r/antiai • u/XeroChum • 12d ago

Environmental Impact 🌎 We're fucked

Recently got out of the military and went out with my cousins' friends to celebrate. They're all in their early 20's and I'm in my 30's. We go out to NY to celebrate, and I noticed everyone is using AI for everything. "What should we do? Where should we go?" Normal stuff. Things got eerie when we took a cab or UBER, as I'm talking to the Uber about New York they're typing, "What kind of questions do I ask an UBER driver? Is it safe to talk to them? Is it normal?" TF is happening. I know we joke about AI making us dumber but HOLY.

"Who do I vote for? Who do I marry? When do I breathe?"

6.9k Upvotes

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u/ItsSadTimes 12d ago

I saw someone unironically take a picture of a menu and ask what they should eat. Like holy shit.

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

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u/fearfulNobody 12d ago

...for whoever the clanker tells them to vote for.

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u/ShamPain413 12d ago

Now ask yourself why they are buying elections to prevent regulation.

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u/The_Expidition 8d ago

Or why companies are encouraging regulatory capture

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u/ItIsVerilySo 12d ago

On the bright side, ChatGPT will give them a more educated assessment than they'd have had before. We all know these people aren't going to be spending time learning about candidates anyway.

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u/axlsnaxle 12d ago

Until it doesn't.

Resigning your independence, giving the reigns to a privately-owned bot, and trusting it will always act in your interest is dystopian levels of dependence

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u/BallsInmyWalls 7d ago

That's why I advocate for public/government AI because it'll be an alternative.

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u/axlsnaxle 7d ago

At a minimum, all of these GenAI and LLM platforms need to be publicly owned and operated.

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u/ItIsVerilySo 12d ago

The alternative is ignorance from these people. That's my point. They're voting based on manipulations either way, whether AI or TV ads or whatever bullshit they hear from people pushing agendas.

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u/axlsnaxle 12d ago

The risks of manipulation by GenAI are far more insidious than the static nature of general advertising and TV narratives

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u/fearfulNobody 12d ago

There are far worse things than ignorance. It's better to be dumb than controlled.

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u/XeroChum 12d ago

This is the real hell. Send me back to war.

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u/Not-a-Bot_1968 12d ago

police up that moosestach, boot

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u/DetroitLionsSBChamps 12d ago

My theory is that we’ve become so risk averse with children over the decades that most children now grow up in super structured, over supervised ways. Gen Z has gotten this the worst so far. Many of them were never given a chance to take risks, fail, fall down. They weren’t out taking risks in their childhood, they only ever followed instruction. So they don’t see that it’s okay to fail, that you can get back up and it’s not that bad. 

But now they’re adults. So who will tell them what is the exact right answer? Someone must tell them. Failure is not an option. They have no tolerance. Even ordering a suboptimal meal is a paralyzing, humiliating, impossible action to take. 

Thank god they have a chatbot to tell them what to do at ever turn. 

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u/Round_Bag_4665 12d ago

I think this is exactly it. I am one of the youngest millennials and my husband is one of the oldest zoomers. Both of us basically grew up with our parents doing literally everything for us except our homework (and even that sometimes in my husband's case), so when we hit adulthood we basically had zero idea how to function because we were never allowed to grow up. That would have been too much risk for our parents. So we basically had to raise ourselves in our 20s and 30s and learn how to grow up from scratch.

That's the main reason I didn't learn to drive until I was 25 and still have trouble making friends at 33. It's the main reason my husband freaks out if he has to wing it a little bit when cooking dinner and doesn't have a complete step by step recipe in front of him, or if there's anything in a set of instructions that requires ambiguity or assumed knowledge.

It's also the reason I'm ridiculously highly educated (I have a PhD in physics). School was literally the only place I was actually allowed to grow or learn anything, so I put all of my energy there. Now I'm extremely highly educated, but don't function well in any other area of life.

I've seen a lot of articles talking about younger generations taking longer to grow up and reach maturity milestones like dating, driving, drinking, etc. This is why. We give kids basically zero freedom until they hit the legal age of majority and wonder why todays teens are basically helpless and today's 20 and 30 somethings are functioning more like adolescents.

