CONTENT WARNING: WORD SALAD. NOT WORTH READING. RAMBLINGS.
thinking about AI a lot today
like i woke up and it's on my mind. i think school is quietly changing, and so is work, with more and more people incorporating AI into their lives.
maybe it's on my mind because of the recent news
misunderstanding of AI
i think a lot of people and companies misunderstand AI, and are misusing it. they're delegating tasks wholesale to AI, producing absolute slop, and then wondering why their productivity levels arent going up. they're firing employees fully believing that genAI or agentic AI can replace the work a human puts out but that's not true. I think it's mostly because they don't understand technology, the way that the younger generations or people who work in ICT understand the technology, and they aren't intelligent enough to parse AI output to make it useful.
including AI (a tool) within your workflow today is good. there. i said it.
hypothetically
consider the following:
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1. student A does not use AI. writes an essay for school, does the required research for the subject matter, completes it, and submits it. they review the structure, flow, tone, and base their essay on previously written / read essays.
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2. student B uses AI, writes an essay. uses AI as a sounding board to bounce ideas off of. uses AI to provide feedback on their essay structure, flow, and tone. so that they can reiteratively improve it. completes the essay with the improvements and submits it.
we don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out which one will do it faster, maybe even better. or which of the two students today will decide to do. and if the bulk of students go with scenario 2, that pushes the bell curve and actually punishes student A types. we know that at the end of it all, grades are what matters, not what was retained from lectures. grades get you the jobs, and most jobs retrain you and most of your school knowledge goes out the window anyway. this is the reality, if you personally do not want to accept the fact that people are integrating AI into their work, that's on you, student A.
student B is also able to explore their subject matter deeper than student A, since they have more advice to work on, and have a better and clearer picture of what their report should be much faster than student A. in a perfect world, student A should also have the same ability, but instead of checking in with AI, they should be able to check in with their professor or lecturer. unfortunately most professors do NOT have the time to entertain you.
student B is able to have a better learning experience while writing the essay, as they are able to reiteratively improve upon their work with constructive feedback, which student A may find difficult to get.
of course, the above is based on a lot of assumptions such as student A not having the luxury of having advice, but the truth is school is like that for most.
what AI CANNOT do for you is produce your work wholesale. mainly because they cannot understand the nuances of the project scenario, requirements, constraints, and deliverables as well as you do. AI is really just a word calculator, something that produces what it deems to be what you're asking for, based on a set of textual data / literature it has been trained on.
the dogmatic beliefs in regards to AI
this is the main pitfall of today's AI users. they request for AI to replace entire teams, spending ridiculous amounts of money to pay for the tokens used and still get absolute slop in return. because they don't understand AI, because they don't care, and likely do not even use AI meaningfully in their lives. a lot of people in this camp are also blindly "pro AI" and arent even sure how exactly AI works. most of them don't even write code. hell they probably don't understand what an LLM is and how it works. they're also the group that probably brushes over the impact that AI and data centers are having on the environment.
the other end of the spectrum, is likely where most of my blog readers (if there are any) sits. one may say AI is not inevitable, that we can change things blah blah blah. sure. just like how people stopped using computers and calculators when processing chips were created. just like how search engines and websites were abandoned. you're very welcome to live in your reality, and the world moves on, student A.
so why the fuck am i yapping
my point is, again, that AI is a tool. blindly supporting it and not considering its flaws and drawbacks OR blindly standing against it and not considering the benefits it clearly provides are both ridiculous. in fact i might go as far as saying that it is cultish behavior. in the era where data is constantly being streamed into our brains, take a little time away from the black and white gangs and think for yourself.
we must practice AI use intelligently, with the required contextual knowledge. we must also admit that not everything can be replaced by AI. AI is good at scraping, writing essays and reports, producing slop videos. i have to reiterate that within this era of information overload, constant deluge of data, a tool that processes the data and narrows the scope of what we're looking for is useful but it shouldn't be used inflate someone's confidence to operate within a domain of which they are not an expert of, as this carries serious ethical issues.
hell, even the most famous AI in media, jarvis, isn't used like this. have u ever seen tony stark say "hey jarvis please make me the bestestest, strongest, most coolest and powerful unkillable iron man suit plz! and no mistakes plx!"?
no, tony uses it to enhance his workflow, he comes up with the ideas, the AI rightfully provides him with data and automations he needs.
so don't be a fucking retard.
more:
i found these after i was done yapping so no i'm not copying coldfusion i'm just in that headspace. also! who's to say coldfusion isn't copying ME! (hah as if)
ok last thing - don't @ me if u are sitting at either end of the spectrum. i do not respect blind devotees.
beep boop blargh,
chxshire22