this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2024
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[–] osugi_sakae@midwest.social 4 points 13 hours ago

Education is one area where GenAI is having a huge impact. Teachers work with text and language all day long. They have too much to do and not enough time to do it. Ideally, for example, they should "differentiate" for EACH and EVERY student. Of course that almost never happens, but second best is to differentiate for specific groups - students with IEPs (special ed), English Learners, maybe advanced / gifted.

More tech aware teachers are now using ChatGPT and friends to help them do this. They are (usually) subject area experts, so they can quickly read through a generated or modified text and fix or remove errors - hallucinations are less (ime) of an issue in this situation. Now, instead of one reading that only a few students can actually understand, they have three at different levels, each with their own DOK questions.

People have started saying "AI won't replace teachers. Teachers who use AI will replace teachers who don't."

Of course, it will be interesting to see what happens when VC funding dries up, and the AI companies can't afford to lose money on every single interaction. Like with everything else in USA education, better off districts may be able to afford AI, and less-well-off (aka black / brown / poor) districts may not be able to.

[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 38 points 1 day ago (6 children)

At a beach restaurant the other night I kept hearing a loud American voice cut across all conversation, going on and on about “AI” and how it would get into all human “workflows” (new buzzword?). His confidence and loudness was only matched by his obvious lack of understanding of how LLMs actually work.

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 29 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

"Confidently incorrect" I think describes a lot of AI aficionados.

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 13 points 18 hours ago

And LLMs themselves.

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 9 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago)

I would also add "hopeful delusionals" and "unhinged cultist" to that list of labels.

Seriously, we have people right now making their plans for what they're going to do with their lives once Artificial Super Intelligence emerges and changes the entire world to some kind of post-scarcity, Star-Trek world where literally everyone is wealthy and nobody has to work. They think this is only several years away. Not a tiny number either, and they exist on a broad spectrum.

Our species is so desperate for help from beyond, a savior that will change the current status-quo. We've been making fantasies and stories to indulge this desire for millenia and this is just the latest incarnation.

No company on Earth is going to develop any kind of machine or tool that will destabilize the economic markets of our capitalist world. A LOT has to change before anyone will even dream of upending centuries of wealth-building.

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[–] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 15 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Some people can only hear "AI means I can pay people less/get rid of them entirely" and stop listening.

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[–] Blackmist@feddit.uk 9 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I've noticed that the people most vocal about wanting to use AI get very coy when you ask them what it should actually do.

[–] ameancow@lemmy.world 5 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

I also notice the ONLY people who can offer firsthand reports how it's actually useful in any way are in a very, very narrow niche.

Basically, if you're not a programmer, and even then a very select set of programmers, then your life is completely unimpacted by generative AI broadly. (Not counting the millions of students who used it to write papers for them.)

AI is currently one of those solutions in search of a problem. In its current state, it can't really do anything useful broadly. It can make your written work sound more professional and at the same time, more mediocre. It can generate very convincing pictures if you invest enough time into trying to decode the best sequence of prompts and literally just get lucky, but it's far too inacurate and inconsistent to generate say, a fully illustrated comic book or cartoon, unless you already have a lot of talent in that field. I have tried many times to use AI in my current job to analyze PDF documents and spreadsheets and it's still completely unable to do work that requires mathematics as well as contextual understanding of what that math represents.

You can have really fun or cool conversations with it, but it's not exactly captivating. It is also wildly inaccurate for daily use. I ask it for help finding songs by describing the lyrics and other clues, and it confidentially points me to non-existing albums by hallucinated artists.

I have no doubt in time it's going to radically change our world, but that time frame is going to require a LOT more time and baking before it's done. Despite how excited a few select people are, nothing is changing overnight. We're going to have a century-long "singularity" and won't realize we've been through it until it's done. As history tends to go.

[–] icecreamtaco@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

"AI, how do I do in "

"Here is some code. Please fix any errors: "

These save me hours of work on a regular basis and I don't even use the paid tier of ChatGPT for it. Especially the first one because I used to read half the documentation to answer that question. Results are accurate 80% of the time, and the other 20% is close enough that I can fix it in a few minutes. I'm not in an obscure AI related field, any programmer can benefit from stuff like this.

[–] Euphoma@lemmy.ml 3 points 19 hours ago

Porn / ai gf. Thats what 90% of ai power users do.

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[–] eran_morad@lemmy.world 4 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

I'm buying semis. I don't see AI, construed broadly, as ever shrinking from its current position.

[–] Furbag@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago (1 children)
[–] GiddyGap@lemm.ee 1 points 8 hours ago

Based on the upcoming robot apocalypse, obviously.

[–] Nomecks@lemmy.ca 4 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

The hype of massive LLMs will die, but smaller companies in all sectors are only increasing the amount of GPUs they're buying.

[–] 31337@sh.itjust.works 8 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

I'm loading up on vacuum tubes.

[–] ninth_plane@lemmy.world 6 points 15 hours ago

They make the LLM responses "warmer".

[–] spyd3r@sh.itjust.works 3 points 13 hours ago

I'm stocked up on obsolete media formats.

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