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Humans have been programming other humans since the beginning of our time (and arguably other species too[0]). The irony that the affiliate link was for a book

Humans have been programming other humans since the beginning of our time (and arguably other species too[0]). The irony that the affiliate link was for a book about this exact topic, just fantastic. LLMs are truly memetic machines, the best we’ve created so far. What’s the difference between a bot and a human who parrots other humans? Is agency+novelty the new version of the Turing test? [0] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bonobo-calls-are-more-like-human-language-than-we-thought/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bonobo-calls-are-...

sho_hn 2y ago
> Humans have been programming other humans since the beginning of our time (and arguably other species too[0]). There's the often-captured idea that social interaction (including the ability to reason about what information another being is in possession of, being able to empathize with their viewpoint, anticipate their reactions, and use all of this to manipulate their next set of actions) is perhaps the main driver of intelligence explosion in humans, birds and other noticably more intelligent animals. I find that interesting because if you look into the SciFi golden age notion of what the Intelligent Machines era would be like, Asimov-style, you usually get depictions of cooly calculating and reasoning, maximally logical machine beings. Yet what we've actually been able to create is mushy, vibe-y text generators that excel at generating manipulative slop. Maybe it's not a coincidence, but somehow echoing the general thrust of higher intelligence.
Aurornis 2y ago
> LLMs are truly memetic machines, the best we’ve created so far. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s more likely this post is just recycled from some past post that did well, rather than written from-scratch by an LLM. The rest of the account’s posts are just recycled old posts that did well. Simplest explanation is that this one is too.
- jumploops 2y ago
  Agreed, this has been happening since long before LLMs existed. I did a quick search for the affiliate tag noted in the blog post, and found another Redditor complaining about that same affiliate tag, but from three other accounts[0]. My fascination is that, with LLMs, the line between obvious bot regurgitation and seemingly human posts is now much thinner. The fact that the Reddit post was an affiliate link for Edward Bernays' Propaganda is just the cherry on top, in this case it's like selling ice to eskimos. [0]https://www.reddit.com/r/TheseFuckingAccounts/comments/1giyl4n/interesting_side_hustle_with_amazon_affiliate_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheseFuckingAccounts/comments/1giyl...

sho_hn 2y ago

> Humans have been programming other humans since the beginning of our time (and arguably other species too[0]). There's the often-captured idea that social interaction (including the ability to reason about what information another being is in possession of, being able to empathize with their viewpoint, anticipate their reactions, and use all of this to manipulate their next set of actions) is perhaps the main driver of intelligence explosion in humans, birds and other noticably more intelligent animals. I find that interesting because if you look into the SciFi golden age notion of what the Intelligent Machines era would be like, Asimov-style, you usually get depictions of cooly calculating and reasoning, maximally logical machine beings. Yet what we've actually been able to create is mushy, vibe-y text generators that excel at generating manipulative slop. Maybe it's not a coincidence, but somehow echoing the general thrust of higher intelligence.

Aurornis 2y ago

> LLMs are truly memetic machines, the best we’ve created so far. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s more likely this post is just recycled from some past post that did well, rather than written from-scratch by an LLM. The rest of the account’s posts are just recycled old posts that did well. Simplest explanation is that this one is too.

jumploops 2y ago
Agreed, this has been happening since long before LLMs existed. I did a quick search for the affiliate tag noted in the blog post, and found another Redditor complaining about that same affiliate tag, but from three other accounts[0]. My fascination is that, with LLMs, the line between obvious bot regurgitation and seemingly human posts is now much thinner. The fact that the Reddit post was an affiliate link for Edward Bernays' Propaganda is just the cherry on top, in this case it's like selling ice to eskimos. [0]https://www.reddit.com/r/TheseFuckingAccounts/comments/1giyl4n/interesting_side_hustle_with_amazon_affiliate_and/ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheseFuckingAccounts/comments/1giyl...