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Linus Torvalds reckons AI is ‘90% marketing and 10% reality’

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Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨vegeta@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/linus-torvalds-reckons-ai-is-90-percent-marketing-and-10-percent-reality

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  • atk007@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I am thinking of deploying a RAG system to ingest all of Linus’s emails, commit messages and pull requests , and we will have a Linus chatbot.

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    • Hoticeberg@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Hold on there Satan… let’s be reasonable here.

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  • HawlSera@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The only time I’ve seen AI work well are for things like game development, mainly the upscaling of textures and filling in missing frames of older games so they can run at higher frames without being choppy

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    • WinstonWolfe@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      ^^

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      • grrgyle@slrpnk.net ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        ^^^

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  • Chessmasterrex@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I play around with the paid version of chatgpt and I still don’t have any practical use for it. it’s just a toy at this point.

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    • ugjka@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
      [deleted]
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      • farngis_mcgiles@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        ugh hallucinating commands is such a pain

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    • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I used chatGPT to help make looking up some syntax on a niche scripting language over the weekend to speed up the time I spent working so I could get back to the weekend.

      Then, yesterday, I spent time talking to a colleague who was familiar with the language to find the real syntax because chatGPT just made shit up and doesn’t seem to have been accurate about any of the details I asked about.

      Though it did help me realize that this whole time when I thought I was frying things, I was often actually steaming them, so I guess it balances out a bit?

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    • Subverb@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It’s useful for my firmware development, but it’s a tool like any other. Pros and cons.

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  • BenchpressMuyDebil@szmer.info ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Nice replacement topic after the maintainer drama last week

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    • YeetPics@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I think the drama came from when the Russian forces started killing civilians 🤷

      Not a company following the law.

      Sucks to suck work for companies run by a wartime government.

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    • SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Yea this is so blatant I’m not even going to click on that shit.

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  • cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    he isn’t wrong

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    • kent_eh@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      If anything he’s being a bit generous.

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  • zxqwas@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Like with any new technology. Remember the blockchain hype a few years back? Give it a few years and we will have a handful of areas where it makes sense and the rest of the hype will die off.

    Everyone sane probably realizes this. No one knows for sure exactly where it will succeed so a lot of money and time is being spent on a 10% chance for a huge payout in case they guessed right.

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    • HawlSera@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      There’s an area where blockchain makes sense!?!

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      • zxqwas@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Cryptocurrencies can be useful as currencies. Not very useful as investment though.

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      • troyunrau@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Git is a sort of proto-blockchain – well, it’s a ledger anyway. It is fairly useful. (Fucking opaque compared to subversion or other centralized systems that didn’t have the ledger, but I digress…)

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    • Manmoth@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It has some application in technical writing, data transformation and querying/summarization but it is definitely being oversold.

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    • Mwa@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Yep, Ik ai should die someday.

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  • FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Linus is known for his generosity.

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    • SynopsisTantilize@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Image

      Linus is a generous man.

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      • FlyingSquid@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Dude…

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    • mitrosus@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      True. 10% is very generous.

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  • Buttflapper@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Copilot by Microsoft is completely and utterly shit but they’re already putting it into new PCs. Why?

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    • bitwolf@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Investors are saying they’ll back out if no AI in products. So tech leaders will talk talk and all deal with ai.

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    • Mwa@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Copilot + Pcs tho…

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  • rottingleaf@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Decided to say something popular after his snafu, I see.

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    • geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Ai bad gets them every time.

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  • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I think when the hype dies down in a few years, we’ll settle into a couple of useful applications for ML/AI, and a lot will be just thrown out.

    I have no idea what will be kept and what will be tossed but I’m betting there will be more tossed than kept.

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    • mitrosus@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      AI is very useful in medical sectors, if coupled with human intervention. The very tedious works of radiologists to rule out normal imaging and its variants (which accounts for over 80% cases) can be automated with AI. Many of the common presenting symptoms can be well guided to diagnosis with some meticulous use of AI tools. Some BCI such as bioprosthosis can also be immensely benefitted with AI.

      The key is its work must be monitored with clinicians. As much valuable the private information of patients is, blindly feeding everything to an AI can have disastrous consequences.

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    • USNWoodwork@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I recently saw a video of AI designing an engine, and then simulating all the toolpaths to be able to export the G code for a CNC machine. I don’t know how much of what I saw is smoke and mirrors, but even if that is a stretch goal it is quite significant.

