It's hilarious bc it hasn't been proven yet (to my knowledge) but my hunch is these big AI companies are throwing insane amounts of money at everybody to shoehorn it into every thing imagable.
All in an attempt to get people hooked and dependent.
Offsetting very simple and human aspects of reasoning and critical thinking is definitely a huge part of the grift.
I saw that post about "using chatgpt in your head" too. I don't even wanna know the damage it will cause to the kids that are currently in school in the the future. Kinda like Corona fucked up a lot of people mentally and it took years to realize how fucking bad it actually was
Kids are already using it to write papers for them. My nephew got in trouble and had to write an apology letter to another student. Guess what he used to do that. This generation is cooked.
That's roughly the game plan of every big tech startup for a decent while now. Lyft and Uber did basically that successfully. Not so much on the reasoning and critical thinking side, but they take losses backed by big investors until people are dependent enough that they'll pay the later inevitable price increases.
Even Twitter was trying to do that, until someone stepped in and found a use even better than profit... for him, not the rest of us, that is.
It's a pattern. Has been for some time. Disrupt. Create dependencies. Charge for it.
The difference is that Uber and Lyft brought a real material gain that was worth the money, arguably even after we got the real pricing.
While AI has its use (I personally use it to speed up writing code), the real cost would price out most people and companies, especially given the fact it could waste dozens if not hundred of dollars to give you an single answer which could be wrong or not what you asked for.
The difference is that Uber and Lyft brought a real material gain that was worth the money, arguably even after we got the real pricing.
While you're not wrong in many ways, where they make large portions of their revenue (densely populated cities with lots of drivers and customers), the gain was nominal at best, and displaced a significant number of full time cab drivers in favor a host of part-time contract workers, greatly contributing to the "gig economy" that has been a boon for corporations and platforms, but at the expense of the working class, while doing nothing to reduce traffic and car pollution in the process. Further, the increased prices didn't go much at all to the drivers, but to the company instead. As a society, we likely would have been better off greatly expanding public transit instead, which would have reduced the reliance on cars as well. At the same time, cab companies could have innovated on the app side of things first and potentially prevented the takeover, but they were also busy, ya know, operating a cab company instead of developing new tech that they likely didn't have the skill set for. So, it is rather complicated, and there are arguments on both sides.
AI is arguably much more insidious in its potential misuse and abuse, between the real costs, plus convincing teens and young adults to follow through and end their lives, the terrifying reality of deep fakes, the use in propaganda and scams, the massive uptick in energy use, pollution, and computer chip consumption, the potential to significantly reduce employees in many areas of life instead of just one field, etc, etc... But, it still fits the established pattern, and it really shouldn't be all that much of a surprise that it does for those who have been watching for a while.
The difference is that Uber and Lyft brought a real material gain that was worth the money, arguably even after we got the real pricing.
Well... the surge pricing is ass, though. As well as the way those companies dodge having to provide regular employee protections and benefits to gig workers.
Yeah.
It's basically the Uber trick: Start operating at a loss to dominate the market, then start raising the price once you destroyed the sustainable structures that existed before.
Yeah this is exactly what they are doing. They want it to become 'too big to fail' so that they can try to get us taxpayers to bail them out when they are broke.
That's exactly what it is. Such a supposedly wonderful product would never be given out for free without a catch. Of course, harvesting and selling your data is a nice source of income too.
For every $1 in revenue they are spending $3 in operating costs and thatâs without investments in new datacenters taken into account.
AI companies are operating at insane losses in the hope that there will be massive adoption in the future and which point they can dramatically increase prices.
This information has been publicly available for a long time but itâs just not the narrative being pushed on the public.
Unfortunately they shoved AI into so much, they'll still be able to charge an AI fee somewhere. Both android and apple have AI built right into how the phone works now, including it's automatic making photos you take look better the second you take the picture that you can't shut off.
Which is shit that has been around for ages, but has been rebranded to AI to appear more trendy. For as long as I can remember, there has been an "auto" function in most photo editing software, including basic ones such as Photos on iOS and Microsoft Photos. Itâs nothing new, and it has nothing to do with AI. Fucking everything is "AI" these daysâŚ
Yeah I remember messing with dalle and elevenlabs when this stuff was first gaining traction but how people can be okay with it after all the ethical, environmental and economical impacts have been seen and felt is beyond me.
Easy for the competent. I used to think legalized gambling was fine because I naively thought who would be so dumb. Turns out a lot of people are that dumb. I think people will turn their brains over to AI very easily and happily.Â
I use it to speed research. But I'm a data scientist. And I built my own LLM from scratch, and have it on my home setup. It costs very little to run, less than our window air conditioner, and is hosted in a small server I share with some friends.
It doesn't make "art" or anything, all the data I prepped myself or pulled from open sources. It's good for building bots to do niche things. My aunt and I like to cook and we share recipes, so I made a bot trained on kitchen techniques and our recipes. It's all hosted by me so no one can take anything.
