I know the reputation that AI has on Lemmy, however I’ve found that some users (like myself) have found that LLMs can be useful tools.
What are fellow AI users using these tools for? Furthermore, what models are you using that find the most useful?
You must log in or # to comment.
“AI” as in the hyped and since 5 years mainstream “Generative AI”: Jetbrains’ locally run code line completion. Sometimes faster than writing, if you have enough context.
Machine learning stuff that existed well before, but there was exactly 0 hype: Image tagging/face detection.
Jetbrains local completion isnt even a llm, it’s a sort of ML fuckery that’s very low on compute requirement. They released it initially just before the ai craze
None
The only thing that comes to mind is I wanted to make a shell script that moved every file in a directory to another directory, but one at a time, slowly, and I didn’t want to learn sh from scratch, so I asked an LLM for a script that would do it.
The script didn’t work, but I was able to figure out how to fix it better than write it from scratch.
I felt bad for the environment I was destroying, and I would never pay for this shit.
Honestly I’m part of the problem a little bit.
In my hobby project I used GitHub copilot, to help me ramp up on unfamiliar tech. I was integrating three unfamiliar platforms in an unfamiliar program language, and it helped expose the APIs and language features I didn’t know about. It was almost like a tutorial; it’d make some code that was kinda broken, but fixing it would introduce me to new language features and API resources that would help me. Which was nice because I struggle to just read API specs.
I’ve also used it when on my d&d campaign to create images of new settings. It just a 3 player weekly game so it’s hard to justify paying an artist for a rush job. Not great, I know. I hope the furry community has more backbone than I do, because they’re singlehandedly keeping the illustration industry afloat at this point.
The one that the other department tried, and which failed to meet expectations dramatically. Gave management a healthy dose of reality on “AI”.
I use it to create funny shitpost copypasta-like outputs that I send to my friends in our personal group chats. Otherwise it’s fucking useless.
I know the reputation that AI has on Lemmy, however I’ve found that some users (like myself) have found that LLMs can be useful tools
I know the reputation that AI has on Lemmy, however I’ve found that some users (like myself) have found that LLMs can be useful tools.
Their utility is not questioned. It’s their true cost and how they’re developed that’s the issue.
No doubt a machine able to do some quick and dirty jobs that would take us a lot more time is a fine tool (like mentioned already, denoise, quick text summaries and stuff like that) edit: even complex and highly skilled stuff. The tool is already impressive today, and I don’t doubt it will get much better quickly.
The issue is how it learned to do what it can do and how it is monoetized. I mean, learning from humanity common knowledge (no AI at all without it being allowed to learn from us all) and making it… subscription-based for us to use? WTF? The issue is also how it is destroying many things in the exclusive profit of a handful of very rich people and their shareholders. The issue is how we, mankind, have zero control over a tool that is threatening to make a lot of us go bankrupt…
Feel free to downvote, obviously.
And to answer your question:
What AI tools have you found useful?
I would say, the off button… of which there is none I can find.
My CRM system at work has what called “Genius AI” integrated into it. When customer service reps receive calls that require site visits the AI auto fills the work ticket using the phone conversation adds in contact name and numbers and even puts a brief description of what service they require. The AI also transcribes our calls into text to be able to refer back to or get caught up on a job when someone is out sick. It wasnt Iife changing it wasnt forced but as a simple aid it makes life a bit easier.
Supermaven code autocomplete in vscode is really nice
Removed by mod
I like this. It’s a fun use situation that can enhance creativity as well as perform as an entertainment platform.
If we are talking chatbots I see them as another level of abstraction to search and is useful but I have concerns on the energy use. Other uses I have encountered is just sorta a convenience thing. Where it can do a bunch of things that individual software can do but at a one stop shop. I have not directly been involved in other aspects but im aware how they are baked into things like facial recognition and tracking and such.
Dont use AI chat as a replacement for search except on popular subjects with broad consensus. Which unfortunately is when you generally don’t need it.
its fine as long as it gives references to check out. I mean its not fine because of the energy usage but if that is solved I would use it for search. again as long as it tells me sources.
If what you want is sources, a regular Google search will do a better job if it’s a popular subject.
Chatgpt and it’s kin will be inexplicably creative in its choice of sources, and in its summary thereof. And in the sources themselves sometimes.
If it’s something you care to get right, just skip AI.
If it’s meaningless, then it’s harmless in its potential inaccuracySee just like a normal search its up to you to evaluate it. ai search wise is as I said another abstraction. Not using it is like turning off the little snipets search engines do nowadays and going back to just clicking an each and every link. The problem is people just taking the response as gospel with no critical thought.
Like a normal search, except it only provides like 4 links, it’s choice of links is even worse than Google SEO, and it provides inaccurate summaries of them rather than relevant text snippets.
So yes, people just taking the response as gospel is bad. But also it’s just worse than search if you’re using it as a search.
You go to the sites just like you would with the snippets and if they don’t pan out you can rephrase or just go back to a normal search. This is what I meant by a level of abstraction. You can skip the scroll and check what it gives you and if its good you save time (much like the snippets saved time) and if not you are no worse and you correct or go slightly older school. As much as I agree the chatbots can be wrong I don’t find them to usually be off base. They generally find pretty decent resources. Now when they are wrong they can be really wrong but its no different from someone searching and just using the first return without going through the results and evaluating each link. It reminds me when a neighbor in the dorms was explaining html to me as he was making a site and I was like. Why? Just use gopher.
But like I said, if you’re using it like a search then it’s just worse.
It’s way slower, it’s way fewer results, and the summaries can never be as accurate as verbatim quotes of the pages themselves.The only reason to use AI is to get the summary, and then you’re not using it as a search. Maybe it provides some references you can use to fact check, but that’s still not a search.
You have to remember, LLM’s are literally just auto-complete. They don’t have the goal of giving you an answer or resources, they have the goal of providing text that would complete the conversation in a way that looks similar to what they’ve seen before. If they can give you a biased answer supported by cherry picked references, that’s just as valid of a completion, because it looks like how such a conversation might be completed.
In situations where the response can be inherently assessed for correctness (eg art, but that’s a whole other ethical issue) or correctness can be automatically verified (eg programming) then there is some value in limited use.
Although I personally think the implications of putting it in the hands of business owners isn’t worth it, that another topic.
For some situations I used Copilot to script an auto-translator for XML-EPG in bash.
For that it worked okay enough.
The only time I’ve seen real use from an ai tool is at work, we are using it to get data from an invoice/quote/etc from the pdf that we get emailed to data that we can put in the database. It’s not a perfect solution, but there isn’t really anything else we can find other than getting people to do it, which is slower and more expensive.
I chat with llm’s to help me remember shit I already know, or to change the tone of stuff I write but thats about it.
