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People who use AI are actual NPCs
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2026
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What about opensource self hosted AI?
There are still major ethical issues with how they get training data, but the problem with hijacking the economy and society seems resolved. I feel like I can more easily forgive the copyright theft for someone just fucking around in their homelab, replacing Google assistant.
Maybe I'm just bean-souping.
I think it means people who use AI to talk to people.
don't forget that frequent LLM use erodes patience and skills. even with the training ethics and environmental ethics set aside, they make you measurably dumber.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.08872
This kinda gets philosophy-of-cognative-science-ey, but it kinda smells like "measuring a fish by its tree climbing ability". Or maybe like goodharts law.
There are many different kinds of smart, is the kind of smart they're measuring the one that will be relevant?
Again, I don't want to carry too much water for AI, but I also don't want to propagate arguments that also apply to other tools I like. Consider: externalizing memory. Without the tool you used to capture that memory, you're completely unable to function. Dependency on it reduces your ability to remember things yourself. By many measures, it makes your dumber and less productive. But I wouldn't personally consider taking notes to be detrimental.
So I want to be very careful when we make claims that externalizing some aspect of our cognition makes us worse somehow.
Books and calculators externalise skills that we see as tedious, like memorisation and calculation. LLMs externalise skills that we value in and of themselves, like decision making, art, and socialisation.
Would you rather live with people who can't memorise dates and perform arithmetic? Or people who can't make a decision or write a beautiful story?
These other things were also once valued.