5 ms·

My fav part of the writeup at the end: """ LLMs need better criticism # A lot of people absolutely hate this stuff. In some of the spaces I hang out (Mastodon

My fav part of the writeup at the end: """ LLMs need better criticism # A lot of people absolutely hate this stuff. In some of the spaces I hang out (Mastodon, Bluesky, Lobste.rs, even Hacker News on occasion) even suggesting that “LLMs are useful” can be enough to kick off a huge fight. I like people who are skeptical of this stuff. The hype has been deafening for more than two years now, and there are enormous quantities of snake oil and misinformation out there. A lot of very bad decisions are being made based on that hype. Being critical is a virtue. If we want people with decision-making authority to make good decisions about how to apply these tools we first need to acknowledge that there ARE good applications, and then help explain how to put those into practice while avoiding the many unintiutive traps. """ LLMs are here to stay, and there is a need for more thoughtful critique rather than just "LLMs are all slop, I'll never use it" comments.

vunderba 2y ago
I agree, but I think my biggest issue with LLMs (and a lot of GenAI) is that they act as a massive accelerator for the WORST (and unfortunately most common) type of human - the lazy one. The signal-to-noise ratio just goes completely out of control. https://journal.everypixel.com/ai-image-statistics https://journal.everypixel.com/ai-image-statistics
- greenavocado 2y ago
  Exif watermark by the generators would solve 90% of the problem in one fell swoop because lazy people won't remove it
  - minimaxir 2y ago
    Every image host and social media app automatically strips EXIF data (for privacy reasons at minimum).
    - greenavocado 2y ago
      Stenography with a known signature perhaps
      - layer8 2y ago
        Still easily defeated when the scheme is known.
        greenavocado 2y ago
        My point is most won't bother
        layer8 2y ago
        Well, it’s a cat and mouse game. They will start to bother when not doing so starts having consequences for them.
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  Sorry but the "lazy is bad" crowd is ludditism in another form, and it's telling that a whole lot of very smart people were passionate defenders of being lazy! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Use_of_Human_Beings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Use_of_Human_Beings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventing_the_Future:_Postcapitalism_and_a_World_Without_Work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventing_the_Future:_Postcapi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_to_Be_Lazy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_to_Be_Lazy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Praise_of_Idleness_and_Other_Essays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Praise_of_Idleness_and_Othe... (That's Bertrand Russell) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Abolition_of_Work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Abolition_of_Work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonjour_paresse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonjour_paresse AI systems are literally the most amazing technology on earth for this exact reason. I am so glad that it is destroying the minds of time thieves world-wide!
  - CRConrad 2y ago
    > the "lazy is bad" crowd is ludditism in another form Capital --> capitalist, capitalism. Commune --> communist, communism. Ned Ludd --> Luddite, Luddism. Not "capitalistism" or "communistism", so not "ludditism" either.
    - fragmede 2y ago
      Going by your other examples, shouldn't it be Luddist and not Luddite? English is famously inconsistent and is a difficult language to learn, owing to it's linguistic heritage, as it's a bunch of exceptions to rules. Like i before e, except after c, but also in a bunch of other words, so every English student just needs to remember those.
      - CRConrad 2y ago
