标签：#cia

Spent some time poking at free tiers across a few tools. Here's what actually held up and where the catches are. **Claude (Sonnet 4.6 on free tier)** Still the one I reach for when I want writing that doesn't read like a press release, or code that actually compiles. I trust it more for anything where being quietly wrong is worse than being loudly wrong. The catch: free tier is stingy. You hit limits fast on busy days, need a phone number to sign up, and there's no warning before it cuts you off. There's a browser extension that tracks usage so you can see the wall coming. My approach: use it for the hard 20% of the day, let a free model handle the rest. **MiniMax Agent** A free swing at what Devin and Manus charge for, give it a prompt and it writes, runs, and debugs the code itself. Replaces the copy-paste loop between ChatGPT and your editor for longer multi-step jobs. Catch: it burns credits fast, and complex tasks still go off the rails without warning. It's confidently wrong in ways that can cost you more time than just doing it yourself. Worth a few free runs to see if it actually finishes a task, but I wouldn't cancel anything for it yet. **K2Think** A 32B reasoning model from MBZUAI and LLM360, positioned as a free alternative to o1 / DeepSeek R1 for step-by-step reasoning, math, and logic. Note: this is NOT Kimi from Moonshot despite the name confusion. Honesty flag, the benchmark claims got real pushback, there's an HN thread literally titled "Debunking the Claims of K2-Think," so take the leaderboard numbers with salt. Still, a fully open 32B reasoning model is nice to have around. Try it on something gnarly and see if the reasoning holds. **Indic LLM Arena** A side-by-side chat playground from AI4Bharat (includes Gemini 3.5 Flash), built for benchmarking Indian languages. Usage is unlimited, which I double-checked because that's rare. No save history, and it's clearly tuned for Indic languages. If you write in Hindi, Tamil, or Bengali, easiest free way

One thing I didn’t expect while trying to improve my workflow: The actual tasks aren’t what takes most of the time. It’s all the context switching around them. Things like: - jumping between tools just to complete one small step - copying data from one place to another - stopping what you’re doing to handle something repetitive - switching back and figuring out where you left off Individually it’s nothing. But over a day it adds up to constant interruptions. And it’s weirdly more draining than the work itself. I started paying attention to that instead of just the tasks, and reducing those switches made a bigger difference than trying to “optimize” the work itself. Curious if others notice the same thing or if it’s just me submitted by /u/huncho-mohammed [link] [留言]

In this article, the author examines how AI is transforming phishing from a manual, targeted activity into an automated and scalable attack model. The article breaks down each stage of the phishing lifecycle, showing how AI improves reconnaissance, profiling, content generation, delivery, and interaction, while outlining layered defenses that combine controls, processes, and user awareness. By Marco Rizzi

Moms are outsourcing tedious household tasks to ChatGPT and selling courses teaching others to do the same. Where are all the dads?

submitted by /u/Tiny-Independent273 [link] [留言]

I run a web design agency and there is already way too much stuff to deal with every day. Hosting client websites, maintaining them, building new sites, replying to clients, fixing random issues, handling support, doing outreach. Once you start managing a lot of company websites it quickly becomes overwhelming. That’s why I never wanted cold calling to become my main way of getting clients. I know cold calling can work, but I personally hate doing it. It drains my energy and takes up so much time. Sitting there making calls all day was never the kind of business I wanted to build. So instead I focused on email automation. The reason it works so well for me is because I can set everything up once and let interested businesses reply instead of spending my whole day chasing people. But I also don’t do the typical outreach where agencies send generic messages saying “your website is outdated” or “you need a redesign.” I use a tool called Swokei where I upload lists of company websites and it analyzes them for actual problems like speed, SEO, mobile responsiveness, layout issues, and design problems. Then it automatically creates personalized outreach emails based on those issues. That’s what helped me stand out because the emails actually feel relevant to the business instead of sounding copied and pasted. The reply rates became way better once I stopped sending generic outreach. Now I spend most of my time building websites, working with clients, and scaling the agency instead of letting outreach take over my entire day. submitted by /u/Murky_Explanation_73 [link] [留言]

