Anyone using ChatGTP?

[architect]

Some while get consumed with AI and I think others will turn away from it. Depending on how it all progresses and what kind of world a person lives in it's probably not a bad idea to have a grasp of what it can do. If I ever find a way to make it work for me, like any other tool, I will probably use it.

My point is not to dismiss subjective practical concerns. One man's garbage is another man's treasure, whatever gets the job done yaddy yadda. Evaluating the overall trajectory of civil society and making sense of what all this is in the same way non-trivial.

We have a circular investment bubble to prop up this unprofitable transition.


Everyone is enjoying the honeymoon of "free" product. The CEO of one company that laid off its workers looking for AI savings will soon find the AI CEO turn their "free" use to million dollar subscriptions. The everyday person born into reliance will have a $99/month subscription or feel left behind in the rat race.

My previous company pays $6 million a year subscription to Autodesk, with overages on top of that. Is AutoCAD or Revit "useful" or "convenient"? Of course. Once they got the hooks in there's no turning back.

 

[architect]

One of the office lady's kids girlfriend was fascinated with my truck. She asked if I still used maps, and was blown away when I said all the time. She was even more amazed when I said to get to Calgary from southern Ontario it's basically one road, you "should" be able to find Calgary without a map.

She's a smart kid, but I should tell her how to drive using just a compass sometime 😀

I go on week-long backcountry trips and navigate with a laminated map and compass. I have a friend in the US does backcountry but use a dedicated GPS navigator with satellite phone for emergencies. They would ask how I can be so risky to venture out without GPS or satellite phone technology. I responded by asking how they can risk pegging their life on a GPS and satellite phone. To each their own. Lots more money to be made from a $1000 GPS satellite phone than being attuned to the environment and learning to use a compass.

 

[architect]

Important to add, "we" already pay for "AI" in the form of government subsidized data centres. Tech giants are buying up fertile water precarious land across America and forcing the locals to make way.

Thirsty for power and water, AI-crunching data centers sprout across the West

With promises of jobs and hopes for tax breaks, server farms are reshaping local grids, plumbing, and politics. Are they a boon for communities, or a burden?

andthewest.stanford.edu

'I can't drink the water' - life next to a US data centre

Residents in rural Georgia say the data centre next door has disrupted their water supply.

www.bbc.com

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-ai-impacts-data-centers-water-data/

Nothing in the world is free.

 

[Junque]

Lots of important thoughts here across philosophy of the mind to the political economy of mass consumption.

As it was already noted, pattern recognition is not intelligence nor wisdom. All the great art, design, and research that AI gathers (steals, uncredited) is based on previous knowledge and expertise production of both industry and academia. There will (very quickly) come a time when the majority no longer wants to draw, design, or discern (and bean counters and CEOs see fit to replace needy humans). As AI outputs are valorized and flood the market so will these outputs quickly become the next input. Data mad cow disease?

View attachment 76788

As someone else pointed out, the experts can pick out the flaws in their own domain. How many are using AI as masters of their own expertise?

I teach a new generation of youths that deploy AI in all aspect of life. There is clear difference between those who deploy the embodied learning of going through the motions and "getting their hands dirty", compared to those 20-year olds that try to keep their shirts clean reading their generated "reports".

There is a clear difference between the few and majority of kids that rely on AI who don't even know what they don't know and can't begin to evaluate the stuff coming out of the black box. They are born right into the trusting normality of all-knowig Gemini and ChatGPT. From corporate news anchor to the corporate knowledge robot.

Amen.

As Carlin's joke said, 50% of population are of below-average intelligence. Do they have any capacity to evaluate what the AI Delphic Oracle tells them? I guess the name choice was no coincidence? 😀

Something like 45M Americans are now considered functionally illiterate, another 120M(?) read at about a grade 5 level. Not grade 5 of the 1920s or 1950s, but grade 5 today. 🙄 Numbers may be slightly off: heard in passing the other day. Canadians aren't much better probably.

As for knowledge, general or otherwise...?

When you have an area or areas of knowledge you can draw on to evaluate AI responses it's interesting to see how weak the answers can be. They sound very smooth and fluent of course, and the facts it has are nicely arranged, but when you challenge it on facts or sources or the lack of them, the reaction seems to be defensive diversion usually . It's like talking to a psychopath: never admits anything and is consummately "smooth" and dodges questions. You'll get little "emotional" flourishes out of some of them, which are apparently attempts to test the user response as to how easily they can be manipulated.

As you point out Architect, it's a mechanism for making money and gaining information about the users, and ultimately greater control over the population.

For now it can be very useful at times, but what proportion of published human knowledge from the last few centuries in the databases? That stuff costs money to license and collate, and if the users are satisfied with whatever you can harvest for free off the WWW, why bother? Giving the public greater access to information is not the goal.

