Live Like a Human, Leave the Rest to the AI
My friend sent me some pictures a couple of days ago from the lecture they had about the use of AI in video making, and frankly, I don't remember any of the classes I had in the last two years that have been as disgusting as this lecture. Based on what she told me, the professor came up with ideas like "live/love like a human, leave the rest to AI," and bragging about how he produced thousands of images by AI, which fundamentally is the same as "I burned a whole forest to find a location to pee". I get that our university, 上海交通大学 (Shanghai Jiao Tong), is super technology-oriented. To some degree, I enjoyed my program because I had an opportunity to use high-quality cameras and decent production, which helped me understand cinema on a deeper level. Still, I'm annoyed by how much pro-generative AI content they promote on every occasion.
To be clear, I'm not fully against AI, and I think it can be helpful as a search engine, but even for that, I don't count on its results. As I noticed, they have very bizarre mistakes that even I couldn't understand. Last year, I was checking whether the new Bi Gan movie had English subtitles in Shanghai cinemas or not, and DeepSeek didn't even show any signs of knowing the movie existed in the first place. I was shocked that a Chinese-made AI couldn't even find basic information about a Chinese movie. For me, it was the point that I realized that I can never trust any AI, and while it seems fairly dumb considering the issue I was looking for isn't even that critical on a grand scale, I'm too paranoid when it comes to relying on AI for more vital matters.
Likewise, when I was baffled by finding a theory to support my thesis argument, I again asked DeepSeek to suggest some theories I could work with, and the results were so terrible that I was even more confused about how dumb the engine is. Apart from recommending unrelated theories and papers that didn't even exist, I found its writing skills passable at best. One can say you were using an AI engine that isn't that good for academic reasons, and you should use Claude or Gemini, but again, I have a moral reason not to use the former (assisting the USA and Israel to bomb my country) and a personal reason to not care about the latter (I'm becoming more and more bothered by Google as they put "AI Mode" as their first result for everything I search on Chrome).
Another instance that I found AI irritating was when I got my kidney stones two weeks ago. Truth be told, I'm afraid of doctors. I know there's nobody who would be like, "yeah, it's so fun to go to the hospital," or something like that, but my fear of doctors is at the top of the ranking. That made me try to ask AI about symptoms and ways to control the pain, and again, it sucks. It's too easy to manipulate it and not to flex my gaslighting skills, but it was literally repeating the same thing I said without adding anything substantial. Unfortunately or not, I ended up going to the hospital, and it turned out that injecting a vaccine into your ass is much more beneficial than discussing your physical issues with AI.
Returning to the topic, I don't think I can say AI is absolute dogshit. Probably, like any other technology, it can be helpful from time to time in certain fields, and I get the point of using it. At the same time, acting like it's gonna be our savior from all the problems in the world and we should "leave the rest to AI" is just another way of saying "I don't like to use my brain," which is fine if you do, but then don't act like I should respect your opinions or care about whatever you're doing.
Anyway, I hope Peter Thiel reads this post and k*** himself before moving to Argentina or starting an online beef with the Pope.