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I find those kinds of chatbots useful, but those aren’t the ones I encounter 90% of the time. Most of the time, it’s a chatbot that summarizes the help articles I just read, giving faulty interpretations of the source material, that then goes on to never direct me to a real person unless I tell it multiple times that the articles it’s paraphrasing aren’t helping. (and sometimes, they have no live support at all, and only an LLM + support articles)

Oh yeah, it’s definitely useful for that!

Since LLMs are essentially just very complicated probabilistic links between words, it seems to be extremely good at picking the exact word or phrase that even a thesaurus couldn’t get me.

I primarily end up using LLMs through DuckDuckGo’s private frontend alongside a search, so if my current search doesn’t yield the correct answer to my question (i.e. I ask for something but those keywords only ever turn up search results on a different, but similar topic) then I go to the LLM and ask a more refined question, that otherwise doesn’t produce any relevant results in a traditional keyword search.

I also use integrated LLMs to format and distill my offhand notes, (and reformat arbitrary text based on specific criteria repeatedly for structured notes,) learn programming syntax more at my own pace and in my own way, and just generally get answers on more well-known topics a lot faster than I would scrolling past 5 pages of SEO-“optimized” garbage just designed to fill time for the ads to load before actually giving me a good answer.

I have never once found an “AI” feature integrated by a corporation useful.

I have only ever found “AI” useful when it’s unobtrusive, and something I chose to use manually. Sometimes an LLM is useful to use, but I don’t need it shilled to me inside a search bar or in a support chat that won’t solve my problem until I bypass the LLM.

I feel like this says more about these students’ schools, rather than the students themselves.

You will eat here, and you will be happy about it! 😡

The real difference is just that it’s a database, with no single person/entity in control. So in the case of banks: A bank can arbitrarily raise fees, a blockchain only does so if the majority of the public running it comes to a consensus on doing so. A bank can freeze your assets if they don’t like a recent purchase, a blockchain can’t. A bank will usually make sending money to friends or family across borders extremely slow and expensive, a blockchain won’t. A bank might not accept transfers on holidays, a blockchain is up 24/7/365 globally.

At the same time: A blockchain will be so public, that all transactions can be seen by anyone. With your bank, your transactions are only visible to them (and whoever they sell them to). (Unless you use a private currency like Monero or Zcash) A blockchain will usually be slower for redundancy, a bank’s database won’t. A blockchain records data permanently, a bank can delete data you don’t want after a certain period of time.

It’s really just different databases for different use cases. Many people in developing countries use crypto for daily purchases because banks won’t give them accounts, and at the same time, many people won’t use crypto for everyday purchases in places like the U.S. because their bank’s infrastructure is faster and more convenient.

I personally have had more success sending money to friends, paying for my VPN, and spending money on holidays, using crypto rails, compared to my bank, but I’ve also had more success with everyday purchases using my bank, because it’s just more convenient.

The gist is really just that blockchains are a ton of computers everywhere recording the same list of transactions permanently, under a certain set of rules, and a normal database is just that, but under one person/company’s control, with more arbitrarily change-able rules. Your use of them is really just up to your preference regarding security, privacy, speed, and reliability.