I have found using google.com in AI mode to be an incredible resource!

[GaryE]

AI is a tool, and a tool that its owners claim will run itself. It could be a chainsaw randomly cutting hedges if someone directs it that way. At the moment, it lacks the judgment not to be.

I actually do read scientific papers, and and have written and edited for the hobby and for subjects of interest to the hobby for 35 years. So I do see the holes in some of the AI written stuff I see. It's not a whole lot worse than many youtubers, although it does have an air of authority.

It'll improve.

I think we have to differentiate between AI as a tool for technical information, and AI as a tool for social control and reorganization. I expect it'll be fine for fish info soon, and it may well cover the bases already. I'll confess, the cycle has no interest to me, so I wouldn't research the questions and can't comment. On species identification and info, even of easily available species, it's still pretty crude. But somehow I don't think improving the efficiency of fish hobbyist information is why it's being financed...

We don't matter in this picture. What's more likely to matter to AI is the large corporate aquarium and pet companies, first and foremost. At 'street level', it'll be a commercial tool. Money will be made, and that'll be prioritized. If you aren't the ones making the money, it may sell you short. That's what the traditional internet now does.

@JCinPA is getting value from using it, and it's another tool out there. It may be a good one, but since I'm no longer in the work force and like research, I've been sidestepping it. If I were doing independent, serious research, I'd use it, and probably resent its theft of intellectual property. I won't let it near my writing. It probably uses my work there as it uses that of millions of other creative people. But those are global issues, and for the purposes of the hobby, it may replace some of the more idiotic youtubers.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I have never talked with an AI and I have little or no interest in doing so. I know what it is good for and it is nothing I would define as intelligence. If you and I were to look at a group of 100 people 1/2 a mile away for 5 seconds It could we say about any of them. on the other hand An AI could snap a picture, do facial recognition and identify almost if not all of the people. But what has that got to do with intelligence?

We do not have long range vision, we do not have photographic memory etc. Before there were horse being ridden running was as fast as we could go, That doesn't mean intelligence is involved with the horse being able to ga faster and even carry us. But then came the car. It was faster and stronger than the horse, but no intelligence was involved.

How did any of us get intelligent and gain knowledge. W actively had to work at it. I put myself though college by mainly writing papers. I spent many hours in the library going the research. My intelligence was what enabled me to pick out the sources to read and which to use. Hoe does an AI system learn- it reads as much as it can based on where humans have told it to look.

An AI can likely speak multiple languages or translate them. I cannot. I am not a machine and never want one givinh me advice. How many tanks has any AI actually cycled? I have done a few 100. How many "conversations" has an AI had with Dr. Hovanec, or Dr. tanner of Swiss tropicals. I have exchanged emails with both and talked with Stephan at several weekend events.

I learned about breeding the B&W p;ecos fromthe Bih Bend from talking to people like Ingo seidel, Hans-georg Evers, Leandro Sousa, Jools of Planet Catfish, Shane Linder, Barbie Fiorentino, Dale Ernst to mention a few. How many of them as any AI talked with and asked questions and gotten excellent answers?

Amd then there is this. If you go to a doctor and he gives you bar/wrong advice and you are harmed bu it you have legal recurse. If an AI does this try suing it.

So lets get a bit real when we evaluate what AI can and cannot do. What it cannot do is to make a moral decision. This is why some AIs are willing to help one plan a murder. It has no idea that this is wrong thing to do.

 

[plebian]

In the fish world, AI is a useful tool for basic info. If you go beyond basic, it fails quickly, but not many fishkeepers go beyond basic.

As we used to say in the IT world, garbage in, garbage out.

 

[seangee]

AI is good if it source is 100% correct otherwise it can be very bad. This is for those item that are boolean; for grey areas it is great at giving opinions of others but lousy at discerning alternative facts from real facts.

As we used to say in the IT world, garbage in, garbage out.

And therein lies the challenge. When using public / free resources the source is likely to be the whole internet.
If you were to do a manual search on say cycling a new tank you would come up with as many bad answers as good, most likely even if you just limited your search to this site.

 

[CaptainBarnicles]

But if you do all your research using AI then forums like this one will be redundant

 

[GaryE]

I love the title of the thread though. If I wanted to stir things up, it's a dream formula. The subject is so vast in its implications that everyone who considers it has to react, and we're reacting to extremes in both directions at the moment.

