Has Ai Made You Better At Troubleshooting... Or Just Better At Troubleshooting Ai?

I've been kicking this around in my head, and I'm genuinely curious where everyone lands.
I use AI. I think it's an incredible tool. I also call my AI names in the middle of a thread and call BS when it screws up. It seems to enjoy the abuse.

And like every other tool, sometimes the problem isn't the tool... it's the tool using the tool. Looking at a few of you. You know who you are.

What fascinates me isn't that AI gets things wrong. Humans have been confidently wrong since the dawn of time. Just read the news. It's that AI gets things wrong with the confidence of someone who's already correcting you about a subject you've spent twenty years learning. (ie. any internet comments section)

The scary part isn't the hallucinations. It's how believable they are.

AI almost never says, "I don't know." Instead, it says, "Absolutely! Here's what I'll do for you..." then spends six paragraphs explaining how it's going to do the thing instead of just doing the damn thing. Or it stitches together three unrelated facts, sprinkles in one it completely made up, and presents the whole thing like it came down from Mount Sinai.

That's where I think people get into trouble. AI talks too much, people have the attention span of a caffeinated gnat, nobody proofreads it... and somehow that turns into, "Well, AI said so."

Somewhere along the line, "AI said..." started carrying the same weight as, "I verified it."

Now that's spicy.

Don't get me wrong—it has absolutely saved me time. It's great for brainstorming, explaining concepts, summarizing walls of text, and finding the thing I couldn't remember how to search for.

It's also fantastic at giving me fresh, creative ways to explain to my boyfriend why he's wrong... when he absolutely is... and he's being too big an idgit to admit it.

Other times, I spend just as long verifying its answer as I would have spent finding the answer myself. The only difference is now I have to troubleshoot the troubleshooting... or tell it, "Cool story, bro. Now do the thing I actually asked you to do."

So where do you stand?

Has AI genuinely made you better at troubleshooting and researching?

Or has it mostly made you better at troubleshooting AI?

Kind of like teaching your sister's toddler to swear... funny until you realize you're the one who's going to have to deal with the consequences.

 

I used it to help me plan a recent trip, and 3 of the places it told me I should try for dinner were seasonal and not open or permanently closed. For example.

 

Sure, AI can be a great tool, but ALL tools can be turned into weapons, and that is what frightens the bejeezus out of me about AI...and the fact that it gives people even more reason not to think for themselves just p***es me off.

So no, I don't use it at all, for anything. Not knowingly, anyway. It's finding its way into so much, whether we want it or not.

 

I use it with caution. I use multiple LLMs, as each has their strengths and weaknesses.
You do need to ask the right questions. As mentioned, different LLMs are better at ambiguity than others.

I have 3 on an external SSD for experimenting in my homelab.

 

I don't think Google's AI is reliable. I asked it if some actor had been in any top ten movies, and it said no, he had not. But that's definitely the wrong answer. At least one of the movies he appeared in reached 6 at the weekend box office. So, come on.

Reggie Bannister is the actor I am speaking of. I don't think he has long to live, as his health has deteriorated.

 

I routinely tell each of them that I find them useless for some task or another. It toughens them up.

 

It could also put you on their hitlist.

 

I've seen the matrix... I got this.

 

See?

 

I've been struggling lately to find alternatives to forums. Maybe there simply isn't any. Because then you'd have to say I should be calling a spade a spade.

"You wanna find something like a forum - to use it as a forum?"

Sheer madness, I know.

Basically, Discord, etc, is for chatting. Then the chat may be deleted after a week, or something like that. But I just find forums for gaming are generally not worth my while nowadays. Either the community is void of activity, or the dweebs who lurk on such places online lack intelligence.

And I'm 40, so...

Maybe I did some reflecting over this past year about my future online.

 

Everything is survivable as long as Mr. Coffee sticks with you.

 

"Any tool can be a weapon, but most weapons ain't tools."