“AI” is a tool to move towards labor post scarcity. That’s all that it is. Billionaires using and owning AI is the problem. Billionaires scamming people with AI related buzzwords is the problem. BILLIONAIRES are the problem. Not AI.

Is nuclear tech a problem? No. It can be used for electricity generation. It can also be used to make bombs. The tech in itself is not a problem.

Sadly, most people on the left have taken the stance of blind opposition, without engaging in good faith arguments, without even attempting to understand the technology. These folks have opinions that range from:

• AI is not actually “intelligence”, where they try to show how it has 0 uses anywhere. These opinions are blatantly dissociated from reality, as professionals do indeed use AI to delegate a lot of tasks.
• “AI will take our jobs, creating a permanent underclass”. This is assuming that all of us live under authoritarianism. This is mostly Americans spreading their doomerism. Still a valid critique, though one that often incorrectly assumes that this new underclass will not riot and cause change through violence.
• AI damages the environment: True, but some additional context is required. The oil industry, the transportation industry and so on causes much much more environmental damage. Coming up with valid, constructive solutions to regulate the tech industry’s emissions makes sense. However, calling for total bans and moratoriums for development and research in AI is so so dumb.

Anywho, this comment is likely going to invite a lot of trolls. I won’t engage with anyone not arguing in good faith.

Do you live on Venus?

I dunno, I find it cute.

“Hey AI overview! Can you please AI overview this wikipedia article for me?”

No sympathy to drivers of objectively environmentally worse modes of transportation unwilling to follow traffic laws.

Ehhh naming stuff after individuals just sounds very icky to me

This is why consumer coops are so so important for stuff like this.

The insurance of a person I’m close to from their coop is around 9% cheaper than other non coop alternatives.

Consumer coops (irrespective of sector) always tend to have top notch customer service in my experience.

Really? For some reason, I really prefer DDG’s results over Google’s. Too much SEO spam for Google now (especially with AI).

DDG has this Reddit+ stack overflow thing that I quite like!

For generic factual stuff, I default to wikipedia. For opinions, it tends to be Reddit/Lemmy. If I have questions that are more of “tell me why my understanding of XYZ is wrong”, then LLMs (the big ones) tend to be quite useful (yeah yeah, hate on me for this as much as you want).

Sockpuppeting an argument with yourself is just masturbation though.

I would disagree. How else is one supposed to understand the limitations of a statement? The completeness of a position? Areas for further study? A confidence rating of sorts in a position?

No. Not unless the other party clearly knows that I’m arguing for a position that isn’t mine. Haven’t really had the opportunity to do that on Lemmy.

That being said, I do most of the counter argument stuff with myself to arrive at a given position. Or, read other people’s debates on the matter.

Mostly, yes a lot!

Writing about my thoughts, opinions and positions has helped me understand them even better!

You’re rarely going to change anyone’s position online, as sadly most aren’t arguing in good faith. BUT responding to rebuttals from others and questions (good faith or bad faith) leads to a very cool intellectual exercise where you get to probe your positions from so many different angles.

If things become toxic or brain-rotty, then you can just disengage without explanation! Kinda cool actually!!!

I fail to understand time and time again how people can tolerate those little annoying squeakers. They aren’t even cute ffs.

That being said, firecrackers just suck. Animals, babies, the elderly, folks sensitive to loud noises, folks with war related PTSD, the environment, all of this has to suffer because “oooo prettyyyyy”.

There are other forms of celebration and entertainment that do not have such negative externalities. Example: the opening ceremony of Paris 2024.