Ask Lemmy

No, it's the same as searching the web or your local library. Perfect information simply doesn't exist at scale so one must know how to verify any source and use basic baysian thought.

Do you disregard people IRL who you know use a calculator for everything?

If that sounds like a ridiculous question, it's because the use of that tool has become so ingrained in our society that we don't question its use anymore. AI is a new tool and one which can offload a lot of mental work. Such tools have always been controversial. If Plato is to be believed (and that isn't necessarily a given), Socrates complained that writing made men lazy and their minds weak, because they didn't have to exercise their memories and were not taught things, just read facts.

AI is a tool, and it's going to be worked into the fabric of our society, for good or ill. It's also facing a lot of push-back, as have many tools, but that is unlikely to stop it. Will AI make us lazier? Absolutely. That's kinda the point. If necessity is the mother of invention, laziness is the father. So much of human invention is all about ways to not work as hard. Sometimes, this is because we need to improve how we do something, sometimes its because we'd rather be down at the pub sipping a brew while a machine does the hard stuff. Often, it's both.

That said, there is likely to be a lot of pain in the short term as we adjust to the new reality. And it will likely cause another shift in how work happens. Businesses used to have hundreds of people doing nothing but tabulating accounts. Rooms would be full of people just doing math. Now, we have Excel and most of that tedious work is now done by one person at the click of a button. The main problem with the rollout of AI may be one of speed. The same speed which empowers Excel is making the disruption of AI happen at a much faster speed than many of our institutions may be equipped to handle. Or not, there's been some reporting lately that the promises of AI have been severely over-hyped (shocker, AI companies over sold the capabilities of AI, whodathunkit?). We won't really know until we're well past the point of disruption.

So, does it annoy me that people use (and believe) AI to answer relatively simple questions? No not really. Sure, they could take the time to look it up with google, but that is slower and harder. Or they could look it up in a book, which is even slower and harder. Or they could just memorize it and avoid that new fangled writing thing, which is making kids lazy. But, that sort of thing is a dead end. Ai is here, it's a tool people will use. We just need to find a way to educate people about its strengths and limitations. And that is a hard problem, but maybe AI will help us solve it.