this post was submitted on 31 Aug 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:

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'3d-printing a screw' is a way to describe how AI integration is stupid most of the time (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 4 days ago by altkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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Listening to another pitch about how AI can empower workers at various jobs across my industry, I was striken by the comparison in the title

3d printing, just like generative models, have it's actual niche uses, where it's obvious downsides are irrelevant and they come handy, e.g. prototyping, replacements, small-series production

Where it comes to the top-down AI promotion trend, it feels not unlike the idea of printing the whole product - a car, or a house, from the smallest details - applying the least effective method, doomed to have a worse than average outcome due to technological limitations

And screws, the thing that we nailed down long before, and that is completely incompatible with that mode of production, is a screaming, growling, shrieking example of how helpful tech can be mispurposed in the most stupid way

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[–] BussyCat@lemmy.world 22 points 4 days ago (1 children)

But would you advocate for trying to integrate 3D printed fasteners into bridge construction?

LLMs do actually have a lot of use, asking it to rephrase an email or report to make it more concise can save a considerable amount of time but trying to get an LLM to perform complex calculations isn’t what it’s made to do and it fails at it.

Also just to be pedantic but do you use 3D printed screws or 3D printed bolts?

[–] ulterno@programming.dev 11 points 4 days ago

get an LLM to perform complex calculations

That would be like: a human taking a calculator and then installing a human emulator on it, just so that it can make mistakes that feel similar to human mistakes, just taking much more energy and making the mistakes more frequently.