I promise this question is asked in good faith. I do not currently see the point of generative AI and I want to understand why there’s hype. There are ethical concerns but we’ll ignore ethics for the question.
In creative works like writing or art, it feels soulless and poor quality. In programming at best it’s a shortcut to avoid deeper learning, at worst it spits out garbage code that you spend more time debugging than if you had just written it by yourself.
When I see AI ads directed towards individuals the selling point is convenience. But I would feel robbed of the human experience using AI in place of human interaction.
So what’s the point of it all?
I hate questions like this due to 1 major issue.
A generative ai with “error free” Output, is very differently useful than one that isn’t.
Imagine an ai that would answer any questions objectively and unbiased, would that threaten job? Yeah. Would it be an huge improvement for human kind? Yeah.
Now imagine the same ai with a 10% bs rate, like how would you trust anything from it?
Currently generative ai is very very flawed. That is what we can evaluate and it is obvious. It is mostly useless as it produces mostly slop and consumes far more energy and water than you would expect.
A “better” one would be differently useful but just like killing half of the worlds population would help against climate change, the cost of getting there might not be what we want it to be, and it might not be worth it.
Current market practice, cost and results, lead me to say, it is effectively useless and probably a net negative for human kind. There is no legitimate usage as any usage legitimizes the market practice and cost given the results.