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Joined 9 months ago
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Cake day: October 11th, 2024

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  • YEP

    1. He supports a one-state solution in Israel (not that a mayor should have a to answer this question, but here we are)
    2. He will arrest Netanyahu if he enters New York
    3. He talks about splitting emergency services into multiple disciplines to handle things like mental health crisis. This is straight from the Defund Police platform.

    On these issues, he’s to the left of 99% of politicians in the US.

    Even if the ONLY thing he accomplishes as mayor is free transportation in New York, that’s infinitely better than an Adams or Cuomo term. I have a feeling he’ll accomplish a hell of a lot more if people actually organize around him. We have a unique opportunity to support a socialist in the largest, most expensive US city. Don’t let perfection get in the way of progress.







  • my experience was that Wikipedia was specifically called out as being especially unreliable and that’s just nonsense.

    Let me clarify then. It’s unreliable as a cited source in Academia. I’m drawing parallels and criticizing the way people use chatgpt. I.e. taking it at face value with zero caution and using it as if it’s a primary source of information.

    Eesh. The value of a tertiary source is that it cites the secondary sources (which cite the primary). If you strip that out, how’s it different from “some guy told me…”? I think your professors did a bad job of teaching you about how to read sources. Maybe because they didn’t know themselves. :-(

    Did you read beyond the sentence that you quoted?

    Here:

    I can get summarized information about new languages and frameworks really quickly, and then I can dive into the official documentation when I have a high level understanding of the topic at hand.

    Example: you’re a junior developer trying to figure out what this JavaScript syntax is const {x} = response?.data. It’s difficult to figure out what destructuring and optional chaining are without knowing what they’re called.

    With Chatgpt, you can copy and paste that code and ask “tell me what every piece of syntax is in this line of Javascript.” Then you can check the official docs to learn more.


  • I think the academic advice about Wikipedia was sadly mistaken.

    Yeah, a lot of people had your perspective about Wikipedia while I was in college, but they are wrong, according to Wikipedia.

    From the link:

    We advise special caution when using Wikipedia as a source for research projects. Normal academic usage of Wikipedia is for getting the general facts of a problem and to gather keywords, references and bibliographical pointers, but not as a source in itself. Remember that Wikipedia is a wiki. Anyone in the world can edit an article, deleting accurate information or adding false information, which the reader may not recognize. Thus, you probably shouldn’t be citing Wikipedia. This is good advice for all tertiary sources such as encyclopedias, which are designed to introduce readers to a topic, not to be the final point of reference. Wikipedia, like other encyclopedias, provides overviews of a topic and indicates sources of more extensive information.

    I personally use ChatGPT like I would Wikipedia. It’s a great introduction to a subject, especially in my line of work, which is software development. I can get summarized information about new languages and frameworks really quickly, and then I can dive into the official documentation when I have a high level understanding of the topic at hand. Unfortunately, most people do not use LLMs this way.



  • While I agree with the sentiment, I think we’re going to get blamed regardless of whether we’re in power. Might as well have some decision making power while it happens. I think part of it is that we need candidates who are willing to push back hard against the narratives . drop the high road shit and step into the pit.


  • Throughout most of my years of higher education as well as k-12, I was told that sourcing Wikipedia was forbidden. In fact, many professors/teachers would automatically fail an assignment if they felt you were using wikipedia. The claim was that the information was often inaccurate, or changing too frequently to be reliable. This reasoning, while irritating at times, always made sense to me.

    Fast forward to my professional life today. I’ve been told on a number of occasions that I should trust LLMs to give me an accurate answer. I’m told that I will “be left behind” if I don’t use ChatGPT to accomplish things faster. I’m told that my concerns of accuracy and ethics surrounding generative AI is simply “negativity.”

    These tools are (abstractly) referencing random users on the internet as well as Wikipedia and treating them both as legitimate sources of information. That seems crazy to me. How can we trust a technology that just references flawed sources from our past? I know there’s ways to improve accuracy with things like RAG, but most people are hitting the LLM directly.

    The culture around Generative AI should be scientific and cautious, but instead it feels like a cult with a good marketing team.






  • Chulk@lemmy.mltoTechnology@lemmy.worldWhy I don't use AI in 2025
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    2 months ago

    marketing hype is pushing anything with AI in the name, but it will all settle out eventually

    Agreed. “use it or be left behind” itself sounds like a phrase straight out of a marketing pitch from every single “AI-centric” company that pushes their “revolutionary” product. It’s a phrase that i hear daily from c-suite executives that know very little of what they’re talking about. AI (specifically generative) has its usecases, but it’s nowhere near where the marketing says it is. And when it finally does get there, i think people are going to be surprised when they don’t find themselves in the utopia that they’ve been promised.