I've never used my brain, ergo I'm not becoming any dumber. Personally making me stupid, AI? I've installed Alpaca and added 4 models (mostly Qwen2 and Llama code). In the last 6 months, using AI (Perplexity, iAsk.ai, Deepseek, and my local AI installs) I've solved and answered a LOT of questions and theories and designs, experiments, chemical mixtures, etc I'd been thinking about for decades, and most of which required lots of research to answer. Most of it was just, I'm too busy most of the time, so just did research on my own when I had the free time, and so these ideas went unresolved for decades. So, just in the last 6 months, answering a lot, figuring out a lot of designs, tuning a lot of Linux and Unix systems and code, etc. I would say, no, AI has not made me stupid if this is the result. However, I have heavy STEM education, and watch, understand, and enjoy films like this https://www.bbc.co.uk/programm... which actually bring me back to my college years, and I laugh at the feeling of nostalgia watching it. So no, AI is not making me any more 'stupid' than I already was xD

It's C level grade (2.0 GPA) average responses from the AIs I have tried. 50% of the time brilliant, 50% failing grade. One way I've found to improve their results is targeted, calibrated searches using startpage (to bypass the Google adsense algorithm's non sequitur search results). Here's a for-instance of how to use search engine operands and startpage to lead your AI of choice to better answers for writing a business letter (a complete business novice asking the letter writing question example) https://iask.ai/q/business-let... Doing it that way seems to bring the GPA of the AI answer results up to 3.0, B grade. Imho, AI currently is WIP. To think it's good enough now to replace likely more intelligent human employees? xD that's folly, will lead to all kinds of business losses and failures. Can't wait to see it happen lol

Not unless their intelligence levels go from 2.0 to 4.0 in the next decade. I've been using AIs lately to help me with optimizing fstabs and sysctl.conf settings for Linux and OpenWRT desktop OSes and routers. And the results are good, eventually, because I know enough to catch the BS the AIs have told me to use and correct it before their code recommendations crash my systems. I'd say they've contributed 50% brilliant code, 50% garbage. If I was a comp-sci instructor grading their performance, I'd give them a solid C right now. Also, i've caught some MAJOR errors AIs have made on questions I've put to them. So bad of errors it was easy for me to prove what they told me was demonstrably false from simple web searches. Let's not forget as humans we're all prone to built in human error. None of us are infallible. To be so would mean we would be Gods, not the mere mortals we are. And the coding for AI is coming from we error-prone humans. So at some point in the future, if companies replace workers with the current batch of solid C grade AI, and replace humans who would do better than the C grade AI replacements, then the error those companies will have made due to their human CEOs, will cause those companies to lose money, lose profits, and we all know where that downward spiral leads to ..

Well, I had an online AI analyze the Slashdot article, and it said, promising candidate, but needs verification https://iask.ai/q/mysterious-P... btw, I played devils advocate for a micro black hole or possibly white dwarf core, and the AI says based on the current evidence, nah, unlikely. More likely based on its weak thermal emissions, it's a large planet emitting residual thermal radiation based on its extreme distance from the Sun https://iask.ai/q/Planet-9-evi...

But then again, current facts often act as trend indicators of future events: "The Arctic is on fire: Siberian heat wave alarms scientists" https://phys.org/news/2020-06-... Never thought I'd see a smoggy sunset in Siberia, hmm

Tor. Ed had it right https://bit.ly/2XAtueJ I use a VPN HQ'ed in 14-eyes US which has about 60 overseas exits. I've checked most of them out, most come out of either US owned data-centers or DCs owned by companies in one of the 14-eyes partnership https://bit.ly/2XRZ46N So far about 1 out of 6 of the overseas exits is in non-14 eyes partner nations. So mainly I just run Tor out of my overseas VPN connections, figure it adds another layer of anonymity to Tor. Oh, it also helps to set the torrc to exclude 14-eyes nations as well as for entering or exiting them, within reason "{??}" to not break Tor functionality, as well as doing the same for obvious abuser type nations (Saudi Arabia, Iran, China, Russia, etc), other obvious violator nations of human rights, free speech, citizen repression, as well as spying, secret police excesses, etc. The result is quite good performance, security, and anonymity using Tor this way. Thanks Ed.

bc Trump goes back to Jan, 2010 on Twitter https://bit.ly/2YxDUbc (did my FF just count 73 instances of this word in his tweets? https://bit.ly/2JgN9aI :-/) anyone on /. or @ Twitter know? bc retroactive would b some kind of justice :-)

Try Startpage.com using Tor+Privoxy like this https://v.gd/5WAYUT & watch those Google bubble feelings melt away.