        Yeah, maybe not the best examples. There are other "-ite" words, but I can't recall off the top of my head any such that also have "-ism" forms. It is, as always with languages, "just the way it is": I've always seen it rendered as "Luddite", never "-ist". (Maybe because it's named for a person, not a thing or principle? Tried to hint at that possibility with his full name.) Yup, English may be the most inconsistent of languages. When I was a kid, we used to blame French for being "just exceptions to rules, exceptions to exceptions, and exceptions to those exceptions!", but with a few decades of perspective... Nope, English is far worse.
- mhh__ 2y ago
  The people who are lazy but have taste will do well, then.
- Adiqq 2y ago
  Isn't it expected that most, if not all, of the content will be produced by AI/AGI in the near future? It won't matter much, if you're lazy or not. It leads to the question, what we'll do instead? People may want to be productive, but we're observing in real-time how world is going shit for workers and that's basically fact for many reasons. One reason is that it's cheaper to use AI, even if the result is poor. It doesn't have to be high quality, because most of the time we don't care about quality, unless something interests us. I wonder what kind of shift in power dynamics will occur, but so far it looks just like many of us will just lose a job. There's no UBI (or social credit proposed by Douglas), salaries are low and not everyone lives in good location, but corporations try to enforce RTO. Some will simply get fired and won't be able to find a new job (that won't be sustainable for personal budget, unless someone already has low costs of living and is debt-free or has somewhat wealthy family that will cover for you). Well, maybe at least government will protect us? Low chance, world is shifting right and it will get worse, once we start to experience more and more results of global warming. I don't see scenario, where world is becoming better place in foreseeable future. We're trapped in society of achievement, but soon we may be not able to deliver achievements, because if business can get similar results for fraction of the price (that is needed to hire human workers), then guess what will happen? These are sad times, full of depression and suffering. I hope that some huge transformation in societies will happen soon or that AI development slows down, so that some future generation will have to deal with consequences (people will prioritize saving their own and it won't be pretty, so it's better to just pass it down like debt).
  - eschaton 2y ago
    Why would this be expected?
im_down_w_otp 2y ago
This happens with every inane hype-cycle. I suspect people don't particularly hate or despise LLMs per se. They're probably reacting mostly to "tech industry" boom-bust bullsh*tter/guru culture. Especially since the cycles seem to burn increasingly hotter and brighter the less actual, practical value they provide. Which is supremely annoying when the second-order effect is having all the oxygen (e.g. capital) sucked out of the room for pretty much anything else.
mhh__ 2y ago
I can think of some runaway scenario's where LLMs are definitely bad but, indeed, this particular line of criticism is really just luddites longing for a world that probably doesn't exist anymore. These are the people who regulate and legislate for us, they are the risk-adverse fools who would rather things be nice and harmless lest they be bad but work. Personally, I think my only serious ideology in this area is that I am fundamentally biased towards the power of human agency. I'd rather not need to, but in a (perhaps) Nietzschean sense I view so-called AI as a force multiplier to totally avoid the above people. AI will enable the creative to be more concrete, and drag those on the other end of the scale towards the normie mean. This is of great relevance to the developing world too - AI may end up a tool for enforcing western culture upon the rest of the world but perhaps a force decorrelating it from the McKinsey's of tall buildings in big cities.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

