| This is a terrible article, apparently one of those that starts with a title and then goes in search of every possible argument to support the conclusion. The whole thing is bad and disingenuous (somehow the very real impact of excessive crawling by AI companies in an indictment of the value of the output). And it just gets worse. For instance: > If you’re looking something up [on a search engine], you usually type a few keywords and get a list of links. But with a chatbot, you have to write full sentences, and how fast you can type limits how fast you can interact. Then, instead of getting quick, scannable links, you get a big block of text. You read it—but you’re always aware it might be wrong. On a regular search engine, you can judge a source just by looking at the domain of the website, the design of the page or even reading the “About” page. Got that? Chatbots make you type whole sentences, and instead of a short list of links the reader can easily scan, click through, analyze quality of graphic designs, and read the obviously-totally-trustworthy About pages to determine accuracy… you get answers in one place that could be wrong. The fact that all chatbots include citations that you can click to do the same rigorous design-based fact checking is omitted, presumably because it would weaken the argument. There are legit reasons to dislike the ethics of AI companies, and there are legit reasons believe this is a dot bomb style bubble, and there are legit reasons to be skeptical that the tech has enough headroom to reach AGI. But this article just puts little bits of each in a blender and hopes for the best. It’s funny because while decrying “hype”, it uses all the same cheap and lazy rhetorical techniques as the worst AI hypesters. Further illustrating the “you become what you hate” principle, I suppose. |
I've noticed that I've solved quite a few problems simply by being forced to spell out the precise problem statement to an AI bot. I knew the answer as soon as I had finished typing the question out in full, and watching the AI confirm my suspicions was superfluous but gratifying.
I also now feel guilty for not providing the same level of detail to other people that I've tasked with something.