And they moved the start menu.

Sure. If you live in an area where kids may need to reach out, sure, give them a loaner phone or something, or one of those watches that can only contact a fixed set of numbers (you and trusted emergency contacts).

Exactly. Vibe coding is bad, but generating code for something you don’t touch often but can absolutely understand is totally fine. I’ve used it to generate SQL queries for relatively odd cases, such as CTEs for improving performance for large queries with common sub-queries. I always forget the syntax since I only do it like once/year, and LLMs are great at generating something reasonable that I can tweak for my tables.

than reading an actual intro on an unfamiliar topic

The LLM helps me know what to look for in order to find that unfamiliar topic.

For example, I was tasked to support a file format that’s common in a very niche field and never used elsewhere, and unfortunately shares an extension with a very common file format, so searching for useful data was nearly impossible. So I asked the LLM for details about the format and applications of it, provided what I knew, and it spat out a bunch of keywords that I then used to look up more accurate information about that file format. I only trusted the LLM output to the extent of finding related, industry-specific terms to search up better information.

Likewise, when looking for libraries for a coding project, none really stood out, so I asked the LLM to compare the popular libraries for solving a given problem. The LLM spat out a bunch of details that were easy to verify (and some were inaccurate), which helped me narrow what I looked for in that library, and the end result was that my search was done in like 30 min (about 5 min dealing w/ LLM, and 25 min checking the projects and reading a couple blog posts comparing some of the libraries the LLM referred to).

I think this use case is a fantastic use of LLMs, since they’re really good at generating text related to a query.

It’s going to say something plausible, and you tautologically are not in a position to verify it.

I absolutely am though. If I am merely having trouble recalling a specific fact, asking the LLM to generate it is pretty reasonable. There are a ton of cases where I’ll know the right answer when I see it, like it’s on the tip of my tongue but I’m having trouble materializing it. The LLM might spit out two wrong answers along w/ the right one, but it’s easy to recognize which is the right one.

I’m not going to ask it facts that I know I don’t know (e.g. some historical figure’s birth or death date), that’s just asking for trouble. But I’ll ask it facts that I know that I know, I’m just having trouble recalling.

The right use of LLMs, IMO, is to generate text related to a topic to help facilitate research. It’s not great at doing the research though, but it is good at helping to formulate better search terms or generate some text to start from for whatever task.

general search on the web?

I agree, it’s not great for general search. It’s great for turning a nebulous question into better search terms.

Which is why I use LLMs to generate keywords for niche subjects. LLMs are pretty good at throwing out a lot of related terminology, which I can use to find the actually relevant, niche information.

I wouldn’t use one to learn about a niche subject, but I would use one to help me get familiar w/ the domain to find better resources to learn about it.

Nah. People don’t watch sports for top tier play, they watch for top tier human play

Look at chess, the top chess bots can beat the top human players every time, and a good outcome for a human is a draw. Yet human chess tournaments are still very popular and AI chess matches are “alien” and only used as a spectacle.

For things like sports, AI will never take our place, their primary function is to be useful for people and save money. That’s bad in the short term for jobs, but I think longer term it’ll result in more leisure time.

Google search was pretty bad at each of those, even when it was good. Finding new keywords to use is especially difficult the more niche your area of search is, and I’ve spent hours trying different combinations until I found a handful of specific keywords that worked.

Likewise, search is bad for getting a broad summary, unless someone has bothered to write it on a blog. But most information goes way too deep and you still need multiple sources to get there.

Fact lookup is one the better uses for search, but again, I usually need to remember which source had what I wanted, whereas the LLM can usually pull it out for me.

I use traditional search most of the time (usually DuckDuckGo), and LLMs if I think it’ll be more effective. We have some local models at work that I use, and they’re pretty helpful most of the time.

Right, but if you’re in a situation where you need emergency services, chances are you won’t be in a situation to call. For the vanishingly low chance of that being necessary (esp. in my case where I take them to/from school since there’s no bus service), I trust strangers to call since my area is sufficiently densely populated for someone to see what happened.

If you live in an area where such things are more likely, I absolutely agree that you should be able to make that choice. I firmly oppose any school-wide ban on phones for that reason, I just happen to agree that, generally speaking, kids don’t need and shouldn’t have phones.

And if you really feel the need for your kid to contact you or emergency services, there are devices like Gabb watches that have only the functions you need. So please, consider those before considering a smartphone.

