I don't want to talk about AI any more. I had a post prepped for today inspired by recent furor over use of AI in the Blaugust community, but I pulled it. Why? Because it's such a boring topic. I hate talking about it. Too many people have turned the vagueness that is "AI" into a symbol representing things they already like or dislike. You can't even get people to agree on what falls into the category of "AI" so you can't have a coherent discussion about it. People are emotionally attached to their LLM agents, whom they feel genuinely help them. Other people got fired because of "AI" and now are suffering because of it. Some people find speech-to-text an incredible life-changing accessibility tool. Some people had psychosis triggered or exacerbated by using it and it destroyed their lives. The strong feelings people have about this category of technologies is preventing us from having a discussion of the actual issues of which the category of technologies commonly called "AI" is often merely a symptom. The problem is not that Google summaries are often inaccurate, the problem is that people are looking up medical information on google because they can't see a doctor. For example: data centres being built in populated areas. That's not about "AI" that's about investment capital, the drive for eternal financial growth, wealth inequality, land ownership, ecological preservation, energy, democracy, capitalism, scientific progress, militarism. We can talk about those topics and plenty more. Those are issues that are interesting and complicated and nuanced. But as soon as you start talking about "AI" my eyes are glazing over, sorry. I am not a fence-sitter. I have developed my own opinions on what's going on with so-called "AI". As maybe you can tell, I've read plenty about the topic! But I am well tired of endless debates round and round about whether "AI" is the inevitable future we all must embrace or a benign tool or ruining everything. I am super duper tired of battle lines being drawn, where using "AI" becomes a social signifier akin to whether you go to church every Sunday or not. It's an oversimplification, it's failing to interrogate the real issues, and it sure is fucking boring. I hate even that I wrote this much about it. I will have one more post about it tomorrow because I already have it done, but then we will return to our regularly scheduled bullshit. ⇄ Reply: mastodon+email ＄ Tip: ko-fi+liberapay AI is so boring was last edited: 2 days, 12 hours ago