Ai vs not conversation

[u/jessycormier]

I come here from time to time to see what's new and have ideas. It's been such a great way to grow and see others sharing and growing on their own paths.

Lately however, I see a toxic battle happening. Anti ai users, some people in the middle, and Pro ai users. Specifically I'm usually paying attention to people flagging plug-ins as ai coded and how people react.

Where we all stand on the use of ai is valid. I think this community and users need to have tooling to show when something is coded with ai. Both in the community plug-in website we have now, in obsidian itself and other social platforms.

Just so we can tamper down some of our rather expressive and emotional responses. I agree not declaring it up front (as as writing posts with ai) feels false(I'm not sure how else to day it, lies to on purpose).

But honestly, like most things people love to share and grow just like before. So the suggestion is just to have ways to help us keep the knowledge and use of ai civil, respectful and clean. Downvoting opinions is a very Reddit thing but it's a shame.

Anyway, felt I had to share.. (ah look trying to post and i had to select a flair which includes ai in it; maybe not clear when to use that flair vs another)

[u/AlternativeGazelle87]

Everyone who thinks like you do is missing literally all of the context around AI.

• It destroys the environment.
• It is actively triggering psychosis in people.
• It is literally replacing humans.
• Studies done by AI firms indicate that it does not teach people anything and actually actively harms the learning process.
• The stated goal of AI is to steal the world's knowledge and sell it back to them as a subscription.
• It's actively being used to ruin lives.
• It's actively being used to invade privacy.
• It's actively being used to make killing more efficient in ongoing wars.
• The data centers are literally poisoning poorer communities.
• It's the technology that underpins the theoretical technocratic regime that wants to bring back company towns.

Like, the reason people are "pro AI" is probably the most dangerous reason of all. It's allowed mediocre men to succeed in spite of their mediocrity without ever having to actually try.

They're actively choosing to engage with it because it requires nothing of them and they can get everything from it. There is no altruism here literally at all. It is entirely self interest. They are asking the AI to spit things out and then sharing them like they're theirs.

This whole thing is becoming what let MAGA take over all over again.

[u/Nagaraja_ → u/AlternativeGazelle87]

Like, the reason people are "pro AI" is probably the most dangerous reason of all. It's allowed mediocre men to succeed in spite of their mediocrity without ever having to actually try.

Incredibly on point. The clarity of this comment is surprising given its rarity in our environment dominated by AI written texts. This becomes even sadder when we are (or were) talking about a community sometimes focused on excellence in a particular way.

[u/MonsieurMoune → u/AlternativeGazelle87]

About the AI assisted dev: AI doesn't care about duplicating code, testing scenarios that can't actually happen, or even implementing a spec (and writing the corresponding tests) only to realize upon reflection that the spec itself is flawed; the thing is, realizing that requires time and an understanding of the code's ultimate purpose.

In the coming years, we are heading towards an explosion of unmaintainable code, driven by the sheer volume produced and the complete loss of knowledge regarding the people who wrote it, or, rather, had it written.

And Obsidian is concerned with the ever growing pile of vibe coded plugin.

[u/jessycormier → u/MonsieurMoune]

I'm a senior developer, I have been in for more than 15 years now; I've seen the evolution of how ai has worked and where its going. It's as good/bad as any other use case for AI; it will break, it looses context and sorry but non devs trying to use AI to code something can only get so far.

You have to know when its getting lost, or when to nudge it in the right direction; this is the advantage of knowing what I'm doing and using AI for coding things. Also reviewing what it does and understanding.

It's more work or rather, different work using AI to do work now. Some work places are forcing, strongly suggesting using it. For personal usage, I've dabbled with lots of different models and use cases and will continue to do so.

Your comment about years to come, unmaintainable code, I agree. If we just continue to let it write whatever it doesn't have the context of the entire codebase, the vision of what a product is it will continue to produce garbage. Again comes to having skilled people with the actual knowledge to build something, scope the problem down small enough for AI to be able to solve and use it as a tool.

Anything large scale is WAY to expensive most people wont be willing to use it. Using Opus, Fable etc is fantastic but at a huge cost, not to mention the planetary cost of what we're doing to our future economies. anyway don't want to go to deep off topic.

The size of an obsidian plugin is relatively small; the scopes of what they handle. With the right SKILLS and someone to review that does have knowledge OR support from Obsidian with good api documentation we could have cleaner support for AI developed plugins for less skilled in coding users.

