this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024
353 points (91.3% liked)

Ask Lemmy

26995 readers
1930 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Please don't post about US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected]


Rules: (interactive)


1) Be nice and; have funDoxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them


2) All posts must end with a '?'This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?


3) No spamPlease do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.


4) NSFW is okay, within reasonJust remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].


5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.


Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Tech Support

No Stupid Questions

You Should Know

Reddit

Jokes

Ask Ouija


Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I've found that AI has done literally nothing to improve my life in any way and has really just caused endless frustrations. From the enshitification of journalism to ruining pretty much all tech support and customer service, what is the point of this shit?

I work on the Salesforce platform and now I have their dumbass account managers harassing my team to buy into their stupid AI customer service agents. Really, the only AI highlight that I have seen is the guy that made the tool to spam job applications to combat worthless AI job recruiters and HR tools.

(page 3) 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

Playing with it on my own computer, locally hosting it and running it offline, has been pretty cool. I find it really impressive when it's something open source and community driven. I also think there are a lot of useful applications for things that are traditionally not solvable with traditional programming.

However a lot of the pushed corporate AI feels not that useful, and there's something about it that really rubs me the wrong way.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I have found ChatGPT to be better than Google for random questions I have, asking for general advice in a whole bunch of things but sido what to go for other sources. I also use it to extrapolate data, come up with scheduling for work (I organise some volunteer shifts) and lots of excel formulae.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

I needed instructions on how to downgrade the firmware of my Unifi UDR because they pushed a botched update. I searched for a while and could only find vague references to SSH and upgrading.

They had a “Unifi GPT” bot so I figured what the hell. I asked “how to downgrade udr firmware to stable”. It gave me effective step by step instructions on how to enable SSH, SSH in and what commands to run to do so. Worked like a charm.

So yeah, I think the problem is we’re in the hype era of LLMs. They’re being over applied at lots of things they aren’t good at. But it’s extremism in the other direction to say there aren’t functions they can do well.

They are at least better than your average canned chat/search bot or ill informed CSR at finding an answer to your question. I think they can help with lots of frustrating or opaque computer related tasks, or at least point you in the right direction or surface something you might not be able to find easily otherwise.

They just aren’t going to write programs for you or do your office job for you like execs think they will.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

I like some of the art. Especially things that would be difficult or almost impossible for a human to do.

One of the more interesting ones is horror. AI is super good at making uncanny or gross stuff that most people wouldn't even think to make.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I use it for coding (rarely pure copy paste), explaining code, use/examples, finding tools to use. Better translation than Google translate for Japanese. Asking for things that search engines only gives generic results for.

[–] ricecake 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

For the most part it's not useful, at least not the way people use it most of the time.
It's an engine for producing text that's most like the text it's seen before, or for telling you what text it's seen before is most like the text you just gave it.

When it comes to having a conversation, it can passibly engage in small talk, or present itself as having just skimmed the Wikipedia article on some topic.
This is kinda nifty and I've actually recently found it useful for giving me literally any insignificant mental stimulation to keep me awake while feeding a baby in the middle of the night.

Using it to replace thinking or interaction gives you a substandard result.
Using it as a language interface to something else can give better results.

I've seen it used as an interface to a set of data collection interfaces, where all it needed to know how to do was tell the user what things they could ask about, and then convert their responses into inputs for the API, and show them the resulting chart. Since it wasn't doing anything to actually interpret the data, it never came across as "wrong".

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

Erotic Roleplay. You're welcome?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

It's funny you mention this, but the erotic roleplay aspect of llms is a thriving business generating millions of dollars every month now in subscription costs.

We've barely even scratching the surface of what these models can do and they're increasing in usage at an exponential rate.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Regardless of how useful some might find it, there isn’t a single use case that justifies the environmental cost (not to mention the societal cost). None. Stop using it. You were able to survive and function without it 2 years ago, and you still can.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (6 children)

This is like saying you can't play video games because it costs electricity and you can go without. You can say it about literally everything that isn't strictly necessary to live. AI isn't just LLMs and only LLMs have a high environmental cost, and unless you are literally wasting the output like the big tech companies are, even that can be justified for the right reasons.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (9 children)

Hey man, why are we using the internet, don't you see this is bad for the environment, while your at it. stop wearing clothes! Our ancestors were able to get by with just our body hair, we're ruining nature.

