There are some subjects as a writer in which you know they need to be written, but at the same time you feel it necessary to steel yourself for the inevitable barrage of criticism once your work reaches its audience. Of these the latest is AI, or more specifically the current enthusiasm for Large Language Models, or LLMs. On one side we have the people who’ve drunk a little too much of the Kool-Aid and are frankly a bit annoying on the subject, while on the other we have those who are infuriated by the technology. Given the tide of low quality AI slop to be found online, we can see the latter group’s point.
This is the second in what may become an occasional series looking at the subject from the perspective of wanting to find the useful stuff behind the hype; what is likely to fall by the wayside, and what as yet unheard of applications will turn this thing into something more useful than a slop machine or an agent that might occasionally automate some of your tasks correctly. In the previous article I examined the motivation of that annoying Guy In A Suit who many of us will have encountered who wants to use AI for everything because it’s shiny and new, while in this one I’ll try to do something useful with it myself.
Continue reading “AI For The Skeptics: Attempting To Do Something Useful With It”
