Have you tried a modern search engine? I suspect part of the reason people reach for LLMbeciles is because search engines are such utter shit today.

I never trust any solution that has to be forced on people.

This is a point that doesn’t seem to catch on with people.

When the plough was introduced, nobody looked at it and couldn’t see that it was useful. Its utility was really obvious, especially in the specific cases where ploughs shine. People would change the way they planted and harvested to suit ploughing, the advantages were so obvious in most cases. The same kind of thing applies to fountain pens over dipped goose feathers. To electrical lights over candles. To wheels over log rollers. To personal computers over slide rules. To … well, pretty much every revolutionary technology in history. People may not have changed right away (as with PCs, say) because of the cost issue, or the like, but nobody looked at them and wondered what they could possibly be used for.

After several years now, LLMbecile-pushing companies are trying to FORCE people to use their “AI” products, to the point of companies mandating their use. (I must have missed the part where Apple forced a fondleslab—modern smartphone—on everybody until people figured out how to use them.) This degree of attempting to force them into every orifice of the human user smacks of intense desperation, not of technology whose benefit is obvious.

LLMbeciles are dangerously incompetent tools that unfortunately “hack” a weakness in human perception: We are hard-wired to equate eloquence and confidence with intellect. (The so-called fluency heuristic.) LLMbeciles are very fluent, eloquent, and confident and we are very vulnerable to that combination. As a result outside our areas of expertise we have a tendency to trust LLMbecile output despite the fact that it is literally 100% bullshit (in the Frankfurt sense) hallucination. It just happens that by the statistics of human language stolen to build the model that these hallucinations match reality enough to fool non-experts. And that’s the danger: they’re “right” (which is to say their bullshit semi-accidentally matches reality) often enough we don’t catch the cases where their bullshit is just plain wrong.

This is a pattern see with a lot of people who have areas of high expertise:

1. “LLMbeciles are not really useful in this field in which I have expertise…”
2. “…but I think they’re very useful in all these fields in which I have no expertise.”

Gell-Mann must be rolling in his grave right now! (Yes, I know it’s Crichton, but I’m sticking to his bit.)

I’ve tasted tea in a teahouse that would be over $1000 a pound.

Yep. Even in a thread about AI in a group criticizing AI the vegan finds a way to identify themself, staying true to the stereotype.

The Bear and the Nightingale seems to fit the bill. It’s a folkloric fantasy novel that is written by Katherine Arden and addresses that clash between valuing domestic life and family while also standing firm in an identity that’s a bit wild and untamed as the protagonist, Vasya, navigates that tension between tradition, intuition, family bonds, societal standing, and personal identity.

I’m not a techie, so maybe I’m missing something. Is there not a possible work flow like this?

• A: <submits slop>
• B: Sees slop. Clicks “ban A” button. Posts A to a public list of people banned for being stupid assholes.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

Because a significant fraction of Americans—enough to vote a Nazi into power—agree with Musk’s stupidity.

All these trolley problems are absurdly framed. There is only one correct answer to any trolley problem: 无. In effect you have to unask the question, step back, and look at the framing.

The framing wants you to look at the switch so that you ignore the real question: which asshole is going around and tying people (or cats (or paintings (or trees (or …)))) on the tracks just so they can get their jollies by watching you make moral choices while people get killed? Find that asshole and you stop all trolley problems forever.

Mental note: avoid Southwest Airlines. This is, of course, easy because of my quarter-century old ban of ever setting foot on US soil.

OK, now it makes (some) sense. Thanks.

Which idiots think Warren Buffett is any different from the rest of the billionaires? He still got to where he is by ruthless exploitation.

I … don’t get it? Can someone explain like I’m five?

Canadian inspectors should find “structural problems” on the Ambassador bridge (only on the Canadian side of the border) and close it down for “delicate repairs”.

Leave it closed down.

The United States of Assholes.

Scolding someone for wanting Nazis humiliated is peak Nazi.

Huh. I thought whites would be safer than that in the USA.

My bad. If you’re not an unequivocal citizen, don’t have white skin, and/or don’t have plenty of money, GTFO of the USA. You’re not safe there.

Turning on the “reasoning” display is always hilarious. The proof that it’s just a hallucination machine can be seen when in the “reasoning” it starts making shit up about what it was asked to do.

What are underpants gnomes?

Underpants gnomes are creatures from an episode of Space: 1999 that steal the underthings from the Alphans, causing a laundry crisis.

Did you?

It specifically talks about one form.

And it implicitly talks about the USA.

And with your performance here, I can see why books are dying in the USA. Reading is for lefties, amirite?

Hush! Don’t confuse the issue with facts when someone is going full-tilt racist!