Have you ever had a *productive* conversation with someone you care about regarding the pitfalls of AI?
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@ShaulaEvans @beandreams I've had a couple of productive conversations with professors and classmates about inaccurate responses and how important it is to me that I not boost the signal of AI slop. It's been harder w/classmates and professors who are younger, though. And it was *really* challenging when I discovered 2 classmates were feeding our group project into chatGPT for their contribution -- that convo ended in me being shut out, unfortunately. So, uh, I have maybe a 10% success rate?
@crystalvisits @beandreams Ten percent is higher than the people who don't try -- and probably higher than a lot of the people who do, too.
All we can do is try, right?
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Have you ever had a *productive* conversation with someone you care about regarding the pitfalls of AI? Not about big picture concerns like ethics, environmental impact, etc., but about the more immediate harms to the person, like inaccurate responses and the risk of AI psychosis.
I need to have a gentle, informative conversation in a non-shaming way with someone dear to me, and I'd love to learn from anyone who has done this successfully.
*AI Booster replies will be blocked.
@ShaulaEvans Ok I'm not sure what counts as productive exactly, but I have had conversations where I shared my concerns about AI and everyone felt good afterwards.
Some angles I can remember people being interested in:
- gen AI tools are going to get much more expensive soon, so it is risky to start depending on them
- chatbots grab your attention using the same "slot machine" loop as social media feeds: they only give you what you want sometimes, at unpredictable intervals
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@ShaulaEvans Ok I'm not sure what counts as productive exactly, but I have had conversations where I shared my concerns about AI and everyone felt good afterwards.
Some angles I can remember people being interested in:
- gen AI tools are going to get much more expensive soon, so it is risky to start depending on them
- chatbots grab your attention using the same "slot machine" loop as social media feeds: they only give you what you want sometimes, at unpredictable intervals
@ShaulaEvans More angles on AI that have been interesting to non-tech folks:
- humans see faces in clouds, it doesn't take much to convince us something seems like a person. don't fall for it!
- chatbots don't understand or know anything-- they convert all your input words into ID numbers and do statistics on them, that's all
- I wish they would automate my laundry and dishwashing instead of replacing art, am i right?
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@commonst @ShaulaEvans if privacy is your concern, are you ok with self hosted models? it’s easy to download whisper and have it transcribe an mp3 without requiring remote servers
@eljojo
https://www.theregister.com/ai-ml/2026/05/14/ontario-auditors-find-doctors-ai-note-takers-routinely-blow-basic-facts/5240771 - local model helps with some concerns, but not all.Also these are generally paid tools people are using to try to save time. Fussing with local tools with more rough edges are not what the therapist is likely looking for.
@commonst @ShaulaEvans -
@ShaulaEvans More angles on AI that have been interesting to non-tech folks:
- humans see faces in clouds, it doesn't take much to convince us something seems like a person. don't fall for it!
- chatbots don't understand or know anything-- they convert all your input words into ID numbers and do statistics on them, that's all
- I wish they would automate my laundry and dishwashing instead of replacing art, am i right?
@ShaulaEvans Less interesting to most people I have talked to about AI concerns:
- LLMs are built by surveillance companies to entice you to share personal thoughts and details
- All the large-scale ethics (stolen data, environmental disaster, enriching fascists)
- These tools don't just filter information like a search engine or a social media algorithm, they also give you a narrative about it. that is an escalation in propaganda strength
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@ShaulaEvans Less interesting to most people I have talked to about AI concerns:
- LLMs are built by surveillance companies to entice you to share personal thoughts and details
- All the large-scale ethics (stolen data, environmental disaster, enriching fascists)
- These tools don't just filter information like a search engine or a social media algorithm, they also give you a narrative about it. that is an escalation in propaganda strength
@beandreams Thanks for all of this, Sarah.
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@beandreams Thanks for all of this, Sarah.
️@ShaulaEvans Good luck! I think your stated intentions of being productive and treating the person as dear and important are so auspicious
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@ShaulaEvans Good luck! I think your stated intentions of being productive and treating the person as dear and important are so auspicious
️@beandreams It's someone very dear to me who is intelligent and caring but isolated and under-supported.
They are also, for other reasons I won't specify, probably at a higher than average risk of AI psychosis.
But it's someone who cares about me and respects me, so I have some ground to stand on in the conversation, at least.
I would like to prevent problems in this situation now rather than respond to a crisis later, if I can.
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Have you ever had a *productive* conversation with someone you care about regarding the pitfalls of AI? Not about big picture concerns like ethics, environmental impact, etc., but about the more immediate harms to the person, like inaccurate responses and the risk of AI psychosis.
I need to have a gentle, informative conversation in a non-shaming way with someone dear to me, and I'd love to learn from anyone who has done this successfully.
*AI Booster replies will be blocked.
