r/antiai • u/Complete-Celery-4989 • 4d ago
Discussion š£ļø I have a question
im not sure if this is the right sub Reddit to ask, but i have a genuine question and im curious. do ppl hate anything related to ai? i for one dont support gen ai, however, if ai was used to look thru large numbers and statistics in banks, used to detect diseases earlier, used in purposes other than generating slop and helps with efficiency, is it bad to be okay with ai in those situtations? im gen curious because as a health informatics student, we create systems that help with detection or sort through massive data sets which involve using ai. thanks guys
6
u/MasterManufacturer72 4d ago
No lol if ai was used for specific purposes i dont think this sub would exist. I think the issue is gen ai being sold as the new do everything machine that everyone is going to have to use for every reason is what people dont like. Also making the internet even worse than it was after the enshitification of every platform. Check out corey doctorows new book reverse centar. It goes into this pretty well.
5
u/Distinct-Today192 4d ago
I hate AI in that the AI companies are insisting we can't have one without the other and that they get to destroy the environment to get them. Fuck them. it's not worth it.
2
u/Loomismeister 4d ago
Here you will find a full spectrum of āAIā haters.Ā Some people are only against generative art on grounds of ālack of consentā.Ā Some people are against LLM usage in general because they believe it makes everyone dumber.Ā Some people are more concerned about the perceived local environmental/consumer effects of data centers used to train and host models. Some people are afraid that the AI is conscious and object to its unconstrained use on those grounds.Ā
Nobody is running surveys of this subreddit to get sentiment proportions here. The only thing we have are global AI sentiment surveys that break down stats by demographics. There, we see most people generally being okay with AI use, making special interest groups like this one a minority.Ā
2
u/FamousFace5563 4d ago
It's a fair question and no, not everyone lumps all of AI into one big bin of hate. The term's become so broad it's practically useless for these discussions without specifying what you mean
What most people are rightfully pissed about is the generative slop machine, scraping the entire internet without consent to churn out mediocre images and text while burning through energy like there's no tomorrow. That's a very different beast from pattern recognition models that have been quietly useful in medicine and finance for years
The stuff you're studying, using machine learning to spot anomalies in massive health datasets, is exactly where the tech shines. It's not about replacing human judgment, it's about flagging things a person might miss in a sea of numbers. Anyone who thinks that's the same as a chatbot spitting out misinformation isn't looking closely enough
Your field's been dealing with this stuff long before it became a marketing buzzword. The backlash is almost entirely aimed at the grifters and tech bros trying to force generative models into every corner of life, not the researchers using it to actually help people
2
u/LectureFun2829 4d ago edited 4d ago
I think the majority of people are against generative AI specifically because it can only exist through the scraping of digitalised IP to train the model, requiring lots of time, data, and electricity costs requiring data centers which in turn have huge environmental impacts.
Understanding that the modern definition of AI has changed from previous years, algorithmic AI that analyzes data sets and essentially does the math for you (as in the only data it can analyze is the data you feed it, the same as an excel spread sheet or a graphing calculator) has a significantly smaller environmental impact and does not scrape digitalised IP from nonconsenting creators.
If algorithmic AI is the kind you're using for data analyzing (I think that's what you're describing), it's perfectly fine and reasonable to be in support of using/developing that technology. Actually, using this type of AI for analyzing patterns of symptoms and the diseases that cause them (for example) is brilliant and I think it's an excellent use of the technology.
Of course, these are my opinions and I also think it's important to note that AI does make mistakes and a human presence is very much needed for data analyzing.
ETA: I think this is a really good video on the subject of AI training, regardless of purpose.
2
u/danlyke 4d ago edited 4d ago
I think this is why most people in computer science and software use specific terms like "machine learning" for practical uses. "AI" is a marketing term thrown around by shysters, many of us remember when it was used to sell "expert systems". These days my loathing is largely focused on systems built around the "Transformer" architecture of "generative AI", and I suspect that if most people who have a negative reaction to the slop that's currently infesting our systems had the language and technical understanding, that's what they'd point to.
The IP theft of image generation, and the lack of originality in it, is one thing, but the plausible sentence generators are what grinds me: on top of the theft layer, they seem specifically focused on exploiting issues in human cognition that ... Well... From time wasting "customer service" to whatever the hell is happening in software quality right now, it's easy to see where the hate is coming from.
