Episode: 4454
Title: HPR4454: AI, It's a Trap!
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4454/hpr4454.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-26 00:49:48

---

This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4454 for Thursday the 28th of August 2025.
Today's show is entitled A.I. It's a trap. It is hosted by Archer 72 and is about four
minutes long. It carries a clean flag. The summary is Archer 72 talks about A.I.
the tolls.
Hello, this is Archer 72 for Hacker Public Radio. In this episode, it seems that A.I. is a trap.
This overarching generalization is my opinion and may not reflect the opinions of HPR.
So the backstory to this is that I was listening to the 26-hour Hacker Public Radio New Year show
and the discussion came up in the Tech and Coffee Telegram channel. My resolution was to stop
using chat GBT for an A.I. chatbot with the implication being to not using A.I. at all,
but instead using duct-to-go and brave search. Probably less than a week or two later, I was trying
to figure out something and figured that I'd use the easy way and use cloud A.I, which is actually
pretty good if you have short and concise questions. I found that if you do have a long drawn-out
question, it is better to do a Google or a duck search and document your results. I document with
them, but you can use whatever tool is best. This way, you can clearly show what works and what
doesn't work and refer to what you find later, instead of relying on an online service.
And sometimes, depending on the A.I. by using exporting is not very straightforward
with the exception of the duck A.I. that has a button for a quick share of a text file,
then you share it to yourself somewhere else like proton mail.
Well, over the past weekend, I was making a quick upload button to my own server.
The previous weekend, I got HTTPS working. This was just from following the guide on the
Let's Encourft website. At least that time, instead of using the A.I. bot, I just followed the
clear documentation. See, the thing about going right to the Debian Wiki or the Arch Wiki is that
users and developers have already documented plenty. I figured out that part of the hacker method
is not to take the easy way, but to document out what you are trying to learn.
So, this past weekend, I was trying to learn something about that upload form, and I probably
took longer going back and forth with the A.I. bot than if I had taken the time to search the
documentation. And even if it did take longer with the documentation, I would have learned
something else and created a Markdown document of my own. There was a tool I used once in a while,
which is part of the Duck Duck Go search called Assist. This can be good because I have a horrible
memory. If there is something small that I can't remember how to do, I let Duck Assist take care of
it. But recently I have turned off the option where it says to sometimes show Assist, but instead
only when it is on demand. That way I won't be tempted to go down a rabbit hole in order to find
what I am looking for. Instead, base what I am looking for on standard tools. So yes, A.I.
is a trap, but it is also useful for certain things. If you are careful how you use it is not always a
bad thing. This has been Archer 72 for hacker public radio. Feel free to comment on this or any other
show. Ken says it is the mana by which we pair host. I also feel free to record a response show
to this or any other show. And as a hookah would say, remember to support free software. Bye bye.
You have been listening to Hacker Public Radio. Hacker Public Radio does a walk. Today's show
was contributed by a HBR listener like yourself. If you ever thought of recording a podcast,
click on our contribute link to find out how easy it really is. Hosting for HBR has been kindly
provided by an honesthost.com, the internet archive and our sings.net. On this otherwise status,
today's show is released on their creative commons, attribution 4.0 international license.