That's how I read the post above you.

load more comments (9 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

Then the use of AI advancements in medicine is right out then too? I pretty sure the radiologist that has looked at my MRI this past week looking for lung damage, (thanks long covid!), used it in some form. And my Wife's upcoming mammogram will also use some form of AI to assist in diagnosis. Or the scheduling department for these appointments that used their own type of AI to manage 1000's of appointments per month and year. And this is just one example where AI is quickly becoming indispensable.

AI can be tremendously useful for somethings and useless for other things. Painting with such a large brush like you do makes you no better than those tech bros who push AI for everything to make it all more impressive sounding.

Carp: edit for missed letter

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

Well I use AI to generate Happy Birthday images with the persons name in the greetings.

that's gotta count, right?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I used to spend 1 month a year where all I did was write performance reports on people I supervise. Now I put the facts in let AI write the first draft, do some editing and I'm done in a week.

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

My corp has been very skeptical and suspicious. So far the only allowed ai is to summarize slack. For channels that I want to keep in the loop but not waste time monitoring, it creates a nice summary of recent traffic.

I was trying to help one guy who used an online ai despite it being against policy. However he was just using it as a search engine to find a code solution and it took way too long to give him the wrong answer. A search engine would have been faster but he’d have to use his own judgement to identify the wrong answer. Pretty arrogant guy despite not knowing what he was doing, so I didn’t fight it when he insisted he was going to follow what it told him

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I like to make karaoke tracks of music I like using an AI vocal remover. Other than that, no.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

Results do vary, but if we're talking that universal vocal remover, it definitely seems to be a competent enough program.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

I built a spreadsheet for a client that sorts their email into threads and then segments various conversations into a different view based on shipment numbers mentioned in the conversations. But it's a lot of work to get something like this set up. Am thinking of going into consulting/implementation.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

I have a custom agent that i ask questions to that then goes and finds sources then answers my question. Can do math by writing python code and using the result. I uae it almost exclusively instead of regular search. Ai makes coding far quicker giving examples remeber shit i cant remeber how to use writing basic functions etc.

Writing emails. Making profile pictures.

I used to enjoy the tldr bot on lemmy till some fascist decided to kill it instead of just letting people block it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

I have had fun with ChatGPT, but in terms of integrating it into my workflow: no. It just gives me too much garbage on a regular basis for me not to have to check and recheck anything it produces, so it's more efficient to do it myself.

And as entertainment, it's more expensive than e.g. a game, over time.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

I've never had AI code run straight off the bat - generally because if I've resorted to asking an AI, I've already spent an hour googling - but it often gives me a starting point to narrow my search.

There's been a couple of times it's been useful outside of coding/config - for example, finding the name of some legal concepts can be fairly hard with traditional search, if you don't know the surrounding terminology.

For the most part, it's worthless garbage.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

I made an AI song for my mom's birthday on Suno and she loved it so much she cried. So that was nice.

I don't like how people are using it to just replace artists. It would be find if it's just to automate some things, like, "AI can tell you when ___ needs to be replaced," but it feels more like it's being used as a stick to workers. Like, "Keep acting up and I'll replace you with dun dun dun AI!"

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

ChatGPT can be useful or fun every now and then but besides that no.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

There are a few uses where it genuinely speeds up editing/insertion into contracts and warns of you of red flags/riders that might open you up to unintended liability. BUT the software is $$$$ and you generally need a law degree before you even need a tool like that. For those that are constantly up to their chins in legal shit, it can be helpful. I'm not, thankfully.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

It looks impressive on the surface but if you approach it with any genuine scrutiny it falls apart and you can see that it doesn't know how to draw for shit.

I find it helpful to chat about a topic sometimes as long as it's not based on pure facts, You can talk about your feelings with it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I’ve used it to fill in the gaps for DND storyline. I’ll give it a prompt and a couple of story arcs then I’ll tell it to write in a certain style, say a cowardly king or dogmatic paladin. From there it will spit out a story. If I don’t like certain affects, I’ll tell it to rewrite a section with some other detail in mind. It does a fantastic job and saves me some of the guesswork.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 weeks ago

I ask it a lot of technical questions that are broad and non-specific. It helps to quickly get a gauge on what is the correct way to implement something.

load more comments
view more: ‹ prev next ›