But if you do all your research using AI then forums like this one will be redundant

It's likely. This forum is conversation based, and we seem to like authority over dialogue these days. I'm sure that its information has been extensively mined by AI, and that correct and incorrect posts about various subjects have been integrated in this and that corporation's models.

I like talking to people all over the world here, but there are only a few dozen regulars in spite of the 100,000 members over the years. Most posted a question and that was that, off they went, just as it will go with AI. A quick question and we're done is what most people want from a forum too. When you see the level of activity on reddit and other short answer online venues, superficial AI is nothing new.

Does it matter on the entertainment and light info level? I look at Facebook's reels sometimes, and the really insulting to the intelligence stuff the algorithm picks out is enlightening. Celebrities, religion, influencers, conspiracies. It talks to us like we're simpletons even as it trains us to be idiots. That pre-dates AI. Look at Father Fish, the King of DIY or some of the aquarium youtubers. We aren't leaving a golden age behind.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I wonder jhhow many folks here, if they they were really feeling sick and you had the 3 following options for dealing with it,
1. Would call your doctor of have one?
2. If not, would you go the the Emergency room of the nearest hospital?
3. Would you go online and ask an AI for help?

For my basic health infprmation where I was not yet prepared to do either 1 or 3 above, I go to Google and search. But. I igbore most of the replies. I will only look at the ones from major healt organizations, usually the well know and highly rated ones. I look at the source of a reply before I will bother to read it.

I want info from places like the Mayo Clinic, the Clevemand Clinic,Johns Hopkins, New Yprk Presbyterian, etc.

Similarly, when I am looking for information regarding cycling and the bacteria etc. I do not go to the regular serach engines, I go to Google Scholar which only looks at the scientific literature.

When I get an AI answer from Google at the top of the page the first thng I do is look to the right for the sources of information used to create the reply. If is is places loke Reddit or Youturbers I know I cannot trust what the AI tells me.

When I use Google Scholar, since I am not a scientist, I never accept a single paper as the answer. I want to look at a number of papers. I want to know a few statistal sthings- how many researchers have cite the paper I am reading. How many of the diffferent papers reach similar conclusions. When was the paper written? SOmetimes I will even take a look at the puplication's Peer Review methodology.

Also, I am aware of one important part of the scientific method. This is that is accepts the fact that what may appear to be proven based on the methodolgies involved ay the time may have to be revised or replaced because new and better information necessitates this.

Cycling is a perfect example. Up until the mid 1990severybody knew that the cycle in tanks was handle by microrganisms, mains bacteria,and they were the same one found in waste water remediations. And then Dr. Hovanecdid his PhD thesis on this and could not find these bacteria in tanks. He followed this with two more papers which had other resewrached involved and they nailed the correct bacteria.

And then it was discovered that members of the Domain Archaea were able to oxidize ammonia as do the bacteria, In fact they are able to thrive on the lower levekl of ammonia found in tanks than the vateria. So the odds are very hiogh that all of us have them as part of our filtration system.

But the sicence was still sure that the process had 3 steps. Step oneconverted ammomia to nitrite, step two converted nitrite to nitrate and step 3 connverted nitrate back into nitrogen. This was all done by different organisms. And then the next mayor discovert upended this. It was dicovered in an aquarium there were stains of Nitrospira which were capable of converting ammonia straight through to nitrate.

This is the beauty of scicne, it expects that in the future what was thought to be know was actua;;y not. And the resu;t is the dcoence acce[ts the changes or additions to what was previously "know" to be the case.

The AI answers from Google on cycling do not acknowledge most of this. I have read the relevant papers and have them bookmarked. I entered the hobby in Jan 2001. That was the same year in which Hovanevc et al published the 3rd in his of papers:

Burrell, P.C., Phalen, C.M. and Hovanec, T.A., 2001. Identification of bacteria responsible for ammonia oxidation in freshwater aquaria. Applied and Environmental Microbiology, 67(12), pp.5791-5800.

But,

Until 2005, bacteria were considered the only organisms capable of nitrification. However, the recent discovery of a chemoautotrophic ammonia-oxidizing archaeon, Nitrosopumilusmaritimus, changed our concept of the range of organisms involved in nitrification, highlighting the importance of ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) as potential players in global biogeochemical nitrogen transformations.

