It’s too late for that scenario. LLMs are already widespread on millions of computers.
On my old 4060 Ti 16GB I can run Qwen3.8:14b and that’s actually good enough for loads and loads of things. It’s actually overkill for a lot of stuff too which is why tiny models are all the rage right now (e.g. 0.8b models).
Let’s say the government banned LLMs. Are they really going to want to halt pharmaceutical and biomedical research like that? Are they going to start inspecting/requiring everyone’s computers be scanned regularly for AI models?
No. It’s unrealistic to think they can do anything at all to stop AI. If we ban it in the US, the world will just use AI services offered from other countries and then the US won’t be able to compete because those countries will become vastly more productive.
As much as everyone on Lemmy believes all AI output is “slop”, it really does do useful stuff! It’s just most of the useful stuff doesn’t make the news. It’s boring things like checking if an uploaded image is NSFW or if an uploaded document has everything it’s supposed to have or follows the correct format.
AI/LLMs are also checking the grammar of basically everything that gets published. Anyone who’s not using AI for that is an idiot. It’s just way too fucking good at spotting grammatical errors, incorrect word use (often innocent typos that normal grammar checking tools miss), and similar problems.
There’s fucktons of super useful, good ways to use AI. We’d be stupid to just ban it and pretend it isn’t good for a lot of things.
We can regulate its use but that’s not really “regulating AI” as much as it is “regulating capitalism” or “regulating people”. Because the AI isn’t just going out on its own to spam misinformation or mislead consumers with generated product photos. Someone told it to do those things.
What we need isn’t “AI regulation” is regular regulation that prevents companies from behaving badly.
Predictable as clockwork… Sure, there’s no way we say, “fuck this shit is cancer maybe I should stop handing my cognitive capabilities over to a machine and start thinking again.”
I had a whole big screed written out about the myriad ways that the implementation of this technology is corrosive at a societal level. But it’s all just so exhausting to have the same arguments time and again.
So let’s just leave it at, sure buddy, you and your ilk have the mandate of heaven to topple the world. Have fun, but please don’t be surprised where the road you’re on takes you.
Will AI completely ruin a zillion people’s ability to think (beyond what social media already accomplished)? Quite possibly!
I’m just saying there’s nothing we can do to stop it at this point.
You’re about to head down a long, lonely road as normies start using and accepting AI more and more into their lives while you scream into the abyss. I’ve been there with fossil fuels, copyright, software patents, and Linux.
People saying “Just use AI!” Is about to live rent free in your head as your most-hated phrase. Just like, “stop driving gas guzzlers!” Or, “stop bitching about Windows and just install Linux already!” Lives in so many others.
At least most people don’t think of AI as a core part of their identity (e.g. pickup trucks) 🤷
It’s too late for that scenario. LLMs are already widespread on millions of computers.
On my old 4060 Ti 16GB I can run Qwen3.8:14b and that’s actually good enough for loads and loads of things. It’s actually overkill for a lot of stuff too which is why tiny models are all the rage right now (e.g. 0.8b models).
Let’s say the government banned LLMs. Are they really going to want to halt pharmaceutical and biomedical research like that? Are they going to start inspecting/requiring everyone’s computers be scanned regularly for AI models?
No. It’s unrealistic to think they can do anything at all to stop AI. If we ban it in the US, the world will just use AI services offered from other countries and then the US won’t be able to compete because those countries will become vastly more productive.
As much as everyone on Lemmy believes all AI output is “slop”, it really does do useful stuff! It’s just most of the useful stuff doesn’t make the news. It’s boring things like checking if an uploaded image is NSFW or if an uploaded document has everything it’s supposed to have or follows the correct format.
AI/LLMs are also checking the grammar of basically everything that gets published. Anyone who’s not using AI for that is an idiot. It’s just way too fucking good at spotting grammatical errors, incorrect word use (often innocent typos that normal grammar checking tools miss), and similar problems.
There’s fucktons of super useful, good ways to use AI. We’d be stupid to just ban it and pretend it isn’t good for a lot of things.
We can regulate its use but that’s not really “regulating AI” as much as it is “regulating capitalism” or “regulating people”. Because the AI isn’t just going out on its own to spam misinformation or mislead consumers with generated product photos. Someone told it to do those things.
What we need isn’t “AI regulation” is regular regulation that prevents companies from behaving badly.
Predictable as clockwork… Sure, there’s no way we say, “fuck this shit is cancer maybe I should stop handing my cognitive capabilities over to a machine and start thinking again.”
I had a whole big screed written out about the myriad ways that the implementation of this technology is corrosive at a societal level. But it’s all just so exhausting to have the same arguments time and again.
So let’s just leave it at, sure buddy, you and your ilk have the mandate of heaven to topple the world. Have fun, but please don’t be surprised where the road you’re on takes you.
No, no. You’ve got the wrong idea.
Will AI completely ruin a zillion people’s ability to think (beyond what social media already accomplished)? Quite possibly!
I’m just saying there’s nothing we can do to stop it at this point.
You’re about to head down a long, lonely road as normies start using and accepting AI more and more into their lives while you scream into the abyss. I’ve been there with fossil fuels, copyright, software patents, and Linux.
People saying “Just use AI!” Is about to live rent free in your head as your most-hated phrase. Just like, “stop driving gas guzzlers!” Or, “stop bitching about Windows and just install Linux already!” Lives in so many others.
At least most people don’t think of AI as a core part of their identity (e.g. pickup trucks) 🤷