Fuck AI

I use Generative AI at work because I know it's being tracked. I've offered examples and suggestions about things I've done with it.

I've then outright referred to it as the World's Worst Intern. Sometimes it does the right thing, but you always have to check. Sometimes it says it's going to do the right thing, but actually does something different. Sometimes it does completely the wrong thing.

So I have it do the things that I can do -- rote steps, easy changes I can explain faster than I can type, bulk renames or code cleanup that the compiler can validate -- but not the things I don't know if I can do. I trust the compiler, I don't trust the code it wrote. I'll use it to write the first draft of documentation based on the steps I took, but I'm editing it and expanding it.

It's not smart. It's not intelligent. It can kind of do things as long as you're willing to let it flail for a while or to spend the time checking it's work. It's the World's Worst Intern.

So the only real business model here is for people to be able to produce things they are not qualified to work on, with an acceptable risk of generating crap. I don't see how that won't be a multi-trillions dollars market.

Being honest, I don't like using AI for much of anything. I have been encouraged to use it at work, but aside from rubber-ducking with it to plan out my own strategies, it's useless.

At home, it's a chatbot. I initially used it like I use random names or locations for writing and RPGs. Now, I stick to Donjon and a few others. The biggest thing I ever had it successfully do was help me construct puns I couldn't quite figure.

In my experience everybody (myself included) is prone to the Dunning-Kruger Effect in domains outside their expertise.

It doesn't mater if you're a outstanding expert in any one domain: you just look at a different domain and go "yeah, that looks easy".

I'm actually a lot more generalist than usual because of my personality and still have that same tendency to underestimate the complexity of different domains, but because of being a generalist I sometimes for one domain or another go down the route of genuinelly practicing it professionally, and one or two years later I'm invariably thinking "This shit ain't anywhere as simple as I thought!".

And, lo and behond, generative AI is just about good enough to handle the entry level stuff in a domain - the ultimate Junior Professional (not even a very good one) with just about enough "competence" to look capable for domain outsiders or even hobbyists whilst at the same time being obviously mediocre for domain experts.

As most people don't really think about their own knowledge perception in these terms and thus don't try to compensate for it, the reactions described in this post totally make sense.

Hot take: it's reasonable for a comics student to use AI for script-writing and for a screenwriting student to use AI for concept art, not because machine can generate meaningful artistic work at these fields but because these are not the fields they are trying to learn.

In a way, this can be used to level the field. The comics professor can use the same LLM to generate scripts for all their students. It'll be slop script, but the slop will be of uniform quality so no student will have the advantage of better writing and it'd be easier to judge their work based on the drawing alone.

And even if AI could generate true art in some field - why would it be acceptable for a student to use it for the very field they are studying and need to polish their own skills at?

I am 100% positive ai cannot take my job or replace me. In related news, I'm the only person in the world who makes a very specific thing.

So basically all these teachers are myopic assholes, is what I'm reading.

AI is just... its a broken mirror, a poisoned forbidden fruit.

It just brings out the worst in everyone and everything.

AI absolutely can be used for the work they know best, it's just that the individual using it will be the only one who knows how to use it correctly and everyone else will just be making slop.

Everyone assumes their expertise is special.

It's the dilbert approach

Facts!!