finish august
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@@ -15,8 +15,8 @@ references:
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file: www-wheresyoured-at-7mfome.txt
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file: www-wheresyoured-at-7mfome.txt
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- title: "AI isn't useless. But is it worth it?"
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- title: "AI isn't useless. But is it worth it?"
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url: https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/
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url: https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/
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date: 2024-08-13T03:39:45Z
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date: 2024-04-18T16:30:46Z
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file: www-citationneeded-news-4myqvd.txt
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file: www-citationneeded-news-loassa.txt
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- title: "Recently - macwright.com"
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- title: "Recently - macwright.com"
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url: https://macwright.com/2024/08/01/recently
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url: https://macwright.com/2024/08/01/recently
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date: 2024-08-09T03:43:36Z
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date: 2024-08-09T03:43:36Z
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@@ -1,628 +0,0 @@
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[1] [citation needed]
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a newsletter by Molly White
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• [4]Archive
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• [5]Recap issues
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• [6]Podcast feed
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• [7]Follow the Crypto
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• [8]About
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• [9]RSS
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• [10]Tip jar
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• [11]Privacy policy
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[13]Sign in [14]Subscribe
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Sidenotes
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[16][ ] Show footnotes
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[17][ ] Show references
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[18]( ) [19]( ) [20]( )
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[21]( ) [22]( ) [23]( )
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[24]Newsletter
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AI isn't useless. But is it worth it?
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AI can be kind of useful, but I'm not sure that a "kind of useful" tool
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justifies the harm.
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[25] Molly White
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[26]Molly White
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Apr 17, 2024 — 15 min read
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AI isn't useless. But is it worth it?
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audio-thumbnail
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AI isn't useless. But is it worth it?
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0:00
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/1311.164082
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[29][0 ]1×[33][100 ]
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Listen to a voiceover of this post, [34]download the recording for later, or
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[35]subscribe to the feed in your podcast app.
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As someone known for my criticism of the previous deeply flawed technology to
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become the subject of the tech world's overinflated aspirations, I have had
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people express surprise when I've remarked that generative artificial
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intelligence tools^[36]a can be useful. In fact, I was a little surprised
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myself.
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But there is a yawning gap between "AI tools can be handy for some things" and
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the kinds of stories AI companies are telling (and the media is uncritically
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reprinting). And when it comes to the massively harmful ways in which large
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language models (LLMs) are being developed and trained, the feeble argument
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that "well, they can sometimes be handy..." doesn't offer much of a
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justification.
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Some are surprised when they discover I don't think blockchains are useless,
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either. Like so many technologies, blockchains are designed to prioritize a few
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specific characteristics (coordination among parties who don't trust one
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another, censorship-resistance, etc.) at the expense of many others (speed,
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cost, etc.). And as they became trendy, people often used them for purposes
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where their characteristics weren't necessary — or were sometimes even unwanted
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— and so they got all of the flaws with none of the benefits. The thing with
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blockchains is that the things they are suited for are not things I personally
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find to be terribly desirable, such as the massive casinos that have emerged
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around gambling on token prices, or financial transactions that cannot be
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reversed.
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When I boil it down, I find my feelings about AI are actually pretty similar to
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my feelings about blockchains: they do a poor job of much of what people try to
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do with them, they can't do the things their creators claim they one day might,
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and many of the things they are well suited to do may not be altogether that
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beneficial. And while I do think that AI tools are more broadly useful than
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blockchains, they also come with similarly monstrous costs.
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[37]Subscribe
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I've been slow to get around to writing about artificial intelligence in any
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depth, mostly because I've been trying to take the time to interrogate my own
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knee-jerk response to a clearly overhyped technology. After spending so much
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time writing about a niche that's practically all hype with little practical
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functionality, it's all too easy to look at such a frothy mania around a
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different type of technology and assume it's all the same.
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In the earliest months of the LLM mania, my ethical concerns about the tools
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made me hesitant to try them at all. When my early tests were met with mediocre
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to outright unhelpful results, I'll admit I was quick to internally dismiss the
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technology as more or less useless. It takes time to experiment with these
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models and learn how to prompt them to produce useful outputs,^[38]b and I just
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didn't have that time then.^[39]c But as the hype around AI has grown, and with
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it my desire to understand the space in more depth, I wanted to really
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understand what these tools can do, to develop as strong an understanding as
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possible of their potential capabilities as well as their limitations and
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tradeoffs, to ensure my opinions are well-formed.
