My Thoughts on AI Use and its Presence in Search Results
Hey everyone,
I've been trying to figure out what I think about AI for a while now, but I think I finally have. The short answer is that I don't like it, and try not to use it too much, but I know it's not going anywhere.
It's been a really useful tool for me, but I have concerns about the effects of AI data-centers on the environment (mainly noise pollution and water consumption). I also have concerns about its effects on the creativity, critical thinking skills, and problem solving skills of the people who use it -- myself included. I feel like the fact that AI results are the first thing to come up in search engines now does a disservice to people's ability to solve problems on their own. It's a trait I highly value.
As a quick aside, the way I avoid having AI in my search results is that I created two new "Search Shortcuts" for Firefox.
Google with UDM14 (my default, which makes the search results just show webpages): https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&client=firefox-b-d&udm=14.
Google without AI (for some of the newer features like news in the search results): https://www.google.com/search?q=-ai+%s&client=firefox-b-d.
Because of these feelings, I've been trying to limit how I use AI. So far in my personal life, I've only used it to help with modifying cooking recipes, and for last-ditch efforts in troubleshooting problems on my computer (I'm using Arch Linux and it feels like there's new problems every day lol). For the troubleshooting, I like to go through Reddit and forums and anything else myself before I go to something like ChatGPT. In my academic life, however, AI use is encouraged. One of my professors thinks that AI is the future and is trying to include its use in some of our future labs. I don't disagree with him. I think AI tools are going to change how work gets done in my future jobs, so I think I should know how to use it.
All in all, I think AI can be very useful for specific tasks and not relied on all the time. I think it's presence in our lives will continue, and that we should be ready for it. And lastly, I despise the harmful effects on the environment of the infrastructure that makes it all work.
That's all! Thanks for reading!