His first paper showing that scienced was wrong about the vacteria in aquariums was published in 1996, the paper on the Nitrospira was Van Kessel, M.A., Speth, D.R., Albertsen, M., Nielsen, P.H., Op den Camp, H.J., Kartal, B., Jetten, M.S. and Lücker, S., 2015. Complete nitrification by a single microorganism. Nature, 528(7583), pp.555-559.

So, in the span of just over 20 years everything we knew about the cycle and the organisms involve changed drastically. I doubt anyone can get this information about cycling fro the Google AI. I cnnot get the Google AI to even give me an answer when I asjked it:

"what is the most up to date information on the nitrogen cycle in aquariums"
(The first answer was sponsored and came from Petco.)
or
"what organisms are involved in the nitrogen cycle in an aquarium"

 

[GaryE]

I don't have to sell a kidney to see a doctor, and I see a doctor for medical info. If I want to dig deeper, of course I use credible medical sites for definitions and such. I wouldn't use AI. If I go online for diagnosis and health info I'll convince myself I'm about to give birth to crocodiles through my left hip. I don't need to scare myself.

If my doctor uses AI, I assume from knowing her professionalism that she isn't using the equivalent of hobby lore to look up data. Used correctly and uncommercially, it seems an interesting technology.

All the papers in the world are lost if no one reads them, and in this hobby, no one reads them. The scientific side of all this doesn't interest a lot of aquarists, and for them, here's hoping AI as a resource improves. It already seems to handle the basics as well as a forum does.

Do I wish it weren't putting people out of work, putting the profit of a few over the well being of the many, increasing war and surveillance technology and spreading propaganda? You bet. But it exists and does what it does increasingly well.

 

[JCinPA]

A lot of folks are treating this as "either or"--use AI or don't use AI, use something else. AI is great for summarizing what it finds on the Internet, it really isn't the least bit "intelligent". As a super search engine, or search engine multiplier, it's a terrific tool to get you started.

I used to go to the Mayo Clinic or Cleveland Clinic websites, now I might ask medical questions in AI because I'll get a wider range of responses, that's all. But I'm going to my doctor for advice once I get some basic knowledge.

I don't know why AI is so polarizing, frankly. It's a tool, an arrow in the research quiver, that's all. You are not likely to get TwoTankAmin's level of knowledge there, but it's a great resource for a beginning aquarist, as is this forum. AI seems to have become an almost religious-type topic for some reason.

 

[Airwreck]

I do not trust any AI to give a good resonse for fish things when it actuially involves the science. It often hallucintates answers. I turn off AI wherever I can. Where I find the Gpoogle AI usedful is when I already know the snaswer but if I know the AI got it right, it becomes easier to cut and paste than to create the answer.

I have yet to believe that AI is actually intelligenc, it is just a faster searcher for answer but many have no idea that they are incorrect. Chrck yhe siurces Google uses to come up with it's I answers on fish things. I find a lot of the time the answers it offers comes from -places on the net I would not trust.

There is a reason I am not on any social media at all is that most of what is on it is BS. It is more like gossip than anything intelligent. So, you trust what you want to and i will distrust what I want. And we can both be happy.

I just went to Google and asked it "how do I cycle a fresh water aquarium." the answer were half right and half either wrong or incomplete.

Here are two examples


The source for this junk is Reddit. Now here is what the PhD microbiologist Dr. Timothy Hovanec says about this (Bold added by me):



Then the AI tells is this:


The nitrifying bacteria do not form spores, they reproduce by dividing. Almost no brands of starter bacteria contain Nitrospira due to patents. So Fritz does not have the needed bacteria in its bottle. Read Dr. Hovanevcs and other papers on this topic and you will see that what Fritz says it in its bacteria starter for nitrite is:


The above is credited to be from Fritz. Now here is what Dr. Hovanec's paper states about this:

Identification of putative Nitrospira-Like NOB.​

Five samples were screened for NOB by either clone library development or DGGE. A total of 96 clones or excised bands were partially sequenced. Of these, 11 were highly similar to members of the Nitrospira group but none were similar to Nitrobacter spp.
Incidentally, since this and many other papers in support of Nitrospira being the nitrite oxidizer in tank, one of the biggest discoveries about some strains of Nitrospira was:


from https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5152751/

Also, as the abstract mentions, it was also discovered that there is another group oof mircroorganisms which can oxidize ammonia- they are Archaea. I know that De. Hovanec has these in his starter product in additions to the ammonia oxidizing bacteria.

