[andymasley]

I say in the post I lose respect for people who specifically claim that a billion people are using an app that adds absolutely nothing to their lives each week, not people who dislike chatbots for other reasons (hallucinations etc.). So I think a lot of people are getting a lot of misinformation from TikTok, and I think it’d be better if TikTok didn’t exist, but I’d consider anyone who said that TikTok is completely useless to its users to be pretty goofy. I feel the same about chatbots.

[jrflowers]

> a billion people are using an app that adds absolutely nothing to their lives each week

I like this reasoning. If something is popular it is objectively good. For example 21.7% of adults on earth use tobacco, so it must be good then.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.PRV.SMOK?name_desc=f...

Except for TikTok, which is bad because people share their experiences of chat bots not being very good on there.

As an aside, “dumb” is subjective, though if we had to put a label on it, “consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic, and behavioral levels” sounds like it could be something?

https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872

[andymasley]

I think basically everyone using tobacco knows it's bad for them. They're not stupid. This is another example of people being basically aware of their situations.

[bpt3]

You realize people can be aware of the negative consequences of their actions and still make a "stupid" choice, correct?

I would say that's true using a strict definition of the term, and is definitely true for common usage of the term.

In the future, you should just tell people up front when you're going to redefine terms to suit your needs (in your article and in your posts here, you apparently define "useful" as "providing immediate gratification with no consideration of any long term effects" and you seem to be define "stupid" only as "making decisions without full knowledge of the consequences" above) rather than confusing nearly everyone who reads your writing.

[andymasley]

The dictionary definition of useful is “Able to be used for a practical purpose or in several ways.” How am I going against this definition?

[bpt3]

How can you both think TikTok shouldn't exist and think that it's useful to its users, without using a pretty unique definition of useful?

[andymasley]

There's a ton of stuff I think is useful in specific circumstances but can be bad overall.

-Video games: Provide fun, but probably overall bad for society bc people waste too much time on them.

-Alcohol: Most drinkers get a lot of value out of drinking, but alcoholism is so bad that on net alcohol's probably bad.

-Guns & nuclear weapons: Wish both didn't exist, but each provides a lot of use to the specific people who have them.

-TikTok: Overall causes too many people to believe misinformation, but for a lot of other people is fun or interesting.

It's possible to think AI chatbots are net bad because people use them to cheat, or they rely on them for information too much and believe false information, without believing that they are always useless in all circumstances. I can use ChatGPT to alphabetize a long list for me. That's useful, even if I think overall chatbots are net bad.

[jrflowers]

> I can use ChatGPT to alphabetize a long list for me.

Trying to imagine using enough energy to boil two liters of water(1)(2) to sort a list instead of typing

sort list.txt

which is a command that works pretty much the same on Windows(3), Linux/Bash(4), macOS (5) and does not have any risk of hallucinating at all, and the only reason I could imagine myself doing that was if for some reason, using enough energy to boil two liters of water to sort a list made me feel good. Like I would only do that if I got some sort of rush out of it or if it made people on the internet think that I am smart.

1 https://ai-basics.com/how-much-energy-does-chatgpt-really-us...

2 https://eatwithus.net/how-much-energy-does-it-take-to-boil-1...

3 https://www.windows-commandline.com/sort-command/

4 https://thelinuxcode.com/bash_sort_command/

5 https://ss64.com/mac/sort.html

[andymasley]

Sorry the energy comment is ridiculously out of context. I've written a deep dive on how small that number is. Do you complain when YouTube videos or video games use similar amounts of energy? Your laptop uses the same energy every 3 minutes. https://andymasley.substack.com/p/a-cheat-sheet-for-conversa...

[jrflowers]

You make an interesting point about that you do not care about energy usage at all, and I have completely forgotten about the point I made about being able to type sort into any computer without installing any software or connecting to the internet.

On the one hand the fact that people accept hallucinations is all the proof you need to indicate that chat bot usage is driven by feelings and not results, and on the other hand there’s a blog post that might’ve been written by a chat bot about how chat bot energy usage is pretty cool, actually, so who is to know anything about anything

[bpt3]

Are you saying you also believe video games, alcohol, and guns shouldn't exist?

If so, that's a pretty radical position, and if not I don't understand how they're relevant.

[andymasley]

I think each are net bad and shouldn't exist yes, but I also think each is useful in specific contexts. Not sure why that's not relevant, it's a direct example of stuff that's useful but net bad.

[jrflowers]

Wait are you saying that you think that chat bots are a net bad that shouldn’t exist because of the cheating and the false information but you can sort a list or are you saying despite the cheating and false information chat bots are a net positive that should exist because you can sort a list?

[andymasley]

I'm not making a claim about whether they're good overall or not, I'm saying 1) Reasonable people can think they're bad overall. 2) It's not reasonable to say they're literally always useless.

[bpt3]

I said your list was not relevant if you didn't believe the items on it should not exist, but that's not the case.

Frankly, the inherent contradiction of your vehement support for something you think shouldn't exist has confounded me, and your position that video games, guns, and alcohol also should not exist is so far on the fringe of society that it's hard to take at face value.

[andymasley]

Sorry this is pretty straightforward. If I'm Kim Jong Un, a nuclear weapon is extremely useful to me. That doesn't mean I think overall a world where nuclear weapons exist is good. I'm confused why you think "useful" needs to have this additional meaning of "good overall"