No affiliation, but no surprise either.
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Plenty of good read/listen of people like Manfred Spitzer (‘Dementia Digital’ and few others) or Jonathan Heidt (‘The Anxious Generation’, or discussions such as Unsupported browser).
Car navigation, smartphones, Google, now AI - all dumbing down the user, making our brain something like just an interface and some processing power to add to the hive mind.
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@rogerh113 Thank you for sharing this. I’ve written about similar topics a few times. You can check out here:
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The problem, too, is how genuinely helpful ChatGPT 5 can be for research. Not saying it’s perfect, but it is addicting once you get a taste. And if you look past all the AI slop images everywhere, engines like Flux 1.1 are getting crazy good for images with the right prompts. We are definitely headed for uncertainty and an overall cheapening of everything that has to do with media, entertainment, and our lives. The scary part too is when ChatGPT is just straight up wrong. Reddit is supposedly the top website that AI combs through and boy that is not the best source for anything anymore imo.
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AI is primarily helpful if you doubt your own capability, or don’t want to invest the time to do it yourself.
Recently heard from a friend of the wife that she composed a ‘personal’ anniversary card for her husband using AI. Wow, who would not want something as heartfelt as that ??
A friend that records and composes music as a hobbyist just told me how helpful AI is in mixing to optimize sound quality and producing a better quality musical product. Wondering if he puts his name on the music, or as co produced with Mr. AI.
I think a designation will be needed for non AI generated content, much like for organic food.
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AI helps me design board games by balancing the stats. It also helps me design product images for some skincare and herbalism products that i sell because i cannot afford to hire an illustrator or a costume company and a photographer. I take a generated image as a foundation and then i edit it heavily myself afterwards.
I hate modern technology more than most people, but i would be lying to myself if i said it’s not helpful and doesn’t make things more accessible.
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AI might also be helpful in browsing thru big data pools, when designing a proper table and making conclusions every time from the scratch for every case is a lot of hassle (depending on the tool you have to work with your db).
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@urszula Those articles are so alarming to me and helped me over the last couple weeks (like a lot of the great Mudita blog content) in self reflecting myself and the people around me. I have two daughters at the age of 6 and 9 and I always was much aware in terms of media competence like what effect exposing them to tech devices, the internet etc. might have to them. Those articles sharpened my senses even more so that I will be even more aware of how, when and what they use while growing up. I won’t let big tech destroy their social behavior or self esteem from the get go.
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This is an important aspect thats overlooked by most people, and overlooked by our own governments as well. These companies with AI have committed possibly the largest most widespread global theft of property ever, and very few even bat an eye or even know. It’s an open secret to many and to government, but no one wants to do anything about it ‘in the name of progress’. They stole from the human race to create something which is decimating the lives of the people they stole from.
Your last paragraph is also very on point. Over-reliance on AI will quite literally reduce the gray matter in your brain. It reduces or even removes peoples skills in being able to research topics, it reduces peoples capacity for reasoning skills and logical thinking and more. Passing the burden to AI to do the thinking for you.
It has its uses… but i really dont think people (myself included) understand where the line is in how it will quite literally turn us dumb
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Beyond the ‘brain impact’ issues of AI, there are also the infrastructure and ecological impacts.
Nuclear power plants expected to be needed for the huge amounts of power required by the AI server farms, Already the requisite cooling water requirements have caused water shortages and the calls for shorter showers in Texas.
Technology is sometimes, or often, not of genuine value to humanity. Here you have nuclear for AI but not people, water for AI and not people, and all for a technology that diminishes the brain function and further brings down humanity.
Without the huge TECH banner, who would actually want AI ?? I think with the commodity nature of electronics (no big profit margins), the apparent demise of biotech, and the pressure against social media, the tech industry / DARPA needs to find a new big money maker, real or not - enter AI…
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