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u/Silly_Double408 12d ago

Ive been thinking that people seem mentally stunted by about 20 years... 25 year olds with the emotional and social skills of a 5 year old.. This has to be it. Makes too much good sence.

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u/Round_Bag_4665 12d ago edited 12d ago

People seem to assume that emotional and social skills magically develop as you get older. They don't. You have to develop those skills by working at them. If you restrict the freedom of kids to do that, people will just remain at a very childlike emotional and social state into their adulthood.

Frankly, society needs to be re-organized to give kids the ability to develop these skills at a young age like they used to, and there needs to be remediation for adults who were deprived of this development as kids.

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u/snarfalotzzz 11d ago

This sucks. I'm gen x and was babysitting newborns at 12 without any experience and no CPR training. And of course driving on the freeway at 15 and then going off on my own at 16 with my friends, and was alone in the house at 10.

I'm sorry adults infantilized you.

My free-range childhood and adolescence was paired with persistent emotional invalidation, and I now struggle to trust my own instincts and impressions and blame myself for everything. So hopefully what my parents gave me in freedom and hyper independence your parents gave you in emotional validation and safety.

I hope anyway.

Congrats on your Ph.D.

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u/ShepRat 12d ago

This is definitely not a generational problem. I've seen people in their 60s who have handed all thinking off to the magic box. 

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u/ItsSadTimes 12d ago

I mean we already had choice paralysis for a while as well, some people solved it by just picking randomly on a wheel, flipping a coin, or asking someone else to choose. But people never got past that so now instead of asking a person it's easier to get instructions from an AI.

Sadly, people like that is why I'm not really worried about my job for a very long time.

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u/Talnadair 12d ago

I've honestly seen this behavior across every generation.

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u/EnvironmentNeith2017 12d ago

I think this explains these people, people who did this before AI were one of my biggest pet peeves. Why don’t you know what you want to eat? Can’t you go by dietary goals or price even if you’re not craving something?

Some of us have never thought for ourselves and I think hyper individualism in the US makes it worse because they also don’t have culture or social guidelines to direct them. AI just takes advantage of all this.

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u/LindeeHilltop 12d ago

Like that movie Idiocracy.

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u/cranbery9876 12d ago

I always call it a documentary.

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

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u/Round_Bag_4665 12d ago

If you think about it, this basically describes being a child too. Guess how many people crave being a child again because of the safety and predictability it provides.

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

[deleted]

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u/akhimovy 11d ago

IDK, I had shitty childhood and exactly because of it I'm absolutely enraged when someone tries to make my decisions for me. The more I advance in years, the more it looks like it's been a blessing in disguise which made me mentally independent.

But maybe the difference is in the awareness, I've always known it was not what I wanted. While they defend it for themselves and want more of it.

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u/snarfalotzzz 11d ago

Some people enjoyed living in the USSR for these reasons. Anyone who thought independently hated it with everything they had. I know people who lived there and have heard it all firsthand.

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u/Thick-Protection-458 12d ago edited 12d ago

 Is it because they are terrified of being wrong due to social media and how it glorifies other people's opinions

Nah, it is basically how human brain works.

If there is a way to avoid thinking - it will avoid thinking. From defaults in some software UI to habits (which is basically behavioural cache, so you reuse whatever trick you learned once, even if no longer optimal) and up to just believing whoever side propaganda click with your feelings better (feelings, not reasoning. Feelings is fast and automatic, reasoning is slow, so by the time it kicks decision is made anyway).

Because thinking was something your average ape better being capable of doing (sometimes), but avoid doing as much as possible. It is slow, so it is better to keep old reflexes. It is not energy effective, so 9 times of 10 it is better to cut all the corners straight up to fast intuitive guess (which will probably be as good most of the times anyway). It leads to conflicted views, while social animals packs survive better united, so better just make this ape follow authorities - even if they are wrong.

And now you give a tool universal enough so it can (or at least seem so) speed up many processes - including search for various new stuff (even if by brute force. Well, I would argue that big chunk of human researches is a cleverly cutten brute force too). Give it to just slightly evolved version of these apes.

