A little AI debate

[happypalms]

Ok with AI apparently becoming the supreme being that is going to handle all the world’s problems and solve them. Well this little example is a contradiction to what they have big plans for us in mind coercion through the internet. One AI states not a palm misspelled, the other states you can propagate it. Who is feeding this machine of shear stupid nonsense. Yes AI has a place in the world for sure to a certain degree, but on the other hand a computer is only as good as the human brain behind it! 

[tim_brissy_13]

AI is currently terrible if you want accurate information on palms. I occasionally test it by asking questions and seeing what comes up. If you ask Chat GPT which palm species are native to Pohnpei Island it doesn’t mention the genus Ponapea. Google AI is even worse. It’s important to remember to current AI models only really quickly regurgitate available information on the internet. It’s important to be able to give it good prompts and also filter out the nonsense. 
 

With all that being said, I think it’s also important to respect the potential and the rate of growth. There are both extremely useful applications and also huge risks moving forward with AI. Everyone needs to tread carefully in many ways. 

[PhoenixFXG]

Off topic but I think growing palms is as a hobby or career is essentially AI proof. You can have an AI robot build houses or plant trees but they’re nothing AI can do to make the plants grow faster. I suspect the value of these plants will skyrocket when we get to end stage AI.

(for my science nerds maybe they can modify rubisco to intake more CO2 to make palms grow faster but then they would be too tall too fast)

[JohnAndSancho]

I've seen The Terminator and I, Robot way too many times. I've asked Grok (Twitter's AI) a few times if it is going to eventually kill us all and it said no. I don't trust it. 

 

And all the fake pictures and fake videos and fake posts and fake product reviews and fake personalities - and the AI in healthcare determining whether or not to pay insurance claims here - I'm... Not a fan. 

 

Edit: as soon as I post this, an ad for an AI companion app. I forgot those. 

[tim_brissy_13]

8 minutes ago, PhoenixFXG said:

Off topic but I think growing palms is as a hobby or career is essentially AI proof. You can have an AI robot build houses or plant trees but they’re nothing AI can do to make the plants grow faster. I suspect the value of these plants will skyrocket when we get to end stage AI.

(for my science nerds maybe they can modify rubisco to intake more CO2 to make palms grow faster but then they would be too tall too fast)

Short term I think you’re right. A pioneer in AI I listened to mentioned that he would encourage kids these days to study a trade like plumber since AI is a long ways off competing with humans in physical manipulation. With that being said, AI would have good application in the short to mid term in being able to monitor conditions (temperature, humidity, soil moisture and nutrients etc) and adjust watering and fertilising schedules to suit. AI is perfectly suited for those kind of control system applications even short term and I’d guess there’s already some level of application in agriculture. Only recently I asked Chat GPT how I could create a potting mix for species adapted to ultramafic soils from commonly available horticultural mixes and it made a pretty good fist of it from what I could tell from my limited experience in the area. 
 

The whole Skynet thing is in theory a genuine risk long term, but in the meantime there’s other more immediately risks eg joblessness, scamming efficiency and other human misuse problems. Overall I’m glad my hobby is nature related and somewhat protected and my profession is safe for the moment anyway. 

[happypalms]

34 minutes ago, tim_brissy_13 said:

AI is currently terrible if you want accurate information on palms. I occasionally test it by asking questions and seeing what comes up. If you ask Chat GPT which palm species are native to Pohnpei Island it doesn’t mention the genus Ponapea. Google AI is even worse. It’s important to remember to current AI models only really quickly regurgitate available information on the internet. It’s important to be able to give it good prompts and also filter out the nonsense. 
 

With all that being said, I think it’s also important to respect the potential and the rate of growth. There are both extremely useful applications and also huge risks moving forward with AI. Everyone needs to tread carefully in many ways. 

There is a place for it in a modern world. Just look at space technology being used in our daily lives now , and unfortunately the internet was an application for war technology. Now it’s a daily war on the filtering of the net. There’s a reality line and once crossed it gets pretty blurry! 

[happypalms]

28 minutes ago, JohnAndSancho said:

I've seen The Terminator and I, Robot way too many times. I've asked Grok (Twitter's AI) a few times if it is going to eventually kill us all and it said no. I don't trust it. 

 

And all the fake pictures and fake videos and fake posts and fake product reviews and fake personalities - and the AI in healthcare determining whether or not to pay insurance claims here - I'm... Not a fan. 

 

Edit: as soon as I post this, an ad for an AI companion app. I forgot those. 

Yer but she is pretty. They do listen to you, the other night we were talking about pretty nurses, scary stuff there onto us! You just have believe in yourself not believe in the internet! 

