[bigstrat2003]

I would kill (figuratively, anyway) to have no AI whatsoever. No slop machine threatening to replace my job, or turn my job into babysitting its stupidity, and hardware would be reasonably priced? That would be awesome. AI has brought me nothing but downside.

[dotancohen]

AI has freed most people I know from the tedious job of writing actual emails and birthday greetings - leaving then more time to e.g. wash dishes or clean the floor.

Seriously, if arts and creativity is what sets humans apart from other animals, then AI has almost completely displaced our capacity to even consider doing these activities ourselves. People reach for AI when they should be composing a birthday greeting themselves.

[atmosx]

People were Googling these things. Those who were good with words, didn’t do that before AI and won’t do it today. They don’t have to.

[sgt]

Is it a genuine birthday greeting if you just let AI do the job?

[socalgal2]

Was it a genuine birthday greeting when you bought a card? Or used an online card? I don’t really see the difference. The point is you thought of them, not the actual words

[actionfromafar]

With AI you don't have to think about them.

[cheschire]

Great business opportunity there. Make a free service that sends AI generated birthday notes to people. All the user has to provide is the other persons birthday.

People cannot be relied upon to provide accurate birthdays but nobody would suffer the social faux pas of an incorrect birthday congrats note. Nor would they send it to a spam catching email, but rather are guaranteed to send it to a regularly checked address. They know the persons birthday after all.

You can then sell high quality birthday information correlated to contact information to ad agencies.

Fuck this current internet. So dystopian.

[actionfromafar]

Then the receiver AI can thank the sending AI before deleting.

[bluGill]

I used to write birthday emails to my friends years ago. I quit when calendar systems started automatically promoting me when birthdays happened. Remembering someone's birthday no longer seemed like a significant effort on my part and so it wasn't worth the bother since it didn't say as much.

[alex43578]

For 90% of birthday greetings, are they ever genuine?

Like seriously, outside of some close friends and family, are you sitting there deliberating over a message for your coworker Steve in the Slack chat or a cousin you barely talk to outside of a birthday and Christmas card?

[Brian_K_White]

that was their point

[Pwntastic]

someone at work unironically said they use ai to compose "thoughtful responses" to people, and my immediate thought was that what they are doing is the literal opposite of thoughtful

[fluoridation]

Are you being sarcastic? There's no way you believe people couldn't wash dishes or clean floors because of all the emails and birthday greetings they had to write, or that people have almost completely lost the ability to consider making art.

[sowbug]

It's a paraphrasing of the popular 2024 Joanna Maciejewska quote: "I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for AI to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes."

[robrtsql]

I believe it was rhetorical. They were trying to illustrate that we've automated tasks that people might find to be fulfilling (drawing, writing) but are still a long way off from affordably automating drudgery.

> or that people have almost completely lost the ability to consider making art

They haven't lost it, no, but there's a lot of financial incentive to stop paying people to do it.

[dandanua]

But we now have trillionaires, aren't you happy about that? It means you might be the one some day too /s

[i_idiot]

I immigrated wanting to become a millionaire. Never found time working my ass off. Now that I get pension and tokens from Musk and Zuck, I can finally try!