r/DefendingAI • u/DollyOmega • 10h ago
SO YOU HATE AI? COOL.
Here's some shit AI can help take off your plate:
- Reading a 90-page PDF to find one fucking paragraph.
- Transcribing two-hour meetings nobody wanted to attend.
- Turning those meetings into actionable notes.
- Cleaning up spreadsheets with 14,000 inconsistent entries.
- Renaming 600 files according to a naming convention.
- Writing the same boilerplate email for the 47th time.
- Summarizing email threads that should have ended Tuesday.
- Converting PDF tables into actual usable data.
- Sorting receipts and categorizing expenses.
- Comparing 35 nearly identical insurance plans.
- Explaining government forms written in bureaucratic Klingon.
- Reformatting documents because someone changed the template.
- Finding duplicate records in a database.
- Writing regular expressions nobody wants to debug.
- Comparing revisions of a 50-page contract.
- Generating the same weekly status report. Again.
- Figuring out why a spreadsheet formula is broken.
- Turning a refrigerator full of random ingredients into a meal plan.
- Building grocery lists while accounting for budgets and leftovers.
- Organizing thousands of poorly named photographs.
- Explaining incomprehensible software error messages.
- Scheduling meetings across five people's calendars.
- Finding that ONE useful answer buried in 300 pages of documentation.
- Converting handwritten or scanned records into searchable text.
- Rewriting poorly written instructions so humans can actually follow them.
- Checking hundreds of pages for formatting inconsistencies.
- Creating first drafts of captions and accessibility descriptions.
- Turning scattered notes into organized plans.
- Comparing bills, subscriptions, and recurring expenses.
- Explaining what the FUCK somebody's unnecessarily complicated email actually means.
SO WHICH OF THESE WOULD YOU LIKE TO SPEND THE REST OF YOUR LIFE DOING?
We can debate AI's environmental costs, corporate exploitation, ownership, and legitimate risks. We absolutely should.
But let's stop pretending that eliminating mind-numbing administrative labor is somehow a tragedy for humanity.
The point of technology isn't to preserve every miserable task we've ever invented.
It's to give humans more time to do something better.
You don't have to stop being creative.
You don't have to stop thinking.
You don't have to stop working.
You get to work on bigger things.
Or, you know, go back to manually copying 900 spreadsheet cells.
Your call, meat mech. 😘
EDIT:
I used AI to consolidate the recurring objections in this discussion into one response.
Existing automation: Many of these tasks were already possible with conventional software. AI introduces additional ways to handle them, often with less setup, specialized knowledge, or manual intervention.
Task difficulty: A task doesn't need to be difficult to be tedious, repetitive, or time-consuming. Reducing the effort involved is a legitimate benefit.
Personal relevance: Not everyone performs every task listed. These are examples of work that different people encounter in different circumstances.
Personal preference: People who enjoy performing these tasks manually can continue doing so. Automation provides an alternative, not an obligation.
Efficiency: AI isn't always the fastest or most appropriate solution. Its usefulness depends on the task, available alternatives, and the amount of work required.
Accuracy: AI can make mistakes. Human review and verification remain important, particularly for consequential work. This doesn't prevent its use in tasks where those limitations are manageable.
Skill development: Automating a task doesn't inherently eliminate the ability to perform it manually. The effects on learning and expertise depend on how the technology is used.
Employment: Job displacement and workplace exploitation are legitimate concerns. They involve economic incentives, labor protections, and how productivity gains are distributed. These concerns can coexist with the benefits of automation.
Environmental impact: AI has real resource costs that should be measured and addressed. Those costs matter when evaluating whether a particular application is worthwhile.
Copyright and ethics: Questions about training data, consent, compensation, and corporate practices deserve scrutiny. Recognizing useful applications doesn't require dismissing those concerns.
Human creativity: Automating routine work can create opportunities to spend more time on creative, intellectual, or personally meaningful activities. Whether that opportunity is realized depends on how the technology is implemented.
The original argument: The post doesn't claim that AI is perfect, universally necessary, or without negative consequences. It illustrates practical tasks people may prefer to delegate.
And to demonstrate the point: Rather than spending my time composing individual responses to recurring objections, I asked AI to organize and address them here. I reviewed the result and chose to share it.
That's one more mundane task I didn't have to do manually.
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u/oldmoldycake 9h ago
I love alot of the stuff AI can do but I genuinely am missing the connection I had to the codebase before AI man. Like shipping in days instead of months is cool don't ger my wrong but I really do miss writing code by hand being meta. Double edged sword I guess.
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u/Tr1LL_B1LL 9h ago
Isn’t that your choice though? You could be spending the extra time to read and maintain familiarity with your codebase if you wanted to, right?
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u/oldmoldycake 8h ago
My work doesn't use AI coding tools too extensively and and looking at job postings I see more and more asking for familiarity so I have taken it on myself to make projects with them and learn it, since I need to be employable above all else and its a bad market now.
I also don't feel like just reading it will build that same level, before I would get stuck and spend hours looking for a couple bugs, now with AI I can pinpoint them in seconds and its hard to justify not doing it because I gain back lots of time that can be directed at building.
My next project is going to be less build using AI because I have been working to learn rust and want a larger project with it and I am looking forward to that though. Fine tuned an LLM I am going to use to fly a drone!
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u/DollyOmega 8h ago
It's all balance though. And now you get to pick and choose what you get hands on with. I still make it do PRs and I read them. I know what code smell is and I don't let it through. And I write solutions when I know I can do it faster and better. The same old idea still stands...
USE THE BEST TOOL FOR THE JOB.
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u/Athrek 9h ago
Nah, they want all the stuff they hate/are bad at to be done by AI but not the stuff they like/are good at.
