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What do people even mean by "If you don't use AI, you'll fall behind"? (lemmy.world)

submitted 4 days ago by emmowo@lemmy.world to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world

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it's getting to the point where I notice people say it a lot, especially IRL now for whatever reason recently.

And for clarity I'm not in research or anything, so these people just mean 'LLM/image gen', not utilities like OCR or (usually not) transcription.

Some have argued it's just more efficient (which I can kind of get), while others think you're actively hindering your intelligence somehow.

On the first point:

I've tried it occasionally to see how it compares to my own skill, and while it produces a functional result, it's always very derivative work to the point where you can find things with the exact same names of other 'public' (but not libre) works, and often isn't the ideal solution to what it targets. So I can see how you can get things out of it, but it never felt really that profound to me.

But for the second... isn't this supposed to be the tool for people to do things they aren't experienced in? If anything, you probably need to be able to understand how to write pertaining to the task so the token probabilities are biased toward writing from that area.

And even then, if all you end up doing is prompting AI, then wouldn't you ultimately serve no purpose outside of being glorified QA?

I guess I'm trying to figure out what exactly non-users would be 'falling behind' in that affects them more than those who use AI?

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[-] lemmyng@piefed.ca 69 points 4 days ago

The people who espouse such nonsense as "if you don't use AI you'll fall behind" believe that using AI will become an absolute necessity in the future, and that those who use AI now will have more expertise in using AI than those who don't, giving them better prospects. Those same people end up saying "you're just not prompting it right" when you point out flaws in the LLM's responses.

[-] MirrorGiraffe@piefed.social 48 points 4 days ago

Prompting is obviously a skill that you can improve, but if you compare it with the skills they are trying to replace it's a very basic skill. Going through a computer science program and a few years of work experience vs figuring out what prompts it tends to fuck up and learn to safe guard against that (as much as you can) are different leagues, different sports, different everything.

It's like saying that if you don't start using lemmy now, you'll fall behind when the year off the fediverse is upon us, when you'll just pick it up as well if need be.

[-] one_old_coder@piefed.social 34 points 3 days ago

Prompting reminds me that most people around me don't know how to use Google. If I want a recipe for an apple pie, I type "apple pie recipe" (3 words). Other people would type "i want to make an apple pie and I need a recipe or something."

And now it's worse with chatbots because they would say "dear ChatGPT, I have been thinking of my grandma and I would loooove to make an apple pie like the one she did, it would mean a lot to me, and also the sun is shining, thanks, kiss, goodbye, have a nice day." It's horribly inefficient and shows that most people cannot use computers properly, and don't understand that they are fast calculators and not magical brains.

[-] kolmaskommentoija@sopuli.xyz 4 points 3 days ago

It is even worse, since LLMs talk back like that, which probably encourages people to be like that. I had to use one to solve a Linux problem, for which I could not get help any other way, and it was just awful. I do not want the agent to spout useless phrases like a human, it just wastes so much time to read them, when you have to figure out are the answers even close to being useful. Maybe I could have prompted it to just reply more efficiently, but I tried to keep the usage minimal anyway. That discussion made me sound more like the robot. "Blahblah not working" "Oh I'm so sorry you are having this problem. Lets start with..."
Fucking awful.

[-] Bristlecone@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

Right! These people are now "super human AI prompt masters", nut my natural ability with written language from a young age and early exposure to technology has made me (and anyone with good vocabulary and grammar mechanics) better than a lot of these idiots could ever hope to become with years of practice. The thing about corporate cultism, though, is in your mind it always makes you "superior" somehow, if you can stick your head far enough up your ass. Corporatism is all about enthusiastic support of your own exploitation, and this shit is the ultimate expression. We need fucking LLMs more than clean drinking water to hear these robber baron fucks tell it.

this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2026

204 points (95.1% liked)

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