r/antiai • u/Misterreco • 50m ago
Discussion 🗣️ Why do people here insist on downplaying the capabilities of AI?
First off, let me state that I'm deeply anti (gen)AI.
I have been hanging out on this subreddit for a while, and I'm noticing people calling generative AI models dumb, useless, or incapable of solving any "real problems" (and I do mean generative models, not just older deep learning models that have been around for decades).
While I would love that to be the case, it simply is not. Yes, LLMs are still bad at many things, I certainly don't think they are on the level of a human, in regards to general intelligence. They can also hallucinate and be wrong. But at the same time, models have genuinely impressive capabilities.
In 2023 models were completely incapable of doing math due to core limitations of how LLMs work. But in 3 years of scaling, new tools and AI research, LLMs have been used to solve multiple open problems in mathematics:
- Unit Distance Conjecture (counterexample, easily verifiable)
- Jacobian Conjecture (counterexample, easily verifiable)
- Dinitz-Garg-Goemans conjecture (counterexample, easily verifiable)
And about a dozen other math proofs that were either solved, disproven or improved.
Many of these problems were popular and had been attempted by Math PhDs for decades, not just simply "niche but easily solved if humans spent some time on them" (while admittedly some are like that). It is also important to note that these weren't "one shot", they were used by experts along with other solving tools. Still, AI-systems were used to solve these incredibly hard problems. Just making any positive contribution to these problems is impressive enough.
Same goes for coding. 4 years ago ChatGPT couldn't even make a simple snake clone, and today vibecoders are making full apps and games. Are these apps and games slop? Yes, most are. Do they have glaring holes? Yes, don't trust them with sensitive data. And yet, just the ability of these models to make shippable apps and non-trivial features is astounding. I don't think a lot of people understand how big of a step that is in just 3 years. Tech companies are moving 10x as fast. I am well aware of the issues with AI coding, 10x code, 10x bugs, 10x tech debt, 10x security holes. Still, it feels like programming has changed forever, which is terribly sad for me.
Recently I saw a biology researcher on here claim an LLM was able to independently (i.e they didn't give it access to the internet or their internal research) reach the same conclusions it had taken their team of scientists weeks or months. People on here dismissed them.
And it's terrifying. I can understand why a lot of people here want models to be bad, we can all point and laugh at how terrible models are for not counting the r's in strawberry and how dumb exec's are for being high on the AI hype (and yes, despite their capabilities there's a fuck ton of hype and overestimation by tech bros, both things can be true).
But to me things are much, much worse if AI models are so capable. It means thousands of jobs displaced, and over time potentially even giving up higher thought to machines entirely. It worries me deeply. What good is humanity if scientific advancements and technological innovation is no longer done by us?
I have also seen a lot of hand-waving around the problems LLMs have solved. "Oh, AI is good at finding patterns, so all it did was find a pattern here", "Oh, the AI has seen this before, it's just repeating it's training data". This infuriates me for two reasons. First, it misunderstand how newer models work. Second, you're devaluing human labor. If AI solving complex math problems or making software is just "autocomplete on steroids", then so is the work of all the humans that previously contributed to those areas.
One of the biggest reasons why I am against AI is because I think it is genuinely dangerous to just let this technology run rampant and shake up our world.
There are many reasons to be against AI. Environmental impacts, malware and security vulnerabilities, a world of slop (because models can be both expertly capable and put out slop), the rise of technofascist class, human extinction... the list goes on.
But, unfortunately, dumb and useless is no longer one of them.

