AI is ruining houseplant communities online

> “If instead of looking at your plants and making sure that they’re watered correctly or reaching out to an expert, you always just take a picture with your AI app and have it tell you what’s wrong, you are letting AI do the thinking for you and you’re not doing the full connection and the mindfulness of having plants,”

Weakest argument against AI I've ever heard.

Taking shortcuts is famously a reliably successful way to get through life. Always has been. Don't know why we're even having this conversation.

I'd wager it is the strongest. Most of the arguments always argue in quantities. So and so much of energy waster per hour, this many job losses and that growing trend of delusions supported by LLMs.

We've already seen it with climate change. Arguing with statistical factoids is too ethereal for anyone and leads to some kind of fatigue. There is no emotional difference between 100 mWh and 10000 mWh. But a "I had to bring my dog to the vet because chatGPT told me to give it chocolate" will convince anyone to deeply distrust technology.

FAANG and its acolytes deprived us from actual connection with our environment. Judging the argument as weak is sad proof of that.

So how about instead of using the slot-machine that chatGPT is, we go visit our grandma, hug our dad or just get a new houseplant :)

It shows the dichotomy between people who want to care for their houseplants as a hobby, and the people who just want to keep their plants alive and green without thinking too much about it.

The former build up a mental model about how plants react to light, water, and fertilizer over time. The latter don't care at all how plants work; they just want the answer, and are the main customers for this type of AI.

I would guess that most communities have a similar problem, and the hobbyists are always outnumbered by the people who pop in, demand an answer, and then leave.