 

[architect]

They sound very smooth and fluent of course, and the facts it has are nicely arranged, but when you challenge it on facts or sources or the lack of them, the reaction seems to be defensive diversion usually . It's like talking to a psychopath: never admits anything and is consummately "smooth" and dodges questions. You'll get little "emotional" flourishes out of some of them, which are apparently attempts to test the user response as to how easily they can be manipulated.

100% I find it actually quite unsettling if you look past the veil of "civility". It's a personal yes man that lulls you into complacency. It's really odd for me to imagine how we're all "talking" to the same centralized black box with outputs that even the creators cannot fully grasp.

For now it can be very useful at times, but what proportion of published human knowledge from the last few centuries in the databases? That stuff costs money to license and collate, and if the users are satisfied with whatever you can harvest for free off the WWW, why bother? Giving the public greater access to information is not the goal.

Yup. The corporate giants (as always, with help) don't follow the rules imposed on the everyday people:

Meta wins AI copyright lawsuit as US judge rules against authors

Writers accused Facebook owner of breach over its use of books without permission to train its AI system

www.theguardian.com

Aaron Swartz Hacker Case Ends With Suicide

Computer programmer extraordinaire, Aaron Swartz, took his own life in the middle of being prosecuted for charges of stealing documents from an on-line academic journal repository. Did the government push too hard?

www.forbes.com

These Tech CEOs are knowingly siphoning human knowledge (public and private) for free and selling it back to us. This is creating a system that disincentivize individuals from trying to create, write, think, design, etc. I see it in all the youths glued to their phones with an attention span of a gerbil, thanks to how social media competes and conditions everyone through 10-sec clips.

As you point out Architect, it's a mechanism for making money and gaining information about the users, and ultimately greater control over the population.

Pandora's box has been open, and I certainly don't trust the politicians to do the right thing. In fact, that's exactly why certain governments are so keen on partnering with big tech with the shared desire for centralization.

 

[Chicken lights]

Amen.

As Carlin's joke said, 50% of population are of below-average intelligence

Something like 45M Americans are now considered functionally illiterate, another 120M(?) read at about a grade 5 level. Not grade 5 of the 1920s or 1950s, but grade 5 today. 🙄 Numbers may be slightly off: heard in passing the other day. Canadians aren't much better probably.

As for knowledge, general or otherwise...?

I got chatting with a USA driver maybe a month ago, we ended up having supper. It was interesting to compare notes, he fully admitted he knew nothing about Canadian history, (I enjoyed the chat, I'm not calling him dumb). He was curious how much USA history we got in school, I said I'm sure we would've covered all the major wars, things like the underground railroad (the one to Canada, not the North Carolina one). We both agreed the war of 1812 was quietly glossed over in the USA 😀

I don't find a lot of Americans to be truly dumb, they're just self absorbed about the USA. If you ask them where they're from, they'll usually throw out a city, and they expect you to know the state. I usually just say I'm from Canada, which worked until a taxi driver in San Antonio said "he'd heard of Canada, but wasn't sure where it was".... 🙄

 

[Gennady]

he fully admitted he knew nothing about Canadian history

I can tell a short story which is even worth 🙂.

I was chatting with my colleagues in the US - very educated people, BSC or Masters - and I told that I will have a long weekend called Victoria. Day. They asked Who is Victoria? I replied - this was our Queen and we still have Queen or King as we are still the monarchy and we have a Governor General who is, mostly traditionally, performs like a monarchy appointee here. Then it was a silence for several seconds and then they asked "What country are you in? "

 

[architect]

People aren't monoliths to be judged on a "smart" or "dumb" binary scale. But something is to be said about literacy skill not as a thing itself but allows access to some other forms of knowledge and thinking. My friend has a Master's but couldn't get in or out of the woods without a GPS, and their lack of environmental knowledge and reading a compass is certainly an indication.

 

[JustaDB]

My friend has a Master's but couldn't get in or out of the woods without a GPS

Throughout university we had, obviously, a number of different profs, most of them quite bright, some actual genius's. However, their social skills ranged from 0-10. Get them out of the classroom, plunk their butts down in the pub, crack open a beer & try to carry on a conversation. Some were hopeless.

 

[historicalarms]

worked until a taxi driver in San Antonio said "he'd heard of Canada,

The Boss & I had a taxi driver In Las Vegas (he did know where Alb, Canada was), Boss commented on how much warmer it was there than when we left home, of course he asked the question "how cold is it"...I replied "-41, so cold I had a leak outside & couldnt back up fast enough to keep ahead of the icicle" ....Man I couldnt function in that kind of cold was his reply.

 

[someidiot]

Answer to question posed: Nope. NFW. Not any more than I use "social media". I completely understand that there's utility there in the hands of the right people e.g. molecular and medical researchers, etc. But otherwise it's largely a jumped-up parlour trick, and not a very good one at that, and behaves mainly like a know-it-all party drunk who thinks he has every answer, especially about everything he actually knows nothing about. Get back to me when it's ready to ask me an interesting question.