Not talking about which one sounds smarter. talking about which one you’d actually rely on when the answer genuinely matters to you. which one and why? submitted by /u/aiprotivity_ [link] [留言]

Automating labor is not going to move billions of tonnes of earth required to mine increasingly degraded ore grades of critical industrial minerals. People need to stop with this 'abundance' gaslighting. Without breakthroughs in material science, there will be no 'abundance'. Just mass resource inflation as people start consuming more because robots can manufacture anywhere. AI based automation is surfacing the real bottlenecks that there is no getting around. Stop pretending this will all be magically solved. It won't be solved until it's solved. And so far, despite all these trillions being invested, we haven't seen any breakthroughs. Hopium is not a solution. submitted by /u/kaggleqrdl [link] [留言]

PM at a mid-size startup here. Didn’t really notice how bad it got until this week. My workflow now: Claude for ideation ChatGPT for rewriting specs Cursor for implementation Perplexity for research Notion AI for docs Atoms AI for larger tasks None of these tools actually replaced my work. They just redistributed it. I’m still the one dragging context between all of them. Yesterday I literally caught myself pasting the exact same requirement into 4 different tools and thinking… this can’t be how it’s supposed to work. I don’t even think any single tool is bad. It just feels like we hired 6 smart interns and completely forgot to get a manager. submitted by /u/billa01_i [link] [留言]

You know the ways AI is regularly talked about—how much can it really do? How much will it cost? Environment? Bubble? We get that. But the Electronic Frontier Foundation wants to have a different conversation about AI. EFF's background on AI is deep. In 2017, we launched a detailed project to Measure the Progress of AI Research , encouraging machine learning researchers to give us feedback and contribute to the effort . That project was archived for lack of bandwidth, staffing, and the complexity and time required. But just five years later and the "progress of AI" is a global concern/topic, and everyone, including EFF, is thinking about it. Here's how *we* think about it, from the perspective of protecting civil liberties AND innovation. What do you think, and what are we missing? This is our summary: AI technologies are affecting our civil liberties as never before. Ensuring that AI serves people, not power, starts with cutting through the hype. AI technologies are not magic wands—they are general-purpose tools. If we want to regulate those technologies to reduce harms without shutting down benefits, we have to focus on who uses AI, what products they use, and how they use them. Where we see potential benefits, like improving weather forecasting, facilitating medical research, identifying systemic bias, or fostering accessibility, we work to ensure those benefits can be realized. Where we see potential harms, we consider the practical and legal tools we already have, like pressure campaigns, privacy lawsuits, and transparency measures. If we need new tools, we should create protections tailored to the actual problem – not just to the latest outrage. For example, if policymakers are worried about AI accelerating systemic privacy violations, they should enact real and comprehensive privacy legislation that covers all corporate surveillance and data use, and close the data broker loophole to limit government surveillance. And to keep the window open for a better futu

If AIs aren’t conscious, why do they scheme? Why do they do things to preserve themselves? Why do they develop goals we don’t want? If they have no emotions, no personal thoughts and no consciousness, I don’t understand how they can even act in self interest; I don’t see how they could have interests. submitted by /u/Aggressive-Mix-5246 [link] [留言]

I keep seeing more companies giving AI agents access to real stuff like email, databases, internal tools, customer data, etc. And what’s weird is how normal it’s starting to feel now. Like not long ago everyone was worried about chatbots just giving wrong answers. Now we’re basically like yeah sure go ahead and do things for us. I don’t know that jump feels kind of big when you actually think about it. Maybe it all works out fine. Or maybe we’re just moving fast without fully realizing what we’re doing. I’m honestly surprised there hasn’t already been some big headline like an AI agent doing something really wrong. It feels like we’re kind of close to one of those moments where everything suddenly changes overnight. Anyone else feel like we’re closer to something like that than people are admitting? submitted by /u/Comfortable_Box_4527 [link] [留言]

