A thing about the "AI" debate in science (or other fields ftm) is that I almost never see anyone asking, "well sure LLMs or whatever can be useful sometimes—but what if we put all the money spent on 'AI' into hiring more humans, furthering other technologies & invest into research helping scientists science better"
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@thomasfuchs I would like to argue that a solo maker who can't afford to hire anyone in the first place can use them for assistance, but omg I samples it a few times and it's WAY more technical debt than it's worth!!!!!!!
Yes. Economists call this “opportunity cost.” It’s no secret. It’s part of many other policy debates and investment decisions. The fact that it’s not in the conversation is evidence of how much the discourse is driven by hype.
@thomasfuchs the problem with that is it doesn’t allow Oligarchs to control and profit off everybody and all transactions.
@thomasfuchs exactly. I just read yesterday that an astronomy journal has had to hire many more reviewers to deal with AI slop submissions and they still can't keep up. what if we paid those people do research instead of validating AI slop?
@thomasfuchs My immediate thought every time is just, what it every penny of this was used on solar panels and batteries?
@thomasfuchs this is the fundamental issue with the current vulnpocalypse
