che cazzo è @rabittotouka - Tumblr Blog

when everyone's reblogging a post but I know op's a fucking weirdo

racism literally bleeds through the cracks of everything and if you dare to even barely point it out everyone will kill you

yossyislandd

racism runs so deeply in people that if you call it out you are calling out them, and instead of sitting down and examining their own racism they lash out at you for being sooo meansies to them. you don't even have to be talking about anyone's racist behavior in particular because it makes racists so uncomfortable they will come forward themselves and act like you're targeting them specifically. it's okay when they do it because they're doing it in the correct way, in the nice way! they don't mean it like that. in fact they're actually being progressive. you're the cruel one for acting like their racist behavior is racist. you're the problem if you're bothered by their comfort racism. you're the bitchy colored person who makes eeeverything about racism when it so clearly isn't. i'm fucking sick of this.

valend

When the guitar solo is so good it shoots you in the head and fucks you through the hole

junk-thunder

she goes to the o-zone when i layer

greelin

how the hell do people work full time AND work out. and also eat. i feel like a dvd player

mariacallous

darkspaceboytoy

One day I will be your early 30s mutual. Take my hand and come with me

pekingopera

tboys

i never fuck with skinny bitches cause what if she starts talking about her pages

cannibalchicken

aletheyass

i hate to see those air bnb lockbox thingies on a beautiful old building literally kill yourself

goodluckdetective

So Hank Green got caught using AI and it’s a whole huge blow up, and I really don’t have much interest in adding to the pile on.

However, I do think this case is great example of what happens when smart people decide they can use these systems “responsibly.”

Let’s put aside the plagiarism and the energy use for a second (not that these don’t matter, but they’re not relevant to my point at the moment) and pretend these systems were made with entirely properly obtained info and ran on only solar, but otherwise were entirely the same. If you’re a person, you might think “okay, I’m going to only use this to come up with ideas for my next paper: I’m going to do all the research myself and the writing, I’m just gonna brainstorm topics.”

The thing is, even if you’re trying to limit use to just “brainstorming” the chatbot isn’t going to limit itself to just brainstorming. You might ask it “what should I write about involving Greek history” and it may suggest “the plague of Athens” but it’s also going to suggest some “basic info” on the plague of Athens that you might end up picking up and deciding your topic is. It’s going to provide you with “research.” And even if you decide to check that research yourself, that’s still setting you down a specific path you might not have picked organically.

And speaking of double checking its “research”, fact checking is a time heavy process. Not only now do you have to read the original text the bot provided, but you also have to compare it line by line with the summary the bot provided. That’s more time than it would have taken to just read the article by itself. And with any time heavy task, people are going to get lazy. And in original research being lazy might mean skimming a paper or an abstract, chatbots allow you to be lazy without looking at the article at all.

And soon enough, despite telling yourself you were only going to use it for brainstorming, you have offloaded topic generation, research and eventually even drafting because that’s what these bots are intended to do. They are not meant to serve as research tools or help brainstorm or serve as a bouncing off board: they are built to encourage maximum engagement. And that means if you go at them with the best of ethical intentions, they are built to tempt you to use them as much as possible, regardless of whatever line you drew in the sand for yourself.

Anyway, my main thought here is you are not smart enough to outwit the dopamine machine. It wants your attention and nothing more. Do not assume you can resist just because you know what’s under the hood.

goodluckdetective

Whenever you decide to use a tool, you should consider “what is this tool designed to do” and for LLM’s that answer is “maximize user engagement.” Anything else is in service to that goal.

goodluckdetective

My read of this came from Hank’s own response to the situation which you can find here. I’ve screenshotted the part in particular that drew my attention and spawned this post below:

Obvs, Hank’s situation is not the same as the scenario I laid out but I think the snippet above gets back to my main point which is these tools are built to encourage interaction and that’s a hard thing to avoid, regardless of intentions.

Some other notes:

1. As stated, I don’t bring this up to add to a pile on, just to use this as an example of something I’ve seen happen with folks trying to engage in this tech with an ethical framework. This is because-

2. Frankly, I think shame is a shit motivator. I bring all this up to try to draw attention to something I find under discussed which is what these LLMS are meant to do, and what they are advertised for which are often very separate lists. (I didn’t even get into how they’re meant to train off user data but that’s another can of worms). If you want to discourage AI use, it’s a far better strategy to listen to why the person is engaging with AI and then address that reason.

3. I don’t want to come off as someone trying to scare folks that they’ll get addicted just by touching the stuff: my point is merely that is it critical to know what something is made for before engaging with it. This actually goes for a lot of tech besides AI like Google or social media (which are also designed to 1. Capture your attention and 2. Show you advertisements). AI isn’t a special kind of evil in this way, merely a continuation of a tech trend where a product is sold to a consumer with the goal of the time of the consumer becoming the source of revenue.

4. I have book recs on this topic. As you can guess, this is an academic interest of mine. But that’s another post if folks are interested.