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this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2025
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- No politics
- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS
If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.
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So it's a total scam but companies are using it... why? Maybe because... it's actually useful?
Because investors will cut you a blank check now that we're in the middle of an inflationary hype cycle
I’ve used it at work to turn a 20 minute task into <5 minute task. Definitely a valuable tool when used properly.
Ill be honest, we are asked to use it at work, and ive actually given it a chance, and its helped me maybe 2% of the time. The rest of the time it wasted my time and gave totally wrong answers (which, since I have experience, I was able to recognize as wrong. A less experienced person would be duped, thus the danger.)
Not worth boiling our oceans while we give more money to billionaire scum. Also, embedded ads are coming soon so have fun with that.
I’m curious what kind of task you tried using it for.
I’d argue that the only danger here is an unqualified person holding a job where they rely on AI to do their job for them and don’t know how to verify what is presented to them. They shouldn’t have said job to begin with.
Obviously you need to be skeptical of any information it spits out, but knowing that it can be wrong sometimes, that should help you decide what exactly you want to use it for.
I’m not asking it to do my whole job for me so I can play minesweeper all day. And I’m certainly not asking it to do shit I don’t know anything about; my job doesn’t require me to do things I’m not qualified or experienced with anyway.
A lot of times I’m using it for mundane or repetitive tasks that need to be done. Sometimes I use it to get another perspective on something: “how would you accomplish X, Y, & Z” - sometimes I’ll get a response that makes me think of a solution I otherwise wouldn’t have thought of, other times I get a response that doesn’t really help at all.
It’s just another tool just like Google has been for many years now. You need to know how and what to use it for in order to make it work for you.
As for embedded adds, yea I’m not looking forward to that. At my age I’m used to enshittification ruining everything. But for now, I enjoy having it at my disposal.
Yeah probably. Still not good for new people or interns etc. People believe what it tells them.
I can see it helping in some ways, but for the example you gave id rather talk to an actual human. Its very strange to me to feed my thoughts into a datcenter so it can predict what I want to hear.
It's a very interesting solution, especially when it doesn't have a problem to accompany it, which is most of the time. Often companies are forcing it because others are using it and God forbid they miss out on the ~~fad~~ revolution!
Solution looking for a problem.
Billionaires really hope this is their ticket to become trillionaires. Thats all it is.
Useful maybe. For what purposes though... getting labor costs down, pumping out stuff fast assuming it's correct because it's AI, being ahead of their competitors. Useful as in productive? Maybe for some cases when they know what AI can and can't do or its limitations. I get the impression from this year's news stories that a lot of them jumped on it because it was the new thing, following everyone else. A lot got burned, some backtracked where they could, some are quiet but aren't pursuing it as much as they advertised.
OP is right, companies will go the direction they feel consumers will buy more from, and if that's a "No AI" slogan, that's what they'll put. There's no regulations on it, so just like before with ingredients or other labeling before rules were set, they'll lie to get you to buy it. Hell, from a software pov there's a big thing now on apps being sold as "FOSS" that are not, because there's no rules to govern it. Caveat emptor.