[…] this technology is horrific for attention. It’s a thermonuclear ADHD amplifier and I have seen the same effect in every single one of my adult friends. Folk running 3 screens simultaneously working on totally unrelated “projects” they have little hope of maintaining, and such little commitment to the outcome that the time is obviously wasted.

Worth a read, whatever your opinion on LLMs.

  • cheese_greater@lemmy.worldEnglish
    57·
    3 hours ago

    I think if AI creates negative effects you shouldn’t use it. I find it quite useful altho I have to be very careful and often cite its sources or explain how it came to a response because I dont trust it much more than a code writing tool and advanced search assistant/summarizee

    I know someone’s gonna swoop in a say it cant think/reason/ideate it only matches patterns but I disagree, thats probably part of it but I have gotten many excellent and reliable responses and answers to questions far faster in so using it so I have to brush over those complaints

    • geekwithsoul@piefed.socialEnglish
      111·
      3 hours ago

      When you say you have it cite its sources, do you actually read the source? Because I’ve noticed models continually cite sources that don’t support what it’s saying.

      And it most definitely cannot think/reason/ideate - full stop.

        • astronaut_sloth@mander.xyzEnglish
          4·
          3 hours ago

          Please read the citations. I’ve found Claude (and a slightly lesser extend GPT) to be right more often than not, but the leading LLMs do get things wrong with enough frequency that it’s worth checking.

          Also, to be clear, I’m not fervently anti-LLM, but I do know how it works (as much as anyone who has read the academic literature). “Thinking” is at best a misnomer and at worst a marketing term. It’s just an ouroboros; the LLM more-or-less feeds its output back into itself to “check” it and “think.” It works surprisingly well, but it’s not actual thinking.

    • 👍Maximum Derek👍@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      31·
      2 hours ago

      cite its sources

      Just so you know, an LLM isn’t capable of actually citing its sources properly, that’s not how vector engines work. When you ask it to do so, one (or more thread) spits out what ever the algebra says is the best answer, then another thread tries to best fit that output to some article in its database. If the first thread was fully committing plagiarism, then the link is accurate. If it “reasoned” anything then it’s may not be.