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I, like many others who have experimented with or adopted these products, have
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found that these tools actually can be pretty useful for some tasks. Though AI
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companies are prone to making overblown promises that the tools will shortly be
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able to replace your content writing team or generate feature-length films or
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develop a video game from scratch, the reality is far more mundane: they are
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handy in the same way that it might occasionally be useful to delegate some
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tasks to an inexperienced and sometimes sloppy intern.
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Still, I do think acknowledging the usefulness is important, while also holding
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companies to account for their false or impossible promises, abusive labor
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practices, and myriad other issues. When critics dismiss AI outright, I think
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in many cases this weakens the criticism, as readers who have used and
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benefited from AI tools think "wait, that's not been my experience at all".
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Use cases
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I've found AI tools to be useful to my writing, though not for the actual
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writing bit. When I'm writing, I often find myself with a word on the "tip of
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my tongue" (so to speak), and I've had more success with ChatGPT than with
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Google for these circumstances — although I can usually find the word with
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Google if I try hard enough.
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[Screenshot-2024-04-16-at-4]User: What's a word for something that will not
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affect the final outcome Assistant: Inconsequential
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Like many people, I also find it challenging to proofread my own writing, and I
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sometimes miss typos or weird grammar accidentally left in from changing a
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sentence halfway through.
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USER Please proofread the following text and point out any spelling or grammar
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problems, typos, and other such issues. Do not change the tone of the writing
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or try to adjust the reading level. Do not repeat the entire corrected text
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back to me, simply identify with brief quotes of the flawed text where changes
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need to be made. <document> Bitcoiners are all aflutter as the halving date
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approaches in about a week. This is very exciting for them, because the past
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three halvings look like they've precipitated major price increases
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(particularly if you use a log scale, which bitcoiners love). Bitcoin prices in
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linear scale (blue) and log scale (black) since 2010, with halvings marked by
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the red lines (chart via Bitbo) The "halving" is the moment when bitcoin block
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rewards that is, the amount of bitcoin issued as a reward to the miner for
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successfully mining a block are reduced by half. This is a strategy to ensure
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the total supply of bitcoin gradually tapers... RESPONSE Here are the spelling,
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grammar, and typo issues I found in the text: 1. "kind of the thought process"
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should be "kind of thought process" 2. "beliefs of guaranteed double-your-money
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returns" should be "belief of guaranteed double-your-money returns" 3. "2024"
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is used instead of "2023" in several places, likely typos: • "Notice of appeal
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filed on April 11, 2024." • "Letter motion filed on April 8, 2024." • "Tweet by
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Inner City Press, April 9, 2024." • "Tweet by Inner City Press, April 12,
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2024." • "Order filed on April 8, 2024." 4. "Committee on Committee on Banking"
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should be "Committee on Banking" 5. "consider proposals" should be "considers
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proposals" 6. "BitBoy" Armstrong's name is inconsistently capitalized as
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"Bitboy" in one instance 7. "coinflips" should be "coin flips" 8. There is an
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inconsistency in the number of Web3 is Going Just Great entries between April 1
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and April 12. The text states "11 entries" but only 7 are listed.Proofreading a
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newsletter post with Anthropic's Claude model
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LLMs are pretty decent at proofreading, and although they sometimes spit out a
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few false positives, this example from proofreading my most recent recap issue
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shows where it caught several mistakes (points 1, 2, 4, and 8; point 5 was also
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a genuine error, but it was within a quote).
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However, I don't think I need generative AI to do this, either. There are a lot
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of proofreading tools^[40]d that work quite well, and, helpfully, don't invent
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errors that weren't in the original text (as I've found the ChatGPT models are
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particularly wont to do).
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Coding has been the far more compelling use case for me. Copilot, Github's AI
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coding assistant, integrates directly into VSCode and other [41]IDEs. I've also
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played with using the more general models, like ChatGPT, for coding tasks. They
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are certainly flawed — Copilot has an annoying habit of "hallucinating"
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(fabricating) imports instead of deferring to VSCode's perfectly good non-AI
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auto-import, for example — but in other cases they are genuinely helpful.
