> rather questioning first if the future being peddled is actually what we want
The author (tom) tricked you. His article is flame bait. AI is a tool that we can use and discuss about. It's not just a "future being peddled." The article manages to say nothing about AI, casts generic doubt on AI as a whole, and pits people against each other. It's a giant turd for any discussion about AI, a sure-fire curiosity destruction tool.
If it were just any regular tool people (speaking for myself here mostly, but I see similar sentiments on HN) would be less annoyed and argumentative about it.
Instead it's being shoved down our throats at every turn and is being marketed at the world as the Return of Christ. Whenever anyone says anything even slightly negative the evangelists crawl out of the woodwork to tell you how you're using the wrong model, or not prompting good enough, or long enough, or short enough, or "Well I've become a 9000000x developer using 76 agents in parallel!" type of posts.
So there’s new technology that many people like. Others post complaints/bug reports in threads. The people who like the technology try to help solve the problems.
Why are you complaining about that?
If you want to complain about AI and have no interest in learning more about it, go somewhere else. This site isn’t for that kind of discussion
It's a tool that we can use and discuss, but it's baffling to claim there aren't also a bunch of charlatans trying to peddle an AI future that is varying degrees of unrealistic and dystopian.
Any number of Sam Altman quotes display this:
"A child born today will never be smarter than an AI"
"We are past the event horizon; the takeoff has started. Humanity is close to building digital superintelligence"
"ChatGPT is already more powerful than any human who has ever lived"
"AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there'll be great companies."
Every bit of this is nonsense being peddled by the guy selling an AI future because it would make him one of the richest people alive if he can convince enough people that it will come true (or, much much much less likely, it does come true).
That's just from 10 minutes of looking at statements by a single one of these charlatans.
The author (tom) tricked you. His article is flame bait. AI is a tool that we can use and discuss about. It's not just a "future being peddled." The article manages to say nothing about AI, casts generic doubt on AI as a whole, and pits people against each other. It's a giant turd for any discussion about AI, a sure-fire curiosity destruction tool.