I’ve found that AI has done literally nothing to improve my life in any way and has really just caused endless frustrations. From the enshitification of journalism to ruining pretty much all tech support and customer service, what is the point of this shit?
I work on the Salesforce platform and now I have their dumbass account managers harassing my team to buy into their stupid AI customer service agents. Really, the only AI highlight that I have seen is the guy that made the tool to spam job applications to combat worthless AI job recruiters and HR tools.
I thought it was pretty fun to play around with making limericks and rap battles with friends, but I haven’t found a particularly usefull use case for LLMs.
Chat GPT enabled me to automate a small portion of my former job. So that was nice.
I like asking ChatGPT for movie recommendations. Sometimes it makes some shit up but it usually comes through, I’ve already watched a few flicks I really like that I never would’ve heard of otherwise
I use it often for grammar and syntax checking
Theres someone I sometimes encounter in a discord Im in that makes a hobby of doing stuff with them (from what I gather seeing it, they do more with it that just asking them for a prompt and leaving them at that, at least partly because it doesnt generally give them something theyre happy with initially and they end up having to ask the thing to edit specific bits of it in different ways over and over until it does). I dont really understand what exactly it is this entails, as what they seem to most like making it do is code “shaders” for them that create unrecognizable abstract patterns, but they spend a lot of time talking at length about technical parameters of various models and what they like and dont like about them, so I assume the guy must find something enjoyable in it all. That being said, using it as a sort of strange toy isnt really the most useful use case.
I think it’s a fun toy that is being misused and forced into a lot of things it isn’t ready for.
I’m doing a lot with AI but it’s pretty much slop. I use self hosted stable diffusion, Ollama, and whisper for a discord bot, code help, writing assistance, and I pay elevenlabs for TTS so I can talk to it. It’s been pretty useful. It’s all running on an old computer with a 3060. Voice chat is a little slow and has its own problems but it’s all been fun to learn.
ChatGPT can be useful or fun every now and then but besides that no.
The only things I use and I know they have AI are Spotify recommendations, live captions on videos and DLSS. I don’t find generative AI to be interesting, but there’s nothing wrong with machine learning itself imo if it’s used for things that have purpose.
I have found ChatGPT to be better than Google for random questions I have, asking for general advice in a whole bunch of things but sido what to go for other sources. I also use it to extrapolate data, come up with scheduling for work (I organise some volunteer shifts) and lots of excel formulae.
Sometimes it’s easier to check ChatGPT’s answers, ask follow up questions, look at the sources it provides and live with the occasional hallucinations than to sift through the garbage pile that google search has become.
I use silly tavern for character conversations, pretty fun. I have SD forge for Pomy diffusion, and use Suno and Udio. Almost all of that goes to DND, the rest for personal recreation. Google and openai all fail to meet my use cases and if I cuss they get mad so fuck em. I never use those for making money or any other personal progression, that would be wrong.
I’ve used it to fill in the gaps for DND storyline. I’ll give it a prompt and a couple of story arcs then I’ll tell it to write in a certain style, say a cowardly king or dogmatic paladin. From there it will spit out a story. If I don’t like certain affects, I’ll tell it to rewrite a section with some other detail in mind. It does a fantastic job and saves me some of the guesswork.
For those interested, I just asked it to generate a campaign with a quick prompt and this is what it spit out. Not perfect, but a good basis to build from:
Campaign Framework: The Relic of Shadows Introduction: The Call to Adventure Setting: The campaign begins in the small, picturesque fiefdom of Ravenwood, ruled by the benevolent Lord Alaric. Known for his wisdom and kindness, Lord Alaric’s peace is shattered when a relic of immense power, the Amulet of Shadows, is stolen by a band of notorious highwaymen. Hook: Lord Alaric seeks the help of the adventurers, promising wealth and favor in return for the retrieval of the Amulet of Shadows. The relic is said to possess the ability to manipulate shadows, providing its bearer with unparalleled stealth and the power to traverse through the Shadow Realm. Act 1: The Journey Begins Initial Quest: The adventurers set off to track down the highwaymen, following clues and engaging in minor skirmishes along the way. They learn that the highwaymen are more than simple thieves—they are a fragmented faction of former soldiers who turned to banditry after being betrayed by a corrupt noble. Twist: Upon confronting the highwaymen, the adventurers discover that Lord Alaric had once wronged them in his past. The highwaymen had stolen the Amulet of Shadows not out of greed, but to prevent Alaric from using its dark powers. They reveal that Alaric’s benevolent facade hides his darker ambitions. Act 2: The Corrupted Lord Return and Betrayal: Despite the highwaymen’s revelations, the adventurers decide to return the Amulet of Shadows to Lord Alaric, hoping to resolve the situation peacefully. However, upon returning the relic, Lord Alaric’s true nature is revealed. Corrupted by the power of the amulet, he becomes malevolent and orders the adventurers imprisoned in a distant, forgotten dungeon. Dungeon Escape: The adventurers must navigate the treacherous dungeon, facing traps, monsters, and puzzles. During their imprisonment, they encounter an exiled hermit named Elias, a former friend of Lord Alaric who was cast out due to discovering the lord’s dark ambitions. Act 3: The Path of Vengeance The Hermit’s Guidance: Elias offers to guide the adventurers back to Ravenwood and reveals crucial insights into Lord Alaric’s plans. He explains that Alaric seeks to use the Amulet of Shadows to control the Shadow Realm and extend his dominion. Elias knows secret paths and hidden truths that can aid the adventurers. Critical Choice: The adventurers must protect Elias throughout their journey. If Elias perishes, they lose his valuable knowledge, making their mission significantly harder. Without Elias, they will face additional challenges and must uncover Alaric’s weaknesses through other means. Act 4: The Final Confrontation Return to Ravenwood: The adventurers, now armed with the knowledge provided by Elias (or through their own investigations if Elias is lost), must confront Lord Alaric. They rally allies, face Alaric’s corrupted forces, and uncover the hidden vulnerabilities in Alaric’s plans. Climactic Battle: The campaign culminates in an epic showdown with Lord Alaric in his fortified castle. The adventurers must disable the Amulet of Shadows, overcome Alaric’s dark magic, and ultimately restore peace to Ravenwood. Resolution Victory or Defeat: Depending on the adventurers’ actions, they may emerge victorious, freeing Ravenwood from Alaric’s tyrannical grasp, or they might succumb to the shadows, leaving the fiefdom to its dark fate. Their choices throughout the campaign will determine the final outcome and the legacy they leave behind. Feel free to add or adjust details to fit your players’ preferences and playstyle! This framework should give you a solid foundation for a thrilling and complex campaign. Happy adventuring! 🐉⚔️
And below was my prompt, took me appx 5 minutes to write from my phone. I like that the AI thought that Elias would recall secret passages from his youth, which I’m thinking could help the adventures bypass some of the guard. I definitely would want to workshop that highwaymen twist, I mean what kind of party would be willing to return a relic of shadows back when they perceive a ruler as being corrupt? It needs something a bit more convincing.
