Disney making $1 billion investment in OpenAI, will allow characters on Sora AI video generator

[flynnibus]

For all those who believe AI is just being pushed as a replacement for people.. note the language here in this article.

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Perhaps the most relevant takeaway for our team is Robbi’s approach to AI. In a fast-moving environment like ours, the temptation to use AI as a "shortcut" is high. Robbi flipped that script. He used AI as a technical partner—to brainstorm, debug shell scripts, and organize his thinking—while maintaining full ownership of the final validation.

"AI is most valuable when it supports your judgment instead of replacing it," Robbi shared. "I don't want AI to become a shortcut around understanding. I want it to help me become more effective while still making sure I understand why something worked."
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This is what is really happening when people are talking about using AI to be more effective. Just like you all start with a search engine query today for just about anything.. then take the information, vet it, and use it.. or use the search engine to test a thought you had to see if you can find references to support to change it.. people are using AI to speed themselves up in similar fashions. They aren't having AI do their job, just like having google find info isn't having your job done by Google. They are using AI as a sidekick to turbo different tasks.

And the people who don't learn to do this - are going to fall behind others who can because they simply will get the job done sooner.

 

[Mr. Engagement]

For all those who believe AI is just being pushed as a replacement for people.. note the language here in this article.

--
Perhaps the most relevant takeaway for our team is Robbi’s approach to AI. In a fast-moving environment like ours, the temptation to use AI as a "shortcut" is high. Robbi flipped that script. He used AI as a technical partner—to brainstorm, debug shell scripts, and organize his thinking—while maintaining full ownership of the final validation.

"AI is most valuable when it supports your judgment instead of replacing it," Robbi shared. "I don't want AI to become a shortcut around understanding. I want it to help me become more effective while still making sure I understand why something worked."
--

This is what is really happening when people are talking about using AI to be more effective. Just like you all start with a search engine query today for just about anything.. then take the information, vet it, and use it.. or use the search engine to test a thought you had to see if you can find references to support to change it.. people are using AI to speed themselves up in similar fashions. They aren't having AI do their job, just like having google find info isn't having your job done by Google. They are using AI as a sidekick to turbo different tasks.

And the people who don't learn to do this - are going to fall behind others who can because they simply will get the job done sooner.

This is exactly right. And why many here have very different perceptions of and experiences with AI.

This is why some folks here don't believe me when I say AI is extremely helpful and a huge timesaver for my daily work. They've asked a chatbot questions and gotten inaccurate responses, and taken that as proof that AI isn't accurate.

Also, getting our information primarily from social media bubbles doesn't help.

 

[MisterPenguin]

Also, getting our information primarily from social media bubbles doesn't help.

Indeed. Tho an AI occasionally hallucinates, at least it's not aggressively delusional.

 

[Baloo124]

The new and unfamiliar is always scary.

Automobiles are going to ruin streets as we know them. Elvis is the Antichrist with his inappropriate dance moves and hip swaying. And just wait until January 1st 2000, when all computers shut down and society ends.

Why should AI be any different?

 

[parksandtravel]

 

[parksandtravel]

 

[flynnibus]

It's inevitable that many early innovators in the space won't survive.. their lessons and tech will be rolled into others.

And it's inevitable that even those do survive the first generation will likely be unhinged by disruptors in another wave. It will be a lot harder for companies to entrench themselves in ways they can't be displaced.. and will be interesting to see what anti-trust looks like for AI in the future so we don't end up with another Microsoft enterprise licensing sham.

 

[parksandtravel]

Indeed. Tho an AI occasionally hallucinates, at least it's not aggressively delusional.

 

[Mr. Engagement]

This article seems to be about agentic AI (such as AI given permissions to access to log in and interact with a user's email accounts), which is still an experimental application of AI.

"AI ignoring human instructions" sounds scary, but it's not unlike, "Microsoft Word refuses to left-align paragraph text in a document" in that there are glitches and bugs.