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I've found these tools to be particularly good at simple tasks that would
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normally pull me out of my workflow to consult documentation or StackOverflow,
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like generating finicky CSS selectors or helping me craft database aggregation
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operations. On at least one occasion, they've pointed me towards useful
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functionality I never knew about and wouldn't even think to look up. They're
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also great at saving you some typing by spitting out the kind of boilerplate-y
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code you have to write for things like new unit tests.
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The tools can also do the kind of simple, repetitive tasks I'd previously write
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a quick script to do for me — or they can generate that quick script. For
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example, here's me asking ChatGPT to write a quick Python script to turn my
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blogroll OPML file into the JSON file I wanted while I was adding a [42]
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blogroll page to my website:
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Suggest some python code to turn an OPML file like this into a JSON file with
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fields for "text", "xmlUrl", and "htmlUrl": <opml version="1.0"> <head> <title>
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Feeds of molly.white5 tagged as Blogroll from Inoreader [https://
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www.inoreader.com]</title> </head> <body> <outline text="Blogroll" title=
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"Blogroll"> <outline text="Adactio" title="Adactio" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://
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adactio.com/rss/" htmlUrl="https://adactio.com/"/> <outline text="Anil Dash"
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title="Anil Dash" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://feeds.dashes.com/AnilDash" htmlUrl
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="https://dashes.com/anil/"/> <outline text="Ben Werdmüller" title="Ben
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Werdmüller" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://werd.io/?_t=rss" htmlUrl="https://
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werd.io/"/> <outline text="Birch Tree" title="Birch Tree" type="rss" xmlUrl=
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"https://birchtree.me/rss/" htmlUrl="https://birchtree.me/"/> <outline text=
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"cabel.com" title="cabel.com" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://cabel.com/feed/"
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htmlUrl="https://cabel.com"/>
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After changing the feeds.opml file path to the location of the file on my
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computer, the code it suggested worked without any modification:
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ASSISTANT python import xml.etree.Element Tree as ET import json tree =
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ET.parse('feeds.opml') root = tree.getroot() feeds = for outline in
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root.findall('.//outline'): feed = { 'text': outline.attrib.get('text'),
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'xmlUrl': outline.attrib.get('xmlUrl"), 'htmlUrl': outline.attrib.get
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('htmlUrl') } feeds.append(feed) json_data = json.dumps(feeds, indent=4) with
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open('feeds.json', 'w') as f: f.write(json_data) This code will read the OPML
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file 'feeds.opml', extract the 'text', 'xmlUrl', and 'htmlUrl' attributes from
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each outline element, and save the data into a JSON file 'feeds.json' with
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proper indentation.
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Besides my own experimentation, others are using these tools in ways that are
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really hard to argue aren't useful. Someone I know in real life has told me
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about creating a custom model based on their own emails, which they then query
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as needed, or use to create some fairly boilerplate documents they previously
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had to spend hours on. Open source developer Simon Willison has been
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documenting his own AI coding experiments on his blog, and has described how
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LLMs have [43]made him more ambitious with his projects and more likely to
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embark on what he calls "[44]sidequests".^[45]e Sumana Harihareswara [46]uses
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OpenAI's speech recognition tools to create subtitles for her videos and
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recorded talks, or to "mine" them for material she can later reuse. Elsewhere
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on the internet, those who speak English as a second language have spoken of
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LLMs' usefulness in revising their professional communications. Others use it
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to summarize meeting notes. Some use it as a starting point for documentation.
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Reality check
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Despite some unarguably useful features, the limitations of these tools make
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themselves readily apparent.
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When it comes to coding, while it can make for a handy assistant to an
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experienced developer, it can't replace an experienced developer. Microsoft's
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[47]Super Bowl commercial, which shows a person prompting Copilot to "Write
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code for my 3D open world game", is pure fantasy.