The cycle and the way it works and the organisms involved have been a pet subject of mine for at least 20 years, I must have over 50 research papers on this bookmarked. If you would like about a month's worth of reading on this subject, i am happy to send you links to the papers.

I have to disagree with you about reddit. The can be some very useful information there. No where have I found a source for information about sheep, guinea fowl, or chickens. I will agree that there is junk there, but we are all intelligent folks( hopefully ) and can sort out the junk.

If you know a better source for these subjects plse share.

BTW I don't and will never us AI

 

[GaryE]

I'm not on reddit, but my daughter uses it for fish related info and gets excellent info. She's smart and thinks critically, and is capable of sorting the ignorance from the grounded thought. That's a key thing. With any system where people or machines try to think for you, if you think uncritically, you're live food.

We have the wikipedia effect. Early on, it was weak. Now, with what I use it for, it's quite good. There are still people who reject it outright based on past reputation.

I'm fighting a foolish battle by not using AI. My concern is social and political. Hey, I don't do self checkout at grocery stores because I want corporations to pay people. I'm a bit of a Luddite, not in the cartoonish way but in what that movement really was (a history nerd too). But those qualms don't affect the simpler uses of the product. The Elon Musks of the world aren't socially engineering shell dwelling cichlid societies. The tool on its own is what it is.

 

[TwoTankAmin]

I am a privacy nut. I do not use any social media at all. I do not use a smart phone. I register almost nowhere either. I have had a PC since 1987. It was all direct dial and modems for me until that end of 1998. At that time CitiBank went online using the Net and that was when I dis so also.

I am pretty active online but mostly hidden. So far I have never been hacked, I have never gotten malware or a virus on an of my boxes since then. If you look fro info for my real name online you will not find anything reliable that isn't publicly available if you have proper access. If you can access driver's License info, for ex,, then you can see that for me.

You cannot find my picture online/ Companies that offer to sell you my info have a number off addresses listed for me where I have never lived.

I know how to search more effectively than about 95% of the people I know. This included where top look, how to structure queries to get accurate info. I have never used Reddit and see no reason ever to do so. It is hard enough finding proper site to get goo info and I do not need to waste my time sorting through all the bad info that populates most social media.

I consider most social media to be spyware and date stealers. They are welcome to take as much as your information as you allow. I am willing to allow very little of mine to get out easily.

I have almost 0 apps and have never been in or shopped for anything in anybody's app store.

We all have to do what we think is safe and smart and that is different for each of us.

p.s. I store no cookies, passwords or history on my box. I am still using wWindows 10 with the extended security they offer. I am happy to pay for this

 

[Uberhoust]

I was one who was totally against using AI but now I have to use it daily for work. My thoughts are that it works best if I consider it to be like a coop student or an intern. We mostly use CoPilot for general questions but the one that works best for me is the Anthropic versions that help with actual code, the problem space is smaller and because of that it does better. The biggest issue is right now that it is quite expensive, and I suspect that might be a big barrier in the future. I do wonder if it will affect future generations in a negative fashion by reducing the amount of thought they are going to put towards a problem or by preventing truly original thinking, but for now it is adapt or become irrelevant. I am not quite ready to be irrelevant, give me a couple of more years, so I have decided to embrace it for now.

 

[GaryE]

As far as any corporate environment goes, I am irrelevant as a retired worker. As far as the surveillance economy goes, I am not that interesting. I dislike providing "them" with raw data that can be used to exploit people in general, but while I'm careful, I am not a privacy freak. I assume that even by typing this and having windows on my computer, I have no privacy.

AI will become useful to fishkeepers in its simplest forms. Hopefully, those fishkeepers won't be unemployed, under employed or underpaid because of it, and will still be able to keep fish. How it impacts our societies remains to be experienced. Since we have no input or control over the technology, we'll find out.

For now, the OP's comments are interesting.

 

[gwand]

While not perfect, i trust AI ChatGTP to provide reasonably accurate information over 99% of fish keeping information from Utube as well as from most PetSmart, PetCo and other big chain employees.