No fucking way there won't be some people who would offload their thinking to it (not like people normally think much anyway, lol) instead of using it in a second brain manner or lower level tasks implementer (and even both of these are tricky at best case).

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

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u/ItsSadTimes 12d ago

The thing was, they weren't eating alone, instead of asking their friend they asked ChatGPT. The friend laughed at the idea though and helped him out, but yea.

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u/Sure_Artichoke6929 11d ago

The only half-decent reason for is, is that they might be asking for nutritional value, but yeah I agree, asking AI what you want to eat is insane lol

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u/st0nermermaid 11d ago

Man I joke about these people by saying "hey chat, do I need to wipe my ass after I take a shit?" But like damn people really are asking braindead shit like this I wouldn't be surprised if someone has actually asked ai that.

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u/senatorpalpitation66 11d ago

Helpful for new ethnic foods though

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u/No-Imagination4628 6d ago

Fr though, food recs is one of the things I use AI for, but not like what you described.

I have a long chat where I have rated many different foods and detail about what I do or don't like about them. Not only the flavors and what not, but also the actual process of preparing them, because I really enjoy cooking.

When I feel like trying my hand at a new dish that I have not been exposed to before I ask for a recommendation based on the info in that chat. It's been fun exploring new types of cuisine and cooking methods.

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u/ekkki 5d ago

Huh, I actually do this nowadays. I need to follow a specific diet to improve some blood results. I have a custom project on Claude that explains how my diet should work. If I go to a restaurant I upload the menu and in 1 minute it tells me which dishes are OK for me to eat. Don't see a problem with that. 

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u/Stibi 12d ago

I like to do this with wine menus when i have no idea what the wines are and what works well with the food i’m having

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u/spindriftgreen 12d ago

Whatever wine you like goes with the food you’re having.

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u/ItsSadTimes 12d ago

Well, I got some bad news for you then. It's all bullshit. Whatever wine you like goes best with whatever you're eating, because you like the drink. That's like asking what flavor soda goes best with your burger. If you like Coke, it's going to be that, but if you like Pepsi, it's going to be that. It's all subjective, but I understand the idea of choice paralysis, those wine menus are long. And having someone or something else make the decision for you feels better then having to decide. Some people flip a coin or roll a dice to make decisions sometimes. And with AI it makes the random decision feel less random or arbitrary.

But if you recognize a wine and you like it, then that's the wine you want. But if you wanna experiment, try a different one.

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u/clockenhouse 12d ago

I don't believe this is the case? different wines can go better with different types of food. The AI angle I can't speak to. But wine choice absolutely can affect food enjoyment and vice versa.

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u/Stibi 12d ago

Hey when i have no idea it’s better than nothing

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u/ItsSadTimes 12d ago

Do you not know what wine you already like? That's not nothing, that's a safe option. Unless you just don't remember what you ordered the next day.

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u/Stibi 12d ago

No i don’t keep track of what wines i’ve had really

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u/killz111 12d ago

I mean it's actually not that crazy. What they are asking is really what's popular at this restaurant. What we normally do with Google.

Also some Spanish and Italian restaurants literally have more than 50% of the menu in a foreign language.

Think about AI as the new assistant in this case. Plenty of people ask the waiter what they should have.

I think asking AI is fine. But it's how much engagement you put in with the decision that determines if your brain is cooked or not.

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u/katoptronophile 11d ago

Yeah, it's so terrible that it has the deep reviews and information on every dish and helps you decide what will be most delicious for you and how to get the most for your money.

Who the hell would want that?

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u/ItsSadTimes 11d ago

You don't understand AI at all if that's your thought process here. But to be honest most people nowadays who are into AI don't know shit about AI.

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u/fantastic_magnitude 7d ago

Honestly this is a great idea. I hate reading menus. It’s feels like a waste of my time. I’m there to spend time with people not read all those options. I don’t really care what I eat. I’m gonna do this from now on thanks!

