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   NoBorg (hadon@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 02-Feb-2026 22:48:55 JST NoBorg

   • Kevin Beaumont

   @GossiTheDog

   AI may be a nice tool to help humanity advance in certain fields, like medical diagnosis. But that doesn't mean it needs or has to be used "everywhere".
   An analogy would be like eating fast food 3 times a day, you'll surely end up sick.

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 02-Feb-2026 22:48:54 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Kevin Beaumont

     @hadon @GossiTheDog We can really do without the gratuitous platitudes. That is not "AI". You don't have to "acknowledge" that "AI" could do something good (it can't). You can just say "no, fuck you" to them.

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 02-Feb-2026 22:51:03 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Kevin Beaumont
     • bemmesr

     @bemmesr @hadon @GossiTheDog A statistical model aiding in.diagnosis is not "AI" just science/applied statistics. "AI" is the app that tells the doctor what diagnosis to make, bypassing their agency and laundering responsibility, and harvests confidential patient data for "training". "AI" is a marketing term and a capitalist/technofascist program, not a technology.

   • Embed this notice
     bemmesr (bemmesr@mastodon.social)'s status on Monday, 02-Feb-2026 22:51:04 JST bemmesr

     in reply to

     • Kevin Beaumont

     @hadon @GossiTheDog right. And there is a big difference between the 'AI' which helps with medical diagnoses and the 'AI' that produces confident-sounding text about almost anything, even when that text is wrong.

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Monday, 02-Feb-2026 22:54:34 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Kevin Beaumont
     • bemmesr

     @bemmesr @hadon @GossiTheDog Medical professionals understand, or are supposed to understand, this difference. Even when you get blood work done, the labs don't return a diagnosis. They return numbers and normal ranges. It's up to the doctor to make a diagnosis, which may involve further knowledge they have of the patient. This is also the difference between a legitimate statistical diagnostic tool and "AI".

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Feb-2026 00:48:00 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • Kevin Beaumont
     • Erik Jonker

     @ErikJonker @GossiTheDog Yes, if your hobby is shopping other people's photos to shitpost on reddit, having a tool that helps you steal other people's creative work probably sounds appealing...

   • Embed this notice
     Erik Jonker (erikjonker@mastodon.social)'s status on Tuesday, 03-Feb-2026 00:48:01 JST Erik Jonker

     • Kevin Beaumont

     @GossiTheDog ...at the same time i spoke a retired friend who was very enthusiastic about the new AI features in Adobe Photoshop, it really made his hobby more interesting.

   • Embed this notice
     Rich Felker (dalias@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 04-Feb-2026 08:45:09 JST Rich Felker

     in reply to

     • bemmesr

     @bemmesr It doesn't refer just to chatbots, but to the narrative that the machine possesses some intentionally mysterious thinking/reasoning process it doesn't that's intended to wow customers and/or investors the same way a mentalist or stage magician would.

     This has been the persistent theme for over half a century: "AI" means you're not focused on the actual impressive computation (likely because there is none) but the image that it doesn't matter and that the plebes should just trust the technocrats selling it.

   • Embed this notice
     bemmesr (bemmesr@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 04-Feb-2026 08:45:13 JST bemmesr

     in reply to

     • Rich Felker

     @dalias I happen to remember a time before ChatGPT, and as someone who was superficially interested in machine learning at the time (I was still in school and didn't really understand the maths) I definitely remember people using the term ‘AI’ to refer to other models (for example, Alpha Go was referred to as ‘AI’).

     So from my perspective ‘AI’ as a term specifically referring to chat‐bots is a pretty new concept.

     Either way, there isn't really any technology deserving of the name.