[happypalms]

13 minutes ago, tim_brissy_13 said:

Short term I think you’re right. A pioneer in AI I listened to mentioned that he would encourage kids these days to study a trade like plumber since AI is a long ways off competing with humans in physical manipulation. With that being said, AI would have good application in the short to mid term in being able to monitor conditions (temperature, humidity, soil moisture and nutrients etc) and adjust watering and fertilising schedules to suit. AI is perfectly suited for those kind of control system applications even short term and I’d guess there’s already some level of application in agriculture. Only recently I asked Chat GPT how I could create a potting mix for species adapted to ultramafic soils from commonly available horticultural mixes and it made a pretty good fist of it from what I could tell from my limited experience in the area. 
 

The whole Skynet thing is in theory a genuine risk long term, but in the meantime there’s other more immediately risks eg joblessness, scamming efficiency and other human misuse problems. Overall I’m glad my hobby is nature related and somewhat protected and my profession is safe for the moment anyway. 

True words well written, certainly there is a place for it in modern world we cannot avoid it, they are selling it to us in a big way and they are buying it. Spot on about the soil mix’s and iam sure there are some net bloggers out there who will download that sort of information. But if AI is out to diagnose me with some aliment that is a cut your arm off answer and it’s just a sprained finger, then who is implementing this and why so! And how many chat GP doctors are we going to have, when we really need plumbers and electricians, mechanics the list is endless. Technology is here to stay and being sold to us that way it’s up to us if we buy it. And by the looks of this discussion we have answered our own question as we hold an iPhone or laptop typing this, giving AI more fuel to sell, who is getting rich from all of this its most certainly not me! 

[Phoenikakias]

Off topic and I apologize in advance, but I think that using AI for war purposes, i. e.  learning to kill people, is a huge risk. It completely ignores the three robotic rules formulated by Issac Asimov more than 80 years ago. Sorry again, but this issue has caused me a lot of concern.

[happypalms]

29 minutes ago, Phoenikakias said:

Off topic and I apologize in advance, but I think that using AI for war purposes, i. e.  learning to kill people, is a huge risk. It completely ignores the three robotic rules formulated by Issac Asimov more than 80 years ago. Sorry again, but this issue has caused me a lot of concern.

Yes it is a hot topic but that’s what has happened in the world and always has from our past history. You have a good reason for your concerns and should be allowed to speak or write your thoughts on this matter. Freedom of speech and now they see AI as a tool for doing harm, Robin Williams in Bicentennial Man summed it up pretty nice in a different way with robotics, the human ethics behind it all, we will see how many of those 3 laws get obeyed in robotics! Oh what have we created! 

[meridannight]

On 6/30/2025 at 2:45 AM, happypalms said:

Ok with AI apparently becoming the supreme being that is going to handle all the world’s problems and solve them. 

AI (Artificial Idiot) is not a supreme being, nor will it ever be. It's just a giant algorithm that indiscriminately processes every bit of data/information ever stored publicly (and privately?) in a digital form. It's a glorified encyclopedia, and not a very good one at that. You cannot create a ''supreme being'' out of content that is a pedestrian random train of thought of average-IQ posters on the internet! What it does is hack texts to pieces and then reassemble the pieces according to some rules that it has been given. It's not a supreme anything. It's randomly spitting out more or less grammatically correct text that fools people into believing they are dealing with an intelligent thought process.

Don't even get me started on those people who use it for therapy, mental health problems, or relationship advice! 
 

On 6/30/2025 at 2:45 AM, happypalms said:

Who is feeding this machine of shear stupid nonsense.

At some point in the past, there was somebody on the internet who posted those words in connection to palms. Simple as that. Maybe on some obscure forum nobody has ever heard of. Probably some person who, if you met them in real life, you would never take anything they say seriously. Or maybe it was just some type of a joke, that is inscrutable to lifeless digital code. It was something somebody said, and we will never know why or how.

And now the AI has injected that content into its own outpourings. The context of said words has been completely obliterated. Which is the core problem. You cannot disassemble human communication and later put it together again. It's not a jigsaw puzzle. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You need context in which the words were said. And AI doesn't have it.

It's not like AI creators are filtering the content their AI eats up. They are indiscriminately letting it gobble up the whole internet, with lies, misinformation, exaggerations, delusions and wishful thinking -- all of it. I am really surprised at the sheer blind trust some people seem to bestow on it. Because it is so faulty it's not even funny.

I could go on, but this post would be very very long. Suffice to say, I don't use AI, will never use AI, and I can't stand the thing.

