Absolutely right. However, it's not good to replace too much manual labor, either. There is also a balance between too much and too little (i.e. not learning enough manual skills to take care of yourself).
There is a balance in both the mental and physical domains. Those who have a high intellectual capacity will probably think otherwise because intellectual activities is what THEY like to do. But the truth is, some people enjoy manual labor and it's not good to completely replace them either because there is art in manual work as well.
A forklift is actually a great example of using technology to augment human capabilities without replacing human judgement. Treating the tool as an extension of the person...more cyborg, less automaton.
I think that's a better mental model for how to implement AI in a way that drastically reduces the likelihood of causing harm or reducing quality.
Unfortunately, most AI solutions, products, implementations, etc. are just defaulting to trying to completely automate and obviate the human element. I think many companies are going to be in for a rude surprise when going that route (e.g. Klarna).
On the other hand, looking things up yourself allows you to become quite familiar with the way things work in a more detailed way than just getting the answer through an LLM.
I already got out of the tech career. But not because I didn't embrace AI – even though I never will. It's exactly because of people like Thomas Dohmke. What an irritating and contemptible individual.
Personally, I'm preparing the people I know to be against AI and to understand why it's a problem. We shouldn't prepare people to be more efficient, because efficiency beyond a certain point is not compatible with the enjoyment of life.
Your assumption is incorrect, because the article doesn't say "the goal is to bond people who overstay their visa frequently." (quoted from you). It says (quoted from article):
"to impose bonds on visitors from countries with high rates of visa overstays"
Quite different, as the latter means it applies to people who don't overstay their visas, but who have a great many fellow citizens who overstay their visas.
So, guilt by association, a method known to cause unfair results. Now the only question is to decide why the bond was imposed on the countries it was. Who wants unfair results, and why?
Nice. Although there are content blockers for the iPhone, uBLock is the best. One of the worst aspects of iOS is that content blockers for it generally suck, and the web sucks without them.
> When companies like Cloudflare mischaracterize user-driven AI assistants as malicious bots, they're arguing that any automated tool serving users should be suspect
Strawmen. They aren't arguing that any automated tool should be suspect. They are arguing that an automated tool with sufficient computing power should be suspect. By Perplexity's reasoning, I should be able to set up a huge server farm and hit any website with 1,000,000 requests per second because 1 request is not seen as harmful. In this case, of course, the danger with AI is not a DOS attack but an attack against the way the internet is structured and the way website are supposed to work.
> This overblocking hurts everyone. Consider someone using AI to research medical conditions,
Of course you will put medical conditions in there: appeal to the hypothetical person with a medical problem, a rather contemptible and revolting argument.
> This undermines user choice
What happens to user choice when website designers stop making websites or writing for websites because the lack of direct interaction makes it no longer worthwile?
> An AI assistant works just like a human assistant.
That's like saying a Ferarri works like someone walking. Yes, they go from A to B, but the Ferarri can go 400km down a highway much faster than a human. So, no, it has fundamental speed and power differences that change the way the ecosystem works, and you can't ignore the ecosystem.
> This controversy reveals that Cloudflare's systems are fundamentally inadequate for distinguishing between legitimate AI assistants and actual threats.
As a website designer and writer, I consider all AI assistants to be actual threats, along with the entirety of Perplexity and all AI companies. And I'm not the only one: many content creators feel the same and hope your AI assistants are neutralized with as much extreme prejudice as possible.
> By Perplexity's reasoning, I should be able to set up a huge server farm and hit any website with 1,000,000 requests per second because 1 request is not seen as harmful.
That's a slippery slope all the was to absurd. They're not talking about millions of requests a second. They're talking about a browsing session (few page views) as a result of user's action. It's not even additional traffic and there's no extra concurrency - it's likely the same requests a user would make just with shorter delay.
> That's a slippery slope all the was to absurd. They're not talking about millions of requests a second. They're talking about a browsing session (few page views) [...]
My statement was meant as an analogy. I'm not saying an argument against Perplexity and agents is about requests per second. I'm saying there's an analogous argument: that the power of AI to transform the browsing experience is akin to the power of a server farm and thus a net negative. Therefore, your interpretation of what I was saying is wrong.
It's also true that you could dismantle a building with a hammer, which accomplishes the same as dynamite. So why not just sell dynamite at the local hardware store along with hammers?
There is a balance in both the mental and physical domains. Those who have a high intellectual capacity will probably think otherwise because intellectual activities is what THEY like to do. But the truth is, some people enjoy manual labor and it's not good to completely replace them either because there is art in manual work as well.