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molly Write code for my 3D open world game GitHub Copilot Used 1 reference >
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Sorry, but writing code for a 3D open world game is a complex task that
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requires a lot of time and effort. It's not something that can be done in a
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single response. However, I can help you get started by creating a basic
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structure for a game using a game development framework like Unity or Unreal
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Engine. Here's a simple example of a Unity script in C# that moves a game
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object: using System.Collections; using System.Collections.Generic; using
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UnityEngine; public class PlayerMovement: MonoBehaviour { public float speed =
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10.0f; void Update() { float moveHorizontal = Input.GetAxis ("Horizontal");
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float moveVertical = Input.GetAxis ("Vertical"); Vector3 movement = new Vector3
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(moveHorizontal, 0.0f, moveVertical); transform.position = transform.position +
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movement * speed * Time.de } } This script should be attached to the player
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object. It takes input from the keyboard and moves the player object
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accordingly. The speed variable can be adjusted to control how fast the player
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moves.
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And in my experience, it sometimes gets in the way more than it helps, as when
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I experimented with it while working on a [48]Chrome extension I was writing
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recently and ultimately had to turn it off. It constantly suggested plausible
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but completely non-functional code, scaffolded the project in an outdated
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format, and autogenerated CSS classes that looked like they could be Bootstrap
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classes, but weren't. It's good at short functions and common boilerplate, but
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it's not going to architect a project for you, and, as with writing, it's not
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going to "think" of novel ideas. I like it for getting annoying, repetitive
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tasks out of my way; I don't worry it's going to take my job.
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Arguably the most widely-described use case for generative AI is writing.
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Indeed, as media companies lay off journalists in droves, [49]some [50]outlets
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are replacing their work with shoddy, AI-generated approximations. Freelance
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writers are reporting challenges in finding work as their former clients decide
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that ChatGPT can do a good enough job. But what these companies and clients
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fail to recognize is that ChatGPT does not write, it generates text, and anyone
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who's spotted obviously LLM-generated content in the wild immediately knows the
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difference.
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You've gotten this far into my article, so you're recently familiar with a
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couple dozen paragraphs of purely human writing. Contrast that with LLMs'
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attempts, from prompts with varying degrees of detail, with my very best
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efforts put into trying to get it to sound halfway normal:
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A table with a range of LLM prompts provided to three models: ChatGPT, Claude,
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and Gemini([51]spreadsheet)
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Yikes. I particularly like how, when I ask them to try to sound like me, or to
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at least sound less like a chatbot, they adopt a sort of "cool teacher"
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persona, as if they're sitting backwards on a chair to have a heart-to-heart.
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Back when I used to wait tables, the other waitresses and I would joke to each
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other about our "waitress voice", which were the personas we all subconsciously
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seemed to slip into when talking to customers. They varied somewhat, but they
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were all uniformly saccharine, with slightly higher-pitched voices, and with
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the general demeanor as though you were talking to someone you didn't think was
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very bright. Every LLM's writing "voice" reminds me of that.
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Even if the telltale tone is surmountable, LLMs are good at generating text but
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not at generating novel ideas. This is, of course, an inherent feature of
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technology that's designed to generate plausible mathematical approximations of
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what you've asked it for based on its large corpus of training data; it doesn't
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think, and so the best you're ever going to get from it is some mashup of other
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peoples' thinking.^[52]f
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LLM-generated text is good enough for some use cases, which I'll return to in a
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moment. But I think most people, myself certainly included, would be mortified
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to replace any of our writing with this kind of stuff.^[53]g
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Furthermore, LLMs' "hallucination" problem means that everything it does must
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be carefully combed over for errors, which can sometimes be hard to spot.