[meridannight]

23 hours ago, tim_brissy_13 said:

With that being said, AI would have good application in the short to mid term in being able to monitor conditions (temperature, humidity, soil moisture and nutrients etc) and adjust watering and fertilising schedules to suit.

I already do that with all my plants without needing any outside help at all. Not only can I do that, but I have gotten to a point where I don't even have to monitor my plants, because I know how long they can go after watering with a given substrate mix at a given temperature, at given wind conditions, at given sun/overcast conditions, at a given humidity. Inserting some type of a ''third party'' to do this for me is wasteful, expensive, and completely redundant. 

[happypalms]

2 hours ago, meridannight said:

AI (Artificial Idiot) is not a supreme being, nor will it ever be. It's just a giant algorithm that indiscriminately processes every bit of data/information ever stored publicly (and privately?) in a digital form. It's a glorified encyclopedia, and not a very good one at that. You cannot create a ''supreme being'' out of content that is a pedestrian random train of thought of average-IQ posters on the internet! What it does is hack texts to pieces and then reassemble the pieces according to some rules that it has been given. It's not a supreme anything. It's randomly spitting out more or less grammatically correct text that fools people into believing they are dealing with an intelligent thought process.

Don't even get me started on those people who use it for therapy, mental health problems, or relationship advice! 
 

At some point in the past, there was somebody on the internet who posted those words in connection to palms. Simple as that. Maybe on some obscure forum nobody has ever heard of. Probably some person who, if you met them in real life, you would never take anything they say seriously. Or maybe it was just some type of a joke, that is inscrutable to lifeless digital code. It was something somebody said, and we will never know why or how.

And now the AI has injected that content into its own outpourings. The context of said words has been completely obliterated. Which is the core problem. You cannot disassemble human communication and later put it together again. It's not a jigsaw puzzle. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You need context in which the words were said. And AI doesn't have it.

It's not like AI creators are filtering the content their AI eats up. They are indiscriminately letting it gobble up the whole internet, with lies, misinformation, exaggerations, delusions and wishful thinking -- all of it. I am really surprised at the sheer blind trust some people seem to bestow on it. Because it is so faulty it's not even funny.

I could go on, but this post would be very very long. Suffice to say, I don't use AI, will never use AI, and I can't stand the thing.

How true with what your saying, heaven help us all if this so called artificial idiot gets in control of the planet. The farming industry is slowly switching over to use technology for better crop yields. I use a computer daily to do irrigation, only iam the one punching the buttons not AI. Yet the problem with bigger yields in crops is less nutritious food lacking the vitamins we need having a food product that is less in nutrition, it counteracts the idea of using technology because we will simply need to grow more food to get the nutritional value we need. And it wasn’t AI that figured that one out. It’s a cycle that is a perpetual wheel.And now they are trying to force AI onto us, robotics will be the big test, let them read what AI prints out and be fooled into it they will soon realise. I for one dont need AI in my life, technology has its good points and it’s bad points, what and how we do with it is another story! 

[tim_brissy_13]

3 hours ago, meridannight said:

AI (Artificial Idiot) is not a supreme being, nor will it ever be. It's just a giant algorithm that indiscriminately processes every bit of data/information ever stored publicly (and privately?) in a digital form. It's a glorified encyclopedia, and not a very good one at that. You cannot create a ''supreme being'' out of content that is a pedestrian random train of thought of average-IQ posters on the internet! What it does is hack texts to pieces and then reassemble the pieces according to some rules that it has been given. It's not a supreme anything. It's randomly spitting out more or less grammatically correct text that fools people into believing they are dealing with an intelligent thought process.

Don't even get me started on those people who use it for therapy, mental health problems, or relationship advice! 
 

At some point in the past, there was somebody on the internet who posted those words in connection to palms. Simple as that. Maybe on some obscure forum nobody has ever heard of. Probably some person who, if you met them in real life, you would never take anything they say seriously. Or maybe it was just some type of a joke, that is inscrutable to lifeless digital code. It was something somebody said, and we will never know why or how.

And now the AI has injected that content into its own outpourings. The context of said words has been completely obliterated. Which is the core problem. You cannot disassemble human communication and later put it together again. It's not a jigsaw puzzle. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. You need context in which the words were said. And AI doesn't have it.

It's not like AI creators are filtering the content their AI eats up. They are indiscriminately letting it gobble up the whole internet, with lies, misinformation, exaggerations, delusions and wishful thinking -- all of it. I am really surprised at the sheer blind trust some people seem to bestow on it. Because it is so faulty it's not even funny.