@ShaulaEvans
Have you seen https://youtu.be/y85nqc2zm7M ?I think the main take-away though is basically share concerns but don't shame which it sounds like is already your plan
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Have you ever had a *productive* conversation with someone you care about regarding the pitfalls of AI? Not about big picture concerns like ethics, environmental impact, etc., but about the more immediate harms to the person, like inaccurate responses and the risk of AI psychosis.
I need to have a gentle, informative conversation in a non-shaming way with someone dear to me, and I'd love to learn from anyone who has done this successfully.
*AI Booster replies will be blocked.
@ShaulaEvans yes, we discussed the way in which it might change how you think. And how you loose that ability of learning when you are presented with scenarios that look plausible, but that you do not grasp fully because you miss the steps that its built upon.
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@ohir @ShaulaEvans That's a good idea. That said, what's especially frightening is that this is only something that'll probably only work for a short time yet. As you've described it, the exercise already requires a subject-matter expert with plenty of time.
But what happens when LLMs get a bit better, like completely accurate for hours of testing? Whatever people say about human error, AI chatbots still fail in completely different ways from people. LLMs are undergoing gradual improvement, but many expect immediate results. Like, I want to be enthusiastic about the prospect of AI improving, but we've moved seamlessly from them being to hoodwink almost nobody with their head screwed on, to being able to mislead almost all of the population, with only subject matter experts being able to tell. What happens in the next stage, when even the subject matter experts are no longer able to tell AI apart from their peers in the field, but the LLMs continue to produce subtly dangerous output?
I have no answers, just fear...
@seabass
> the exercise already requires a subject-matter expert with plenty of time.The one who you are trying to save has all the expertise needed. Not you. You just guide them to understand that what they pointed out as "almost ok" is-a disinformation, is a lie. One that their own brain can correct and complete, but not brain of someone who does not have a field knowledge.
That said, people with no education and no hobbies likely already are lost to the #aislop.
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@ShaulaEvans I had this with my therapist when I refused consent for AI transcription. He was genuinely curious about my opinion because I work in tech. I pointed out there were security concerns because you don't know where the servers are located or what the laws arw there; I mentioned the possibility of hallucination and I didn't want that in my records; just general facts in a level way. Of course he legitimately wanted to learn, which possibly helped.
@commonst @ShaulaEvans well done. spreading literacy and knowledge to those who need and don't necessarily yet have it, what an honourable thing to do.
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Have you ever had a *productive* conversation with someone you care about regarding the pitfalls of AI? Not about big picture concerns like ethics, environmental impact, etc., but about the more immediate harms to the person, like inaccurate responses and the risk of AI psychosis.
I need to have a gentle, informative conversation in a non-shaming way with someone dear to me, and I'd love to learn from anyone who has done this successfully.
*AI Booster replies will be blocked.
@ShaulaEvans heh I just posted three that I use for real, in real conversations, and have used recently (you can frame them or spin them more positively, I tend to be a bit direct sometimes
https://mstdn.social/@Meznor/116623673342818185one more I forgot: when people say “(people say) I’ll be left behind if I don’t start using these tools”
response: consider that much of the evidence shows that using these tools is actually _deskilling_ people, making them less effective at their jobs.
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@ShaulaEvans heh I just posted three that I use for real, in real conversations, and have used recently (you can frame them or spin them more positively, I tend to be a bit direct sometimes
https://mstdn.social/@Meznor/116623673342818185one more I forgot: when people say “(people say) I’ll be left behind if I don’t start using these tools”
response: consider that much of the evidence shows that using these tools is actually _deskilling_ people, making them less effective at their jobs.
@ShaulaEvans the first one, reframing when people talk about AI in human ways, is powerful, I think… remind people how they actually work: they (LLMs specifically) take inputs, and are programmed (by humans) to produce probable outputs. that’s all. there’s no magic (or “intelligence”) to it.
even “agents” or “skills” (another human term) - no: they are order-takers. they are given instructions to perform a task when triggered by a certain event, events that are defined by a human.
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@commonst @ShaulaEvans well done. spreading literacy and knowledge to those who need and don't necessarily yet have it, what an honourable thing to do.
@falcennial @ShaulaEvans if someone is willing to listen, I am always willing to talk them through. I enjoy demistifying tech for others.
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> "or just good excuses to reject AI?"
Sorry, you're off topic and being rude and trollish to someone in my mentions. You're blocked.
If you expect people to take you seriously, you should do the same to people who took the time to respond.
@eljojo >> what do you mean when you say AI “listens” to conversations, is that different than your smartphone “listening” for you to say “hey google”? do you turn your phone off during therapy?
You blocked him without answering this very important question.
I am ant-AI, and I have the same question and would love your thought on this.
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J jwcph@helvede.net shared this topic
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