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Because of this, while it's handy for proofreading newsletters or helping me
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quickly add a fun feature to my website, I wouldn't trust LLMs to do anything
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|
||||||
of real import. And the tendency for people to put too much trust into these
|
|
||||||
tools^[54]h is among their most serious problems: no amount of warning labels
|
|
||||||
and disclaimers seem to be sufficient to stop people from trying to use them to
|
|
||||||
provide legal advice or sell AI "therapy" services.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Finally, advertisements that LLMs might someday generate feature-length films
|
|
||||||
or replace artists seem neither feasible nor desirable. AI-generated images
|
|
||||||
tend to suffer from a similar bland "tone" as its writing, and their
|
|
||||||
proliferation only makes me desire real human artwork more. With generated
|
|
||||||
video, they inevitably trend towards the uncanny, and the technology's inherent
|
|
||||||
limitations — as a tool that is probabilistically generating "likely" images
|
|
||||||
rather than ones based on some kind of understanding — seem unlikely to ever
|
|
||||||
overcome that. And the idea that we all should be striving to "replace artists"
|
|
||||||
— or any kind of labor — is deeply concerning, and I think incredibly
|
|
||||||
illustrative of the true desires of these companies: to increase corporate
|
|
||||||
profits at any cost.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
When LLMs are good enough
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
As I mentioned before, there are some circumstances in which LLMs are good
|
|
||||||
enough. There are some types of writing where LLMs are already being widely
|
|
||||||
used: for example, by businesspeople who use them to generate meeting notes,
|
|
||||||
fluff up their outgoing emails or summarize their incoming ones, or spit out
|
|
||||||
lengthy, largely identical reports that they're required to write regularly.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
You can also spot LLMs in all sorts of places on the internet, where they're
|
|
||||||
being used to try to boost websites' search engine rankings. That weird, bubbly
|
|
||||||
GPT voice is well suited to marketing copy and social media posts, too. Any
|
|
||||||
place on the web that incentivizes high-volume, low effort text is being
|
|
||||||
inundated by generated text, like e-book stores, online marketplaces, and
|
|
||||||
practically any review or comment section.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
But I find one common thread among the things AI tools are particularly suited
|
|
||||||
to doing: do we even want to be doing these things? If all you want out of a
|
|
||||||
meeting is the AI-generated summary, maybe that meeting could've been an email.
|
|
||||||
If you're using AI to write your emails, and your recipient is using AI to read
|
|
||||||
them, could you maybe cut out the whole thing entirely? If mediocre,
|
|
||||||
auto-generated reports are passing muster, is anyone actually reading them? Or
|
|
||||||
is it just middle-management busywork?
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
As for the AI [55]enshittification of the internet, we all seem to agree
|
|
||||||
already that we don't want this, and yet here it is. No one wants to open up
|
|
||||||
Etsy to look for a thoughtful birthday gift, only to give up after scrolling
|
|
||||||
through pages of low-quality print-on-demand items or resold Aliexpress items
|
|
||||||
that have flooded the site.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[Screenshot-2024-04-13-at-5]
|
|
||||||
[Screenshot-2024-04-13-at-5]
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Your AI model is showing
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
No one wants to Google search a question only to end up on several pages of
|
|
||||||
keyword-spam vomit before finding an authoritative answer.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
But the incentives at play on these platforms, mean that AI junk is inevitable.
|
|
||||||
In fact, the LLMs may be new, but the behavior is not; just like [56]keyword
|
|
||||||
stuffing and [57]content farms and the myriad ways people used software to
|
|
||||||
generate reams upon reams of low-quality text before ChatGPT ever came on the
|
|
||||||
scene, if the incentive is there, the behavior will follow. If the internet's
|
|
||||||
enshittification feels worse post-ChatGPT, it's because of the quantity and
|
|
||||||
speed at which this junk is being produced, not because the junk is new.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Costs and benefits
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Throughout all this exploration and experimentation I've felt a lingering
|
|
||||||
guilt, and a question: is this even worth it? And is it ethical for me to be
|
|
||||||
using these tools, even just to learn more about them in hopes of later
|
|
||||||
criticizing them more effectively?
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
The costs of these AI models are huge, and not just in terms of the billions of
|
|
||||||
dollars of VC funds they're burning through at incredible speed. These models
|
|
||||||
are well known to require far more computing power (and thus electricity and
|
|
||||||
water) than a traditional web search or spellcheck. Although AI company
|
|
||||||
datacenters are not intentionally wasting electricity in the same way that
|
|
||||||
bitcoin miners perform millions of useless computations, I'm also not sure that
|
|
||||||
generating a picture of a person with twelve fingers on each hand or text that
|
|
||||||
reads as though written by an endlessly smiling children's television star
|
|
||||||
who's being held hostage is altogether that much more useful than a bitcoin.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
There's a huge human cost as well. Artificial intelligence relies heavily upon
|
|
||||||
"[58]ghost labor": work that appears to be performed by a computer, but is
|
|
||||||
actually delegated to often terribly underpaid contractors, working in horrible
|
|
||||||
conditions, with few labor protections and no benefits. There is a huge amount
|
|
||||||
of work that goes into compiling and labeling data to feed into these models,
|
|
||||||
and each new model depends on [59]ever-greater amounts of said data — training
|
|
||||||
data which is well known to be scraped from just about any possible source,
|
|
||||||
regardless of copyright or consent. And some of these workers suffer serious
|
|
||||||
psychological harm as a result of exposure to deeply traumatizing material in
|
|
||||||
the course of sanitizing datasets or training models to perform content
|
|
||||||
moderation tasks.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Then there's the question of opportunity cost to those who are increasingly
|
|
||||||
being edged out of jobs by LLMs,^[60]i despite the fact that AI often can't
|
|
||||||
capably perform the work they were doing. Should I really be using AI tools to
|
|
||||||
proofread my newsletters when I could otherwise pay a real person to do that
|
|
||||||
proofreading? Even if I never intended to hire such a person?
