How many studies do researchers need to do before the threat of LLMs is taken seriously? This technology *might* have some useful niche applications, but widespread deployment will be a disaster for humanity.
This shit is an existential hazard, and not in the way the AI companies love to talk about. It's not going to take over the world like Skynet, it's a cognitohazard that turns anyone that interacts with it into an idiot.
@malcircuit People don't care about studies. They care about money and right now LLMs promise them more money.
They're wrong. They'll be proven wrong. But it'll take time and some MASSIVE failures, first.
Fortunately, if the news is to be believed, Zuckerberg is doing his hardest to destroy Meta with AI so it may come sooner than later.
@faithisleaping @malcircuit I wish I could believe that it will eventually be proven to be bad. I'm afraid it's going to become a subliminal part of society and stick with us forever. Technologies have a tendency to do that no matter how harmful they are.
Broadcasting brought us manufactured consent.
Cable brought us cognitive overwhelm.
Social media brought psyops to the individual.
I'm afraid AI be around forever and destroy conceptual diversity.
@sabrina @malcircuit It will likely be around forever in some form. We're not going to just shut it all down. Too many people have spent too much money.
But it will likely become part of the background noise that we learn to navigate.
But also, you say social media brought psyops to the individual but here we are talking on social media. It also brought human connection across continents.
Which isn't me saying that we should look for the silver lining to AI. It's pretty shit at 95% of what they're trying to use it for. I'm just pushing back a bit on the "technology is destroying everything" narrative. It's changing everything. It's destroying some things. Other things get created in its wake. Humanity will probably survive this one, too.
@faithisleaping @malcircuit I see the implicit argument now. Sorry, bad wording from a bad mood. I didn't mean to imply the world would be better off without those technologies.
I'm not so sure about AI. Hypothetically if we started from scratch and built it in a good ethical framework it would be fine. I don't think it can be redeemed as-is.
@sabrina I think the fundamental tech has some real and valuable applications. It's a huge jump in parallel compute power.
But LLMs just aren't it. They're cool and flashy but at the end of the day it's just a better markov chain and there's no real intelligence there. And thinking there is is just delusional. And, yeah, they can make pretty pictures, too, but pretty pictures aren't art and we need to stop thinking they are.
But if we used those data centers to study protein folding, maybe we could figure out better vaccines or something.
Mallory's Musings & Mischief
Faith, Purple haired feminist 🧋 
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