
<p>
Hello, this is Archer72 for Hacker Public Radio.</p>

<p>
In episode, it seems that AI is a trap. This over-arching
generalization is my opinion and may not reflect the opinions of
HPR.</p>

<p>
So the back story to this is that I was listening to the 26 hour
Hacker Public Radio New Year’s show, and the discussion came up in the
<a href="https://t.me/techandcoffee"
title="Tech and Coffee Telegram Channel">
Tech and Coffee Telegram
Channel</a>
 My Resolution was to stop using ChatGPT for an AI chat bot,
with the implication being to not using AI at all, but instead, to use
<a href="https://duckduckgo.com" title="Duckduckgo">
Duckduckgo</a>
 and
<a href="https://search.brave.com" title="Brave Search">
Brave
Search</a>
</p>

<p>
Probably less than a week or two later, I was trying to figure out
something, and figured that I’d use the easy way and use <a
href="https://claude.ai" title="Claude.ai">
Claude.ai</a>
 , which is
actually pretty good if you have short and concise questions. I’ve found
that if you have a long drawn-out question, it is better to do a Google
or <a href="https://duckduckgo.com" title="Duckduckgo">
Duck search</a>

and document your results.<br />

I document in Vim, but you can use whatever is best.</p>

<p>
This way you can clearly show what works and doesn’t work and refer
to what you find later, instead of relying on an online service. And
sometimes, depending on the AI bot you use, exporting is not very
straightforward. With the exception of <a
href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=DuckDuckGo+AI+Chat&amp;ia=chat&amp;duckai=1"
title="Duck.ai">
Duck.ai</a>
, that has a button for a quick share of a
text file. Then you share it to your self somewhere else like in <a
href="https://account.proton.me/mail" title="Proton mail">
Proton
mail</a>
</p>

<p>
Well… Over the past weekend, I was just making a quick upload button
to my own server. The previous weekend, I got HTTPS working. This was
just from following the guide on the <a
href="https://letsencrypt.org/docs/"
title="Let&#39;s Encrypt - Documentation">
Let’s Encrypt -
Documentation</a>
 and <a
href="https://certbot.eff.org/instructions?ws=apache&amp;os=pip"
title="EFF Certbot instruction - Apache2">
EFF Certbot instruction -
Apache2</a>
 websites. At least that time, instead of using the AI bot, I
just followed clear documentation.</p>

<p>
See, the thing about going right to the <a
href="https://wiki.debian.org" title="Debian Wiki">
Debian Wiki</a>
 or
the <a href="https://wiki.archlinux.org" title="Arch Wiki">
Arch Wiki</a>

is that users and developer have already documented plenty. I figured
out that part of the hacker method is not to take the ‘easy’ way, but to
document out what you are trying to learn.</p>

<p>
So this past weekend, I was trying to learn something about that
upload form, and I probably took longer going back and forth with the AI
bot than If I had taken the time to search the documentation. And even
if it did take longer with the documentation, I would have learned
something else and created a Markdown document of my own. There is a
tool I use once in a while, which is part of the <a
href="https://duckduckgo.com" title="Duckduckgo">
Duckduckgo</a>
 search,
called <a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&amp;q=web&amp;assist=true"
title="Search Assist">
Search Assist</a>
</p>

<p>
This can be good, because a have a horrible memory. If there is
something small that I can’t remember how to do, I let <a
href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=DuckDuckGo+AI+Chat&amp;ia=chat&amp;duckai=1"
title="Duck.ai">
Duck.ai</a>
 take care of it. But recently, I have turned
off the option where it says to sometimes show <a
href="https://duckduckgo.com/?t=h_&amp;q=web&amp;assist=true"
title="Search Assist">
Search Assist</a>
, but instead only when it is on
demand. That way I won’t be tempted to go down a rabbit hole in order to
find what I am looking for. Instead base what I am looking for on
standard tools.</p>

<p>
So Yes, AI is a trap, but is also useful for certain things. But if
you are careful how you use it, it’s not always a bad thing.</p>

<p>
This has been Archer72 for Hacker Public Radio.</p>

<p>
Feel free to comment on this or any other show. Ken says it is the
Mana by which we pay our hosts. Also, feel free to record a response
show to this or other shows.</p>



