Asking "them"... your perspective is already warped. It's not your fault, all the text we've previously ever seen is associated with a human being.
Language models are mathematical, statistical beasts. The beast generally doesn't do well with open ended questions (known as "zero-shot"). It shines when you give it something to work off of ("one-shot").
Some may complain of the preciseness of my use of zero and one shot here, but I use it merely to contrast between open ended questions versus providing some context and work to be done.
Some examples...
- summarize the following
- given this code, break down each part
- give alternatives of this code and trade-offs
- given this error, how to fix or begin troubleshooting
I mainly use them for technical things I can then verify myself.
While extremely useful, I consider them extremely dangerous. They provide a false sense of "knowing things"/"learning"/"productivity". It's too easy to begin to rely on them as a crutch.
When learning new programming languages, I go back to writing by hand and compiling in my head. I need that mechanical muscle memory, same as trying to learn calculus or physics, chemistry, etc.
I play once or twice a week and it's definitely worth $20/mo to me
Reactions to this vary. The ones described in the article have sought out addictions to escape this reality. Many others, including my son, have essentially said, "Well if this side rejects me, I'll go to the other side." The result is a rapid rise in conservatism, as documented in polls. See https://www.realclearpolling.com/stories/analysis/young-amer... for an example.
It is very easy, particularly for those who are very progressive, to blame the men themselves for these reactions. But it is a natural overreaction to the systematic rejection to a lifetime of being told that they are the problem. "You think I'm the problem? I'll show YOU what it looks like if I BECOME the problem!"
I firmly believe that these problematic behaviors and politics would be greatly softened if our society showed more empathy to these struggling men. But in our polarized society, their choices and beliefs label them as the enemy. Which causes some to double down into toxic extremism like siding with incels, or MGTOW.
Historically when a pendulum swings one way, eventually it swings back. But I'm having trouble how we're going to swing back, when both sides have swung to and then doubled down on polarization.
We're all on top of one another, and different cross tabs feel different ways about the same thing. So there is room for empathy and antipathy to coexist
If you read the New York Times and The Atlantic there is lots of empathy for the male loneliness crisis
I am in between the age of you and your son it seems. As a man who has not missed any of the "misandry", I think the overly online conservative young men are an embarrassment and I hope they grow out of it