What is the worst thing about "Artificial Intelligence"?

[Dan Gould]

It's been a few years, what do you say?

 

I was inspired by another AI "Comedian" clip on my FB feed. But I would probably say, today, that the worst are the fake news pieces, written in the same way, especially baseball team "news".  It's always some comment by a manager or something and its annoying AF.

[Dub Modal]

Something else. The aggregating and use of material that isn't theirs, meaning the companies that run these systems. Essentially it's large scale theft. 

[Rabshakeh]

For me it is just the crappiness of it. GenAI is really useful for some things but it is terrible at writing, drafting, creating etc.

I'm always amazed that anyone would need AI check software to identify AI prose. It is all "green ideas sleep furiously".

[kh1958]

The worst thing is the way the management of my employer has gone nuts over AI, spending gobs of money on it and trying to jam it into every aspect of the job.

[HutchFan]

2 minutes ago, kh1958 said:

The worst thing is the way the management of my employer has gone nuts over AI, spending gobs of money on it and trying to jam it into every aspect of the job.

Yes. This.

 

[Niko]

I miss the old search engines 

[psu_13]

The larger problem with software driven by machine learning and related things is that the behavior of the software is no longer predictable. You can see this in a lot of places even before LLMs (autocorrect, speech commands, etc). Software is generally easier to use when it is more predictable, so this trend away from behavior that is consistent is really annoying.

The larger LLM trend is the latest in a 30 to 40 year history of idiot tech managers getting FOMO over the next big thing even before the next big thing has actually been proven to be useful. The fact that it involves hugely inefficient use of computing resources at a time when cutting back on resource utiltization is important and the fact that except for certain interesting cases in software development (at least for me) it's been mostly useless is pretty upsetting. And that's even before we get to the fact that it's based on stolen IP.

[Stompin at the Savoy]

The worst thing is that it is a speculative bubble and huge investments and debt have been incurred without sufficient longer-term planning.  Everybody is so excited to get on board with the next great thing and afraid to be left behind that they are hocking their future on a hope and a hot mess. It'll probably crash in the next year.  A lot of these immense, polluting data centers are going to be obsolete before they are finished being built. There are so many things wrong with the current approach to AI that it would be tedious to list them. 

That said, I have found google AI to be pretty amazing at finding favorite books I read as a kid whose authors and titles I have long since forgotten. There were several books I read as a young teen that made an impression and stuck with me and over the years I have attempted to find them via internet searches, to no avail.  The other day I tried again and several came right up!  You just type a question: I'm looking for a juvenile novel with such and such a character, thus and so location, these plot elements, etc.  Boom, there it is.  So it's great for parlor tricks but the big picture is sort of grim...

[Rabshakeh]

2 hours ago, Stompin at the Savoy said:

It's great for parlor tricks but the big picture is sort of grim...

This is quite a good summary.

[danasgoodstuff]

The worst thing about Artificial Intelligence is what it reveals about natural stupidity.  In so many ways...

Edited July 19 by danasgoodstuff

[rostasi]

A man sells ten-dollar bills for five dollars each, and when asked how business is going, he says it’s booming, he just needs more volume. That’s the AI economy in a nutshell.

[Stompin at the Savoy]

We are in an era where it's insane to invest in AI but you're crazy if you don't.  https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/22/business/economy/stocks-economy-ai.html?unlocked_article_code=1.zlA.UGdt._sB3k1crkFYs&smid=url-share

[Rabshakeh]

12 minutes ago, Stompin at the Savoy said:

We are in an era where it's insane to invest in AI but you're crazy if you don't.

Describes most of the economy these days. The idea of investing based on business fundamentals and outlook seems to be considered quaint these days. 

On a slight tangent, I've noticed that the term "unicorn" has stopped being a snide put down and become something to boast about. 

[medjuck]

https://substack.com/home/post/p-205273420.   This story shows how AI can kill existing useful sites.   Where will AI steal its info if the places they steal from no longer exist?

Edited July 22 by medjuck

[tranemonk]

As a university professor the worst issues are the change in cultural norms where students no longer expect to (and in many cases cannot) conceptualize and write their own reports and papers. The ability to write well is eroding quickly. 

[jlhoots]

I haven't read the entire thread, but they steal stuff. Just saw a settlement where one of the AI companies has to pay numerous authors that they ripped off books from. 1.5 billion dollars. I suppose that's "chump change" to them.

Edited July 22 by jlhoots