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Finally, there's the issue of how these tools are being used, and the lack of
|
|
||||||
effort from their creators to limit their abuse. We're seeing them used to
|
|
||||||
generate disinformation via increasingly convincing [61]deepfaked images,
|
|
||||||
audio, or video, and the [62]reckless use of them by previously reputable news
|
|
||||||
outlets and others who publish unedited AI content is also contributing to
|
|
||||||
misinformation. Even where AI isn't being directly used, it's degrading trust
|
|
||||||
so badly that people have to question whether the content they're seeing is
|
|
||||||
generated, or whether the "person" they're interacting with online might just
|
|
||||||
be ChatGPT. Generative AI is being used to [63]harass and [64]sexually abuse.
|
|
||||||
Other AI models are enabling [65]increased surveillance in the workplace and
|
|
||||||
for "security" purposes — where their well-known biases are worsening
|
|
||||||
discrimination by police who are wooed by promises of "predictive policing".
|
|
||||||
The [66]list goes on.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
I'm glad that I took the time to experiment with AI tools, both because I
|
|
||||||
understand them better and because I have found them to be useful in my
|
|
||||||
day-to-day life. But even as someone who has used them and found them helpful,
|
|
||||||
it's remarkable to see the gap between what they can do and what their
|
|
||||||
promoters promise they will someday be able to do. The benefits, though extant,
|
|
||||||
seem to pale in comparison to the costs.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
But the reality is that you can't build a hundred-billion-dollar industry
|
|
||||||
around a technology that's kind of useful, mostly in mundane ways, and that
|
|
||||||
boasts perhaps small increases in productivity if and only if the people who
|
|
||||||
use it fully understand its limitations. And you certainly can't justify the
|
|
||||||
kind of exploitation, extraction, and environmental cost that the industry has
|
|
||||||
been mostly getting away with, in part because people have believed their lofty
|
|
||||||
promises of someday changing the world.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
I would love to live in a world where the technology industry widely valued
|
|
||||||
making incrementally useful tools to improve peoples' lives, and were honest
|
|
||||||
about what those tools could do, while also carefully weighing the technology's
|
|
||||||
costs. But that's not the world we live in. Instead, we need to push back
|
|
||||||
against endless tech manias and overhyped narratives, and oppose the
|
|
||||||
"innovation at any cost" mindset that has infected the tech sector.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Footnotes
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
1. When I refer to "AI" in this piece, I'm mostly referring to the much
|
|
||||||
narrower field of [67]generative artificial intelligence and [68]large
|
|
||||||
language models (LLMs), which is what people generally mean these days when
|
|
||||||
they say "AI". [69]↩
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
2. While much fun has been made of those describing themselves as "prompt
|
|
||||||
engineers", I have to say I kind of get it. It takes some experience to be
|
|
||||||
able to open up a ChatGPT window or other LLM interface and actually
|
|
||||||
provide instructions that will produce useful output. I've heard this
|
|
||||||
compared to "google-fu" in the early days of Google, when the search engine
|
|
||||||
was much worse at interpreting natural language queries, and I think that's
|
|
||||||
rather apt. [70]↩
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
3. ChatGPT was publicly released in November 2022, right as the cryptocurrency
|
|
||||||
industry was in peak meltdown. [71]↩
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
4. Many of which are built with various other kinds of machine learning or
|
|
||||||
artificial intelligence, if not necessarily generative AI. [72]↩
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
5. As it happens, he has also [73]written about the "AI isn't useful"
|
|
||||||
criticism. [74]↩
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
6. Some AI boosters will argue that most or all original thought is also
|
|
||||||
merely a mashup of other peoples' thoughts, which I think is a rather
|
|
||||||
insulting minimization of human ingenuity. [75]↩
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
7. Nor do I want to, by the way. I performed these tests for the purposes of
|
|
||||||
illustration, but I neither intend nor want to start using these tools to
|
|
||||||
replace my writing. I'm here to write, and you're here to read my writing,
|
|
||||||
and that's how it will remain. See my [76]about page. [77]↩
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
8. Something that is absolutely encouraged by the tools' creators, who give
|
|
||||||
them chat-like interfaces, animations suggesting that the tool is "typing"