Exactly! LLMs are useful when used properly, and terrible when not used properly, like any other tool. Here are some things they’re great at:

• writer’s block - get something relevant on the page to get ideas flowing
• narrowing down keywords for an unfamiliar topic
• getting a quick intro to an unfamiliar topic
• looking up facts you’re having trouble remembering (i.e. you’ll know it when you see it)

Some things it’s terrible at:

• deep research - verify everything an LLM generated of accuracy is at all important
• creating important documents/code
• anything else where correctness is paramount

I use LLMs a handful of times a week, and pretty much only when I’m stuck and need a kick in a new (hopefully right) direction.

What trouble? Adults don’t want to mess with kids (most child abuse happens with close aquaintances, not random crazies on the street), so their biggest threat is going to be bullies around their age, and a parent stepping in will just make that problem worse, so they’ll need to learn to deal with that on their own anyway.

I personally have never had an issue going to/from school, other than the typical bullying on the bus. The most likely problem they’d run into is getting hit by a car, in which case they need paramedics and police, not me, and those emergency services will call me once they identify them (and I trust random strangers to call emergency services if a kid gets hit).

The only time I expect my kid to need to call is if they’re at a party or something outside of school and need to be picked up because they don’t feel comfortable. When they get to an age where that’s a thing, we’ll have a loaner phone for them to use.

that’s exactly how it works right now

Right, I’m explaining how Stop Killing Games would change things if adopted.

Public servers will either sell micro transactions themselves

That can certainly be restricted, since they’re profiting off someone else’s IP. Selling hosting is one thing, reselling assets in the game is another thing entirely and AFAIK would be a violation of copyright’s fair use provisions.

If they’re no longer profiting from a game, surely releasing access to gated content isn’t an issue any more? It’s not like they are losing anything. So I think unlocking cosmetics for everyone would be fine, but it’s up to them. If they want to preserve the restriction, they can find a way that doesn’t reauire ongoing costs, such as the ones I mentioned.

I basically quoted the whole thing, the last bit wasn’t really relevant. And yeah, it’s pretty much just BS.

What peers? They mostly play with neighborhood kids, and we have contact info for a few that live further away and arrange things that way. Our kids aren’t teenagers yet, but my sister’s are and they seem to do fine without phones as well. My friends growing up mostly had phones, and I worked around that as well.

I think people are making a much bigger deal about it than it really is. Maybe it’s a larger issue in other areas, but honestly, my kids mostly want one to play games, not contact friends.

We certainly reevaluate regularly, but I’ll need a pretty good reason to give my kids their own phones. I’m much more likely to have a loaner they can share, and only for a fixed amount of time.

I mostly care about longer term impacts. The ban has only been in place for a year and a half, so it’s really not much to go on.

Yup, I run a Minecraft server at home, and it’s great. I’d love for more games to do the same.

I absolutely agree that criticism is speech and should absolutely be protected, even if the take doesn’t have merit. And that’s basically what I’m doing here, I’m criticizing the FUD against social media platforms like TikTok; yes they’re bad, but not bad enough to curtail speech.

And yes, Lemmy doesn’t set policy, but voters elect reps who do, and there are a lot of voters here. That’s why I bother discussing politics at all, in the hope that maybe someone will consider what I have to say the next time they cast their ballot. Who knows, maybe I’ll persuade someone that freedom is worth more than protectionism, probably not, but I’m not doing much else while sitting on the toilet.

They’re as biased as the data they were trained on. If that data leaned toward male applicants, then yeah, it makes complete sense.

Sure, I just don’t trust results from subjective studies, unless it’s tracking trends over time. So maybe if they had opinion polls like this before smartphones were a thing in classrooms, while smartphones were a thing, and after they were banned I’d trust the results somewhat. But if we’re just tracking an after-the-fact poll, it just feels like confirmation bias. I believe teachers have an incentive to overstate the impact of policies that give them more control, because they want to encourage more such policies, even if they aren’t effective at achieving tangible results.

So yeah, I distrust this type of study. I don’t think it’s necessarily worthless, I just don’t think many conclusions can be taken from it.

Yet he has charisma for a certain demographic.

They should be compelled to either make those cosmetics available for everyone or have some technical means to prove ownership (e.g. blockchain or cryptographically signed file). You can’t lose stuff you bought just because the publisher shut down the servers.