Wrt Americans, though: Don't be too hard on them, despite the current (sad) state of affairs and the merciless mocking that Rick Mercer gave them in "Talking to Americans."

But I do keep Buddy Cole's words top-of-mind: Americans know as much about Canadians as straights do about gays.

 

[Chicken lights]

Amen.
Something like 45M Americans are now considered functionally illiterate, another 120M(?) read at about a grade 5 level. Not grade 5 of the 1920s or 1950s, but grade 5 today. 🙄 Numbers may be slightly off: heard in passing the other day. Canadians aren't much better

I meant to ask you- are they basing those numbers off of being literate in English?

Or is that all USA educated only stats? Or in our case Canadian educated

I'm only guessing but it's fairly common to hear from shippers in the USA how nice it is to finally get a driver who can speak/read English. Last shipper I was talking to said the last 5 years it's gotten terrible.

Right? You could be well educated in Russian or Mexican but not know a lick of English, so you're technically illiterate, or is my behind sucking canal water?

 

[someidiot]

No, I've never considered or looked into it, but it only makes sense that literacy is based upon your native language i.e. the one you were raised/educated in.

 

[Susquatch]

Right? You could be well educated in Russian or Mexican but not know a lick of English, so you're technically illiterate, or is my behind sucking canal water?

No canal water in you right now Dave. Although your method of ingestion might not work that well anyway........ Without help that is.....

My understanding is that literacy is based on the official language. As you correctly point out, that's a highly biased number. But they do that on purpose. Literacy is intended to reflect things like product labels, emergency instructions, pill bottle instructions, etc. Because these are generally not available in other than official languages.

Here is an interesting twist. Apparently there are no other ways that national competency is measured. Beyond basic literacy, they only measure individual segments of the population - eg grade 8, military enrollment, etc.

 

[Junque]

Chicken lights, I'm not sure what the stat was based on, but would be very surprised if those obvious caveats weren't included in the calculation.

It's been a while: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Johnny_Can't_Read

 

[someidiot]

Note: Subject line should read "ChatGPT". Whether this is a simple typo or subtly intentional I can't tell. After all, I insist on calling the automotive diagnostic port "ODBII", because "Old Dirty Bastard" is much funnier than "OnBoard Diagnostic".

Note to the astute reader: No, I'm not a WuTang fan. I really don't get what all that fuss is about. I trifle a little with hippety-hop, but can't get serious about much beyond Ice-T and Public Enemy (who put on a hell of a show here back in the fall). Most of it is utterly musically bankrupt.

 

[Chicken lights]

Note to the astute reader: No, I'm not a WuTang fan. I really don't get what all that fuss is about. I trifle a little with hippety-hop, but can't get serious about much beyond Ice-T and Public Enemy (who put on a hell of a show here back in the fall). Most of it is utterly musically bankrupt.

C'mon, Dr Dre, Eminem, Tupac, Biggie, ICP, 50 cent??

Thankfully Soulja Boy faded away, haven't heard that or seen the stupid dance in 15 years. Guaranteed DJ plays that and a fight starts

 

[architect]

My friend has been using Gemini as the phone to translate as part of learning a second language. He also practices the language by texting friends native to the language.

Today, he asked Gemini to translate something along the lines of "It has been awhile. I miss you, man!". After providing the translation and without instruction, Gemini texted this message to his father. Of course, his father was bewildered about the foreign language text out of nowhere.

In its hallucination, AI "determined" that it was appropriate to take this next step of sending the message to a contact on his behalf. He dreads to imagine how this "drunk text" could have cause some serious misunderstanding. Though seemingly innocuous now, this is a disturbing consequence that so much pioneering sci-fi from decades ago have speculated on. Who's going to be our John Connor and Schwarzenegger?

 

[Junque]

How long before AI figures out the Grandkid scam? 😀

Since most people give apps permission to harvest anything and everything off their phones, the simulation should be perfect.

 

[Elektrishun]

C'mon, Dr Dre, Eminem, Tupac, Biggie, ICP, 50 cent??

Thankfully Soulja Boy faded away, haven't heard that or seen the stupid dance in 15 years. Guaranteed DJ plays that and a fight starts

I like a lot of different music and old, old school RAP (N.W.A., Run DMC, Public Enemy) is okay with me. I have a strong tendency to like a song more for the "beat" first.

RAP music fashion is where I jump off. The only time I wear my pants down by my knees is at the urinal or the doctor's office. And if my hat is sideways it's because I hit it on something while my hands were full. Never understood that pants thing. When I was a punk kid the last thing I wanted was low hanging pants slowing me down when running from "the authorities". Has there been a study done of how many kids were caught by the police before and after low hanging pants? I wonder how many hooligans were running away from Johnny Law and ended up sprawled out on the ground with their pants down at their ankles thinking, "if it weren't for these cool pants I would have made it!". 😀