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      • gian@lemmy.grys.it ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        and then simulating all the toolpaths to be able to export the G code for a CNC machine. I don’t know how much of what I saw is smoke and mirrors, but even if that is a stretch goal it is quite significant.

        <sarcasm> Damn, I ascended to become an AI and I didn’t realise it. </sarcasm>

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      • linearchaos@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        An entire engine? That sounds like a marketing plot. But if you take smaller chunks let’s say the shape of a combustion chamber or the shape of a intake or exhaust manifold. It’s going to take white noise and just start pattern matching and monkeys on typewriter style start churning out horrible pieces through a simulator until it finds something that tests out as a viable component. It has a pretty good chance of turning out individual pieces that are either cheaper or more efficient than what we’ve dreamed up.

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    • Petter1@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Maybe in some places, but I just found this:

      www.arcade.ai

      A Market place, where people can generate their ideas of jewellery and order them after. Makes life of goldsmiths and customers way more easy. I do not think aI will leave this project, for example.

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    • Johnmannesca@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Snort might actually be a good real world application that stands to benefit from ML, so for security there’s some sort of hopefulness.

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  • houstoneulers@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    100% hyped by the people who’ve watched a few youtube videos and now claim they’re an expert

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  • Alpha71@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    “duh.”

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  • Toneswirly@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I agree with Mr. Torvalds

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    • GhiLA@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      That’s my usual feeling with Linus.

      Well, I agree, but he could be nicer about it.

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  • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    That’s about right. I’ve been using LLMs to automate a lot of cruft work from my dev job daily, it’s like having a knowledgeable intern who sometimes impresses you with their knowledge but need a lot of guidance.

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    • eldavi@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      watch out; i learned the hard way in an interview that i do this so much that i can no longer create terraform & ansible playbooks from scratch.

      even a basic api call from scratch was difficult to remember and i’m sure i looked like a hack to them because of it.

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      • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I mean, interviews have always been hell for me (often with multiple rounds of leetcode) so there’s nothing new there for me lol

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      • orgrinrt@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        In addition, there have been these studies released (not so sure how well established, so take this with a grain of salt) lately, indicating a correlation with increased perceived efficiency/productivity, but also a strongly linked decrease in actual efficiency/productivity, when using LLMs for dev work.

        After some initial excitement, I’ve dialed back using them to zero, and my contributions have been on the increase. I think it just feels good to spitball, which translates to heightened sense of excitement while working. But it’s really just much faster and convenient to do the boring stuff with snippets and templates etc, if not as exciting. We’ve been doing pair programming lately with humans, and while that’s slower and less efficient too, seems to contribute towards rise in quality and less problems in code review later, while also providing the spitballing side. In a much better format, I think, too, though I guess that’s subjective.

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  • Doug7070@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Mr. Torvalds is truly a generous man, giving the current AI market an analysis of 10% usefulness is probably a decimal or two more than will end up panning out once the hype bubble pops.

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  • ntn888@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I dunno about him; but genuinely I’m excited about AI. Blows my mind each passing day ;)

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    • iknowitwheniseeit@lemmynsfw.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I work at a company big into AI. We build our own models. Our senior management drank the Kool-Aid. We don’t have search on our Intranet any more, just LLM chatbots.

      Our TLS certificate expired last week on our main web page. I tried to find the contact details for the team responsible and the thing just hallucinated e-mail addresses.

      Needless to say, I’m less excited than you.

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      • Codilingus@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Holy fuck my sides hurt laughing. Sending a virtual IT bro hug.

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      • PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        That sounds insane

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      • naught101@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        This is hilarious

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  • Siegfried@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    No AI is a very real thing… just not LLMs, those are pure marketing

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    • Rogers@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      The latest llms get a perfect score on the south Korean SAT and can pass the bar. More than pure marketing if you ask me. That does not mean 90% of business that claim ai are nothing more than marketing or the business that are pretty much just a front end for GPT APIs. llms like claud even check their work for hallucinations. Even if we limited all ai to llms they would still be groundbreaking.

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      • clutchtwopointzero@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
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  • nifty@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    In a way he’s right, but it depends! If you take even a common example like Chat GPT or the native object detection used in iPhone cameras, you’d see that there’s a lot of cool stuff already enabled by our current way of building these tools. The limitation right now, I think, is reacting to new information or scenarios which a model isn’t trained on, which is where all the current systems break. Humans do well in new scenarios based on their cognitive flexibility, and at least I am unaware of a good framework for instilling cognitive flexibility in machines.