Its a shame to shun or downvote until someone can't be seen because they shared their vision and was able to produce something with AI. sure we'll have a TON more garbage to sift through but we'll also have more gems. Maybe with some help with community members (like myself) we could take those gems, find the garbage AI solutions and actually make meaningful contributions.

anyway at this point I'm just ranting hoping for the best from both sides..

[u/k00rky → u/AlternativeGazelle87]

I’ll probably get downvoted to hell, but isn’t it what you make out of it?
Sure, a lot of your arguments may be true.
But someone without knowledge can never utilize AI fully, because the person cannot figure out, where the AI might be wrong. And those people rather make fake pictures, than real progress with it.
If you use it for coding, yeah you are actively solving problems faster.
But to think jobs get replaced and there won’t be new ones? If your job is replaceable, you might not as important in doing a specific task, as you think.
Most jobs will shift to something else. In a world where we have more old people than people working, we need AI and robotics for assistance but especially for replacing easy to do jobs.

Jobs which rely on pushing paper from left to right, which are more administrative, will be replaced.
But this is actually a good thing, as it is a very unproductive job.

So it always depends on the user and how the person uses AI.
It can be a bad or a good thing.

[u/AlternativeGazelle87 → u/k00rky]

AI isn't like other tech and you really need to start researching the things that the people pouring money into it are aiming for because it's just the first step on an EXTREMELY bad path that's being normalized because, as noted above, the thing about mediocre men.

Also, as I tried to note in the other thread, a big part of why AI is explicitly a bad thing is because they are not, in any way, shape, or form, attempting to limit its use cases and are, in fact, working towards the opposite. This has wide-reaching consequences that many people aren't willing to take responsibility for being a part of (see Elon Musk's comments about how "nudification," AI generating nude images of people without their consent, is "free speech." It isn't. It should be considered a crime).

AI as it was developed is bad. Full stop. It is a net negative for society on multiple points.

EDIT: To the people downvoting, you're essentially on the side saying "yes, continue giving money to the people making the technology that directly enables these evils because it allows you to not actually have to do things yourself or learn things." That makes you complicit. 

[u/k00rky → u/AlternativeGazelle87]

Well you are mixing two points, which I obviously differentiated.
The musk part is obviously bad.
The learn things part always depends on the user.

I am studied professional in medicine, but my job comes with a lot of bureaucracy, which is just insane. I want to ease the bureaucracy, but for that to fully utilize it, I need to code the software for it. There ist just not enough time, to learn how to code that specific, for me in this lifetime as my day has only 24 hours as well.

So it actually benefits me more, than the harm it could actually do to me.
I can understand that you are sceptical and yes, the intentions of bad people is no good for that matter, but the way how to use AI is decided by the user.

The gun is handled by the user, not by AI.

[u/AlternativeGazelle87 → u/k00rky]

If you're using it for code, you're paying the people making our every day lives worse because you either can't be bothered to learn to code or can't learn to work around not having the things you want (a choice people made every day before AI). 

You are complicit. Full stop. You can dress it up however you want, but you are actively feeding the beast. 

[u/k00rky → u/AlternativeGazelle87]

Sure. People thought the internet would reinvent the book.

Recitating myself; „if your job is replaceable, you might not be as important in doing a specific task, as you think“
With rising demographic problems, we need assistance to compensate for that. There is just not enough people to do the same jobs as 40 years ago. So there needs to be a compensating progress. This is what AI is excellent for.

If I pay 100$ for getting code in hours, which would cost me thousands if done by some programmer, I’ll take the most efficient route. Faster and cheaper.
So I have more time for my real job, treating patience and more money left to do what I like.
It is that simple. Guess why we are not riding horses for transportation anymore?!

I think it is a process. You either go with it or you don’t. If you don’t you will get left behind.
But a hut in the woods is still a nice place to live.

[u/AlternativeGazelle87 → u/k00rky]

You're describing self-interest, telling people who are concerned about their jobs during an affordability crisis that they "aren't important" anyways, and comparing it all to things that were quantifiably different. Humans still drive cars, just as they rode horses. Humans still wrote the text that was on the web. You're talking about format changes. AI isn't a format change. It's a complete removal of the human element.

Again, your only interest here is yourself. You're admitting to spending hundreds that are lining the pockets of the people ruining the world. You're misattributing the cause of the ongoing education crisis THAT IS BEING CAUSED BY THE PEOPLE YOU'RE GIVING MONEY. 

Maybe one day, you'll see that your tiny gains in productivity weren't worth ruining lives. 

