Press Pause | Somebody got mad that I used AI...

A 13RW TONY SPIN OFF IS COMING!!!!

AI was the secret Third Duffer and why Season 5 of Stranger Things was bum bum booty cheeks

one of the correct ways to use AI such a time saver when u have to search for multiple things

ERIC DID YOU SEE STRANGER THINGS IS RELEASING A BTS? THE BALLS THEY HAVE

Hey Eric, I hope you and everyone are doing well. I'm wondering if you ever plan on doing a tour in Australia, thank you again for being a great person and performer, Hug(h)e Love from Australia

Me having war flashbacks to "Gemini Man" when Miles mentioned Google Gemini...

I agree with the general sentiment of everyone else that generative AI is bad and the use of LLMs for replacing monotonous tasks is fine—we’ve already been doing it for years before ChatGPT (autocomplete for example). I still will stand by the fact that using these services is still bad and not because of just the power and water usage. Additionally, the more we use these services, the more data centers will be constructed and in tern, drive up the cost of power for communities where they’re built. As we use these services more, we are also feeding them more training data with every interaction we have. They’ve already consumed most of the internet so they need us to continue to create so they can steal from us to train their models. In turn, they get better and even more likely to replace a job and drive the “need” for more data centers. These AI companies are also having an immense impact on consumer electronics prices as well—look at RAM, GPU, and SSD prices just in the last month. RAM prices have gone up 5X or more, SSD prices have doubled, GPU prices are rumored to double as well. These are all directly caused by these AI companies—for example, Micron (one of essentially 4 RAM manufacturers in the world) decided to shut down its consumer division and just focus entirely on their commercial partners. To me, the only ethical way to use AI right now is if you’re running it locally—which of course is getting harder and more expensive to do if you don’t already own hardware capable of doing so, sadly. Thankfully, there are a lot of models that can actually run fairly well on even a cell phone but, it’s still not something everyone is capable of because it’s not necessarily the easiest thing to do compared to just going to a website or downloading an app. Plus, I know most people don’t even realize you can run them locally so it’s silly to hate on someone when I have no expectation that they even know they have a choice.

The problem is generative AI, which way too often is simply called "AI" so that it's lumped in with stuff like Spotify algorithms, diluting the whole argument about why this particular thing is so bad.

Also like... I always feel weird talking about this, but ChatGPT really isn't bad for the environment in a meaningful way (https://open.substack.com/pub/andymasley/p/a-short-summary-of-my-argument-that). I mean, I'm not an AI apologist; there is plenty of stuff to be concerned about with AI. It can have significant local impacts on power grid usage and water usage depending on where data centers are built, it is built on tons of stolen IP, it seems like it has negative cognitive effects for people who use it habitually to bypass schoolwork/learning, it's gonna lead to crazy job loss, our whole economy is built on a bubble, it might eventually kill us all, etc. But the national/global environmental consequences seem overblown at best, and I say this as someone who cares deeply about the environment.

i generally dont like LLM/ai, because it is being used to replace humans and make us more effective cogs to make a very small number of people obscenely wealthy. we make tools that give us more time to exist as humans. the problem with ai is that it isnt being used in a way that does that. its use is actively making things worse. its being used to isolate and harass people, and sloppily implemented to make common products worse. when we invent things to make our lives easier, theres nothing wrong with it. in this specific case, its like being angry that someone used a calculator instead of whipping out the abacus or doing long division by hand. or drove a car with an automatic transmission instead of shifting manually. anyone who thinks that there is any value in rewatching the show to search for clips is missing the point and blindly repeating that ai is bad. ai is bad because we are using it like assholes who dont care about each other, not because it is inherently evil. by the way, i am the type of person that immediately dislikes a youtube video and stops watching once i realize they used text to speech instead of their own voice, which some may consider insane, so im not out here sucking off the clankers. i hate ai music, and generally anything that tries to replace humans for anything other than minor, monotonous, repetitive tasks. which is funny because im kinda a hive sympathizer (sorry for ruining this post for you, pluribus fans)

People do need to be more specific. AI used to speed up or otherwise do menial, non-creative tasks is a natural progression of technology. GENERATIVE AI is the fuckin’ scum of the earth and contributes nothing to anything.

I find the conversation around AI to be so performative in so many examples. People will Google a million things and be on social media all day, but then be mad that someone else used ChatGPT to figure out a tech problem. (There is no way Google and social media don't also use a lot of resources. )

Love the nuance... but i am leaving because you use plastic straws, sorry bye

unless you're a constant user. or dont care about what AI is doing wrong. it really doesnt matter.

One chatgpt prompt is the energy equivalent of about 15 google searches - not ideal, but like you said, unless youre also boycotting google it's a bit performative to get really upset about lol. I'm generally against the use of chatgpt as a whole but I totally respect this response (Now I'll continue waiting ever so patiently for the stranger things video to be released from copyright jail)

i have an ex partner that got mad at me for the same bullshit. some people definitely hyper focus too much on the actual mundane that ai fixes

Yes! People like to be angry! I am so against AI for the deep fake and scary stuff like that. But it is so helpful for those boring tasks!

Great explanation of AI use good job boys ❤️

Eric this is why I love you. It was here to make mundane shit better and people act like I’m stabbing the earth itself. Then Sam Altman made it AI slop bullshit. I used it to separate dialogue from music the other day and wow did I get an earful

wow… had no idea you used plastic straws. i’ve been a fan since pre-k… sad to unsub.

Oh boy do i hope that person didnt watch stranger things s5 cuz those three waterfalls were killed to write it