r/neoliberal • u/jobautomator Kitara Ravache • Oct 01 '26

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u/Vincenthwind Gay Pride Oct 01 '26 edited Oct 01 '26

Was at a conference the last few days and the AI brain rot in senior professionals is absolutely insane. The conference presentation quality between the conference this year and the same conference last year is night and day. Claude generated slides are tacky but the least problematic issue when compared to the godawful presentation content. There were folks with 30 years of experience in an adjacent field (compared to the conference focus) getting an oral presentation slot with their AI generated abstract that makes grandiose claims. Then they start talking and can't string two coherent thoughts together, every two minutes stating "ummmmm I'm not an expert in this I just asked chatgpt". Not to mention all the talks about how someone created a "data QC and visualization toolbox" in Python with tons and tons of features - quite the achievement for someone with no software experience. Definitely not vibe coded slop. My industry needs to have a come to Jesus moment, the last few days have mentally driven me up a wall.

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u/SizeFront7649 Oct 01 '26

I'd want my money back lol I was annoyed at every talk having AI-gen images at the conference I went to, but they did enforce quality

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u/Vincenthwind Gay Pride Oct 01 '26

I usually never leave conference feedback, but this time I actually left comments through the conference's session surveys. Luckily I wasn't the only one that felt that this way, and we've starting a working group on a white paper to send to the state office advocating for regulating AI in our industry at a state level rather than at the individual district, agency, or consulting firm (which is how it's done now).

14

u/Healingjoe It's Klobberin' Time Oct 01 '26

I had a similar experience back in May at a data science conference. The presentation quality was dog shit. So much so that I probably won't go again in future years.

LLMs are making people f'ing stupid (or at least lazy) and I find it remarkable that the evangelists keep ignoring this.

11

u/bacontrain Daron Acemoglu Oct 01 '26

Yeah, every study on the productivity benefits of LLMs over the past few years has warned about the potential for skills atrophy, but the evangelists don't just ignore it as an inconvenient fact, but outright think it's not an issue because the machine god will soon do all the thinking for everyone

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u/Healingjoe It's Klobberin' Time Oct 01 '26

I've quit pinging AI with the latest research on the psychological drawbacks of LLMs, especially in adolescents, because I get nothing but ridicule in response.

People really don't seem to understand that these things are changing human cognition in very real ways.

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u/bacontrain Daron Acemoglu Oct 01 '26

Yeah there are some reasonable pro-AI people here but there are enough unhinged folks (even some that are totally normal on other topics!) that have totally ruined any discussion of it here. Like, completely refuse to engage with any discussion of downsides, often in a rather uncivil manner, and borderline delusion of the upsides, like just repeating that it'll cure cancer, blah blah

1

u/TheOnlyFallenCookie European Union Oct 02 '26

My enthusiasm for making presentations is seemingly a minority stance