Yeah, I’m not in complete disagreement with the article. I agree that blanket “AI good” is bad, but I also think blanket “AI bad” is bad, and it wasn’t clear to me that there was much acknowledgement of the possible benefits of the technology.
I admit I’m not all the way there with coding with local LLMs, but I don’t think it’s as impossible as you’re making it seem. I’m running Qwen3.6-35B on my laptop, and while I’m sure it’s smaller than the flagship models when you break things down into chunks and have it work on those chunks one by one – I think it can do a lot.
Obviously the AI psychosis is related to how the model is tuned, but as the article pointed out our tools shape us, and in my opinion learning to resist this is going to turn people into critical thinkers. I don’t think there’s any realistic scenario where the technology wins in a tug of war with reality about what reality is. Maybe there are edge cases with people who are already mentally deeply comprised, but reality has a way of not being something you can just ignore. The growing pains suck too. People who’ve not thought critically in forty years are going to struggle, but it’ll force them to become better people.
I’m not arguing tools are neutral or that AI is all good – but it’s not all bad either. A lot of stuff associated with AI is horrific and should be banned: Pollution from AI data centers, AI mass surveillance, AI revenge porn. I don’t see how any of those thing are in any way defensible, but it’s the uses not the technology that should be banned. Those bad use cases aren’t all of AI. I use AI to critique my writing. I use it design proteins that will someday soon be used to treat or even cure disease. AI can be used for good.
I’ve felt the skill decay a few instances, but I’m power/skill hungry and immediately adjust my behavior. There are also skills I’d never be able to learn without AI. Writing is a great example. No one in my life has the time to read over every crappy attempt at writing I make and critique it. Without some sort of feedback, I can’t improve the writing. AI provides that feedback at least for early drafts. It’s also been able to point me towards information I’d never be able to find just digging through the literature. It’s often wrong on those technical things, but it can generate a list for me to look through.
Agreed on a lot of the politics, largely just another iteration of the same stuff.
Yeah, I’m not in complete disagreement with the article. I agree that blanket “AI good” is bad, but I also think blanket “AI bad” is bad, and it wasn’t clear to me that there was much acknowledgement of the possible benefits of the technology.
I admit I’m not all the way there with coding with local LLMs, but I don’t think it’s as impossible as you’re making it seem. I’m running Qwen3.6-35B on my laptop, and while I’m sure it’s smaller than the flagship models when you break things down into chunks and have it work on those chunks one by one – I think it can do a lot.
Obviously the AI psychosis is related to how the model is tuned, but as the article pointed out our tools shape us, and in my opinion learning to resist this is going to turn people into critical thinkers. I don’t think there’s any realistic scenario where the technology wins in a tug of war with reality about what reality is. Maybe there are edge cases with people who are already mentally deeply comprised, but reality has a way of not being something you can just ignore. The growing pains suck too. People who’ve not thought critically in forty years are going to struggle, but it’ll force them to become better people.
I’m not arguing tools are neutral or that AI is all good – but it’s not all bad either. A lot of stuff associated with AI is horrific and should be banned: Pollution from AI data centers, AI mass surveillance, AI revenge porn. I don’t see how any of those thing are in any way defensible, but it’s the uses not the technology that should be banned. Those bad use cases aren’t all of AI. I use AI to critique my writing. I use it design proteins that will someday soon be used to treat or even cure disease. AI can be used for good.
I’ve felt the skill decay a few instances, but I’m power/skill hungry and immediately adjust my behavior. There are also skills I’d never be able to learn without AI. Writing is a great example. No one in my life has the time to read over every crappy attempt at writing I make and critique it. Without some sort of feedback, I can’t improve the writing. AI provides that feedback at least for early drafts. It’s also been able to point me towards information I’d never be able to find just digging through the literature. It’s often wrong on those technical things, but it can generate a list for me to look through.
Agreed on a lot of the politics, largely just another iteration of the same stuff.