[ Jer moved instances ]Sep 30, 2023
I've been talking about how AI will directly lead to Idiocracy (2006) scenarios (like Brawndo has what plants crave, Charlie Chaplin leading the 3rd Reich, etc) for some time, but today's update to the "can you melt eggs?" saga is as clear an illustration of how as I think it's possible to ever have.

Quora's AI answers made up the melting point of eggs, and then Google picked it up and responded affirmatively that you can indeed melt eggs.

Then people wrote articles about how stupid it is that Google says eggs can melt. Then Google fixes the answer.

Then Google ingests an article about how stupid it is that Google says you can melt eggs, and suddenly Google starts answering affirmatively again that you can melt eggs, citing the article about how stupid Google is for thinking you can melt eggs.
Show threadOmnivoreSep 30, 2023

@nyquildotorg

#AI

This exists in human-written scholarly papers as well. Citations get copied from one paper to the next without review. "Artificial Intelligence is no match for real stupidity." (everybody, ~2007)

I do think the [Artificial Intelligence] descriptor should be replaced with [Clever Idiocy] so we truly admit the limitations of the tools.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7500547/

MyCites: a proposal to mark and report inaccurate citations in scholarly publications

Inaccurate citations are erroneous quotations or instances of paraphrasing of previously published material that mislead readers about the claims of the cited source. They are often unaddressed due to underreporting, the inability of peer reviewers and ...

PubMed Central (PMC)
Show threadBornachSep 30, 2023

@Ralph @nyquildotorg

I prefer the term "Automated Idiocy"

That way we can use the same acronym

Show threadJobSep 30, 2023
@bornach @Ralph @nyquildotorg but "automated mansplaining as a service" is so much more appropriate in the context of where, how and why this is mainly happening
Show threadOmnivore

@vanderZwan @bornach @nyquildotorg

I think mansplaining requires demeaning the audience. ChatGPT is a very polite raconteur. Hopefully OpenAI Codex will get us past the 'service' issue for general requests. I have to admit, AMAAS would be a good acronym.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI_Codex

OpenAI Codex - Wikipedia

Sep 30, 2023 at 5:19pmWeb
Show threadJobSep 30, 2023

@Ralph @bornach @nyquildotorg mansplaining is often demeaning, but I think the core element is a dude asserting something about topics they know nothing about with utterly unearned confidence. The demeaning part is doing that to people who often actually know more about the subject than them (like explaining to women how sexism works or something).

And asserting things with unearned confidence is very much what LLMs do as well.