Post Awiw7Ja4pg5loH54ro by ravenbait@mastodon.scot
 (DIR) More posts by ravenbait@mastodon.scot
 (DIR) Post #Awiw76wHpn8KbON8BE by ravenbait@mastodon.scot
       2025-07-31T23:13:37Z
       
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       “They’re trying to convince people they can’t do the things they’ve been doing easily for years – to write emails, to write a presentation. Your daughter wants you to make up a bedtime story about puppies – to write that for you.” We will get to the point, she says with a grim laugh, “that you will essentially become just a skin bag of organs and bones, nothing else."https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/03/creatives-academics-rejecting-ai-at-home-work
       
 (DIR) Post #Awiw77qeSEDhQCk92G by ravenbait@mastodon.scot
       2025-08-01T08:53:33Z
       
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       I posted this late (very late) last night, but it summarises my main problems with LLMs and how "AI" is being marketed. In addition to how environmentally destructive it is, it tells people that they're too lazy to do things that are well within the capability of most people. I'm reminded of that line from Ripley in Alien3."Do we have the capacity to make fire? Most humans have enjoyed that privilege since the stone age."
       
 (DIR) Post #Awiw78UM4bylPLJqvA by nusher@mastodon.scot
       2025-08-01T09:02:52Z
       
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       @ravenbait Funnily enough, my latest French lesson on Duolingo was about a website to tell you whether to protest or not, and whether the speaker would invest in such a thing - she said no, because the person has to make that decision themself, a website can’t do it for them. Same true of AI, we need to think for ourselves.
       
 (DIR) Post #Awiw7949vUcRCO4RjE by ravenbait@mastodon.scot
       2025-08-01T09:07:52Z
       
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       @nusher It's becoming very clear that use of these "tools" degrades people's ability to do these things for themselves.At archery, I can now maintain a running total of 5 people's scores faster than some can add one person's up at the end with a calculator. It's just practise. If you stop asking your brain to do things, your brain will stop being able to do them. The brain isn't a muscle, but it's resource hungry, and the body is efficient at getting rid of expensive things it doesn't use.
       
 (DIR) Post #Awiw7EhgxwDEgRbaXg by ravenbait@mastodon.scot
       2025-08-01T08:57:01Z
       
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       Humans are a species of storytellers and artists. It is arguably the main thing that sets humans apart. Tool using? Apes and corvids do that. So do some species of marine mammal, and they don't even have thumbs. Language? Orca. Maybe whales also have art -- they certainly have songs. But humans are unique in how they use story, and in how much communities have always valued storytellers.https://www.forbes.com/sites/willburns/2017/12/07/research-proves-that-the-storyteller-is-valued-more-than-anyone-in-a-society/Why would we let a machine take that away from us?
       
 (DIR) Post #Awiw7Ja4pg5loH54ro by ravenbait@mastodon.scot
       2025-08-01T09:18:30Z
       
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       I should really put my hand up here and say we don't know if humans are unique in this respect. I have my suspicions about Orca, as they are the only other known species where the female members survive past menopause. The knowledge and experience they offer is so valuable. If story is an evolved method for transmission of knowledge and shared cultural norms, I see no reason why it would not exist in similarly long-lived, knowledge-dependent species.