I stopped drinking the AI Kool-Aid

jjoshtronic about 4 hours ago 33 commentsRead Article on joshtronic.com

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Discussion (33 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

jostylr•24 minutes ago

Reasonable piece. I always thought the hope/promise of AI was to make it do the work we don't want to do so that we can enjoy life the way we want to which is typically socializing with humans? I get that it generates so much that if you are reviewing thoughtfully everything it is doing, it can suck you away like being a worker at a conveyor belt, but hopefully that is a short period of growing pains. A related take on staying human in the age of AI: https://charleseisenstein.substack.com/p/the-lost-subject-ai...

joshtronic•13 minutes ago

I'm pretty biased these days, but I don't think the bean counters share that vision of the positive impact that AI could have on our working lives.

Appreciate the link!

variety8675•about 3 hours ago

Using AI agents to email each other is just a reflection of "If you're not going to bother to write it, I'm not going to read it"

joshtronic•about 3 hours ago

How would you approach this. You email a company that has something you want to license. An agent responds. Do you abandon your pursuits at that point and consider other options?

vips7L•about 2 hours ago

Yes.

joshtronic•about 2 hours ago

Let's say it was critical for the business, with no viable alternatives? I'm all for "find a way or make one" but there are times when you need to be more practical than dogmatic.

Would love to hear your thoughts

AnimalMuppet•about 3 hours ago

Depends on how close other options are to what I want.

But if you're going to have an agent rather than a human respond to enquiries from potential customers (= $), then I'm not convinced I'm going to like how you respond after I am a customer.

joshtronic•about 3 hours ago

Yeah, that closeness of options makes it tough to really dig the heels in. Also, you can become a customer today, and have them fire their entire support staff and replace it with an agent tomorrow. Dwindling QC and CS isn't a new concern though, just need to make sure the space isn't owned by a single company

variety8675•about 3 hours ago

I mean honestly yes, if given the choice not to interact with an AI system for something I will. Simple example, the Comcast AI slop bot stonewalls you online, but you can walk into a retail location and have a human resolve the issue in 30 seconds

joshtronic•about 3 hours ago

Totally get that. I think the fear there is that maybe this is the timeline where we just keep running out of those options.

I still favor a longer line with a human or two in the loop at the store rather than self checkout. Depending on the time of day, self checkout is the only options. Fortunately, there's usually problems and you still get a chance to connect with a human :)

RMS drew a line in the sand with how he interacts with closed-source systems. Starting to wonder if that's how extreme we need to be AI systems.

dieselgate•41 minutes ago

I'm glad for Author to write on the subject but think the article was tough to get through due to undeveloped ideas and too many cliches. I was additionally confused where the Kool Aid thing was going because the "drinking it" phrase originates from LSD/acid tests--mentioned in the wiki [1] page but not the post.

Where do we go from here and what is the intermediate ground of leveraging LLMs and Agentic AI? It's odd for me to read about someone going "all in" on AI--to the point of using it for email with humans--and then having a massive reversal.

I think this is a really interesting case study and temporal snapshot of where we are with AI technologies. I have always been wary|skeptical|cynical of the technology and this is affirming but also just confusing.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_the_Kool-Aid

joshtronic•35 minutes ago

Thanks for the feedback! When I ran it through an LLM it had some similar feedback that I purposefully didn't action on ;)

TruffleLabs•about 3 hours ago

Thanks for the Bill and Ted reference at the end ;)

joshtronic•about 3 hours ago

I'm humbled that somebody made it to the end. Doubly blessed because it's not every day you get to make 2 Keanu Reeves movie references in one post

verdverm•about 3 hours ago

made it to the end as well :wq

it was good, resonates with my own experience dialing it back and reconnecting with other human beings, I like being pro-Ai, but not pilled-Ai, and trying to moderate the Ai discourse

joshtronic•about 3 hours ago

:wq indeed :)

it's been a wild ride, in a lot of ways I feel like I speed ran running my EQ into the ground, only to be reborn like a phoenix.

I've been told in the past to "think like an entrepreneur, not an engineer" and in a lot of ways I think that was bleeding into how I was approaching AI-usage.

I'm on your blog now, hoping you've posted your own musings so I can read them!

DubiousPusher•about 1 hour ago

To the chagrin of the unfortunate General Foods corporation, the water flavor enhancement product used at Jones Town was actually Flavor Aid.

And maybe that's a pretty good analogy to what's going on with this post. It contemplates a world of suburban parental neglect and private burrito taxis and lays them at the feet of AI. But these were happening before LLMs burst onto the scene.

In a world of $3,000 rent and $3,000 medication and $3,000 preschool, what do you expect will happen?

joshtronic•about 1 hour ago

TIL on the Flavor Aid. Appreciate you taking the time to read and respond!

cpoile•about 3 hours ago

One of the nicer blogs I’ve read on the subject, thanks Josh.

joshtronic•about 2 hours ago

Appreciate the kind words, tyty :bow:

levelZero•about 1 hour ago

Pretty sure you only get to drink the Kool-Aid once. At least in UK this is Jim Jones ref.

joshtronic•about 1 hour ago

Similar here in the states, but we've neutered it a bit to effectively describe the "One of us, one of us" scene from the movie Freaks