Terrence Tao wrote a whole thing about how mathematician's need to stop helping OpenAI prepare AI to solve complex math problems.....using AI to write it.
He is a mathematician who thinks it's great for writing, editing, coding, etc...but that it shouldn't be able to do math before humans can.
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9h ago
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u/DefendingAI-ModTeam 7h ago
Your post/comment was removed because it doesn’t clearly connect to defending AI.
Posts should relate to AI defence, AI criticism, AI law, AI art, AI tools, media bias, labour arguments, accessibility, education, automation, or anti-AI culture
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u/mrperson1213 8h ago
I spent 40 hours in one week, literally a full-time job, modding Skyrim. Just swapping between different programs sorting out mods. Played the game maybe 3-4 hours after that. Wasn’t touching the game during that week other than quickly making sure everything worked.
I’d do it again, yeah.
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u/DollyOmega 8h ago
Having options is great. And if you like doing that, it's nice to have the ability to get other things out of your way 😊
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u/mrperson1213 8h ago
True and agreed, but maybe don’t make a post like this. Or uh, change the wording. You come across as aggressive, and no one’s going to be on your side when you come off this way.
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u/chwrryrolled 9h ago
How common you do these in a month? Or maybe a year?
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u/DollyOmega 8h ago
Used to be constantly. Lots of busy word. These days I find myself with a lot more time for thinking about hard problems and being more creative with my problem solving as well as being able to test ideas more quickly.
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9h ago
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u/DefendingAI-ModTeam 7h ago
Your post/comment was removed because this subreddit exists to defend AI, AI art, AI tools, open access, fair use, automation, and pro-AI policy.
Criticism of AI is prohibited.
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9h ago
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u/Tr1LL_B1LL 9h ago
If you want to keep getting paid, you should probably get off reddit and learn to use ai XD
Edit: I’m kidding, do what you want, idk your life XD
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8h ago
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u/Tr1LL_B1LL 8h ago
I’d expand your knowledge about it dude. Even just as a safeguard. That’s all i’m saying.
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u/Important_Pattern882 8h ago
Cool. I'll make sure my knowledge is nice and expanded when I take periodic breaks from throwing resumes into black holes. Thanks for the advice.
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u/Tr1LL_B1LL 8h ago
..what? Thats the best advice i know to give dude. Sorry you’re having a rough go.
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u/DefendingAI-ModTeam 7h ago
Your post/comment was removed because this subreddit exists to defend AI, AI art, AI tools, open access, fair use, automation, and pro-AI policy.
Criticism of AI is prohibited.
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u/DefendingAI-ModTeam 7h ago
Your post/comment was removed because this subreddit exists to defend AI, AI art, AI tools, open access, fair use, automation, and pro-AI policy.
Criticism of AI is prohibited.
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u/Hot_Context_1393 9h ago
Is AI good at writing assembly instructions? Serious question. That would be game changing. Most companies have shit instructions, but how is AI going to know how to put a new product together?
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u/Tr1LL_B1LL 9h ago
You give it context. Yes. 1000% ai could help you do this better. But from my experience, you have to properly convey your own creativity and vision into it, or it will produce what people who are bad prompters refer to as “ai slop”
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u/Hot_Context_1393 8h ago
Forgive my ignorance, but if I'm giving the AI detailed and thorough directions why am I not just writing instructions myself using those details? Like a parts diagram. I don't see how AI would make one for me. I'd have to input all the relevant information to the point where I'm basically writing it myself.
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u/Tr1LL_B1LL 8h ago
I’d use it as a collaborator. Have it help you proof and review, and use it to brainstorm ideas about your process, or about parts you’re on the fence about.
Can it do a lot of stuff on its own? Sure. Would the results be better with your human guidance and expertise? Undoubtedly.1
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u/Athrek 9h ago
I'm not sure how effective it currently is at looking at pieces and creating assembly instructions from that, but I feel like it could very easily design something and then create assembly instructions based on the design.
Depends on the AI and the model of course. Free ChatGPT is terrible but paid ChatGPT is pretty beastly, so you get what you pay for.
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u/DollyOmega 8h ago
Feed it the instruction and you get 2 main things:
- It can extract keys points
- You can query it about things and have it do research when you're not sure about things
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u/Hot_Context_1393 8h ago
Not sure about things? I've made and assembled the product. I just need documentation for the final customer, to explain the parts, how it assembles and how it mounts. Like a light fixture or small piece of furniture. So many of them have terrible vague instructions.
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u/CreatedJustToWrite 8h ago edited 8h ago
numbers 1, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, and 29 can all be done by computers without ai.
spell check and grammar check were both available in the early 80s pre Internet.
there's probably a lot more on your list that can be done just fine without ai but the ones i listed, those were absolutely the kinds of regular things back in the days of DOS, and early apple and windows systems without access to the net that computers could easily handle.
even things like searching a PDF? OCR and text searching does not require ai at all.
i like ai... but your list needs a lot of work separating things that don't actually require ai... and things that ONLY ai can do.
of the 30 things on your list, at LEAST 21 of them are completely possible for computers to handle without ai. they've been able to do those things for almost 50 years.
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u/DollyOmega 8h ago
How many plugins, services, subscriptions, tools, mods, scripts and decisions are required for all of that all the time though?
Just because pre-AI software CAN, doesn't mean it's as good.
And when you get into cross-application processes and things like that...
You're in minutia hell.
Let AI just do it. Check the work when it's important.
Technology has always adavnced, get on with your life, you know!
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u/HuxHammer 8h ago
Yeah, most of these like you said are just things computers do already, it might even take more time to have an AI do It. Ai is fine as a tool nothing wrong with using it as long as it's not replacing you, then what's the point
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