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.
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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.
@EmilyEnough THIS oh my GODDESS 🤯
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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.
@EmilyEnough "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."
In the 1970s, yes, when you wrote every single byte of code in the machine and could watch every bus cycle on a logic analyser.
I reckon the rot set in long before LLMs - I reckon it started with on-chip cache, so you could no longer see how each instruction operated through each clock cycle, because some instructions no longer needed to touch the bus at all.
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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.
@EmilyEnough there's no saving people, you know.
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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.
@EmilyEnough "squishy" computing
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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.
@EmilyEnough The one and only reason I ever got into computers back in the late 70s/early 80s was exactly this.
It was so refreshing to work with something that had a super specific and repeatable instruction set, where the *vast* majority of issues could be nailed down quite precisely to something I could control.
If I didn't like this sort of work, I wouldn't do it.
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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.
@EmilyEnough
The most interesting detail for my autistic brain is that the professional computertouchers like myself are technically proletatians but are paid like the managerial class (also called worker aristocracy).So what we - imho - are witnessing is the proletarization of the computer workers. Like other jobs that used to be well paid before they got eliminated/recuperated.
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@EmilyEnough Wow, I have thought a lot about how coding LLMs are antithetical to my own OCD tendencies that want everything to be built and formatted in a very specific way (i.e. the right way), but had not considered how terrible the interface would be for folks who prefer not to have to process information conversationally.
I would love to read an entire book or series of articles about how LLMs as an interface enforce neurotypical modes of communication on neurodiverse people.
@mikemccaffrey @EmilyEnough Good point.
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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.
@EmilyEnough very interesting observation, thanks a lot. I haven’t perceived it that way - I used to work a lot with probabilistic models, simulated annealing and genetic algorithms and in that case the computer works entirely deterministic but the result is always different. So I lost my expectation to a deterministic result long time ago
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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.
@EmilyEnough Very astute and exactly my experience too - I went into computing for the same kinds of reasons and as you say LLMs break that. Thank you for expressing it so clearly.
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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.
@EmilyEnough I think you're absolutely correct on this. Yet another reason why we need to find a way to irrevocably destroy this abomination.
But also it's not just the style of "communication" that these algorithms are pretending to do, it's that you cannot trust that their output is even correct because they have no understanding of what they are "saying". They could be "hallucinating" complete nonsense but they'll output it in an authoritative way and may even make up references that don't exist. They're 100% bullshit generators (it's even been scientifically proven).
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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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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.
"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."
OMG - That's perfect. Maybe also explains why everyone loves them that much. 🤨
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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.
@uriel Way to miss the point
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@uriel Way to miss the point
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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.
> Nope. The whole IT sector uses about 3–5% of global electricity, so poor home insulation is a much bigger problem overall.
Source?
> 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.
Source? In fact this is false. Human behaviour includes more than a stochastic process, even though it may adopt stochastic heuristics to speed up some computational parts. This is also why LLMs are technically speaking *not* AI. An AI includes, as human reasoning does, an internal world model and the basic set of Boolean probability-logic rules. See for instance Russell & Norvig's *Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach* (http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/global-index.html), or Pearl's older *Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems* (https://doi.org/10.1016/C2009-0-27609-4). LLMs are, instead, just Markov chains (https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2410.02724). A modern robot vacuum cleaner is more "AI" than an LLM.
This is also the reason why the larger the software project you apply an LLM to, the more likely the failure. Such kind of application requires larger and larger string correlations, which are therefore more and more uncertain and fault-prone, and these faults are therefore also more difficult to spot. Such kind of applications may also require new or innovative kinds of solution, which again are less likely to be stumbled upon by an LLM.
> 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.
No, because humans, and also *proper AI*, have a "logic engine" underneath. It may require some effort to bring the logic engine to the fore instead of poor heuristics, but it can be done (related: Kahneman's *Thinking, Fast and Slow*, and the research cited there). With LLM it can't be done because there's no logic engine at all there.
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> Nope. The whole IT sector uses about 3–5% of global electricity, so poor home insulation is a much bigger problem overall.
Source?
> 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.
Source? In fact this is false. Human behaviour includes more than a stochastic process, even though it may adopt stochastic heuristics to speed up some computational parts. This is also why LLMs are technically speaking *not* AI. An AI includes, as human reasoning does, an internal world model and the basic set of Boolean probability-logic rules. See for instance Russell & Norvig's *Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach* (http://aima.cs.berkeley.edu/global-index.html), or Pearl's older *Probabilistic Reasoning in Intelligent Systems* (https://doi.org/10.1016/C2009-0-27609-4). LLMs are, instead, just Markov chains (https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2410.02724). A modern robot vacuum cleaner is more "AI" than an LLM.
This is also the reason why the larger the software project you apply an LLM to, the more likely the failure. Such kind of application requires larger and larger string correlations, which are therefore more and more uncertain and fault-prone, and these faults are therefore also more difficult to spot. Such kind of applications may also require new or innovative kinds of solution, which again are less likely to be stumbled upon by an LLM.
> 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.
No, because humans, and also *proper AI*, have a "logic engine" underneath. It may require some effort to bring the logic engine to the fore instead of poor heuristics, but it can be done (related: Kahneman's *Thinking, Fast and Slow*, and the research cited there). With LLM it can't be done because there's no logic engine at all there.
Source?
Who Am I, your secretary? Just google.
here is my answer, complete.
Das Böse Büro
blog, personale, pensieri, riflessioni, sfoghi , uriel, fanelli, loweel
Das Böse Büro (keinpfusch.net)
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Source?
Who Am I, your secretary? Just google.
here is my answer, complete.
Das Böse Büro
blog, personale, pensieri, riflessioni, sfoghi , uriel, fanelli, loweel
Das Böse Büro (keinpfusch.net)
@uriel @EmilyEnough
No, you're the one making the claim, so the onus is on you to give evidence. -
@uriel @EmilyEnough
No, you're the one making the claim, so the onus is on you to give evidence.ok, since you aren't able to, let me google for sources:
We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard.
The emissions from individual AI text, image, and video queries seem small—until you add up what the industry isn’t tracking and consider where it’s heading next.
MIT Technology Review (www.technologyreview.com)
MIT says , 4.4%.
Arxiv is so full of shit, I don't even care. WARNING: next time you ask me to google something for you, since you are too stupid for , you must pay me.
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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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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.