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Provide me a framework for a DND campaign that will contain the following story arcs. A lord of a small fiefdom seeks a group of traveling adventures to return a relic (you choose the relic, it must have magical powers) that was stolen from him by a group of highwaymen. The story must include a twist about the highwaymen. When returned, the lord becomes corrupted and throws the party in a far off dungeon. The adventures must work their way back to the lord and seek their revenge, with the assistance of a self exiled hermit who formerly knew the lord in his youth that they encounter along the way. If the hermit dies, the party loses insight into the lord’s intentions and it makes it much more challenging to win the campaign.
It’s basically to replace their shitty chat bots. It’s ok, I’m doing the course for it now. You guys hiring?
Even before AI the corps have been following a strategy of understaffing with the idea that software will make up for it and it hasn’t. Its beyond the pale the work I have to do now for almost anything I do related to the private sector (work as their customer not as an employee).
I like messing with the locally hosted AI available. We have a locally hosted LLM trained on our command media at work that is occasionally useful. I avoid it otherwise if I didn’t set it up myself or know who did.
To me AI is useless. Its not intelligent, its just a blender that blends up tons of results into one hot steaming mug of “knowledge”. If you toss a nugget of shit into a smoothie while it’s being blended, it’s gonna taste like shit. Considering the amount of misinformation on the internet, everything AI spits out is shit.
It is purely derivative, devoid of any true originality with vague facade of intelligence in an attempt to bypass existing copyright law.
Your last line pretty much sums up my feelings entirely.
Do I think it’s generally useful? No, not at all.
But for very specific purposes it’s worth considering as an option.
Text-to-image generation has been worth it to get a jumping-off point for a sketch, or to get a rough portrait for a D&D character.
Regular old ChatGPT has been good on a couple occasions for humor (again D&D related; I asked it for a “help wanted” ad in the style of newspaper personals and the result was hilariously campy)
In terms of actual problem solving… There have been a couple instances where, when Google or Stack Overflow haven’t helped, I’ve asked it for troubleshooting ideas as a last resort. It did manage to pinpoint the issue once, but usually it just ends up that one of the topics or strategies it floats prove to be useful after further investigation. I would never trust anything factual without verifying, or copy/paste code from it directly though.
It’s great at summarization and translations.
Until it makes shit up that the original work never said.
The services I use, Kagi’s autosummarizer and DeepL, haven’t done that when I’ve checked. The downside of the summarizer is that it might remove some subtle things sometimes that I’d have liked it to keep. I imagine that would occur if I had a human summarize too, though. DeepL has been very accurate.
LLMs are especially bad for summarization for the use case of presenting search results. The source is just as critical of information for search as the information itself, and LLMs obfuscate this critical source information and combine results from multiple sources together…
LLMs are TERRIBLE at summarization
Downvoters need to read some peer reviewed studies and not lap up whatever BS comes from OpenAI who are selling you a bogus product lmao. I too was excited for summarization use-case of AI when LLMs were the new shiny toy, until people actually started testing it and got a big reality check
tl;dr?
Translates Sumerian texts.
Might want to rethink the summarization part.
AI also hasn’t made any huge improvements in machine translation AFAIK. Translators still get hired because AI can’t do the job as well.
Thank you for pointing that out. I don’t use it for anything critical, and it’s been very useful because Kagi’s summarizer works on things like YouTube videos friends link which I don’t care enough to watch. I speak the language pair I use DeepL on, but DeepL often writes more natively than I can. In my anecdotal experience, LLMs have greatly improved the quality of machine translation.
Kitboga has used AI (STT, LLMs, and TTS) to waste the time of Scammers.
There are AI tools being used to develop new cures which will benefit everyone.
There are AI tools being used to help discover new planets.
I use DLSS for gaming.
I run a lot of my own local AI models for various reasons. Whisper - for Audio Transcriptions/Translations.
Different Diffusion Models (SD or Flux) - for some quick visuals to recap a D&D session.
Tesseract OCR - to scan an image and extract any text that it can find (makes it easy to pull out text from any image and make it searchable).
Local LLMs (Llama, Mixtral) for brainstorming ideas, reformatting text, etc. It’s great for getting started with certain subjects/topics, as long as I verify everything that it says.
For fun I’ll probably setup GLaDOS like what was done here: https://www.reddit.com/r/LocalLLaMA/comments/1csnexs/local_glados_now_running_on_windows_11_rtx_2060/