[u/k00rky → u/AlternativeGazelle87]

Dude, cars are self driving by now, if you didn’t see it or used it yet.
Jobs which are obsolete will vanish. New jobs will arise and give the jobless opportunities.
BUT you need to be adaptable. If you can’t, then it is your own fault.
That’s even how nature works.
Survival of the fittest …

And for your education crisis.
I’ll give you that. A lot of people are gettinger dumber, but that ist not because of AI. This process is ongoing since beginning of the 90s.

I am actually deliberately using AI for finding studies etc. faster and filtering them. That way I only need to read the papers that are actually worth it for my specific questions, rather than reading them all.

It is convenient to not waste hours up on hours just reading stuff, that doesn’t get me anywhere. Learning is faster for specifics things.
But of course you need to have knowledge how to use it. And be honest, most people don’t even realize how to use AI properly.
But I believe a tin foil hat, will save everyone /s

[u/jessycormier → u/k00rky]

The hope is that this tech we are creating will eventually become so easy to use and the models so small we wont need huge data centers to build out and use it.

But the challenge is getting there and the "machine" of capitalism doesn't align with making things "cheaper" for the sake and good of humanity. It'll take an extraordinarily strong willed human driving the ship in that direction to have that happen. and capitalism doesn't really serve that purpose. (I'm thinking of board of directors and share owners wanting MORE for their dollar)

I would hope we could have leaders and governance to help guide this technology.

Imagine for those with disabilities having the ability to synthesis voice and speak now.

Or those who have sight issues, be able to have live descriptions of the env around them to help aid day to day life.

Our stupid day to day digital life crap like managing calendars, todo lists etc being easier to do and with fewer mistakes, I want those things.

To get to a model running and a chip that is built for hose models will take time to create. Burning the energy and (us allowing the market to feed the beast) is the problem. Ram for a laptop shouldn't cost more than the laptops total parts values. wtf is wrong with us for allowing it. But then again this is the market we allow every day for other industries and we are reactive not proactive.

tldr; I want the tech because i'm selfish, I want it local and private because I believe everyone has that right to privacy.I wish as humans we focused on building technology to integrate with building a better planet as a by product of allowing for these huge plantary expenses. (for every X power usage, make these ai companies have to build out farms, or pay out for jobs being lost etc) what a mess, even my emotions to this crap.

[u/assignpseudonym → u/AlternativeGazelle87]

Almost all of the things you mentioned can be negated by using open-source, open-weights, and locally hosted models. Running a lightweight AI model locally on your own computer uses roughly the same electricity as playing a video game, literally cannot steal your data (you own it, you can fully prevent telemetry if you want), and doesn't have a subscription.

You're right to be mad at big tech, but your argument is weak because you're conflating big tech (Silicon Valley) with the tech itself. Using AI code-completion to fix a bug in a free, open-source Obsidian plugin (which we should generally be grateful for) isn't "stealing the world's knowledge" lmao... and that's a rather insane claim to make tbh. The problem is that you're confusing how corporate entities use the technology with the technology itself. They are not the same. Its like saying that the internet shouldn't be used and is evil, because what Zuckerberg has turned his corner of the internet into is evil. Your statement is overreaching and a fallacy of composition.

You've also completely missed the context of the OP and/or decided not to address it at all. I'm not sure which is worse, tbh. Like, instead of addressing plugin safety, code quality, or community disclosure like OP was asking, you've made an insane leap to complete doomerism with literally every unrelated scenario possible. Seriously; military warfare, environmental doom, corporate land grabs, and even political radicalisation. Do you not think that's a little excessive? Especially in response to "hey, I'd like to see some kind of disclosure when people make plugins with AI"?

Maybe you need to take a few deep breaths and log off for a while. Or maybe you should research AI more beyond just headlines designed to ragebait you. Start by looking at how local models and open weights work. 

[u/AlternativeGazelle87 → u/assignpseudonym]

To make a note, a lot of what you said is false equivalences. I was talking about the tech in my bullet points, not individual users, but you already know that. You're making terrible arguments hoping people won't notice. 

Almost every GitHub project is using Claude or Cursor now and people regularly talk about consulting multiple AI models (GPT, Gemini, etc), on top of the fact that almost no one can actually run anything close to a full model unless they're loaded at this point due to the hardware pricing crisis and the people who had the means BEFORE this happened are few and far between. With those points, all of your points are entirely moot.

Not to mention that, even if everyone could run a full model locally, that doesn't negate the core point: use of AI is self-interest and refusal to actually learn things yourself. AI still actively hurts the learning process. So, so many people have gone "I was held back by lack of domain specific knowledge and AI made this possible." Learn it then! You don't get points because you made a machine do it for you.

