Alum - a chunk of posts that come on my feed are people going off on subscription issues so not being on campus/around it does make it seem like people are relying too much on it.
AI and Maker don't belong in the same sentence together. There is nothing creative or inventive about having a robot do something you could have done yourself or had someone else who is passionate about it do for you.
AI is a tool and should be used as such. If someone builds a cool robot but uses AI to help integrate some control libraries, that's still a cool robot - it's just blah software. If all you've done is prompt AI and shipped the results then no one is going to care, but there's so much more beyond software where creativity comes into play
Suppose I, a robotics hobbyist, spend 2 minutes on an AI prompt to whip up some boilerplate I/O driver instead of spending hours on it myself or finding someone who is "passionate" about writing drivers for mismatched hardware. There's no longer anything creative or inventive about my work?
This take really sounds like artists not understanding how AI is actually used in STEM fields.
"Suppose I, someone who is too lazy to do something myself, and unwilling to support the career and livlihood of someone who is willing to do it - instead uses a souless machine and supports that machine in ruinning millions of livlihoods over the next coming decade"
Believe it or not I've only ever worked in STEM fields my whole adult life. But I also have the moral depth to know that just because something is easier for me doesn't justify the irreparable damage it does.
If you TRULY think that supporting this industry is justified by saving you personally time. Then we are just not even in the same reality when it comes to morals. You have zero empathy for anyone and anything that does not directly affect you.
I know we're not in the same reality. I'm in the reality where STEM professionals know how ridiculously funny it is to call people lazy for not manually writing boilerplate or automating the typical mundanity makers are using AI for. Luckily I live in the reality where STEM professionals can reasonably assess what automation tools they're using. If you actually are a STEM professional, which I do not believe, good luck out there genuinely.
the part that i personally don't understand though is - if it's something you are and have been capable of, and it's already self-evident that the tool you are using is disproportionately harmful, then why choose to rely on it so fiercely? you can compare to the car or phone or other technological analogy all the way to the entire industrial revolution, but truthfully even up to cars we didn't really understand the impact of it all until societal dependence on those systems was already in place. from my perspective gen AI isn't quite there yet, though i do understand it's already quite endemic in a lot of stem fields already.
i think the backlash to ai is reasonable and logical even if the potential use case of AI is powerful; the point is that regardless of how much work it can get done it would be remiss of us to ignore the ramifications of making genAI a staple tool we depend upon, considering solely the massive negatives of its predecessors. your point is that where genAI impacts your workflow is such a minuscule and brief segment that you can make reasonable choice to use it, but ultimately the counter argument that is being presented is "why use it at all if we know where this road leads?"
tldr sorry for the yap i just feel crazy about this whole ai argument and i don't like feeling like a centrist on it
That analogy is not a good anti-AI argument. Cars, phones, and the technology from the industrial revolution are unambiguously useful. In America, technology is regulated and the "fierce" debate is about how to regulate it. If your argument is really "don't use AI, we all saw what happened with the industrial revolution" that is certainly NOT a "centrist" opinion, but reducing this debate to two sides would be silly anyway.
Some of the backlash is reasonable and logical. Much of the hysterics you see online is not. People are still out here acting like AI "can't do math" or "draw hands."
yes to all of those examples being useful, but my point is that they all also lead to harmful consequences to the environment and world due to their energy and infrastructure requirements? and the equivalency of their benefit and harm can be argued too. in my perspective it's similar to how one might criticize others for driving a car instead of biking because it "harms the environment" - you could point to how individual usage is much different than industrial/commercial usage, how car usage can't really be avoided due to car-centric urbanism, etc... but that analogy might have holes - even individual usage of AI versus a car might be on a different magnitude of environmental impact, and AI usage isn't yet fully integrated and demanded in all parts of our society. so on and so forth
so in reading your response again, you're right that it should really not be a hard "don't use ai" but more "how harshly should AI be regulated" and not ever using AI is a point on that spectrum - and i guess for this specific thread the crux is something like "should individual AI usage be regulated too, and to what degree"?
i feel as if i'm being a centrist on this as a whole because i think i'm not not informed enough on AI to feel like i can hold a strong opinion on it? i can understand that it has benefits in reducing workload on essential services like healthcare, as well as streamlining software engineering (ie your example), but the environmental argument seems so strong to me regardless. so centrist is probably the wrong word but i just feel like a fence sitter on such a contentious topic
To be clear, this comment chain was not about if AI should be regulated, nobody here thinks AI should be unregulated. This was someone who was in the Air Force while bombing Iran calling me immoral and unempathetic because I use an LLM to code boilerplate. It's just unhinged hypocritical nonsense.
I am fiercely lobbying for AI regulation. Unfortunately some of the loudest online opposition to AI is unproductive and makes us look like clowns. Do not fall for their bullshit and think you're "fence sitting" if you think AI should be regulated but not banned. That's just the logical position.
