This. AI and more generally algorithm dependence is an addiction and watching him struggle with it the past few years has been heartbreaking. Watching him try to bargain and rationalize an objectively misanthropic technology that grew out of a sphere that he was a major role in and did begin as an objectively beautiful attempt at building community and healthy dialogue is very disappointing. I don’t hate or judge him. He tried to do something beautiful. He just didn’t understand the Faustian bargain he made in the process. The systemic forces turning his work into poison.

I don’t judge him for wrestling with it. I’m sad for him. I’m sad for a lot of us. We’re all working in a system that’s slowly killing us to some degree or another. There is no ethically clean life in a system predicated on greed, gluttony and lies. His optimism may have slipped into delusional, but it beats the crushing cynicism that comes with naked realism.

I don’t think that we should lose hope, but the future can’t look like this. His Icarus moment shouldn’t be the end of his journey. I hope he finds himself and begins planting new seeds even if none of us ever live to see the shade of the trees that grow from them.

Well said

But this is the first time there’s been this significant of an impact on one’s mental health(?) I’m unsure. It’s so easy to get caught up in that dopamine hit where you feel like you did something. Its even more frustrating when you’re forced to use it in work regularly, whether directly or indirectly (if you’re coworkers are using it there is an indirect force to use it if you need to stay competitive and keep your job and feed yourself and your loved ones especially if your workspace is not healthy)

Thought experiment: is it better to treat the AI as a contractor (fivver etc) who is doing the task you’re asking rather than thinking of it as something you’re doing? From a mental health perspective A contractor because you are only to talk a out the task and nothing else really. That way it’s work could be more distant and you’re less likely to associate it to your work and boost in productivity?

No. This is a line we cannot cross and if it destroys us, so be it. I’m not against AI, or automation. But not these tools. Not these companies. Not these models. The question is death or death. So we learn to live without, or we die. There is no synthesis possible with this paradigm.

The cats out of the bag, so what are we gonna do now. Like replace that but not this with any other tech you should stop using, say social media, good luck. So what are we going to do now?

What do we do? We’re doing it. We’re asking questions, we’re building communities IRL and in digital paces outside the bounds of the major corps. We use poison pills to make corpos that embrace these systems pay dearly. We give grace to those who sincerely pull back and we move on.

Cocaine exists and it can be a major boost to productivity. But we don’t have to use it. We don’t have to live with its downsides slowly killing us and robbing us of our humanity.

At this point I don’t understand why he is still hustling new products and ventures all the time. That’s the mental illness at this point. Using LLM is a symptom, like plagiarism would have been.

Why is it so important that he keeps producing content? What is there left he can possibly teach himself that platforming someone else wouldn’t achieve better.

There’s just something maladaptive here.

Listened to someone talk about a bad video he made about knitting and how clueless he was about the topic. He then acknowledged that and made a subsequent video interview… about weaving. There’s just this lack of profoundness you’ll inevitably reach when you yourself are out of your field.

I’m kind of done with edutainment. Like I’m tired of singular smart people acting like they know everything, when they don’t.

Yes. He doesn’t want to admit, he’s gone as far down this path as he responsibly can. He doesn’t want to transition to the “producer” role, where he becomes a resource for a new generation that’s seeking a future away from the old platforms.

It’s a bit like the oil man who knows his work enabled so much good, unable to also admit his product has a dark side, and it’s time for us all to move on from it. That times changed and a new world is struggling to be born.

I disagree about “edutainment” in a qualified way. We still need communicators and domain experts sharing their knowledge, and there’s still a great deal of knowledge to share, but I don’t think it’s on YouTube (or TikTok). People talking out of turn on matters so far outside their expertise and experience they’re effectively neophytes, and just as vulnerable to Dunning-Kruger impulses certainly doesn’t help. I don’t think that AI or better algorithms are going to save them either, that’s a good way to end up lost in a psychotic hallucination. I don’t know what it will look like yet but it isn’t going to come from the tech giants. Unless Wikipedia wants to take a crack at it, they might be the only ones that could pull it off.

I mean, we are all going to die. In fact it’s the fear of that that built these AI systems. If you want to go against them then accept death and extinction as our future.

No. I refuse. We may die, but I refuse to surrender. Where there is life, there is hope, and we’re not dead yet.

Agreed, this is new technology for everybody, we’re allowed growing pains.

Its pretty fucking simple to not use it.

I understand where you’re coming from, but you could almost always say this about every kind of mistake every person has ever made, and then sit there wondering why humans ever make mistakes, you know?

Then you’re not critically trying to think and examine the implications of this new technology. And that’s fine, we all can’t do all the things but we can listen to the people around us without being pretentious tools who would say I told you so.

Then you’re not critically trying to think and examine the implications of this new technology.

I’ve been examining and thinking about artificial neural networks since ~2010.

It is pretty fucking simple to not use an LLM.

There was a point where it was pretty simple not to use the internet, too. This analogy drives a question: were those people who rejected the internet at the beginning better off in the long run, when compared to people who embraced it?