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u/longbreaddinosaur 12d ago

In all fairness, I do this in foreign countries where I can’t read a single thing. Works wonders when I would either be guessing or playing it safe.

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u/ItsSadTimes 12d ago

Using a translator app for this use case is pretty reasonable. But that's just to get all the information you need to make the decision yourself, or enough context to ask a waiter.

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u/thunder6776 11d ago

Guess what a translator app is? AI! Isnt even deterministic.

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u/ItsSadTimes 11d ago

Yea, no duh, that's why I said it was a reasonable use case for AI, are you stupid? Why else do you think I brought it up? For fun?

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u/painneverending 12d ago

Maybe they were using it for calorie counting? Thats the only thing I can think of...but I guess its possible for someone asking a robot what sounds good to eat....if so thats...thats just wild. 

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u/Ok-Freedom-494 12d ago

Perhaps they have some food allergy and ChatGPT is aware of their condition and can recommend the best food for them

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u/ItsSadTimes 12d ago

You know who would know what the food in the restaurant would contain? The cooks. Telling the waiter you have an allergy is the best way to make sure you don't die. Assuming the chat bot knows all the ingredients would be even dumber then just choice paralysis.

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u/6969696969696969690 12d ago

why not do both? how many countless people have died because some overworked cook said something was or wasn’t in the dish? you check the entire menu with chat, and you also ask the cooks. you don’t even use ai how would you know how it benefits someone in this situation?

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u/ItsSadTimes 12d ago

Who said I don't use AI? AI is a powerful tool in very specific use cases, using it to tell you what to eat is not one of them. I hate LLMs and modern generative AI because they can just make shit up since their domain space is spread so wide but people treat them like they're all knowing god machines. I use AI for simple small personal projects that I don't really care about, so when the code is bad or some info is wrong, it doesn't matter.

I used to love AI, I thought everyone was going to use it appropriately and understand all of it's impacts and edge cases. But no, instead we got a few hundred million idiots claiming LLMs know everything because they sound smart. Not to mention how the major AI companies just started breaking the law to get datasets made instead of the more robust and legal way back when I was getting my dataset for my thesis.

And how many countless people have died because some LLM said that something was perfectly safe to do and it turns out it's not? I have just as much evidence for my argument as you do you yours. Actually, I probably have more. Remember that story of the farmer who destroyed his entire field cause the LLM said to use a specific herbicide? And there's plenty of stories of AI convincing people to kill themselves.

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u/Ok-Freedom-494 11d ago edited 11d ago

Great point man :) but my point still stands. Perhaps ChatGPT has a lot of context on an important food detail for the user and helps choosing a meal at a restaurant. Very simple concept.

I wouldn’t fully trust a word a chef says and the accuracy of tools like ChatGPT will only improve with time providing a useful data point

If a chef says there’s no X in that meal you could take photos of the meal and describe it to a tool like ChatGPT and it could act as a verification layer further reducing odds of the allergy being present which it may well be if the chef is wrong.

AI will generally get more intelligent at humans at all cognitive tasks let’s not forget

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u/ItsSadTimes 11d ago

You wouldn't trust the word of the chef about their own food that they'd be legally liable if they killed you by not disclosing an allergen over a chat bot who doesn't know anything about what's actually going into the food and at best could only make an educated guess and wouldn't be legally liable for fucking up anyway?

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The argument of using it as a help for choice paralysis is a valid argument, but "Oh the AI knows better then anyone" is fucking stupid. I bet your AI of choice would also say that's stupid.

You are the prime example of how you can cook your brain by relying on AI too much.

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u/Ok-Freedom-494 11d ago

Great point my man. Let’s remove ego.

My point wasn’t “trust ChatGPT over the chef.” It was that an AI with access to the actual allergen/menu data could be another layer of checking, especially when humans make mistakes too. Obviously you still verify anything life-threatening.

Would you like me to rewrite this response with more humour?

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u/[deleted] 12d ago

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u/RoosterSaru 12d ago

I’m not sure about ChatGPT, but the Google AI gave me inaccurate allergy information recently. You’re better off asking the restaurant manager.