|
|
||||||
messages back to you, and a confident writing style that encourages people
|
|
||||||
to envision the software as another thinking human being. [78]↩
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
9. Or, more accurately, by managers and executives who believe the marketing
|
|
||||||
hype out of AI companies that proclaim that their tools can replace
|
|
||||||
workers, without seeming to understand at all what those workers do. [79]↩
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Loved this post? Consider [80]signing up for a pay-what-you-want subscription
|
|
||||||
or [81]leaving a tip to support Molly White's work, which is entirely funded by
|
|
||||||
readers like you.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Read more
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[82] An image of Donald Trump at a podium, pointing, with a logo behind him
|
|
||||||
reading “robconf2024”
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Issue 63 – RobConf 2024
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Coinbase responds to campaign finance violation allegations, Trump panders to
|
|
||||||
bitcoiners, and I chat with Lyn Alden about sexism in bitcoin.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Aug 7, 2024
|
|
||||||
[83] The Coinbase logo and the US Marshals seal overlaid on a photo of two
|
|
||||||
people shaking ha
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Coinbase appears to have violated campaign finance laws with a $25 million
|
|
||||||
super PAC donation
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Actively involved in contract negotiations with a federal government agency,
|
|
||||||
Coinbase was likely prohibited from making its $25 million contribution to the
|
|
||||||
Fairshake cryptocurrency-focused super PAC in May 2024.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Jul 30, 2024
|
|
||||||
[84] A person dropping an orange envelope with a white bitcoin symbol into a
|
|
||||||
ballot box
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
When did cryptocurrency policy become a voter issue?
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
I don’t believe that it has.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Jul 29, 2024
|
|
||||||
[85] Rolls of artificial turf in a shop
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Issue 62 – Grassroots
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Coinbase’s Stand With Crypto Alliance fudges the numbers, a (former) crypto
|
|
||||||
industry CEO has a meltdown, and another exchange suffers a nine-figure hack.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Jul 23, 2024
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
Citation Needed features critical coverage of the cryptocurrency industry and
|
|
||||||
of issues in the broader technology world.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
It is independently published by Molly White, and entirely supported by readers
|
|
||||||
like you.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[86]Subscribe
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|
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• [87]Archive
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© 2024 Molly White.
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
References:
|
|
||||||
|
|
||||||
[1] https://www.citationneeded.news/
|
|
||||||
[4] https://www.citationneeded.news/page/2/
|
|
||||||
[5] https://www.citationneeded.news/tag/weekly-recaps/
|
|
||||||
[6] https://www.citationneeded.news/podcast/
|
|
||||||
[7] https://followthecrypto.org/
|
|
||||||
[8] https://www.citationneeded.news/about/
|
|
||||||
[9] https://www.citationneeded.news/rss/
|
|
||||||
[10] https://donate.stripe.com/14k8AseTNaqLaZy7ss
|
|
||||||
[11] https://www.citationneeded.news/privacy/
|
|
||||||
[13] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#/portal/signin
|
|
||||||
[14] https://www.citationneeded.news/signup
|
|
||||||
[24] https://www.citationneeded.news/tag/newsletter/
|
|
||||||
[25] https://www.citationneeded.news/author/molly/
|
|
||||||
[26] https://www.citationneeded.news/author/molly/
|
|
||||||
[34] https://www.citationneeded.news/content/media/2024/04/2024-04-16-AI-isnt-useless-voiceover.mp3
|
|
||||||
[35] https://www.citationneeded.news/podcast/
|
|
||||||
[36] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-1
|
|
||||||
[37] https://www.citationneeded.news/signup
|
|
||||||
[38] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-2
|
|
||||||
[39] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-3
|
|
||||||
[40] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-4
|
|
||||||
[41] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integrated_development_environment
|
|
||||||
[42] https://www.mollywhite.net/blogroll
|
|
||||||
[43] https://simonwillison.net/2023/Mar/27/ai-enhanced-development/
|
|
||||||
[44] https://simonwillison.net/2024/Mar/22/claude-and-chatgpt-case-study/#not-notable
|
|
||||||
[45] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-5
|
|
||||||
[46] https://www.harihareswara.net/posts/2022/speech-to-text-with-whisper-how-i-use-it-why/
