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.

The next EMF ticket sale will be this Sunday (March 22nd) at 15:00 UK time:
https://www.emfcamp.org/tickets

Due to higher than expected uptake on volunteer vouchers, we unfortunately don't have a huge number of tickets remaining for the last two public sales, but we will be offering refunds and reselling tickets in the next few months.

I'm not anti the general field of Artificial Intelligence, it's an extremely interesting subject. I am deeply skeptical of the LLM/GPT products that are being deceptively sold to people as "AI solutions" or claiming to be the science fiction of Artificial General Intelligence. The cult-like following developing around them is even more disturbing, it is like something from Dune or W40K.

Please learn how these things actually work, even on a basic level, before making such wild claims.

#ai

More amazing minimalist pencil sketches of cats, by Shou Xin (手訫)

#Art #Artwork #Artist #Cats #Caturday

Kind and cherished FOSS and computing freedom advocate @sleepyowl (Joyce Ng) has gone missing and there is reason to fear she may have been apprehended by authorities, possibly likely even for being framed. Nobody has been able to reach her and many of us are worried for her safety.

Joyce does work on verifiable open source hardware. She also has been an activist pushing against the rise of far-right Christian nationalism globally but especially in Singapore. Because of this and her identity, she has people who would like to see bad things happen to her.

Probably for this reason, she may have been misidentified by Five Eyes as being a threat actor. Joyce wrote about this concern in November, posting a threatening screenshot where she was tipped off. https://bitowl.online/about

Please spread this wide. Hopefully this is a false alarm but Joyce is a kind-hearted person who fights for human rights and computing freedom; many of us are worried for her safety.