The anti-AI thread

[Red Squirrel]

I wasn't online for netscape. When I started using it, firefox was called firebird for about a week before changing to firefox. I've never used anything else since.

Oh man I remember that. We used Netscape Communicator since it came with our PC. Had a lighthouse icon with the light going in a spiral. At the time Internet Explorer was considered slightly better because it supported frames. I would kind of bounce back and forth between the two. Eventually discovered Mozilla browser so used that. Then eventually Firefox came out as a light weight version. I kinda remember Firebird too but don't recall using it. Once I switched to Firefox I never really looked back. When Chrome came out I tried it just because it was a newfangled thing, but ended up going back to Firefox. Also tried Opera for a bit, but no matter what always went back to Firefox.

 

[Muse]

Wellllllll here we go

White House Uses AI to Alter Protester's Face So That She's Sobbing, Instead of Looking Brave, During Arrest

The White House published an image on X featuring an AI-altered image of an ICE protester crying during her arrest.

futurism.com

I posted that elsewhere saying "how low can this administration go?! Shameful!"

 

[Kaido]

I posted that elsewhere saying "how low can this administration go?! Shameful!"

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/03/us/politics/nekima-levy-armstrong-minnesota-protest.html

This is the key:

In response to this image of Trump and a penguin walking towards a Greenland flag, some observers pointed out that penguins actually live at the south pole. But that’s missing the point of these types of post, says Robert Topinka, a reader in digital media and rhetoric at Birkbeck, University of London.

“People continue to interpret them as if they’re meant to be a legitimate claim, or an argument or a piece of evidence, but they’re emotional hooks.” Their purpose is to stir up the base. “White House staffers have said they use AI because it’s the fastest way to get content out. It’s not the fastest way to say something that’s true; it’s the fastest way to push their propaganda.”

The slopaganda era: 10 AI images posted by the White House – and what they teach us

Under Donald Trump, the White House has filled its social media with memes, wishcasting, nostalgia and deepfakes. Here’s what you need to know to navigate the trolling

www.theguardian.com

 

[IronWing]

This is my favorite graph of the year, so far:

 

[Kaido]

This is my favorite graph of the year, so far:

View attachment 137914

The illusion that AI boosts grades···“AI that presents itself as educational may fail to meet expectations”

A survey of students worldwide found that excessive reliance on generative AI for studying or assignments may not lead to strong actual learning effects, regardless of assignment outcomes. Experts ...

www.khan.co.kr

The OECD report does mention a field experiment in Türkiye where high-school students used general-purpose generative AI tools during math practice. In that study, students with AI access did better on practice tasks, showing a performance increase around +48 % compared to students studying without AI.

However, when those same students were tested later without access to the AI tool (i.e., on an independent exam), their performance didn’t just drop back to normal - it was lower than peers who studied without AI by about 17%.

 

[marees]

The illusion that AI boosts grades···“AI that presents itself as educational may fail to meet expectations”

A survey of students worldwide found that excessive reliance on generative AI for studying or assignments may not lead to strong actual learning effects, regardless of assignment outcomes. Experts ...

www.khan.co.kr

AI will allow managers to code

it can't replace programmers

 

[VashHT]

This is my favorite graph of the year, so far:

View attachment 137914

Kind of reminds me of people who would study in college using old exams with all the answers spelled out. Most of the people who did that didn't learn when or why to use the right math and would just memorize the test questions they were studying from. They would do terrible on the exams because they didn't know why they were applying equations so if a question was slightly different than the ones they studied they would get it wrong. Doesn't really surprise me that people using AI to tell them how to do it run into the same issue.

 

[MrSquished]

I hope Brave Browser comes out with an AI feature block too.

Firefox doesn't work well with my CRM that I use unfortunately.

 

[nakedfrog]

I posted that elsewhere saying "how low can this administration go?! Shameful!"

The available evidence from the first term and the first year of the second term would seem to indicate that there is no bottom.

AI will allow managers to code

it can't replace programmers

One of the important tasks is figuring out why something isn't working, if you don't know how it works in the first place, that seems to present something of a challenge...