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  • Suavevillain@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    He is correct. It is mostly people cashing out on stuff that isn’t there.

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  • NeilBru@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I make DNNs (deep neural networks), the current trend in artificial intelligence modeling, for a living.

    Much of my ancillary work consists of deflating tempering the C-suite’s hype and expectations of what “AI” solutions can solve or completely automate.

    DNN algorithms can be powerful tools and muses in scientific, engineering, creativity and innovation. They aren’t full replacements for the power of the human mind.

    I can safely say that many, if not most, of my peers in DNN programming and data science are humble in our approach to developing these systems for deployment.

    If anything, studying this field has given me an even more profound respect for the billions of years of evolution required to display the power and subtleties of intelligence as we narrowly understand it in an anthropological, neuro-scientific, and/or historical framework(s).

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  • jagged_circle@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    That’s probably true about all new technology that VCs throw billions at.

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    • MadBigote@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      We lived more than a decade of those decisions, when borrowing money was cheap, and VC was investing in startups selling juice machines.

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  • iAvicenna@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    it is basically like how self improvement folks are using quantum

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  • explodicle@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Just chiming in as another guy who works in AI who agrees with this assessment.

    But it’s a little bit worrisome that we all seem to think we’re in the 10%.

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    • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      it’s a little bit worrisome that we all seem to think we’re in the 10%.

      A bit like how when you poll drivers on how good they think they are at driving, the vast majority say they’re better than average lol

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      • Takumidesh@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        That’s possible though, if there are some really bad drivers screwing the average.

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  • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    That makes sense. He’s old enough and close enough thematically to have seen a few of these tech hype cycles.

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  • peopleproblems@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Yup.

    I don’t know why. The people marketing it have absolutely no understanding of what they’re selling.

    Best part is that I get paid if it works as they expect it to and I get paid if I have to decommission or replace it. I’m not the one developing the AI that they’re wasting money on, they just demanded I use it.

    That’s true software engineering folks. Decoupling doesn’t just make it easier to program and reuse, it saves your job when you need to retire something later too.

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    • Ultraviolet@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      The worrying part is the implications of what they’re claiming to sell. They’re selling an imagined future in which there exists a class of sapient beings with no legal rights that corporations can freely enslave. How far that is from reality doesn’t matter, it’s absolutely horrifying that this is something the ruling class wants.

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    • Revan343@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      The people marketing it have absolutely no understanding of what they’re selling.

      Has it ever been any different? Like, I’m not in tech, I build signs for a living, and the people selling our signs have no idea what they’re selling.

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    • jagged_circle@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Their goal isn’t to make AI.

      The goal of both the VCs and the startups is to make money. That’s why.

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      • Kronusdark@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        It’s not even to make money, they already do that. They need GROWTH. More money this quarter than last or the stockholders don’t get paid.

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  • Sam_Bass@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    and that 10% isnt really real, just a gabbier dr.sbaitso

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    • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Idk man, my doctors seem pretty fucking impressed with AI’s capabilities to make diagnoses by analyzing images like MRI’s.

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      • Sam_Bass@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        then you are a fortunate rarity. most postd about the tech complain about ai just rearranging what it is told and regurgitating it with added spice

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  • Simulation6@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    There was a great article in the Journal of Irreproducible Results years ago about the development of Artificial Stupidity (AS). I always do a mental translation to AS when ever I see AI.

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  • Rolder@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    AI as we know it does have its uses, but I would definitely agree that 90% of it is just marketing hype

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    • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      The image generation features are fun, even though you have to browbeat the idiot AI into following the description.

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  • Nihilistra@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I understand nothing about ai and haven’t used it in any way nor do I plan to. It feels wrong for me and I believe it might fuck as harder than social media ever could.

    But the pictures it creates, the stories and conversations don’t seem like hot air. And I guess, compared to the internet we are at the stage where the modem is still singing the songs of its people. There is more to come.

    I heard it can code at a level where entry positions might be in danger to be swapped for ai.

    Gotta admit I’m a little afraid it will make most of us useless in the future.

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  • trespasser69@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Yeah, he’s right. AI is mostly used by corps to enshittificate their products for just extra profit

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