Emily VelascoMy craziest friend just text me to ask me how and where I get affirmation and praise if I don't use ChatGPT to do it.
Homewreckin Carnival Girl@MLE_online why does this make me uncomfortable?
@h2onolan cuz the idea of people relying on computer code to tell them they have worth is really sad?
jbaggs@MLE_online It's also sad we're going through some of the lessons learned from ELIZA over half a century later, but with more cost and spend to get there.
@jbaggs what's Eliza?
@MLE_online Oh sorry. I just assumed you'd know:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELIZA
(Maybe you were making a recursive joke there as well. I'm tired.)
@jbaggs no! I've never heard of this before
NilaJonesWell I guess that's the problem right there. I mean if you don't know, probably nobody your age knows. No wonder people are falling for this LLM bullshit
@NilaJones @MLE_online Well that was just fucking rude.
It was? It sure wasn't intended that way!
@NilaJones @MLE_online Maybe not, but I don't think it's a generational issue. It could be, but I really don't want to presuppose that.
I wouldn't call it a generational issue. I think it's just normal that people don't know things that happen 50 years before they were born, if they are relatively minor things
@NilaJones @MLE_online Was it minor?
Where I was confused (again really tired) was not knowing if MLE was joking or not in the response. There's nothing wrong with not knowing something, but is it because of age?
Cultural memory and the length of it is probably a topic I don't want to get into with people I don't know online at this point in history.
Well I'm glad you don't want to get into it!
@NilaJones @jbaggs it seems like people of all ages fall for it. Older people think it's a magic miracle machine. Younger people think it's just a normal way to get facts and get things done
@MLE_online @NilaJones I'm also probably the odd person out here. didn't want to wreck either of your evenings, mornings, (no idea about everyone's timezone here.)
Yeah, my point was that there's probably a limited number of people who think of it as something that has been tried before, and was unhelpful then, also
@NilaJones I've known these LLMs are far from the first attempt at this, but i had never heard of Eliza before tonight. It's a bit of computer arcana
Douglas Edwards 
@MLE_online @NilaJones It was written in the 1960s[!] by AI critic Joseph Weizenbaum to illustrate how easy it is to get humans to attribute far more intelligence to a computer program than it actually possesses:
@jbaggs @MLE_online @NilaJones My understanding from his book "Computer Power and Human Reason" (IIRC) is that it was the intent from the beginning — but he was astonished to discover how strong the effect was.
@jbaggs @MLE_online @NilaJones The program was named "ELIZA" after Eliza Doolittle in "My Fair Lady" — who could eventually talk convincingly like a noble lady, though it was never clear how much of what she was saying she actually understood.
@jbaggs @dedicto @NilaJones if you're going to pick fights with everyone tonight, do it somewhere besides my mentions, please
@MLE_online That was real not my my intention at all, and I appollogize for dirtying up your feed.
@jbaggs Just don't fight with people so much! No one was even being aggressive or antagonistic towards you.
@MLE_online You are entirely correct there.
@MLE_online I probably should have logged out several hours earlier. Sorry again.
@MLE_online @NilaJones When I was a student at Harvard in 1976, I heard Weizenbaum lecture on the problems of AI and related technologies. Remarkably, he predicted openly — to a large lecture audience — that none of us would be alive 25 years later. Clearly, that did not happen. I'm just hoping that he was off by considerably more than a factor of 2.