When people call LLMs “useless” they’re generally being kind as it’d be more accurate to call it harmful, dangerous, toxic, or risky.
It’s like calling white asbestos “useless”. Technically true in most western countries because you literally can’t use it, but it kind of elides the reason why
Yeah, same. And I honestly don't have a clue when it might pop
The AI Bubble specifically is a hail Mary pass for tech. They've built up the entire industry on stock market speculation jazzed up with a promise of wondrous futures and none of the other paradigm-shifting innovations have panned out. So when these bubbles pop, they might take much of tech with them, which gives them an incentive to keep the bubbles inflated which in turn means the eventual pop will be bigger.
@baldur thinking about asbestos, lead, arsenic, PFAS, ...
it's hard not to conclude that a lot of the most harmful things are exactly those with a lot of apparent applicability / utility in a bunch of domains while the harms are hidden, deferred, papered over, obscured by industry collusion, etc.
generative AI feels like it fits this profile one way or another. its outputs *may* not be good, but either way the relevant people are convinced of the utility and hellbent on obscuring the harms.
@baldur and like... asbestos is an amazing insulator & fire proofer. lead is straightforwardly useful for countless things. all that stuff that 3M et al. have churned out that now shows up in every water supply and bloodstream is *super* useful. too bad about, you know, all the poisoning.
i wish we could talk about computational phenomena more like we talk about lead: yep, sure is useful if you don't give a shit about the nervous systems of your children.
Oh! About that "can't use it" bit, have you heard Trump's latest?
UkeleleEric
Baldur Bjarnason
Gerry McGovern
Reiner Jung
Jay Williams
brennen
Edelruth, PBS Passport Holder