C.I posted this as a reply elsewhere, but think it stands on its own, fleshed out a bit. So here it is.
It's about "AI" - LLMs or chatbots, of course.
Ask an LLM "Is <X> a good idea?", and it will tell you why it's a good idea.
Ask the same LLM "Is <X> a bad idea?", and it will tell you why it's a bad idea.
It occurs to me that this behaviour - ask a chatbot a leading question, and it will give you an "answer" that backs up the assumptions buried in the question - is the realization of the computer system Douglas Adams called "Reason" (in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency).
Originally designed as a reasoning machine to help you find the correct solution to a problem you described, it instead turned out to be good at retroactively finding an incontrovertible argument to justify a decision you'd already made. It was so successful the Pentagon bought it lock, stock, and barrel, and military purchasing decisions started to have the hallmarks of its output.
So, they really have done a version of building the Torment Nexus from a book advising against it.
#LLM #AI #Reason #DouglasAdams #DirkGently #reasoning #TormentNexus #justification #chatbot
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