FOUND IT

@lokeloski "It's only ever the jobs we're unfamiliar with that we assume can be replaced with automation."

Yup. And I only ever hear *bosses* say that *everybody* can be replaced by automation.

You may now draw your own conclusions.

@ratsnakegames this right here ️
@lokeloski

@davidgerard ironically I really thought Crichton was smart until he wrote a book around my own field of expertise.
@geeeero @lokeloski

@lokeloski There is a sense where, in an academic environment, using AI for those parts that are not central to ones study might be justified.

So, if you are doing comics, learning how to draw stories, maybe using something else for the storywriting is viable.

Obviously, not in the real world. In the real world, generative AI is of no use whatsoever.

@lokeloski People perennially underestimate the difficulty of any type of work other than the type they do themselves.

@mathieugenois

Terry Tao?

@davidgerard @geeeero @lokeloski could you elaborate on it, or provide some sources? Cause at first glance it honestly feels pretty accurate? Like I've even felt myself slip into this, and I only learned there's a name for it just now

@hazelnot @geeeero @lokeloski well, the linked Wikipedia article for one. If you're demanding I go prove a negative for you, i mean, you could go look yourself.

@davidgerard @geeeero @lokeloski I'm not *demanding* anything, I was just asking

I read the Wikipedia article and it didn't seem like trash to me, it says it hasn't been formally recognised but that it's "gained traction in critical thinking and media literacy discussions"

@deborahh @mynameistillian @lokeloski

The machine can not replace the human.
The machine will be used to replace the human.

@hazelnot @geeeero @lokeloski and it cites a total of one thing

hence the notability tag

i put a note on the talk page that this is based on almost nothing except a vastly overlength quote and the few sentences in the crichton article do exactly the same job

@lokeloski Found the link https://catmask.tumblr.com/post/805377916247621632

@lokeloski
We all take pride in our work but the reality is that most of it is meaningless. Sure we can do a better job in context than AI, but jobs are not about efficiency, but about power. And the only one more powerless than an employed person is a person looking for work. Which is why the powerful love AI. It seems to have an added benefit in being capable of sowing division.

@lokeloski because "Gen" really means not only "generative", but also "generic". So, it can only truly replace generalists, but not specialists.

@lokeloski Clearly, the only thing AI can actually replace is…. Engineers doing AI work.

Once no humans are working on AI any more, nobody will care what it does.

Ok, this has been making the rounds around here, so I'm muting it now because it keeps blowing my notifications up.

@lokeloski
@catrinity

related

https://social.vivaldi.net/@bloggityblog/115892874495961546

@wifwolf @mynameistillian @lokeloski inadequately

@lokeloski I just want AI to do the dishes, clean the house and do the washing...why is it so difficult?

@lokeloski whenever I do end up trying to use gen AI for anything, it's precisely because I know I'm not good at whatever I ask it to do, knowing it'll spit out something mediocre to either use as a placeholder so I can at least move on with the stuff I am good at or as something that's "good enough" if it's of lower importance but still needs to be present. If it was as quick and... dirt cheap to commission, that might be good for me but let's be real, commissioning stuff from people who actually know what they're doing shouldn't be paid bargain-bin style.

Some of my D&D characters have faces now because this one time I messed around with Stable Diffusion a little. It's not something I'd have been able to justify spending money on to get commissioned, and the results from the gen AI were mediocre at best but they serve their purpose of visualising my characters at least more than just words on paper. I don't have an amazingly vivid imagination and I definitely don't have that of anyone else so sometimes it's just convenient to have a visual representation that can be shared with others in this case.

And tbf a lot of the time when I want AI to fill in the gaps, it's not actually good enough to do so. The sad reality is that even with the more ethical approach of using AI as a tool to help with productivity rather than replacing people, it's usually not nearly good enough to actually help. Oftentimes, just struggling to do it yourself anyway and producing something crappy is still better than an AI generated hallucination that looks alright at first but progressively gets worse with every passing second of looking at it. I'll sometimes use it for stuff that it's sufficiently okay at and when it makes sense, and will certainly never claim credit for what pops out of it. But besides that it's just often not even useful in the first place.