7112@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Is “AI” even worth it?
Seriously, is there really a major use case for LLM besides data collection (which they can still do without LLM)?
In a perfect, utopian world, yes. AI can go a lot of good. In the world that we are living in? No.
But it’s still good to keep an eye on what people are using AI to do, and how their capability is evolving. If anything, so you can be prepare for what’s to come.
When the product is a solution in search of a problem, keeping an open mind is a good way to get it stuffed full of garbage. I was told the same thing about NFTs and Metaverse and Blockchain: a radical benefit is just around the corner!
If it arrives (huge if), it’ll be Big Tech’s job to explain it to us, and it should be very apparent
Keeping an eye on it doesn’t mean you need to think it’s a good thing. Keep an eye on it like how you would keep an eye on a developing hurricane or pandemic.
Touche. I apologize for responding to the argument I’ve seen elsewhere, not the one you were making.
I use LLMs for the following, you can decide for yourself if they are major enough:
What does this cost me? I don’t pay any money for the tech, but LLM providers learn the following about me:
There’s also an impact on energy and water use. These are quite serious overall. Based on what I’ve read, I think that my marginal impact on these are quite small in comparison to other marginal impacts on the climate and water use in other countries I have. Of course there are around a trillion other negative impacts of LLMs, I just once again don’t know how my marginal usage with no payment involved lead to a sufficient increase in their severity to outweigh their usefulness to me.
If you are using DDG for searches and concerned about privacy related to using LLMs, have you tried duck.ai?
You can also download some LLMs and run them locally.
Machine learning
consilidation of information, resources and potentially “the narrative”.
oh, for the user you mean? -it can be better than the enshittified search machines unless the llm decides to lie -middle managers need to write less emails themselves -some programmers deem it enough to write some boilerplate code while deskilling themselves -scammers and slop creators love it
Not for the peasantry, no.
It’s a great way to poke at software looking for security holes en masse. Lots of vulnerabilities are ready to be exploited at scale with LLMs.
Perhaps, but see the tons of imagined issues raised on bug bounty sites by LLMs. Maybe it’s right sometimes, but it’s very often wrong!
You don’t have to be right 100% of the time when scanning for vulnerabilities. You only have to be right once. It’s a fundamentally different game.
That’s true. Offense is always easier than defense.
I think that LLMs amaze rich investors and boomers with their naturalistic-enough language and responses, and they invest in and prop up the tech because they think, in the nearish future, that it can replace a ton of human jobs, both menial and creative. Eliminating manual labor jobs is great if it’s paired with Universal Basic Income.
I think that the fervor around AI is more economic anxiety than anything. If people’s income and oppurtunities were mostly equal, no new tech would make people think they’re being disenfranchised from society.
I think it could be good for faster language translations between different languages
I do use it quite often in my work. I just downloaded an Excel worksheet with all standard mailtexts (I work at a company offering courses), about 500x3. I gave it a list of criteria they should follow, and made it find those that didn’t. This worked pretty well. And it can work pretty well so long as you’re in control and you don’t take the result as truth.
That’s beside the obvious privacy issues, obviously. I hardly ever use LLMs outside of work (though when I do, I like to run models locally).
MissesAutumnRains@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Generative AI in its current, public-facing form? Probably not. It’s sort of like an invention of the internet situation. It CAN be used to facilitate learning, share information, and improve lives. Will it be used for that? No.
A friend of mine is training local LLMs to work in tandem for early detection of diseases. I saw a pitch recently about using AI to insulate moderators from the bulk of disturbing imagery (a job that essentially requires people to frequently look at death, CSAM, and violence and SIGNIFICANTLY ruins their mental health). There are plenty of GOOD ways to use it, but it’s a flawed tech that requires people to responsibly build it and responsibly use it, and it’s not being used that way.
Instead it’s being scaled up and pushed into every possible application both to justify the expenses and enrich terrible people, because we as a society incentivize that.
Headofthebored@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Really it’s just capitalism that incentivises that. The fact that stepping on your fellow man and destroying nature makes you more money is not a coincidence.
shalafi@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You got an economic system in your back pocket that doesn’t allow money to funnel upwards? Bring it out! It’s not capitalism you’re complaining about, it’s plutocracy we’re living under.
Adam Smith would be horrified at our monopolies. 1980s conservatives would be horrified! Yeah, the economy has always served the wealthy, but it wasn’t anything like today.
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Another one that makes sense is having an AI monitor system stats and “learn” patterns in them, then alert a human when it “thinks” there’s an anomaly.
clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
In the best cases, those would be ML but not specifically an LLM, no?
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s data collection like you mentioned in your original post, and
As for a valid use of LLMs: Natural language searching (with cited sources) is a use case that it’s already doing. This is especially useful in highly technical fields where the end users have the expertise to vet responses.
But one big LLM trained on everything isn’t that.