Mastodawn

My biggest problem with the concept of LLMs, even if they weren’t a giant plagiarism laundering machine and disaster for the environment, is that they introduce so much unpredictability into computing. I became a professional computer toucher because they do exactly what you tell them to. Not always what you wanted, but exactly what you asked for.

LLMs turn that upside down. They turn a very autistic do-what-you-say, say-what-you-mean commmunication style with the machine into a neurotypical conversation talking around the issue, but never directly addressing the substance of problem.

In any conversation I have with a person, I’m modeling their understanding of the topic at hand, trying to tailor my communication style to their needs. The same applies to programming languages and frameworks. If you work with a language the way its author intended it goes a lot easier.

But LLMs don’t have an understanding of the conversation. There is no intent. It’s just a mostly-likely-next-word generator on steroids. You’re trying to give directions to a lossily compressed copy of the entire works of human writing. There is no mind to model, and no predictability to the output.

If I wanted to spend my time communicating in a superficial, neurotypical style my autistic ass certainly wouldn’t have gone into computering. LLMs are the final act of the finance bros and capitalists wrestling modern technology away from the technically literate proletariat who built it.

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Uriel Fanelli 3d ago

@EmilyEnough

My biggest problem with the concept of LLMs, even if they weren’t a giant plagiarism laundering machine

Also known as “training”. When people are trained in art, they don’t reinvent art from scratch. This is why you can’t really sue an LLM for plagiarism: you can’t even identify specific victims in the first place.

and disaster for the environment,

Nope. The whole IT sector uses about 3–5% of global electricity, so poor home insulation is a much bigger problem overall.

is that they introduce so much unpredictability into computing.

We call it a statistical method, or more precisely a stochastic system. Because, to a large extent, human behaviour itself can be modelled as a stochastic process.

If I wanted to spend my time communicating in a superficial, neurotypical style my autistic ass certainly wouldn’t have gone into computering.

The problems you face when communicating with LLMs are the same ones you face when communicating with people, because statistically speaking an LLM mimics how people communicate.

This is why computer‑mediated communication was used before, and is still used, when computers were not trying to mimic humans.

The core issue is that mimicking humans reproduces the same communication problems people already have with one another; and the “unpredictability” of the other party is nothing new in human interaction.

LLMs mimic humans, so the problems you encounter with LLMs are the same problems you encounter with humans. The point is that you consider it normal when you face exactly the same issues with other people.

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Fabio G.

@uriel Way to miss the point

@EmilyEnough

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Uriel Fanelli 2d ago

@magitweeter @EmilyEnough

Way to miss the point

whatever.