Neil ErikssonFeb 22
Charlie Stross

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY:

Insofar as currently-marketed AI is all about passing the (as currently understood) Turing test, and as spam filters are all about excluding machine-generated solicitations from our media inputs, it follows that ...

The single task generative AI is good for is producing spam.

Feb 22 at 10:36amWeb
Show threadHeliopolitanFeb 22
@cstross The Turing Test was always a pile of pants.
Show threadCharlie StrossFeb 22

@heliopolitan The Turing Test originated as the "imitation game" in this paper from 1950, and it's *fascinating* to consider (a) Turing's socio-cultural myopia, and (b) how wildly the TT subsequently mutated in the popular imagination:

https://courses.cs.umbc.edu/471/papers/turing.pdf

Show threadHeliopolitanFeb 22
@cstross it's perhaps a slighyly tangential example of how when a metric becomes a target, it ceases to be a useful metric...
Show threadSysAdmin1138Feb 22
@cstross Halting State keeps haunting this industry.
Show threadDeterioratedStuccoFeb 22
@cstross
Quite.
I have not been able to identify a legitimate use case for LLMs.
Show threadPhilippa CowderoyFeb 22
@cstross Yeah, but spam-for-bash is also kinda dangerous
Show threadPhilippa CowderoyFeb 22

@cstross Or to put it more nightmarishly:

I'm sorry Colonel Petrov, but those are clearly missiles and I must follow my orders

Show threadAlison ChaikenFeb 22
@cstross To be fair, generative AI is pretty decent at writing documentation and language translation.
Show threadeuroplus Feb 23
@cstross that’s why it’s perfect for C-level interdepartmental memos…