Anyone who is playing with high-risk/high-stakes applications of agentic AI is foolish. As @flynnibus keeps saying, AI outputs are the responsibility of the user.

 

[Casper Gutman]

This is exactly right. And why many here have very different perceptions of and experiences with AI.

This is why some folks here don't believe me when I say AI is extremely helpful and a huge timesaver for my daily work. They've asked a chatbot questions and gotten inaccurate responses, and taken that as proof that AI isn't accurate.

Also, getting our information primarily from social media bubbles doesn't help.

There are many useful applications of AI if it is very carefully guided and monitored, but even having said that its limitations are being ignored more then was the case with many earlier technologies. It’s an amazing innovation, though not nearly as amazing as it’s being presented.

And that’s the point. A lot of the biggest AI boosters, both here and elsewhere, want to examine the technology in the void of their own particular usage without considering the massively broader social, cultural, and economic impacts and the way the most powerful and influential men in society are trying to force its use. You can’t handwave chatbots when they are disingenuously being presented as the most accurate source of information even as they’re deliberately forged into propaganda machines unlike anything we’ve seen before. You can’t just claim businessmen have always tried to dodge regulations when you have a massive effort on behalf of the current administration to unconstitutionally ban ALL regulations of the technology for a decade. You can’t focus only on your own workplace when consumer AI is being integrated into Department of Defense operations and the administration is trying to illegally crush one AI company for trying to institute minimal safeguards and human oversight in its war-focused applications. You can’t call it “just another tool,” when we are already seeing a very pronounced decline in schoolchildren’s ability to read and write and THINK. We can’t ignore the impact of AI in other fields when it’s nearly destroyed entry-level positions and short-sighted companies have no one to promote.

AI does have great applications and I’m glad people find it useful. But that’s not the real story of AI right now.

 

[Mr. Engagement]

There are many useful applications of AI if it is very carefully guided and monitored, but even having said that its limitations are being ignored more then was the case with many earlier technologies. It’s an amazing innovation, though not nearly as amazing as it’s being presented.

And that’s the point. A lot of the biggest AI boosters, both here and elsewhere, want to examine the technology in the void of their own particular usage without considering the massively broader social, cultural, and economic impacts and the way the most powerful and influential men in society are trying to force its use. You can’t handwave chatbots when they are disingenuously being presented as the most accurate source of information even as they’re deliberately forged into propaganda machines unlike anything we’ve seen before. You can’t just claim businessmen have always tried to dodge regulations when you have a massive effort on behalf of the current administration to unconstitutionally ban ALL regulations of the technology for a decade. You can’t focus only on your own workplace when consumer AI is being integrated into Department of Defense operations and the administration is trying to illegally crush one AI company for trying to institute minimal safeguards and human oversight in its war-focused applications. You can’t call it “just another tool,” when we are already seeing a very pronounced decline in schoolchildren’s ability to read and write and THINK. We can’t ignore the impact of AI in other fields when it’s nearly destroyed entry-level positions and short-sighted companies have no one to promote.

AI does have great applications and I’m glad people find it useful. But that’s not the real story of AI right now.

This is a great post, and very well put, as usual.

My thoughts (for conversation, not argument) :

• Businesspeople promote and sell their products. Without regulation, they will lie to do so. Anyone who stands to benefit from our adoption of a technology (of any kind) should not be blindly trusted.
• Everything here can also be applied to social media. All of these technologies can be harmful (especially to children).
• Though I'm an advocate of AI, I've tried to be honest about its shortcomings, failures, and dangers.
• I'll call AI "another tool," though it is a powerful and dangerous one. That's not to downplay the risks, but to empower humans to think/use it as a tool and to keep it in its place.
• Military applications of AI are morally wrong, in my opinion.
• All technology threatens what were considered to be "entry level" positions at the time of their introduction (eyeglasses, tractors, power tools, calculators, computers, etc.). Entry-level is being redefined.
• Proponents and opponents are parts of the "real" story of AI, but neither is the complete story.