I've seen a lot of sentiment around Lemmy that AI is "useless". I think this tends to stem from the fact that AI has not delivered on, well, anything the capitalists that push it have promised it would. That is to say, it has failed to meaningfully replace workers with a less expensive solution - AI that actually attempts to replace people's jobs are incredibly expensive (and environmentally irresponsible) and they simply lie and say it's not. It's subsidized by that sweet sweet VC capital so they can keep the lie up. And I say attempt because AI is truly horrible at actually replacing people. It's going to make mistakes and while everybody's been trying real hard to make it less wrong, it's just never gonna be "smart" enough to not have a human reviewing its' behavior. Then you've got AI being shoehorned into every little thing that really, REALLY doesn't need it. I'd say that AI is useless.
But AIs have been very useful to me. For one thing, they're much better at googling than I am. They save me time by summarizing articles to just give me the broad strokes, and I can decide whether I want to go into the details from there. They're also good idea generators - I've used them in creative writing just to explore things like "how might this story go?" or "what are interesting ways to describe this?". I never really use what comes out of them verbatim - whether image or text - but it's a good way to explore and seeing things expressed in ways you never would've thought of (and also the juxtaposition of seeing it next to very obvious expressions) tends to push your mind into new directions.
Lastly, I don't know if it's just because there's an abundance of Japanese language learning content online, but GPT 4o has been incredibly useful in learning Japanese. I can ask it things like "how would a native speaker express X?" And it would give me some good answers that even my Japanese teacher agreed with. It can also give some incredibly accurate breakdowns of grammar. I've tried with less popular languages like Filipino and it just isn't the same, but as far as Japanese goes it's like having a tutor on standby 24/7. In fact, that's exactly how I've been using it - I have it grade my own translations and give feedback on what could've been said more naturally.
All this to say, AI when used as a tool, rather than a dystopic stand-in for a human, can be a very useful one. So, what are some use cases you guys have where AI actually is pretty useful?
Troublehsooting technology.
I've been using Linux as my daily driver for a year and a half and my learning is going a lot quicker thanks to AI. It's so much easier to ask a question and get an answer instead of searching through stack overflow for 30 minutes.
That isn't to say that the LLM never gives terrible advice. In fact, two weeks ago, I was digging through my logs for a potential intruder (false alarm) and the LLM gave me instructions that ended up deleting journal logs completely.
The good far outweighs the bad for sure tho.
The Linux community specifically has an anti-AI tilt that is embarrassing at times. LLMs are amazing, and much like random strangers on the internet, you don't blindly trust/follow everything they say, and you'll be just fine.
The best way I think of AI is that it's going through a bubble not unlike the early days of the internet. There was a lot of overvalued companies and scams, but it still ushered in a new era.
Another analogy that comes to mind is how people didn't trust wikipedia 20 years ago because anyone could edit it, and now it is one of the most trusted sources for information out there. AI will never be as 'dumb' as it is today, which is ironic because a lot of the perspective I see on AI was formed around free models from 2023.
I really hate AI as it is now only because of all the weird marketing people are doing for it; pretending they don't know how it works like "omg it's not supposed to do that idk why it's doing that". Anyone can see it's potential though once they can see through all the SEO bullshit. Like you said, it's in it's infancy now and will take a long time to truly mature and it will be amazing when/if it does.
There is an inherent catch-22 in that the people who believe AI a fluke will rarely have the time/interest in realizing the vast improvements since the initial launch 2-3 years ago.
I am as frugal as they come, yet I shell out money for the paid version and have a reference point on its helpfulness that is grounded in experience. It is almost impossible trying to create a reference point to those that have no (recent) experience and refuse to get any.
It's human nature/Dunning-Kreuger so I can't be too frustrated I suppose.