but the absolute hostility held here against anyone who tries to have a conversation beyond “_____ sucks ass!” is exhausting.
The adults are talking
There wasn’t an intervention, he asked them about his AI use in response to the outrage and they agreed he’d been using it unhealthy.
Seemed to me more along the lines of “do I have too much salt?” , “yeah you should cut back” ; Then “your coke problem is tearing this family apart”
He said they “did not pull any punches” which implies it was a more blunt conversation than you’re suggesting.
Hank Green himself describes his relationship with AI the same way you would an addiction, and specifically mentions the dopamine reaction driving his use of it to a point where he became overwhelmed by it.
He’s not describing a casual discussion about table salt, he’s literally describing a drug/alcohol addiction.
That’s fair. It’s a new technology, we need trusted people to explore it and tell us what their experience was. I don’t think we have very many trusted people left
You sound like you lick Grok and Gippitys silicon balls.
Ok, I guess you were too busy fondling Gr0ks and gipeettys balls to type out a constructive response. Are these how you’d like them to participate in your silicon fetish?
when he messed up was when he pissed off the crochet and knitter crowd. 😂
I really don’t get it. It’s so easy for me not to use AI 99% of the day, same as not using social media. I cannot understand why people get addicted to it so easily.
What are you using it for during the 1%??
Personally I’ve found that ai is fantastic at pulling files off my phone cause I’m a lazy shit… Iv trained it so that when I tell it “do the thing” it pulls all the pictures off my phone and backs them up.
It’s fun, whimsical, and while I could do it a host of other ways. This is just more fun.
Which is honestly kinda what I see as one of the better use cases for local models. Sure you could do the same thing with a script, or by hand.
But it’s not as /fun/ as having a little robot butler that slings one liners from various cartoons that you don’t have to prepick as it enacts your will.
Just have the ai make the script. It’s going to go off the rails one day and you’ll regret that whimsy.
…so your good use case for AI is running a task apps have been able to do automatically for 20 years…?
It’s like buying a robot butler to manually turn off the lights
Yes we did that with smart bulbs. We aren’t against the robot butler.
He seems fairly prone to ego stroking, which internet goers would typically label as narcissistic.
Kind of the target audience for the sycophant machine
See the knitting debacle… where SciShow put out an episode about the science of knitting which was poorly researched and it was clear that they had consulted zero knitters.
I’ve always really liked SciShow - to the point I’ve assigned some episodes to my students - but it’s just embarrassing when it would have been trivially easy to hit up Ravelry and run the video past people who won’t call yarn “string.”
some of the recent episodes were quite sloppy. they just stuck to the original format.
I’m on your side, but replace AI or social media with “meth” in your argument and see how that logic works. (Becoming easily addicted to something vs. avoiding something [because using it would rapidly become addictive])
