[cornholio]

News at 11, spammers use sophisticated techniques to increase the profitability of spam. This is absolutely shocking and never before seen, what is the world coming to.

In all seriousness, manipulation and bullshit generation emerges as the single major real world use of AI. It's not good enough yet to solve the big problems of the world: medical diagnostic, auto accidents, hunger. Maybe just a somewhat better search tool, maybe a better converational e-learning tool, barely a better Intellisense.

But, by God, is it fantastic at creating Reddit and X bots that amplify the current line of Chinese and Russian propaganda, upvote and argue among themselves on absurd topics to shittify any real discussion and so on.

[brabel]

> X bots that amplify the current line of Chinese and Russian propaganda...

Do you think those countries are the only ones doing this? Just the other day there was a scandal about one of the biggest Swedish parties, one that's in the government coalition, doing exactly this. And that's just one that got caught. In countries like India and Brazil online disinformation has become an enormous problem, and I think that in the USA and Europe, as the old Soviet joke went: "Their propaganda is so good their people even believe they don't have any".

[CoastalCoder]

I don't think this is unique to this specific technology.

People can be both wonderful and despicable, regardless of era or mechanism.

[cornholio]

Sure, but I'm talking about the good:bad ratio of some creations. I really have strong hope for AI, and that we won't regard it in retrospect like the multi-stage thermonuclear device, the landmine or tetraethyl lead additives.

[squigz]

Not to dismiss any of the negative aspects of "AI", but it seems utterly foolish to compare it to those 3 things.

[cornholio]

There is no comparison, explicit or implied. Just an enumeration to illustrate that some technologies are inherently likely to be harmful rather than beneficial, not everything is a question of the agency of the user.

[CoastalCoder]

I hope you're right. I'm less optimistic.