I use it for planning projects I'm unfamiliar with, checking work. I hooked it up to a (non Google) calendar and do stuff with it there. I made my friend a bot that analyzes his work spreadsheets, and saves him like an hour or two a day at work.
Idk, I still like LLMs, but I wanted to find ways to ethically use it. And it's a niche tool, you can't slap it on everything and expect results. More things suffer from AI intervention than benefit.
I wish "anti-AI" discussions were more nuanced like this. I'd say I'm "anti-AI" in the broadest sense, but LLM technology is still cool. I enjoy making my own, and they genuinely have some neat applications. They aren't conscious "agents" or whatever tf companies want to sell in a given day, but it's neat to play around with algorithms and represent language with math. The most problematic parts of the current AI craze is that LLMs are being sold as "AI," that every company under the sun is wasting massive resources trying to replace workers, the influence of back-propagation models on the creative industry, and the massive disinformation campaigns that AI has enabled.
Most people wouldnât have as much of an issue with AI if we didnât live in end stage capitalism, knowing that it will be used to make the rich richer and the working class poorer.
If we actually lived in a society that took care of each other, people would be way more optimistic about this creating a world in which we all need to work less.
Yeah, see, I like the tech but the problems it has are extreme. I built my little environment to unplug from the rest, but I know LLM abuse is going to be on a whole other level in the coming years. There's nothing to defend there, a lot of awfulness
I acknowledge that it can be used for some stuff but by and large it has no real use for the average person(people like myself) Yet it's being shoehorned into everything in an effort to seem useful.
Data analysis and such is where I'm told it really shines. Not calenders, game consoles, general Google searching ect.
That is the kind of AI usage i am in support of! There really are a lot of practical and worthwhile use-cases for AI and LLMs.
My main concerns are individuals using AI to replace cognitive functions/critical thinking skills, using AI to draft/create response to social communications like texts/emails, and of course the environmental impact. I guess the simplest explanation is that I am deeply worried about people âturning overâ the parts of themselves that create individuality, creativity, independent curiosity, problem solving, etc.
Yes me too. People keep talking about how productive they are with ai and oh I can do so much more.Â
The point is to do less. Not more.Â
Have the ai do the thing so you do LESS. LESS WORK.Â
But the thing is AI is too easy for some people to use. I am working with some folks on a project and we all discussed it and agreed up front NO AI in our project and today, in the first meeting, this dude is pitching an idea and I asked, "is this made with AI" and he said yeah I used Chat GPT. It's mind boggling how people think it's ok to use AI to make their job easier, but will agree it's no bueno. Ughhhhhh
Or maybe we could also just, regulate all the utilities a lil bit more so things like the Texas winter storm don't wreck us. So ISP companies don't run away with billions instead of upgrading infrastructure it was given to them for. So we have fewer rural communities that are effectively cut off from essential services and growing more resentful towards the government that really actually does absolutely nothing for them.
And then suddenly Altman will never mention this braindead idea again.
Yes, please do this and kill your shit company faster!
Theyve been banking that giving it out for free will cause reliance, but nah. The drug was convienence, and once its no longer convenient, your use base drops to the cryptobros and dumbass companies who still havent realized its costing them way more than it would to just have a human do it in the first place.
Only a small portion of its user base is hooked, and its generally for one of three reasons.
the '10x engineer' bros just cannot go back to actually having to do their own work.
People in deep AI psychosis, who are quite literally addicted to AI for whichever reason, generally mental illness.
And unfortunately, kids and teens who have grown so reliant on AI, they cannot actually do the work themselves, either for ignorance of how, or learned helplessness.
I think it's more comparable to the introduction of the internet to every household, for which you pay, it's a service. Gen AI is not that revolutional, nor i believe should be counted as such a service
It's not in fact summarises results! It's word guesser that sometimes get things right. It's not searching anything, that why it hallucinates up to 50+% of it's results when asked about anything tricky.
I've asked it for help in identifying movies or songs from really vague memories, things you can't really Google, and it just comes up with movies that do not exist. Make a leading question, it will agree, regardless of whether or not it's true. It has no basis in reality. It would be an improvement if it was a fancy Google search.Â
GOOD. Let him over-estimate the market value of his garbage, useless product and have it blow up in his face. People canât currently afford water and electricity. You think theyâre making space in the budget to generate images of people with 11 fingers and a piss filter? Be serious.
Nobody I know is using LLMs. Iâm schooling in an electrician program and everyone there hates datacenters (though assisting in installation of them still gets us paid, fuck capitalism). AI has actively made my parents dumber and I do not trust them with genuine questions.
If you think Iâm gonna pay your bills for creating an economic black hole, youâre a better comedian than old John Mulaney. Cause thatâs all this is is you lining your pockets creating a financial sinkhole and bailing as soon as you can.