|
|
||||||
[47] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaCVSUbYpVc
|
|
||||||
[48] https://github.com/molly/courtlistener-download
|
|
||||||
[49] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/sports-illustrated-found-publishing-ai-generated-stories-photos-and-authors
|
|
||||||
[50] https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2023/01/17/cnet-ai-articles-journalism-corrections/
|
|
||||||
[51] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSYCmj-hH51Yz8uc0W55lYYvrCD3464Jb2uULI9_aqsZ6ZGsLl-5IXYv1HkNiNagLFyYgtMubGQx-Ns/pubhtml
|
|
||||||
[52] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-6
|
|
||||||
[53] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-7
|
|
||||||
[54] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-8
|
|
||||||
[55] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
|
|
||||||
[56] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyword_stuffing
|
|
||||||
[57] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_farm
|
|
||||||
[58] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_work
|
|
||||||
[59] https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/ai-training-data-synthetic-openai-anthropic-9230f8d8
|
|
||||||
[60] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-9
|
|
||||||
[61] https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-elections-disinformation-chatgpt-bc283e7426402f0b4baa7df280a4c3fd
|
|
||||||
[62] https://www.newsguardtech.com/special-reports/ai-tracking-center/
|
|
||||||
[63] https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/08/technology/ai-4chan-online-harassment.html
|
|
||||||
[64] https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/12/01/1084164/deepfake-porn-scandal-pushing-us-lawmakers/
|
|
||||||
[65] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/jan/07/artificial-intelligence-surveillance-workers
|
|
||||||
[66] https://incidentdatabase.ai/
|
|
||||||
[67] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_artificial_intelligence
|
|
||||||
[68] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model
|
|
||||||
[69] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-anchor-1
|
|
||||||
[70] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-anchor-2
|
|
||||||
[71] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-anchor-3
|
|
||||||
[72] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-anchor-4
|
|
||||||
[73] https://simonwillison.net/2024/Mar/22/claude-and-chatgpt-case-study/#llms-are-useful
|
|
||||||
[74] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-anchor-5
|
|
||||||
[75] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-anchor-6
|
|
||||||
[76] https://www.citationneeded.news/about/
|
|
||||||
[77] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-anchor-7
|
|
||||||
[78] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-anchor-8
|
|
||||||
[79] https://www.citationneeded.news/ai-isnt-useless/#footnote-anchor-9
|
|
||||||
[80] https://www.citationneeded.news/signup
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[81] https://donate.stripe.com/14k8AseTNaqLaZy7ss
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[82] https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-63/
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[83] https://www.citationneeded.news/coinbase-campaign-finance-violation/
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[84] https://www.citationneeded.news/when-did-cryptocurrency-become-a-voter-issue/
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[85] https://www.citationneeded.news/issue-62/
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[86] https://www.citationneeded.news/signup
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[87] https://www.citationneeded.news/page/2/
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[88] https://www.citationneeded.news/tag/weekly-recaps/
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[89] https://www.citationneeded.news/podcast/
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[90] https://followthecrypto.org/
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[91] https://www.citationneeded.news/about/
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[92] https://www.citationneeded.news/rss/
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[93] https://donate.stripe.com/14k8AseTNaqLaZy7ss
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[94] https://www.citationneeded.news/privacy/
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[95] https://twitter.com/molly0xFFF/
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[96] https://hachyderm.io/@molly0xfff
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[97] https://bsky.app/profile/molly.wiki
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[98] https://www.youtube.com/@molly0xfff
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[99] https://www.tiktok.com/@molly0xfff
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[100] https://www.mollywhite.net/
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Reference in New Issue
Block a user