{"id":4000,"date":"2025-05-02T02:00:12","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T10:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=4000"},"modified":"2025-05-01T20:27:40","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T04:27:40","slug":"a-meander-from-ai-to-people-and-back-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2025\/05\/02\/a-meander-from-ai-to-people-and-back-again\/","title":{"rendered":"A Meander from “AI” to People and Back Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

The latest scandal to hit the science fiction community is the revelation that the people putting on WorldCon in Seattle are using ChatGPT to vet proposed panelists<\/a>. Given that a large number of people who want to be on panels are published authors who are part of the class actions against the companies making these over-hyped LLM products, the amount of outrage was completely predictable.<\/p>\n

A number of us also pointed out that the information produced by these programs is very often wrong, since they make things up because they are basically word prediction devices. As a person who is not famous and who has a common Anglo name, I shudder to think what so-called \u201cAI\u201d would produce about me.<\/p>\n

But the biggest problem I see with \u201cAI\u201d \u2013 outside of the environmental costs, the error rate, and the use of materials without permission to create it \u2013 is that they keep trying to sell it to do things it doesn\u2019t do well, instead of keeping it for the few things it actually can do. Of course, there\u2019s not a lot of money to be made from those few things, especially when you factor in the costs.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re at the point in tech where new things are not going to change the product that much, no matter what the hype says. Exponential growth cannot last forever. If you don\u2019t believe me, look up the grains of rice on a chessboard story.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been thinking a lot about all the ways people are trying to use \u201cAI\u201d or even older forms of tech to get rid of workers and the more I think about it, the more disastrous it looks.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t need more tech doing stuff; we need more people doing stuff.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just \u201cAI\u201d. Just try to call your bank or your doctor, or, god help us all, Social Security or the IRS (now made worse by the Dodgy Minions). When we have issues, we need people \u2013 real people, who understand what we\u2019re calling about and can solve our problems.<\/p>\n

The \u201cchat\u201d feature on a website doesn\u2019t cut it and an \u201cAI\u201d enabled chat feature is probably worse in that it might well make up an answer instead of just not knowing what to do.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been thinking of health care in particular. I\u2019ve heard a lot of talk about how LLMs can read radiology films better than radiologists, in that they don\u2019t get bored or distracted, so they can point to any things that look out of the ordinary in reference to the kind of films they were trained on.<\/p>\n

But of course, what they\u2019re really doing is flagging the problems for a radiologist to look at. They don\u2019t replace the expert; they help them do their job. It\u2019s probably useful, but it isn\u2019t going to make radiology any cheaper, because you still need the person to look carefully at the films.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t believe for a moment that LLMs will be better at diagnosing patients. <\/p>\n

What we really need in health care is more people: More doctors, way more nurses, more nurse practitioners and physician assistants. More trained people fielding phone calls and emails \u2013 people, not AI.<\/p>\n

And we need scads of people in public health.<\/p>\n

All of that is just to provide the health care, because of course we need all kinds of medical research as well, and that takes a lot of people.<\/p>\n

Ever see health recommendations \u2013 say taking up a challenging exercise program \u2013 and notice that they recommend consulting your doctor before you try it. Does anyone actually have a doctor they can consult for something like that?<\/p>\n

Does anyone\u2019s insurance actually pay for that sort of visit?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just health care. We need way more teachers, so that they have small class sizes and can give students individual attention.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019m not just talking about in the United States. We need this worldwide.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re not short on people, despite those who decry the low birth rate. With 8 billion people on the planet, we\u2019re producing plenty of people. We can end up with plenty of medical people, plenty of teachers, plenty of folks caring for children and those who need assistance.<\/p>\n

Even plenty of people who answer the phone and can provide useful answers.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been reading Rebecca Solnit\u2019s new essay collection No Straight Road Takes You There<\/i>. The first essay, \u201cNo Truce With the Trees,\u201d about the 300-year-old violin played by the leader of the Kronos Quartet, got me to thinking about how we need more people doing things.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not quite sure how I got there from that essay, since a lot of it is about all the materials that went into that violin, as well as the craftsmanship it took to make a violin that is still making incredible music after so many years. But that\u2019s one of the things that happens when reading \u2013 you end up putting together ideas that don\u2019t quite seem related, but yet they are.<\/p>\n

I am also quite taken with another essay in the book, \u201cIn Praise of the Meander,\u201d which I read twice and which has made me start to think about how to write fiction with a structure that resembles fungal networks.<\/p>\n

It is easier to think about how to do that in essays and nonfiction, but I don\u2019t think it\u2019s impossible in fiction. And it might be fun to try.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m pretty sure ChatGPT can\u2019t understand how stories relate to fungal networks, which is yet another reason not to take it seriously as the next big thing.<\/p>\n

Though it is probably a good idea to take seriously the fact that a lot of people with a lot of money are trying to shove it down our throats.<\/p>\n

The science fiction community should know better than to be taken in by this game. They are, after all, the people who understand that the best dystopias were written as warnings, not as guidebooks.<\/p>\n

We shouldn\u2019t help the broligarchs create the Torment Nexus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest scandal to hit the science fiction community is the revelation that the people putting on WorldCon in Seattle are using ChatGPT to vet proposed panelists. Given that a large number of people who want to be on panels are published authors who are part of the class actions against the companies making these […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,363],"tags":[681,516,1045,567],"class_list":["post-4000","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rants","category-technology","tag-ai","tag-rebecca-solnit","tag-torment-nexus","tag-worldcon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4000","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4000"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4000\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4001,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4000\/revisions\/4001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4000"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4000"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4000"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}