Charlie StrossJul 19, 2025

LLMs are not intelligent but they ARE good for spouting extruded text that mimics the zeitgeist of their training data and if that training data includes the overflowing sewer that is the unfiltered internet you're going to get gaslighting, lies, conspiracy theories, and malice. Guardrails only prevent some of it from spilling over.

Humans base their norms on their peers' opinions, so LLMs potentially normalize all sorts of horrors in discourse—probably including ones we haven't glimpsed yet.

Show threadCharlie StrossJul 19, 2025

To be clear, that point about LLMs is a criticism of the training inputs. Which as far as I can see are promiscuously hoovered off the public internet by bots (like the ones perpetually DoS'ing the server my blog runs on this year) with zero thought given to curating the data for accuracy or appropriateness.

They generate perfect "answer shaped objects" … from a foul-minded misogynist white supremacist bigot oozing malice against everyone who's not like him.

Show threadStarkRGJul 19, 2025
@cstross I have yet to see a use case for LLMs that isn't already handled at least as well or better by other things that are less power-hungry and unethical.
Show threadNearly Normal (=>÷)Jul 19, 2025
@StarkRG @cstross
Every time I encounter artificial intelligence it displays an awful lot that is artificial but very little that is intelligent.
Show threadNearly Normal (=>÷)

@StarkRG @cstross
Also, and very comforting, no-one has yet made any money out of this.

The music has been playing, sometimes clamorous and at times quite softly.

The Tech Bros have all joined in with fervour but it's pretty clear that when the music stops there will be very, very few chairs left to sit upon.

AI is a solution looking for a problem to solve.

Jul 20, 2025 at 10:14pmWeb
Show threadCharlie StrossJul 21, 2025
@Spoon @StarkRG Disagree, conditionally: generative AI is almost 100% hot steaming garbage, but analytical AI (aka "big data") is quietly revolutionizing some fields, eg. face recognition via networked public CCTV cameras. She we didn't ask for that!
Show threadNearly Normal (=>÷)Jul 21, 2025

@cstross @StarkRG

I have demonstrated my ignorance but I still maintain that generative AI is a solution looking for a problem to misunderstand.

We should have cancelled the lot when HAL refused to open the hatch.

Show threadStarkRGJul 21, 2025
@Spoon @cstross They're good at finding possible patterns/matches in large datasets (possible, not definite, you've still got to actually check to make sure), but it definitely isn't something that the vast majority of consumers would ever have need for. It's like those enormous dump trucks mines use to move around the raw rubble before it gets turned into something useful, they are absolutely perfect for mines but would be wasteful and an ill fit to get drive-thru.
Show threadNearly Normal (=>÷)Jul 21, 2025

@StarkRG @cstross

What a good post.

You have cleared this up very well for me and I think I understand why the day to day manifestations are so irritating.

I taught on many levels for more than 40 years and plagiarism leaps off the page at me and slaps me across the face.

Any teacher who cannot see AI in student work needs to take a good look at their own knowledge base.

Show threadShimmin Beg (he/him)Jul 25, 2025
@cstross @Spoon @StarkRG and indeed you have personally written entire novels involving it going horribly wrong (poor, poor Headingley)