Post #4381317

2026-08-04 19:12 UTC

look there's a billion other reasons why people are against AI and all but fundamentally the core of my person reason is that I've already spent 30 years learning how to teach computers how to do exactly what I tell them to, so I am exceptionally disinterested in having them do things less accurately by talking to them in a sloppier language

Replies (9)

@aemstuz@mastodon.com.pl 2026-08-04 19:39

@foone@digipres.club You're not the first to raise this concern. Edsger Dijkstra already raised it 50 years ago… https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/EWD667.html

Open ##4381316
@DarcMoughty@infosec.exchange 2026-08-04 19:31

@foone@digipres.club I had a great conversation with a colleague about this. Since I was five years old, I've been using tooling created by some of the smartest people in the world to do this stuff efficiently and precisely. Switching work patterns to take the form of "an unproductive conversation with a subordinate" isn't a good use of my time or skills. It's not like photographers bemoaning the advent of Photoshop, it's like handing a trained fine artist an old box of crayons and saying, "You'll love this, even kids can do it!"

Open ##4381645
@Loosf@yiff.life 2026-08-04 19:13

@foone@digipres.club yup

Open ##4381869
@Stellar@mk.absturztau.be 2026-08-04 20:10

@foone@digipres.club HAL, open the airlock. make no mistakes

Open ##4381957
@VeroniqueB99@mastodon.social 2026-08-04 20:45

@foone@digipres.club 👍 💯

Open ##4382765
@foone@digipres.club 2026-08-04 19:13

like, there's a reason why laws are written Like That, because legal english has to establish all its terms and be very precise with what it's saying because English (like all human languages) is not precise.

Open ##4383177
@humbird0_talks_nsfw@aethy.com 2026-08-05 03:07

@foone@digipres.club I don't have particularly strong opinions about machine learning, aside from it being inherently bad things that require accuracy or truth. But most of the uses that AI is presented for are things I happen to enjoy doing manually, so to my ears it always sounds like "Now your computer can have fun instead of you!" I happen to enjoy the process of making things. Hobbies are not really about the results. They're about the activity itself. Results are just a happy side-effect.

Open ##4389324
@rzeta0@mathstodon.xyz 2026-08-05 18:16

@foone@digipres.club I hate it too but it is good to challenge ourselves sometimes. The sloppier language is one that most ordinary non-technical people can use. Unlike every single programming language I can think of. The 50 year failure to develop a ui or language to get computers (or databases or search engines or information repositories) to do what people want is the gap that natural language interfaces to (increasingly) general purpose capabilities that are being filled by "AI". And it is the specialist community's failure to communicate to normal people the risks of an inaccurate system like "AI".

Open ##4397858
@mos_8502@studio8502.ca 2026-08-04 19:13

@foone@digipres.club Valid and worthy of respect.

Open ##4460659