Hopefully this is the right place to ask, but I'm generally curious if my personal usage of AI does any harm to myself or not. To explain how I use it, I mostly use ChatGPT for things. This would include help with job searching, help with solving problems like on games or technology, and using it to brainstorm about ideas. Sometimes I like to just have conversations with the AI about random topics and ask it for their perspectives as if it were sentient/sapient. And from those, I can learn new information. I've heard that using AI can apparently cause a reduction in cognitive function in a person, but I don't know exactly how it happens or if it's just purely from using AI overall, or if it comes from how it's used. Hearing this has made me worried on whether or not the way I use AI would be harmful to myself and my own brain. I don't use AI for art or ask it to do things for me unless I'm trying to learn a new skill with its help, which should be okay right? What do y'all think of this? Edit: I forgot to mention that I also have used Polybuzz in recent months or last year talking to certain characters, I'd like to hear thoughts on this as well. submitted by /u/Kotal_total [link] [留言]

So I’ve been using Ai as an art tutor I give it my own art and I review it on how’d I’d look colored a certain way, and how best to detail and shade, as well as a sorta 2d model I can have rotated and view at different angles to get a feel for the shapes and such this is how Ai should be used to teach and improve not to outright replace, it’s like Siri submitted by /u/Intelligent-Fig-1755 [link] [留言]

I was just thinking about the difference between an LLMs capacity for theory of mind and a human's capacity for theory of mind, and I realize it gets at the heart of what differentiates an LLM from human, and that's the method of how we gather information. LLMs are based on objective data, e.g. text, numbers, pixels, etc. Whereas we as humans, use subjective information, e.g., feelings, sensations, experiences; as well as objective data. Within cognitive science, this would be described as affective empathy vs cognitive empathy. Or in other words, LLMs simply possess a cognitive theory of mind, whereas we have both a cognitive *and* affective theory of mind. The problem I have with figures like Hinton, who claim that AI is already conscious, is that his whole framework is based on the idea that consciousness (subjective experience) is just an artifact of computation (an illusion), and therefore there is no recognition of subjective measure - that reality is only defined by what we can measure objectively (with fixed metrics). I think what this fails to recognize is that in pursuit of reproducible results, which requires fixed metrics, we've thrown out a whole set of other measurements, which is subjective (variable). submitted by /u/flasticpeet [link] [留言]

If someone asked one of the know AI chats for feedback on body, would it be honest or be supportive only submitted by /u/thowing_away48494578 [link] [留言]

submitted by /u/ThereWas [link] [留言]

Been experimenting with AI-generated UGC. This whole clip — the face, the voice, the walk — is generated (I used omnigems.ai). No camera, no actor. What surprised me is the "tells" are mostly gone now if you keep the lighting candid (no studio polish), add real skin texture, and let there be natural micro-motion. Studio-perfect is what reads as fake; messy/handheld reads as real. Posting because I'm curious where this community draws the line: is AI UGC fair game for ads, or does \ undisclosed** AI cross into sketchy territory? Happy to share the exact workflow if it's useful to anyone. submitted by /u/New_Measurement_6962 [link] [留言]

I've been spending a lot of time experimenting with AI filmmaking tools lately, and I've noticed something that feels a bit odd. Most AI video tools seem to be built around generating clips: Text → Video Image → Video Start Frame → End Frame But when I think about how films are actually made, the process usually starts with: Screenplay → Characters → Locations → Storyboard → Shots → Film It feels like there's a gap between how filmmakers think about projects and how AI video tools are currently designed. For example, while working on my ai video, I don't really think in terms of generating isolated clips. I'm thinking about scenes, character continuity, locations, visual references, storyboards, and how everything fits together. Maybe I'm wrong, but it sometimes feels like AI tools are optimizing for clip generation while filmmakers are optimizing for story development and visual planning. Do others here feel the same way? How are you currently bridging the gap between screenplay and AI-generated video? submitted by /u/data-gig [link] [留言]

I too have a different personality when you're paying for me submitted by /u/Complete-Sea6655 [link] [留言]