vunderba 2y ago

I agree, but I think my biggest issue with LLMs (and a lot of GenAI) is that they act as a massive accelerator for the WORST (and unfortunately most common) type of human - the lazy one. The signal-to-noise ratio just goes completely out of control. https://journal.everypixel.com/ai-image-statistics https://journal.everypixel.com/ai-image-statistics

greenavocado 2y ago
Exif watermark by the generators would solve 90% of the problem in one fell swoop because lazy people won't remove it
- minimaxir 2y ago
  Every image host and social media app automatically strips EXIF data (for privacy reasons at minimum).
  - greenavocado 2y ago
    Stenography with a known signature perhaps
    - layer8 2y ago
      Still easily defeated when the scheme is known.
      - greenavocado 2y ago
        My point is most won't bother
        layer8 2y ago
        Well, it’s a cat and mouse game. They will start to bother when not doing so starts having consequences for them.
Der_Einzige 2y ago
Sorry but the "lazy is bad" crowd is ludditism in another form, and it's telling that a whole lot of very smart people were passionate defenders of being lazy! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Use_of_Human_Beings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Use_of_Human_Beings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventing_the_Future:_Postcapitalism_and_a_World_Without_Work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inventing_the_Future:_Postcapi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_to_Be_Lazy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_to_Be_Lazy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Praise_of_Idleness_and_Other_Essays https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Praise_of_Idleness_and_Othe... (That's Bertrand Russell) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Abolition_of_Work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Abolition_of_Work https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Society_of_the_Spectacle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonjour_paresse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonjour_paresse AI systems are literally the most amazing technology on earth for this exact reason. I am so glad that it is destroying the minds of time thieves world-wide!
- CRConrad 2y ago
  > the "lazy is bad" crowd is ludditism in another form Capital --> capitalist, capitalism. Commune --> communist, communism. Ned Ludd --> Luddite, Luddism. Not "capitalistism" or "communistism", so not "ludditism" either.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    Going by your other examples, shouldn't it be Luddist and not Luddite? English is famously inconsistent and is a difficult language to learn, owing to it's linguistic heritage, as it's a bunch of exceptions to rules. Like i before e, except after c, but also in a bunch of other words, so every English student just needs to remember those.
    - CRConrad 2y ago
      Yeah, maybe not the best examples. There are other "-ite" words, but I can't recall off the top of my head any such that also have "-ism" forms. It is, as always with languages, "just the way it is": I've always seen it rendered as "Luddite", never "-ist". (Maybe because it's named for a person, not a thing or principle? Tried to hint at that possibility with his full name.) Yup, English may be the most inconsistent of languages. When I was a kid, we used to blame French for being "just exceptions to rules, exceptions to exceptions, and exceptions to those exceptions!", but with a few decades of perspective... Nope, English is far worse.
mhh__ 2y ago
The people who are lazy but have taste will do well, then.
Adiqq 2y ago
Isn't it expected that most, if not all, of the content will be produced by AI/AGI in the near future? It won't matter much, if you're lazy or not. It leads to the question, what we'll do instead? People may want to be productive, but we're observing in real-time how world is going shit for workers and that's basically fact for many reasons. One reason is that it's cheaper to use AI, even if the result is poor. It doesn't have to be high quality, because most of the time we don't care about quality, unless something interests us. I wonder what kind of shift in power dynamics will occur, but so far it looks just like many of us will just lose a job. There's no UBI (or social credit proposed by Douglas), salaries are low and not everyone lives in good location, but corporations try to enforce RTO. Some will simply get fired and won't be able to find a new job (that won't be sustainable for personal budget, unless someone already has low costs of living and is debt-free or has somewhat wealthy family that will cover for you). Well, maybe at least government will protect us? Low chance, world is shifting right and it will get worse, once we start to experience more and more results of global warming. I don't see scenario, where world is becoming better place in foreseeable future. We're trapped in society of achievement, but soon we may be not able to deliver achievements, because if business can get similar results for fraction of the price (that is needed to hire human workers), then guess what will happen? These are sad times, full of depression and suffering. I hope that some huge transformation in societies will happen soon or that AI development slows down, so that some future generation will have to deal with consequences (people will prioritize saving their own and it won't be pretty, so it's better to just pass it down like debt).
- eschaton 2y ago
  Why would this be expected?

im_down_w_otp 2y ago

This happens with every inane hype-cycle. I suspect people don't particularly hate or despise LLMs per se. They're probably reacting mostly to "tech industry" boom-bust bullsh*tter/guru culture. Especially since the cycles seem to burn increasingly hotter and brighter the less actual, practical value they provide. Which is supremely annoying when the second-order effect is having all the oxygen (e.g. capital) sucked out of the room for pretty much anything else.

mhh__ 2y ago

I can think of some runaway scenario's where LLMs are definitely bad but, indeed, this particular line of criticism is really just luddites longing for a world that probably doesn't exist anymore. These are the people who regulate and legislate for us, they are the risk-adverse fools who would rather things be nice and harmless lest they be bad but work. Personally, I think my only serious ideology in this area is that I am fundamentally biased towards the power of human agency. I'd rather not need to, but in a (perhaps) Nietzschean sense I view so-called AI as a force multiplier to totally avoid the above people. AI will enable the creative to be more concrete, and drag those on the other end of the scale towards the normie mean. This is of great relevance to the developing world too - AI may end up a tool for enforcing western culture upon the rest of the world but perhaps a force decorrelating it from the McKinsey's of tall buildings in big cities.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]