[CamperBob2]

There's no point arguing with someone who's not only wrong, but who doesn't care if they're wrong. ("I will not be able to produce anything even remotely comparable in terms of negative impact that AI brings to humanity these days.")

There are basically no conditions under which one party can or will reach a legitimate common ground with the other. Sucks, but that's HN nowadays.

[reconnecting]

There is common ground, as per my initial message. Only one AI company spends billions of dollars yearly on marketing their software to make it work. I work on open-source software development on a bootstrapped basis.

My input is: water, nutrition, a bit of electricity, and beliefs and the output is a fairly complex logical system like software. AI's input is billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of people's lives spent in screen time daily, gigawatts of electricity, and still produces very questionable results.

To answer your question in other words: if you spent the same amount of resources on human intelligence, it might bring much more impressive results in one year. However, taking into account the resources already paid into these AI technologies, humanity is unlikely to have a chance to buy out of this new 'dependency'.

[CamperBob2]

To answer your question in other words: if you spent the same amount of resources on human intelligence

If AI tools don't amplify and magnify your own intelligence, it's not their fault.

If the advances turn out to be illusory, on the other hand, they'll be unwound soon enough. We generally don't stick with expensive technology that doesn't work. At the same time, fortunately, we also don't generally wait for your approval before trying new things.

[LtWorf]

> We generally don't stick with expensive technology that doesn't work.

Homeopathy is still around…

[CamperBob2]

D'oh, you got me there.