Generative AI can be a very useful productivity tool. Choosing not to use an available tool is “easy”, but is it wise?

I find myself agreeing with the person you responded to; you don’t appear to be thinking critically about the implications of LLMs/generative AI. That, or you are speaking more literally than it seems, and you mean, literally, that it’s easy not to use AI, without commenting on how wise that decision may or may not be.

you don’t appear to be thinking critically about the implications of LLMs/generative AI

You don’t appear to have a functioning brain.

Hyperbolic insults don’t help your case. If you did think critically about this, feel free to show your work and talk through your thought process.

Generative AI is just a tool. Using it is not much different than using a thesaurus while writing. You can quickly tell when someone has over-used the thesaurus, and it affects the quality of the output, but that doesn’t make it bad to use a thesaurus.

Good job you’ve literally not reflected on the adoption of tech.

Its pretty fucking simple not to be an unempathetic prick, but here we are.

I’m gonna need someone to empathize with me after I get brain damage from reading these replies.

Gotchu.

It would also have been simple to not use any technology ever that has had controversy around it

But unless you are actively a lodite hermit living in the woods with no connection to the world. In which case your opinion on the topic doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things since clearly you already have a unhealthy relationship with reality.

Learning to have a healthy relationship with new tech is how to actually deal with shit. Not ignoring it forever as if pandoras box wasn’t open.

It’s not going anywhere, even if the bubble pops and all of it dies. Local models will only become more and more common, the tech will only become easier and easier to run and more efficient and effective.

Even if it devolves into a specialist tool for research and science only. That still is going to be something you will have to come to grips with.

The tech is far far more than just chat bots.

We are about to get hardware built for AI specifically. None of this will go away.

And people could simply not work for major corps.

And they could simply not buy plastic clothes from Walmart.

And they could simply grow their own food.

Etc etc.

i don’t understand why you guys are making it seem like not using LLMs is like some impossible task

like they pretty much didn’t even exist until like a few years ago lol

it’s ridiculous to me, how did people even do stuff before LLMs? the same way they have always done it! (and yeah I work w code and are expected to use them but even then I know this is bullshit)

I mean, not smoking is also pretty simple. Or not using social media.

Hank Green has earned the right, with me anyway, to have his point of view heard. And frankly he has more credibility with me than the garden variety pitchfork-wielding anti-AI mob. I think Hank is a person who finds AI interesting and sees upsides as well as downsides. But the aforementioned mob is not interested in anything other than the emotional catharsis of railing against something they hate.

Now ask me if the mob is in the room with us, because it probably is.

His AI use caused him so many problems in his private life that his family had to intervene. His point of view is “This technology has had a negative impact on my life and the lives of the people I care about”.

Your pro-AI spiel is a bit tone deaf here

There wasn’t an intervention, he asked them about his AI use in response to the outrage and they agreed he’d been using it unhealthy.

Seemed to me more along the lines of “do I have too much salt?” , “yeah you should cut back” ; Then “your coke problem is tearing this family apart”

He said they “did not pull any punches” which implies it was a more blunt conversation than you’re suggesting.

Hank Green himself describes his relationship with AI the same way you would an addiction, and specifically mentions the dopamine reaction driving his use of it to a point where he became overwhelmed by it.

He’s not describing a casual discussion about table salt, he’s literally describing a drug/alcohol addiction.

You don’t actually fucking know him.

That’s probably why he wrote an in depth explanation of what he did, his motive, how it affected him etc.

His public posts on the matter were not made for the people who actually know him.

I said nothing pro-AI. But by accusing me of that, you reveal where your own bias (and defensiveness) lies. So thanks for that.

You’re also exaggerating the facts. They didn’t stage an intervention. He turned to his wife and brother and said “do you think my AI use is unhealthy?”

You’ve said plenty pro-AI lol. You don’t have to get so defensive about it, just own your position.

I’ve exaggerated nothing. Hank himself said he’s spoken to both his wife and brother about his AI use and said they “didn’t pull any punches”, which implies there was a blunt conversation about it, if not two.

You sound like you lick Grok and Gippitys silicon balls.

Ok, I guess you were too busy fondling Gr0ks and gipeettys balls to type out a constructive response. Are these how you’d like them to participate in your silicon fetish?

I literally use no AI in my day to day. I try and bully AI users tbh

Good job, now shut the fuck up, adults are talking.

I don’t even know what that second one is, and I wouldn’t touch Xitter with a ten foot turd.

That’s fair. It’s a new technology, we need trusted people to explore it and tell us what their experience was. I don’t think we have very many trusted people left

For me it’s just another disconnected millionaire Youtuber. But he‘s kind of blaming AI or rather his relationship with LLMs for this dilemma instead of actually reflecting on himself. If he thinks simply abstaining from using LLMs will establish a connection to the people he‘s dead wrong and will likely fall back on AI in no time.

Yeah, part of what I appreciate about him is that he does consistently acknowledge when he fucks up and tries to change.