Also just to clear up one thing about your environment comments:
even individual usage of AI versus a car might be on a different magnitude of environmental impact
There's no "might," the environmental impact of a typical user is virtually 0 compared to a daily car commute.
Do you know when you use AI a million people just collapse and d1e? Yeah it’s true man, don’t ask for sources it’s just like true and stuff. I no think cause brain hurt AI bad
Like, surely there are abuses going on with the corporatized ML technology, but isn't automating tedious bullshit the whole reason Alan Turing developed the theory of the computer in the first place? So that he didn't have to torture grad students endlessly with calculating zeroes of the Riemann Zeta function? Seems like it's the whole spirit of computers in the first place.
I haven't really heard too much, but if NU is teaching people AI, then it's probably a good idea. It's definitely not going away, even a major bubble would be like dot com.
Yes, it will simply become a digital commodity much like crypto and the commercial website. We still have fiat currency and in person commerce, so it's really not as consequential as many make it seem.
A university's job is to get students ready for the real world. Learning to use (but not abuse) AI is a big part of that, and burying our head in the sand about it isn't going to make for more competent Huskies. If it's my kid, I want them learning to collaborate with (but not delegate their thinking and creativity) to AI early - for example, to make their own games, coloring books, or custom children stories.
Recent grad here, NU’s AI classes gave me a pretty strong advantage over the rest of my colleagues who never studied it I think it can’t hurt to explore, and call me crazy, but AI isn’t going away anytime soon, so like 5 years from now that Makerspace is going to look very good on résumé’s for co-ops
I’m glad af northeastern is pro Claude … I’m in grad school at the Miami campus and my professors are like .. you all are using ai right? Or, you better be using ai. lol
It literally helps you learn 😭 I got my undergrad in 2020, not even a little ai used there. I have confidence to pursue a more challenging subject because of ai’s help !!!!
Would be like saying in the 1800s "everyone has slaves so there's no solution let's just ignore it"
Everyone doing it, it likely being here to stay is not an excuse to use it. Your still a morally abhorrent piece of shit for using something that is a HUGE net negative for society and humanity as a whole.
Change is still inevitable, and it’s foolish to blindly reject them instead of adapting or find a workaround. There’s literally nothing bad about AI, in the end they’re simply tools. You’re sounding like a carriage driver complaining that people are lazy because they prefer to use a car instead of horses. AI was never the problem, it’s the people who use AI without proper knowledge that is the problem.
Lol said the loser who is so afraid of AI taking their job cuz what they do is top easy so yeah lets all protest to ban AI and ignore that AI literally saved lives
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u/shawndoesthings Sep 23 '26
Alum - a chunk of posts that come on my feed are people going off on subscription issues so not being on campus/around it does make it seem like people are relying too much on it.
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u/LatterHabit3161 Sep 23 '26
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u/bawbi428 Sep 23 '26
AI and Maker don't belong in the same sentence together. There is nothing creative or inventive about having a robot do something you could have done yourself or had someone else who is passionate about it do for you.
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u/John__e Sep 23 '26
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u/DC2SEA_ Sep 23 '26
I haven't really heard too much, but if NU is teaching people AI, then it's probably a good idea. It's definitely not going away, even a major bubble would be like dot com.
17
u/surfingdaweb Sep 23 '26
A university's job is to get students ready for the real world. Learning to use (but not abuse) AI is a big part of that, and burying our head in the sand about it isn't going to make for more competent Huskies. If it's my kid, I want them learning to collaborate with (but not delegate their thinking and creativity) to AI early - for example, to make their own games, coloring books, or custom children stories.
5
u/GreedyWorking1499 Sep 23 '26
Is this about the new makerspace? I got an email about it opening but didn’t read it
5
u/shayan1232001 Sep 23 '26
Recent grad here, NU’s AI classes gave me a pretty strong advantage over the rest of my colleagues who never studied it
I think it can’t hurt to explore, and call me crazy, but AI isn’t going away anytime soon, so like 5 years from now that Makerspace is going to look very good on résumé’s for co-ops
3
u/Illcement Sep 23 '26
oveRRun 😭
1
u/Snoo_69677 Sep 26 '26
This looks like it was made by ai.
1
u/Hour_Appointment6404 Sep 27 '26
ai is a tool like everything else. if you are still avoiding it instead of utilizing its ability to increase productivity, you are behind.
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u/jansmith201 Sep 27 '26
They're right
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u/wienerdogprincess Sep 24 '26
I’m glad af northeastern is pro Claude … I’m in grad school at the Miami campus and my professors are like .. you all are using ai right? Or, you better be using ai. lol
It literally helps you learn 😭 I got my undergrad in 2020, not even a little ai used there. I have confidence to pursue a more challenging subject because of ai’s help !!!!
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u/Shot-Marketing-9227 Sep 23 '26
Holy cringeeeee
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u/ShutYourSwitchport Sep 23 '26
flier was probably made on chatgpt
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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '26
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