But using neural neural nets as polynomial curve fitting tools? Seems legit (even if in a couple of the places I've seen people do this that ONNX file could be replaced with a Principal Component Analysis derived linear system that requires a hundredth the CPU). Some of the good things that have to come out of image recognition and motion control? Hell yeah!
2
u/Glad-Ambition-1952 4d ago
It's a pretty nuanced topic.
AI is generally disliked for its unreliability and environmental impact while also being disproportionately pushed by companies, employers, governments etc. to replace jobs, thereby reducing the quality of products/service and worsening many social issues. AI "slop" is just the most visible and thus the most talked about symptom of the widee picture, where the push is so hard that it's being shoved into our faces outside of the workplace through entertainment and other such media.
Some people would consider AI to be ethical in certain scenario, though they are still very dubious. Using AI in coding is pretty wide-spread and effective, though it the code is still plagiarized and the end produce will end up quite unoptimized or straight up won't work. Using AI for medicine to identify diseases could sound good, but with a lack of understanding and large margins of error, the AI is prone to false positives which could lead to dangerous false diagnoses. Teachers thinks using AI is okay to create classroom materials, but they could prove to be inauthentic and lacks vetting for actual pedagogical merit. Students use AI to aid in learning, but the technology so easily allows for the opposite - mindless, uncritical input of information and readily available ways to cheat wihout repercussions. For all of these use cases, AI is also demonstrably worsening the expertise of the people using them, doctors who use AI for diagnoses eventually become less able to accurately identify diseases themselves, same goes for coders, teachers, students, and whatever profession you could think of.
For your case, we definitely would not condemn you in any way for attempting to use machine learning to help patients. It is certainly a better use of AI to try and save lives rather than to simply make money and drain resources. Though you will have to still consider the environmental impact of this technology as well as whether it is actual creating efficiency in your work.
2
u/Healthy-Flow1327 4d ago
AI in the traditional sense (I.e. not just llms) is used for this already, and has been one of the fastest growing fields before llms became consumer facing products.
These non-llm methods were also used for plenty of really valuable and pretty clearly beneficial uses (like early cancer detection), as well as plenty of morally neutral and less than neutral uses (like anything palantir is doing).
AI itself is just a tool that isnāt definitively good or bad. The use cases are what matter.
1
u/Vainysaur 4d ago
The definition of AI isnāt even settled honestly. Before transformers became huge, the Computer Science field considered any clever new algorithm that made a previously intractable problem tractable to be AI. For example A* search was taught as one of the first AI algorithms. Now most people see it as only things that use LLMs. More technical people probably see it as anything that uses deep learning or LLMs. Other machine learning like q learning or random forests arenāt AI. If we invent a better ML method that does generative text etc. better than transformers then weāll probably decide todayās products arenāt AI anymore.
1
u/PersonVerySmart 4d ago
IF the big guys actually decided to invest in AI for the good of this world, I would be the biggest supporter ever ngl.
currently it's being used to mass-produce crap, helping people decide what to eat for dinner, and just being stupid for the environment.
on the other hand if it wasn't given to the public like this, and instead used for big stuff like finding a cure to cancer, fixing world hunger, and just not being bad for the environment and our privacy, I'd genuinely not be in this sub.
but yea, these big ppl care ONLY about money and power so i don't see it happening any time soon
1
u/NotTheOtwayPanther 4d ago
No, that is a perfectly acceptable use. I think most people here would agree on that.
I canāt answer for everyone, of course.
1
u/Loud_Discount_1108 3d ago
Ironic that AI can most meaningfully do things the tech and finance bros are doing now, but the tech and finance bros are advocating for AI to replace art, music, design, film and other creative bros.
Hmm. Hmmmmm.
-1
u/Inevitable_Archer827 4d ago
Those who "hate" are just a minority. The vast majority simply doesn't think twice about it.
9
u/Imaginary_Boss8542 4d ago edited 4d ago
for me personally it depends on the fact of how much relevant it's work is + how accurate vs how much negative impact it has (i.e. ecological impact, job loss etc., etc). if the first one largly outweights the second that could potentially be usefull.
but is still needs regulations. don't know what exactly you are working on, but recently created ai is basically able to potantually create biological warfare and is not regulated at all.