The headline should be qualified: Maybe it makes you boring compared to the counterfactual world where you somehow would have developed into an interesting auteur or craftsman instead, which few people in practice would do.

As someone who is fairly boring, conversing with AI models and thinking things through with them certainly decreased my blandness and made me tackle more interesting thoughts or projects. To have such a conversation partner at hand in the first place is already amazing - isn't it always said that you should surround yourself with people smarter than yourself to rise in ambition?

I actually have high hopes for AI. A good one, properly aligned, can definitely help with self-actualization and expression. Cynics will say that AI will all be tuned to keep us trapped in the slop zone, but when even mainstream labs like Anthropic speak a lot about AI for the betterment of humanity, I am still hopeful. (If you are a cynic who simply doesn't belief such statements by the firms, there's not much to say to convince you anyway.)

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argee 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

In other words, AI raises the floor. If you were already near the ceiling, relying on it can (and likely will) bring you down. In areas where raising the floor is exceptionally good value (such as bespoke tools for visualizing data, or assistants that intelligently write code boilerplate, or having someone to speak to in a foreign language as opposed to talking to the wall), AI is amazing. In areas where we expect a high bar, such as an editorial, a fast and reliable messaging library, or a classic novel, it's not nearly as useful and often turns out to be a detriment.

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latexr 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> As someone who is fairly boring

As determined by whom?

> conversing with AI models and thinking things through with them certainly decreased my blandness

Again, determined by whom?

I’m being genuine. Are those self-assessments? Because those specific judgement are something for other people to decide.

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Sol- 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I think I can observe the world and my relative state therein, no? I know I am unfortunately less ambitious, driven and outgoing than others, which are commonly associated with being interesting. And I don't complain about it, the word has a meaning after all and I'll not delude myself into changing its definition.

Definitely at a certain threshold it is for others to decide what is boring and not, I agree with that.

In any case, my simple point is that AI can definitely raise the floor, as the other comment more succinctly expressed. Irrelevant for people at the top, but good for the rest of us.

	▲	latexr 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> I think I can observe the world and my relative state therein, no? Yes, to an extent. You can, for example, evaluate if you’re sensitive or courageous or hard working. But some things do not concern only you, they necessitate another person, such as being interesting or friendly or generous. A good heuristic might be “what could I not say about myself if I were the only living being on Earth?”. You can still be sensitive or hard working if you’re alone, but you can’t be friendly because there’s no one else to be friendly to. Technically you could bore yourself, but in practice that’s something you do to other people. Furthermore, it is highly subjective, a D&D dungeon master will be unbearably boring to some, and infinitely interesting to others. > I know I am unfortunately less ambitious, driven and outgoing than others I disagree those automatically make someone boring. I also disagree with LLMs improving your situation. For someone to find you interesting, they have to know what makes you tick. If what you have to share is limited by what everyone else can get (by querying an LLM), that is boring.