Thank you for your cordial reply. I know I've engaged you in a testy sort of fashion from time to time (I blame that on my recent mental/emotional state, which is not good) but overall I respect you and I'm sorry if sometimes my words come off as overly hostile. I do sometimes feel like you're a bit flippant at times, and I feel the need to call that out, but that might partially just be my own overactive imagination.
That's the impression I got.
Actually >90% of the people do NOT think AI is Peachy. According to this you're in the majority (if you don't count the people who are not aware or have no opinion). I'd be interested to see what the survey results would be now as the topic and general awareness has exploded since February.
That's interesting, so thank you for the link. From my side, I honestly see more people just blindly using and marveling at ChatGPT than people questioning it for legitimate reasons, but perhaps maybe I'm looking in the wrong places. In any event, the money and power is overwhelmingly behind AI and overwhelmingly
not behind the average people who are suffering from AI, so....well -- to borrow the words of my favorite author -- I'll still perceive this as a battle between the overpowering wall (the former) vs. the egg that dares to smash itself against the wall (the latter), and will take the latter's side, even if it makes me come off as a bit silly at times.
No, I'm not trying to say that at all. My tree-saving friend is not at all self-righteous and I consider him one of my best friends.
I'm saying that what he is doing is not really doing much for the greater good but if it makes him feel good I'm happy for him and I respect him for it.
Just like I respect people who go running regularly. It's not a habit I could easily form. I'm certainly not going to belittle somebody for doing something helpful.
This is more or less the same cycle we've seen along the arc of history starting with the invention of the written word itself. Or, more recently, the advent of home computers and the digital divide that ensued. Clearly people will be disrupted. I'm not happy or laughing about it. It's just something we all need to deal with. In my case I probably won't have to worry about it but since it will affect my kids I do have to worry about it.
Thank you for the clarification. Like you talked about the impression you got from my words, the impression I got from your "I wonder if he's even saved one tree" struck me as kind of saying "he's done this for 40 years...what has that ever amounted to,
really."
If you were trying to genuinely show respect for his commitment and not belittle it by making it seem insignificant, you might want to choose your words or phrasing a bit more carefully. I'm not sure your friend would feel particularly respected or honored by reading that part of your post.
In that case, my (genuine) apologies. I have to admit, I do kind of see you as a "pro-AI, damn everything else" person, just because you don't seem to express much doubt or qualifcation when quoting DeepL, Bing, etc.
I remember one time when quoted a DeepL translation to answer a very thought-provoking post by a person (KarenK) whose Japanese ability is quite possibly (not a judgment of your character, just a third-party observation) better than your own, and I found that kind of off-putting.
I'm sorry you took it that way. It took me a minute to even figure out what you were talking about. My only point was that you've been on the Internet long enough to know how it works. Not that you're "old" or a luddite or anything like that. Quite the contrary. Which is why I was puzzled you'd even bothered to call me out for something I wrote months ago.
Again, I apologize for replying to an old post of yours. I was in a semi-lucid state (all too common for me these days, unfortunately) and didn't look at the date. I thought it was recent, and I thought you were going back on your previous comment that you would clarify when you were AI-sourcing your replies (which I don't care for) and when you were responding with your own knowledge (which I respect a lot...your posts regarding oldschool neighborhood life in Japan are one of the few things here I can relate to anymore).
P.S. Just because I argue against something, it doesn't mean I don't understand the perspective of people who argue for it. I just...simply...don't...agree.
I don't consider myself a proponent of AI. It's a new toy that I've been playing with. Just like when GIFs first came out and we had fun playing with those.
And I choose to focus on what the tool can do well. Not what it can't do or isn't designed to do. As noted in the link above, you're actually not a minority at all.
If it looked like I was condescending or making fun of anybody, that was not my intent at all.
Well, unfortunately, people don't only use tools for the things they are intended by the (powerful, wealthy) people behind them intend them to be used for. It would be great if guns were only used to shoot and kill bad people, but unfortunately, a lot of good people die because America has decided that guns are peachy-keen.
You can think that AI is just a nice toy, but when people are losing their livelihoods because powerful people would rather make a 190% profit instead of a 170% profit by firing all their writers and instead hiring half-rate "editors" to rewrite AI-written word salad garbage, that acutally matters to some people, including people who might not even realize it.
I'm glad you're at least aware that the stuff you consider a "toy" might be "disruptive" in the sense of actually
ending lives and careers of the future generation. I'd like to think I'm at least aware of the point you're making, even though I find it quite frankly a bit scary.
I'm not an IT exec by the way. Or executive either. And I haven't done direct I.T. work for about 20 years. I do work in technology though.
Thank you for clarifying this. I apologize for having misrepresented you.
Despite my apparent anti-technology views, I also work in an IT-adjacent position, though in a more "soft skill" sector of the tech world, which is perhaps why I'm a bit sensitive to the AI/machine learning push.
yokai.com
naruto.fandom.com
today.yougov.com
lenwilson.us
