Not for the peasantry, no.
7112@lemmy.world 11 hours 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)?
minorkeys@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
nialv7@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
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.
XLE@piefed.social 10 hours ago
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
nialv7@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
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.
XLE@piefed.social 7 hours ago
Touche. I apologize for responding to the argument I’ve seen elsewhere, not the one you were making.
Goodlucksil@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 hours ago
Machine learning
captain_solanum@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
I use LLMs for the following, you can decide for yourself if they are major enough:
- Generating example solutions to maths and physics problems I encounter in my coursework, so I can learn how to solve similar problems in the future instead of getting stuck. The generated solutions, if they come up with the right answer, are almost always correct and if I wonder about something I simply ask.
- Writing really quick solutions to random problems I have in python or bash scripts, like “convert this csv file to this random format my personal finance application uses for import”.
- Helping me when coding, in a general way I think genuinely increases my productivity while I really understand what I push to main. I don’t send anything I could not have written on my own (yes, I see the limitations in my judgement here).
- Asking things where multiple duckduckgo searches might be needed. E.g. “Whats the history of EU+US sanctions on Iran, when and why were they imposed/tightened and how did that correlate with Iranian GDP per capita?”
What does this cost me? I don’t pay any money for the tech, but LLM providers learn the following about me:
- What I study (not very personal to me)
- Generally what kinds of problems I want to solve with code (I try to keep my requests pretty general; not very personal)
- The code I write and work on (already open source so I don’t care)
- Random searches (I’m still thinking about the impact of this tbh, I think I feel the things I ask to search for are general enough that I don’t care)
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.
Murdoc@sh.itjust.works 4 hours ago
If you are using DDG for searches and concerned about privacy related to using LLMs, have you tried duck.ai?
Hond@piefed.social 11 hours ago
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
pennomi@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
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.
clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works 10 hours ago
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!
pennomi@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
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.
clay_pidgin@sh.itjust.works 8 hours ago
That’s true. Offense is always easier than defense.
big_slap@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
I think it could be good for faster language translations between different languages
MissesAutumnRains@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 hours 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 10 hours 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 1 hour 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 10 hours 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 10 hours ago
In the best cases, those would be ML but not specifically an LLM, no?
Semi_Hemi_Demigod@lemmy.world 3 hours 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.