No worries. Thanks for talking with me.

I think we mostly agree, at least we don’t disgree on anything substantive. Except the last fear mongery paragraph. My grouchy math teacher said the same sort of things about pocket calculators. Here we have another calculator, quite literally, and the same sort of arguments being made.

I didn’t mean listen to what Tesla says, but listen to what they do. They had a problem killing cruiser motorcyclists because the two break lights low to the ground they have resembles a car far away. Anyway, my own luddite problems with car tech aside. It’s not a reason for you to stop using it, nor would I try convince you.

My main problem is with the anti-AI people, for the reasons I’ve already gone over. Grouchy math teacher arguments aren’t convincing. Anti-capitalist arguments aren’t an argument against AI but capitalism. The ethical arguments (deep fakes) are half convincing but could be handled legislatively.

Correct, calculators can make you quicker… Just like they made me quicker with my cover letter. A pocket calculator would make my writing a cover letter slower though. Correct tool, correct job. I will accept for some jobs there isn’t an appropriate calculator yet.

Let’s reframe the issue with your car using your braked for you. You don’t see potential dangers in trusting a machine with acceleration and breaking? Tesla is screaming that you should.

But for cruise control you have accepted certain dangers and for AI you haven’t. That’s fine, don’t use it. For my own experience, the car can accelerate but the brakes are mine always, for if it does weird things with the power.

It is luddite though. “Tech is potentially dangerous” is luddite. I agree, it is potentially dangerous, so are knives, cars, etc. but we accept potential dangers in society, I would like them better regulated (deep fakes are bad yo) but I wouldn’t throw away scalpels because knife crime is on the rise.

Ok but there’s a distinction between “you don’t see the value in it”, and “there is no value in it.” The first means, congrats don’t use it, leave everyone else alone, unless you want to sound like Ben Shapiro claiming hip-hop isn’t music. The second is much harder to demonstrate, particularly as it’s value has already been demonstrated to many people. Just as an example, it turned a blank page into a covering letter that I could edit into what I wanted, breaking through blank page paralysis=value. Maybe it’s very little value, but it’s still value. Not the only use case for generative AI, or the best one.

Back in my day calculators were making us dumber, and to be clear I would accent that mental numeracy ability is lower now, but not that we’re dumber for having them. Luddite arguments are not convincing, I suppose I’m still hearing “calculators are making us dumber”

It’s AI… So… Yeah.

I dunno, I like AI for what it’s good for. The luddite argument doesn’t particularly sway me, my clothes, furniture, car, etc, are all machine made. Machine made stuff is everywhere, the handmade hill to die on was centuries back during the industrial revolution.

The anti-capitalist arguments don’t sway me when specifically applied to AI. The corporations are going to bad things? Well yeah! It’s not “AI bad” it’s “corporate bad”.

The ethical arguments kinda work. Deep fakes are bad, and I don’t think that the curios AI provides tip the scales when weighed against the bad of deepfakes.

Tl:Dr AI is a heavy, blunt tool.

Can your confusion be treated with a scalpel?

Scalpel: Am I a joke to you?