So I have a Google Pixel 9 Pro but I’ve resisted downloading Gemini.. Now that I have a system update downloading, it says it’ll ask me about poopy AI again. Should I submit? I’m personally concerned about environmental impacts, and theft of everyone’s stuff. I’m sure it both cures and causes cancer. IDK. Thought?
Also bad information, and copies of copies. Who’s in charge of programming? Secure? What we doin?
If I could get all the AI bots off my bundled software, I’d be a happy person. More annoying than Clippy.
I have an iPhone. It came with the AI assistant Siri. I have never used Siri for anything ever. I would delete Siri entriely if I could. On an unrelated dive into Settings, I learned that while I never use Siri for anything, the default is for Siri to collect data on my use of the phone and every app on it. There should be a single button to turn that off. There is not. I went through a list of every app on the phone and set it to ‘Do not allow Siri to collect usage data from this app’ and deleting all the data Siri had already collected.
My sister in law was trying to convince me to enable iCloud. I said I understood what iCloud did, I did not need it. I very much did not want it. She insisted on explaining how iCloud was useful. None of this was new information. I kept telling her that. She kept explaining, At one point, she asked “Can I finish speaking?” I answered- calmly and politely “No.” She got very angry and started yelling. Then, she asked if I was okay with all the information and settings on my phone not being backed up. I said yes and she walked off.
When I first got an iPhone, I learned that if you download iTunes onto your Windows computer and connect your phone by Bluetooth or data cable, you can back everything up without using iCloud. After the patronizing and condescending explanation of facts I have known for years, the yelling (if you don’t want an answer, don’t phrase things in the form of questions.), and her angrily accusing me of not being calm (Again I said no politely and calmly. I had concluded she had no new information to give me. I was proven correct), I had forgotten to mention that to her. Oh well.
I have turned off autocorrect on my laptop. It still tells me when it thinks there is a spelling or grammar error in my writing. Often there is no mistake, I am just using a word that is not in the English dictionary.
I have a PIxel and got the 16 update and the AI is there but not really making me do anything with it.
I think at this point it is baked in. You have it whether you like it or not. But again, I have never seen it be intrusive (I have an 8-Pro if that makes a difference).
I do use Claude AI and pay the basic rate for it. I have found it useful. It works on my phone and computer. I had an HTML based email that was getting wonky and I asked it to solve the formatting and it did in a minute. I was out with a date and she got a work request via text and needed some help writing something I didn’t know much about and the AI solved her problem (good for me since she was happy).
Occasionally it is useful to ask questions like, “I am traveling to Timbuktu, help me make an itinerary for these dates.” And it will. Maybe you do not want to do all those things but it helps get you on a path to deciding what it is you’d like.
I never let it write things for me but I find it helps at the basic research for lots of things and then I can use that as a jumping-off point to doing the rest.
I think it is worthwhile if used properly. But there are limits. I think you (general “you”) still need to put in the work.
That said, I don’t think I have ever used the built in AI on the phone for anything. Just feels like Googling something but now it is Gemini. Presumably free to use though so there’s that.
He didn’t mean it AI overlords. Please spare us during the robot revolution. That would be alright, right?
It is certain
Wait, how’d he do that?
Write your plans in pencil and give God the eraser. — Paulo Coelho
Ahhhh! He’s gained sentience! He’s going to erase us all from the timeline and recreate the world according to his own design!
It was inevitable.
You should try to avoid it as much as possible, it’s dangerously untrustworthy.
@discobot is drip tonight.
Hi! To find out what I can do, say @discobot display help.
Just don’t, disc ol’guy.
I’ve always been a play with new technology, see what it’s good at and what it isn’t, adapt to it, and leverage it for your own needs kind of guy. I don’t begrudge anyone who wants to stick to what they know, but I like being on top of progress or, more cynically, “progress.” Whether I like it or not, it’s here to stay, and better for me to know how well it works and in what ways it works than not, but that’s my personality. I’ve been using LLMs since November 2022, and I’ve found them endlessly fascinating and useful for many tasks. But it takes time and tinkering and an open mind to figure out what they’re good at.
I’m still resisting actually making any earnest use of generative AI. Apart from the ethical angle, it’s just not very useful - generated text is typically trite and stale and shallow; generated summaries are often just wrong; generated images are impressive but usually soulless.
Last week I googled the pronunciation of a place name I was visiting and Google’s AI overview not only asserted the wrong answer, but it was also just bullshitting about the pronunciation given in the source it cited. Worse than useless.
In other words, it was successfully imitating a meat intelligence?
I teach a high school photography class. In Photoshop, I discovered using Generative AI was actually fairly useful in photo editing. So there’s that. I’m otherwise fairly skeptical of AI in general.
This argument almost always comes up from AI detractors. But all server farms have an environmental impact. Netflix’s server farms have an environmental impact. Online gaming server farms have an environmental impact. Google’s server farms have an environmental impact. Every computerized thing that, as a service for millions of people, requires the use of central locations with large numbers of servers has an environmental impact. But unless you are avoiding all services that utilize large server farms because of their environmental impact (and if you are on the internet, you are using those server farms) then your concern boils down to “I’m concerned about the environmental impact of services that other people use that I don’t like.”.
Not all server farms are created equal. Sometimes people don’t like server farms because of the direct impacts they have on their immediate neighborhood and how they impact their personal quality of life.
And others care that some companies take steps to mitigate negative impacts and other companies don’t seem to give a damn.
We all piss - but there’s a difference between throwing one’s piss out of a chamber pot onto the street with no regards to passers-by and depositing one’s piss in a receptacle that feeds into a sewer that leads to a treatment plant where waste water is detoxified prior to being released back into the wild.