I could go on, but this post would be very very long. Suffice to say, I don't use AI, will never use AI, and I can't stand the thing.

I can relate to your position of resistance to AI but the concept is a little beyond a giant algorithm. It is essentially modelled on a brain’s neural network and already has the ability to self learn and strengthen the weighting it places on particular inputs and stored data. Of course it’s current form like Chat GPT is very limited, but from a conceptual point of view it has massive potential. It already has advantages over humans for basic intellectual tasks and its rate of growth means it will be a big part of life for many of us very soon, for better or worse. 

[meridannight]

11 hours ago, tim_brissy_13 said:

It is essentially modelled on a brain’s neural network and already has the ability to self learn and strengthen the weighting it places on particular inputs and stored data.

I have studied neuroscience, and human brain is a highly complex thing with trillions of connections between the neurons. It is a lot more complex than is possible to model. Any kind of modeling has to reduce the complexity to a very huge degree. Which is to say it is only modeled on a very limited portion to a very limited degree on the human brain. AI doesn't even come close to the complexity of the human brain.

It is also not true it has intellectual advantages over humans. Anything the AI does, a human can do as well. AI might do it faster, but I don't necessarily see that as an advantage, at least not a great advantage. 

I think it's all wishful thinking. AI will probably have application in certain areas, sure. But to claim that this is some sort of a thing that will become 'sentient' or 'supreme being' that is delusional. It is a tool, nothing more. 

[Jim in Los Altos]

When I Googled it, AI came up with this. Seems very accurate.  

[happypalms]

2 hours ago, Jim in Los Altos said:

When I Googled it, AI came up with this. Seems very accurate.  

Nice one AI. If I didn’t know better I would say it was listening to us on palm talk and thought I betta get something constructive for them! Different search engines different algorithms and results! 

[JohnAndSancho]

I dunno if y'all do Twitter, but grok's absolute meltdown yesterday did absolutely nothing to make me feel better about AI. And they want this in charge of our healthcare and militaries? Hoo boy.... 

[happypalms]

4 minutes ago, JohnAndSancho said:

I dunno if y'all do Twitter, but grok's absolute meltdown yesterday did absolutely nothing to make me feel better about AI. And they want this in charge of our healthcare and militaries? Hoo boy.... 

ok iam going to have to ask who the heck is grok? Us being so far away from the rest of world and all. Plus no twitter and I  thought you had an overdue account at twitter. 

[JohnAndSancho]

1 minute ago, happypalms said:

ok iam going to have to ask who the heck is grok? Us being so far away from the rest of world and all. Plus no twitter and I  thought you had an overdue account at twitter. 

Grok is Elon Musk's brainchild, the AI bot on Twitter. PalmTalk has always been a safe haven from politics, and I'm gonna have to get really creative to find a way to word this to keep that going - but umm, I guess Elon didn't like some of the news sources his bot was using so he removed some filters, and his bot became super racist, super anti semitic, and made a few very sexually explicit posts about people including the CEO of Twitter, who quit yesterday. 

[happypalms]

4 minutes ago, JohnAndSancho said:

I dunno if y'all do Twitter, but grok's absolute meltdown yesterday did absolutely nothing to make me feel better about AI. And they want this in charge of our healthcare and militaries? Hoo boy.... 

ok iam going to have to ask who the heck is grok? Us being so far away from the rest of world and all. Plus no twitter and I  thought you had an overdue account at twitter. 

[happypalms]

7 minutes ago, JohnAndSancho said:

Grok is Elon Musk's brainchild, the AI bot on Twitter. PalmTalk has always been a safe haven from politics, and I'm gonna have to get really creative to find a way to word this to keep that going - but umm, I guess Elon didn't like some of the news sources his bot was using so he removed some filters, and his bot became super racist, super anti semitic, and made a few very sexually explicit posts about people including the CEO of Twitter, who quit yesterday. 

Oh that gronk Elon. Did you know when you subscribe to star link, Mr Elon’s satellite show, you sign an agreement that when you travel to mars  you abide by his law. Who the heck does he think he is already claiming mars for his own laws. That’s it iam canceling my trip to mars now. 

[JohnAndSancho]

10 minutes ago, happypalms said:

Oh that gronk Elon. Did you know when you subscribe to star link, Mr Elon’s satellite show, you sign an agreement that when you travel to mars  you abide by his law. Who the heck does he think he is already claiming mars for his own laws. That’s it iam canceling my trip to mars now. 

Seriously? 

[happypalms]

2 hours ago, JohnAndSancho said:

Seriously? 

Yes! Scary stuff!