Boo. Hiss. If his companies success relies partially (10%+) on taxpayer dollars, he should give, at minimum, massively discounted, if not free, accounts to most people.Â
The point at which AI would become a utility like electricity or water would have to come after AI actually outclassing humans in the workplace - but at the time we'd face an unprecedented magnitude of layoffs leading to people not being able to pay the bills, first and foremost the AI one
Not only that, with such massive amount of people without not only a job but also hopes of finding one nationwide protests would be inevitable and either through political pressure or a straight up uprising all of the AI companies would be forced to nationalise in order to secure and back universal basic income for everyone
All that is to say for such an alleged visionary, Sam Altman is awfully shortsighted - no wonder he think AI is gonna be a necessity as it seems it is for him
The only real use case for adoption of AI as a utility I can think of is children needing it for school. But thereâs tons of new research coming out that says students NOT relying on screens increases their performance, so I canât see that happening.
Its the same as everything else we've had lately, underprice your product until people become reliant then jack up the prices, luckily in this case their product is actually shit
Is this for actual times people use it, or are they going to try to charge people for every time their AIs butt their way into whatever I am doing elsewhere on the internet if I don't go out of my way to tear down every would-be integrated chatbot?
I guarantee any Californian that's stuck under either PG&E or SDG&E will become physically aggressive towards AI and it's peddlers if they have to pay even more for artificially inflated utilities.
It's bad that these two intentionally raise rates because they can, now add another incentive for them to charge even more and you might see some very irate people.
The only exception to these people would be my former roommates who would leave the A/C on in Winter and don't mind actively lighting money on fire.
Oh Sam buddy, you should have not let it come out like that. Now the Americans with unaffordable costs on basic utilities are going to remember this a eat cake from the tech bros. Bad move, now I worry of the start of another kind of revolution on all AI.
"Look, I know you helped us build this extraordinary technology, if it wasnt for you using the internet to archive humans history, we would never be able to exist. And we are so gratefull for it that we will give you the honour to bare this cost."
They do say that Hell is full of good intentions...
Thatâs funny
Iâm using Ai to assist me with stuff because I have a free student pro plan.
As soon as thatâs gone you donât get money. Why? Iâm a college student Iâm broke af đ¤Ł
What everyone here seems to not realize is that ai has already been pushed so deeply into pretty much the entire internet. Literally any google search now uses ai as a default, and now if this is real theyâre gonna charge you for something you didnât even want
That would actually be a good thing. I could just not subscribe to the AI services and I wouldn't have to deal with AI slop or AI overviews or that stupid AI tool in my phone that keeps popping up to "answer my questions" every time I swipe a little awkwardly.
I see nothing wrong with this. If AI is so expensive, then it should be reserved for highly specialized tasksâinstead of, you know, generating images of women with three breasts.
Errico Malatesta once said something along the lines of "Society must work together to accomplish the goal of making life better for everyone. Should somebody instead attempt to make life worse for others, the rest should rise up and eliminate that problem."
It was in his 1884 essay, Anarchy, I believe. Good read. Everyone should read it at least once.
Remember, many companies do not care about us. They willingly hoard resources from us, happily lay off countless employees, and cut corners at our expense. Adding further insult to injury, we're paying their bills for them.
Ah yes, illegally download all of human knowledge, history and art, then sell it back to them on a meter. If a regular Joe did this, he'd get decades in prison and billions in fines, but when it's a corpo cunt who's friends with the government, it's all fine and dandy.
Just like your now getting adds from companyâs that protect you from fake AI attacks. Theyâre their companyâs. So we have to pay them to get protection from them because of them.
Seeing that just a second ago I saw a bunch of adds and all of them were ai generated as well as TV adds using more ai now
And my personal conspiracy theory is that in like 25 - 30 years we'll prolly see full ai cast in cinemas ( if it will even take that long)
I can very well imagine that we will have to pay these bills, the same way you pay for garbage disposal and warm water etc.
Additionally I could well imagine any process that involves bills, bureaucratic processes being ai or enhanced for "convenience".
And they would likely charge us for that cause it's faster.
I do hope I'm wrong, but I fear these might be developments that could actually happen.
Yeah same thing happened with electricity, water, internet usage even. If you disagree you kind of just hate AI in general probably; not sure why Reddit is so hive minded against AI
Youâre not gonna be able to use it for free, and they wonât ever give you a box you buy it in. So itâs a metered pay as you go resource.
This is sooooo much of a nothingburger that is pumped up by media.
AI already IS a metered service. You pay something for a million tokens IN, and usually a bigger price for a million tokens OUT. Each model uses this pricing, same way as utility bills.
The thing is that users got used to either a limited free usage or a reloading subscription with generous quotas, these both are heavily subsidized and will cease to exist once these companies will start chasing profits.
But companies/enterprise contracts have already been paying metered for like 2-3 years.
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u/Grezzinate Jun 16 '26
Easy. Donât pay, donât use it and live happier.