Technology

never used it in any practical function. i tested it to see if it was realistic and i found it extremely wanting. as in, it sounded nothing like the prompts i gave it.

the absolutely galling and frightening part is that the tech companies think that this is the next big innovation they should be pursuing and have given up on innovating anyplace else. it was obvious to me when i saw that they all are pushing ai shit on me with everything from keyboards to search results. i only use voice commands to do simple things and it works just about half the time, and ai is built on the back of that which is why i really do not ever use voice commands for anything anymore.

When it was new to me I tried ChatGPT out of curiosity, like with any tech, and I just kept getting really annoyed at the expansive bullshit it gave to the simplest of input. "Give me a list of 3 X" lead to fluff-filled paragraphs for each. The bastard children of a bad encyclopedia and the annoying kid in school.

I realized I was understanding it wrong, and it was supposed to be understood not as a useful tool, but as close to interacting with a human, pointless prose and all. That just made me more annoyed. It still blows my mind people say they use it when writing.

Critical thinking skills are what hold me back from relying on ai

You mean an AI that literally generated text based on applying a mathematical function to input text doesn't do reasoning for me? (/s)

I'm pretty certain every programmer alive knew this was coming as soon as we saw people trying to use it years ago.

It's funny because I never get what I want out of AI. I've been thinking this whole time "am I just too dumb to ask the AI to do what I need?" Now I'm beginning to think "am I not dumb enough to find AI tools useful?"

Pretty shit “study”. If workers use AI for a task, obviously the results will be less diverse. That doesn’t mean their critical thinking skills deteriorated. It means they used a tool that produces a certain outcome. This doesn’t test their critical thinking at all.

“Another noteworthy finding of the study: users who had access to generative AI tools tended to produce “a less diverse set of outcomes for the same task” compared to those without. That passes the sniff test. If you’re using an AI tool to complete a task, you’re going to be limited to what that tool can generate based on its training data. These tools aren’t infinite idea machines, they can only work with what they have, so it checks out that their outputs would be more homogenous. Researchers wrote that this lack of diverse outcomes could be interpreted as a “deterioration of critical thinking” for workers.”

Really? I just asked ChatGPT and this is what it had to say:

This claim is misleading because AI can enhance critical thinking by providing diverse perspectives, data analysis, and automating routine tasks, allowing users to focus on higher-order reasoning. Critical thinking depends on how AI is used—passively accepting outputs may weaken it, but actively questioning, interpreting, and applying AI-generated insights can strengthen cognitive skills.

Remember the:

Personal computers were “bicycles for the mind.”

I guess with AI and social media it's more like melting your mind or something. I can't find another analogy. Like a baseball bat to your leg for the mind doesn't roll off the tongue.

I know Primeagen has turned off copilot because he said the "copilot pause" daunting and affects how he codes.

Of course. Relying on a lighter kills your ability to start a fire without one. Its nothing new.

Oddly enough that's exactly what corporate wants. Mindless drones to do their bidding unquestioned

I‘m surprised they even published this finding given how hard they‘re pushing AI.

That's the same company that approved Clippie and the magic wizard.

No shit.

Gemini told me critical thinking wasn't important. So I guess that's ok.

i use my thinking skills to tell the LLM to quit fucking up and try again or I'm gonna fire his ass

Unless you suffer from ADHD with object permanence issues, then in that case you can go fuck yourself.

Corporations and politicians: "oh great news everyone... It worked. Time to kick off phase 2..."

• Replace all the water trump wasted in California with brawndo
• Sell mortgages for eggs, but call them patriot pods
• Welcome to Costco, I love you
• All medicine replaced with raw milk enemas
• Handjobs at Starbucks
• Ow my balls, Tuesdays this fall on CBS
• Chocolate rations have gone up from 10 to 6
• All government vehicles are cybertrucks
• trump nft cartoons on all USD, incest legal, Ivanka new first lady.
• Public executions on pay per view, lowered into deep fried turkey fryer on white house lawn, your meat is then mixed in with the other mechanically separated protein on the Tyson foods processing line (run exclusively by 3rd graders) and packaged without distinction on label.
• FDA doesn't inspect food or drugs. Everything approved and officially change acronym to F(uck You) D(umb) A(ss)

The same could be said about people who search for answers anywhere on the internet, or even the world, and don’t have some level of skepticism about their sources of information.

It’s more like, not having critical thinking skills perpetuates a lack of critical thinking skills.

Good thing most Americans already don't possess those!

It was already soooooo dead out there that I doubt they considered this systematic properly in the study...