You know how some people have imposter syndrome? More people should have it.

Let me put it in tech bro speak: most of my AI usage has been suitability evaluation.

In layman terms: does this shit even do what it’s supposed to be doing.

It doesn’t. There are few limited tasks where LLMs can be genuinely used as a tool (my favourite example is image captioning) but it still needs hand holding and can’t work fully automatically. It’ll fuck up, and I’ll need my expertise to unfuck it.

They marketed AIs as “don’t worry, you can just use it as a tool”. It’s a tool that is sometimes useful. This is not a high endorsement.

Now: it’s my humble opinion one of the greatest tragedies of this AI boom is that it never should have been pushed to the mainstream. If LLMs had been left to the stage where they blatantly are now, they’d been left as marginal nerd toys. And all would have been well. But no, the Bros had to ruin it all and let us all discover myriad societal ills unfathomed by scifi authors. Thanks guys.

Corey Doctorow has a good article about this.

If Donald Trump ordered Big Tech to turn off all of your country’s chatbots tomorrow, nothing would change. Every one of your country’s ministries and corporations would chug on with nary a hitch. Households, too, though perhaps a few of the younger members of those families would have to do their own homework again.

Contrast this with what would transpire if Trump directed his tech giants to switch off your country’s Office 365 access, or to brick your Android and iOS phones, or to killswitch your John Deere tractors. Your country would effectively cease to exist.

Sure, tons of people are using AI, but that isn’t because they need AI to get their jobs done or even that AI makes their jobs easier. It’s because their bosses are convinced that they need to be using AI because it will change everything.

I find these tech-bro dickheads hilarious

They look down on everyone else, genuinely believing themselves to be innately superior

I work with my hands.

I have an education, including a science degree, but I choose to do something that I enjoy and that I think contributes to this world

When the chips are down, guys like this are lost, useless, and little more than a hindrance

And of course, they’re utterly unable to see that they aren’t people of value

I could even get through a workday without my smartphone, even tho those things have become a requirement in today’s society.

I work in tech and I’ve never used AI for any reason ever. Never a question. Never code. My coworkers don’t understand. I’m even required to use it in new and unique ways, and I’m not going to use something I’m going to learn to rely on, especially when my critical thinking is precious to me.

You mean…go back to how things were six months ago? I’m sure we would manage.

I’ve not intentionally used it. I shall continue on happily.

I look at my ai use the same way I look at streaming services: cheap entertainment of middling quality and if it stops existing then nothing of value will be lost. Worst case scenario I have to actually write coherent notes, but I’m trying to drink less so that’s already part of the plan anyway.

I got local-running AI for images and text (but the text one is slow and not as good). And I can actually code just fine myself. I would probably be slower without Claude Code. But I would still be fully able to do my job.

This will change for the next generation which is growing up with AI. But right now, an AI outage isn’t really that big of a deal.
So we definitely need open weight models and the hardware to run them to become available and affordable to everyone. Then a global AI outage becomes as unlikely as a global power outage.

I work in plane manufacturing, the use of ai is prohibited except for looking up simple information regarding the company, majority of the employees won’t be affected except for maybe the higher ups writing a report or some other shit.

people forget that books exist

I mean I would have a much harder time creating a “you’re a fucking moron, go fuck yourself” email in a professional manner to some of my higher ups. Other than that, I would literally miss nothing about AI.

If AI disappeared tomorrow could you still go through entire workday without ChatGPT?

If computers stopped working, would you?

Said the druggy about his drug.