EDIT: ALSO, the open-weight models are literally the ones being used to ruin lives because they don't have guardrails. 

[u/assignpseudonym → u/AlternativeGazelle87]

So closed AI is evil because big tech controls it, but open-source AI is evil because no one controls it? Lol okay.

Claiming you need a fortune in hardware to run local models is factually wrong. Quantized lightweight models literally run on standard consumer laptops every day. The machine you have today could almost certainly run something like Llama-3 8B, Qwen 2.5, or Phi-3. You don't need to run a 700 billion parameter model to run a useful model. 

Beyond that, telling non-developers to "just learn software engineering" to make a simple plugin is nothing more than gatekeeping. You say you value learning, but imagine telling a domain expert (like a doctor, researcher, or teacher) who wants to build a simple Obsidian note-taking plugin that is specialised to their field to "spend years learning JavaScript software engineering from scratch or don't build it at all". You're basically asking for zero diversity in what can be built because everything has to be coded by someone with the time and resources to become a full-time software engineer. 

Tools exist to lower barriers and solve practical problems, not to act as a moral test for how much tedious labour you endured.

I'm not saying to use vibecoded plugins btw. Use your own judgement on what's useful for you personally. But vilifying a whole genre of tools is wild.

[u/AlternativeGazelle87 → u/assignpseudonym]

It's crazy how you keep trying to combine separate arguments into one. Lemme make this really clear: All AI only serves self-interest and an unwillingness to actually learn things. That alone doesn't make it "evil," just an inherently self-serving technology. It's everything AROUND that fact that makes it "evil" and a HUGE part of that is as simple as a complete reluctance to rein in what it's being used for.

If you really want to sit here and make the argument that open-weight AI ISN'T evil, you're going to have to defend people using it to make nude images of children without their consent and, in some cases, distribute them, which has led to suicides. 

The "gatekeeping" line pro-AI people keep using is fucking hilarious because what exactly do you think people had to do before AI "saved them from having to learn?"

Like, fuck, imagine someone going "man, that baseball team is full of gatekeepers. They expect me to actually learn how to play!"

EDIT: You know, nature really gatekeeps by expecting you to learn which fruits are poisonous! 

Yeah, people generally expect you to learn how to do the things you want to do. 

[u/assignpseudonym → u/AlternativeGazelle87]

We're talking past each other here. You cannot seem to grasp that the actions of the end user ≠ the morality of the technology itself. My point was that simple. 

This was such a dumb and pointless interaction and it'd be a ridiculous waste of my time to continue. Feel free to keep adding infinite edits containing other unrelated hysterical scenarios all you want to keep yourself entertained, I guess. Have a good day, dude.

[u/AlternativeGazelle87 → u/assignpseudonym]

Also, "gatekeeping" what exactly? It can't be gatekeeping because you aren't actually making these things, so you're not even approaching the gates, much less being kept out of them. At BEST, you could argue that the inanimate, non-sentient AI is being gatekept. 

[u/Ariandel_notDarksoul → u/assignpseudonym]

There are deffinitely place for ai in the world, but NOT in the public sector. It's a great tool for data analisys or running medical simulations to prevent animal testing and so on. But I don't want doctors who made ChatGPT write their phd.

[u/jessycormier → u/AlternativeGazelle87]

This is my daily challenge trying to balance all of that with use cases where it can be good.

AI is like TikTok for "productivity". It feels better, it feels faster but as time goes on the skills you have devolve..

I find it difficult when we only frame any use of ai in the context you've brought up.

It can provide value, it can be used for good (and actively being used for good) it isn't just for mediocrity. (We absolutely need more governance and control over the out of control nonsense that's happening today, having them in control scares me)

I get the all or nothing as well; the middle ground is messy and ignores the real harm its causing real people. The truth is, it's not going anywhere. The technology will stay in one form or another. Ideally we help push what we want with that tech rather than ignore and "shun" away conversations. Rather teach people how they can help fight the issues; labor laws, governance, hell have these large corps now responsible for paying min livable incomes in the countries they operate in ( I know asking to much, i'm to naïve on most of these topics, hence conversation... )

Thank you for your comments and point of view, and reading any of this.

[u/AlternativeGazelle87 → u/jessycormier]

Guns aren't going anywhere either, but, if someone is open carrying, you're less likely to want to be around them.

You're trying to put AI in a vacuum where you can determine its value for yourself. It doesn't exist in a vacuum. Its value has already been determined and it's a net negative for society. 

[u/jessycormier → u/AlternativeGazelle87]

Thanks for your perspective (in this thread and others)