Alex McLean@sean_ae Yep I'd generally push back on LLMs being described as algorithms, if noone can see how they work there's no algorithm to talk about, it's just black box statistics. I think here though they are just talking about algorithms in terms of systems/machine-making in general, and LLMs fit that.
emenel@yaxu @sean_ae tbh we could describe the function of an llm (or any "ai") in algorithmic terms, it's just a stochastic and fractal algorithm... so we can't trace the exact path of input to output, but we can describe in abstract detail what happens to the input to transform it into the output....
and yes, there was a lot of optimistic (naive tbh) writing about tech from a leftist perspective over the preceding 40 years :)
holly 🐜