I know its a bit of a hot topic but I’ve always seen people (online anyways) are either a hard yes or absolutely no on using AI. There are many types of “AI” that have already been part of technology before this hype, I’m talking about LLMs specifically (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc…). When this bubble burst its absolutely not going anywhere. I’m wondering if there is case where you’ve personally used it and found it beneficial (not something you’ve read or seen somewhere). The ethics of essentially stealing vast amount of data for training without compensation or enshitification of products with “AI” is a whole other topic but there is absolutely no way that the use of the technology itself is not beneficial somehow. Like everything else divisive the truth is definitely somewhere in the middle. I’ve been using lumo from proton for the last three weeks and its not bad. I’ve personally found it useful in helping me troubleshoot issues, search or just use it to help with applying for jobs:
- its very good at looking past SEO slop plaguing the internet and it just gets me the information I need. I’ve tried alternative search engine (mojeek, startpage, searXNG, DDG, Qwant, etc…) Most of them unfortunately aren’t very good or are just another way to use google or bing.
- I was having some wifi problem on a pc i was setting up and i couldn’t figure out why. i told it exactly what was happening with my computer along with exact specs. It gave gave me some possible reasons and some steps to try and analyze my computer it was very very useful.
- I’ve been applying for so many jobs and it so exhausting to read hundreds of description see one tiny thing in the middle that disqualifies me so I pass it my resume with links and tell it to compare what i say on my resume and what the job is looking for to see if im a fit. When i find a good job i ask rewriting tips to better focus on what will stand out to a recruiter (or an application filtering system to be real).
I guess what I’m trying to say is it cant all be bad.
I find it’s good as a “search engine of last resort”. I would pay $2 monthly at most for one, and less if it’s American.
LLMs trained exclusively on documentation and ran locally seem like they’d be nice. Basically the next step in search algorithms. Do note that I am not talking about having an AI summary at the top of every web search page, that’s harmful.
That’s essentially what I do, I don’t have any accounts with ChatGPT or anything, I just run it locally off my laptop. IDK if you get better results with ChatGPT (I’d assume probably) but my local one seems fine for everything I need it for. It’s a little slow too, but who cares?
How do you run it locally? I haven’t ever tried it. I’m curious to.
No, you phrased it right, I haven’t run any LLMs locally at all.
Ah okay. Well if you grab either of those programs I linked to it’s pretty straightforward, you pretty much just choose your model from a list and away you go. You can run them even if you don’t have a great GPU, but they’ll be slower.
I needed the following CSS copied 51 times with a 0.05 s increment, because CSS can’t for-loop and didn’t want JavaScript:
#butterfly span:nth-child(1) { animation-delay: 0s; }I know I could’ve just for-looped it somewhere else and copy-paste the output, but I was curious if DeepSeek could do it.
Creating low-effort images for ideas that don’t warrant effort, like silly jokes.
It’s good for rapid output of plausibly human text that can then be sorted or assessed for adequate validity or utility. That’s all.
I actually just view it as the latest abstraction of search. Yahoo in the 90’s did not give you a blurb summary of links or would do math equations for you or give answers to simple questions like what time is it or whats the capital of alaska.
I think there are many thousands of folk in fields beyond IT that use it all the time. It’s by no means perfect, but for many of us managing teams or doing boring AF admin, working with procurement, writing user documentation or trying to navigate basic system configs then it’s immensely useful.
My take on it is that it’s just a tool, and as with most tools you can use it in a sensible way that’s positive, although many people choose not to. So as an example, I work in a creative field and I see a lot of people relying on it to do their creative work for them, which I don’t really agree with. What I use it for is kind of like an assistant to handle all the admin crap that usually gets in the way of doing creative stuff. So sometimes you have to write form letters, grant things etc. - basically formal stuff that wouldn’t require any creative thinking if you did it by yourself anyway, but still eats up time and brain power. I just give that stuff to the AI, make sure it sounds vaguely presentable, and send it off. I could also see a use case for it in areas where I’m weaker like marketing my stuff, maybe for at least coming up with an outline strategy of some sort, although I haven’t really tried that out yet.
Essentially, AI will do your creative stuff for you if you let it, or you can just use it to handle the day-to-day piddly crap to free yourself up to do the creative stuff yourself. It’s up to you really.
My take on it is that it’s just a tool, and as with most tools you can use it in a sensible way that’s positive, although many people choose not to.
I mean sure a screwdriver is “just a tool”, and you can use a screwdriver to pick ice; but it’s not the most efficient tool for the job. It was designed for something else entirely, which makes it awkward and finicky to use as an ice pick. This is why so many people use screwdrivers for their intended purpose, rather than manipulating them to fit into a different workflow.
(The intended purpose here is disrupting creative professions, making creative labor cheaper and more efficient in order to maximize capitalists’ profit from it. Not to make artists’ lives easier or increase their effectiveness as laborers and business owners, although yes it can be used that way and, yes, that is arguably a limited side effect of the original intention.)
I don’t use it for writing code because that’s what I love but I use it for documentation and other stuff I hate…😂
I find it good for music and film suggestions. You feed it a set of ( I want a suggestion like these ) and it provides a good result.
Also good at building mermaid code for diagrams, just tell it write me mermaid code for this, and drop in a descriptive paragraph, then copy paste the code into mermaid.live
That use case became very useful so there is a paid mermaid page to automate that manual process.
I’d love to have an AI assistant that does shit like call service providers and wait in queue and take care of business for me
bash scripting, light python programs, fixing software and hardware issues, learning Japanese, learning other things, writing applications, all the boring stuff and stuff need extreme repetition or data mining. Ideas comes from me, work is done by machine.
In short, teaching myself simple stuff.
You can’t steal data, only illegally copy it. The original data holder still has the data, just you do too.
I ask for information sometimes that I cannot find in few minutes of googling (I use a lot of this information in writing fiction). I generate images once in a while for role playing and storywriting. (Not sure if it is AI but) I turn some text over to speech, to listen at my stories.
