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No contradiction here: When we say “machine”, we mean deterministic algorithms and predictable mechanisms. Generative AI is neither of those things (in theory

No contradiction here: When we say “machine”, we mean deterministic algorithms and predictable mechanisms. Generative AI is neither of those things (in theory it is deterministic but not for any practical applications). If we order by predictability: Quick Sort > Brenda > Gen AI

dsr_ 11mo ago
There are two kinds of reliability: Machine reliability does the same thing the same way every time. If there's an error on some input, it will always make that error on that input, and somebody can investigate it and fix it, and then it will never make that error again. Human reliability does the job even when there are weird variances or things nobody bothered to check for. If the printer runs out of paper, the human goes to the supply cabinet and gets out paper and if there is no paper the human decides whether to run out right now and buy more paper or postpone the print job until tomorrow; possibly they decide that the printing doesn't need to be done at all, or they go downstairs and use a different printer... Humans make errors but they fix them. LLMs are not machine reliable and not human reliable.
- anonzzzies 11mo ago
  > . If the printer runs out of paper, the human goes to the supply cabinet and gets out paper and if there is no paper the human decides Sure, these humans exists, but the others, that I happen to encounter every day unfortunately, are the ones that go into broken mode immediately when something is unexpected. Today I ordered something they ran out of and the girl behind the counter just stared in The Deep not having a clue what to do now. Do or say. Or yesterday at dinner, the PoS (on batteries) ran out of power when I tried to pay for dinner. The guy just walked off and went outside for a smoke. I stood there with waiting to pay. The owner apologized and fixed it after a while but I am saying, the employee who runs out of paper and then finds and puts more paper in is not very ... common... In the real world.
  - some_guy_in_ca 11mo ago
    Alignment problem? JK
  - cwillu 11mo ago
    “You get what you pay for” applies in spades to customer-facing staff.
- insane_dreamer 11mo ago
  Or the human might take the printer out back with his buddies and smash it to bits ;)
  - dsr_ 11mo ago
    Sometimes it's the only sane response.
afandian 11mo ago
I was brought up on the refrain of "aren't computers silly, they do exactly what you tell them to do to the letter, even if it's not what you meant". That had its roots in computers mostly being programmable BASIC machines. Then came the apps and notifications, and we had to caveat "... when you're writing programs". Which is a diminishing part of the computer experience. And now we have to append "... unless you're using AI tools". The distinction is clear to technical people. But it seems like an increasingly niche and alien thing from the broader societal perspective. I think we need a new refrain, because with the AI stuff it increasingly seems "computers do what they want, don't even get it right, but pretend that they did."
- Lord-Jobo 11mo ago
  We have absolutely descended, and rapidly, into “computers do whatever the fuck they want and there’s nothing you can do about it” in the past 5 years, and gen AI is only half of the problem. The other half comes from how incredibly opinionated and controlling the tech giants have become. Microsoft doesn’t even ALLOW consent on windows (yes or maybe later), Google is doing all it can to turn the entire internet into a chrome-only experience, and Apple has to be fought for an entire decade to allow users to place app icons wherever they want on their Home Screen. There is no question that the overly explicit quirky paradigm of the past was better for almost everyone. It allowed for user control and user expression, but apparently those concepts are bad for the wallet of big tech so they have to go. Generative AI is just the latest biggest nail in the coffin.
  - ryandrake 11mo ago
    We have come a LONG way from the "Where do you want to go today?" of the 90s. Now, it's "You're going where we tell you that you can go, whether you like it or not!"
    - afandian 11mo ago
      Flash-backs to dial-up and making sure I had my list of websites written down and ready for when I connected.
deleted 11mo ago
[deleted]
philipallstar 11mo ago
> If we order by predictability: > Quick Sort > Brenda > Gen AI Those last two might be the wrong way round.
stavros 11mo ago
If you think programs are predictable, I have a bridge to sell you. The only relevant metric here is how often each thing makes mistakes. Programs are the most reliable, though far from 100%, humans are much less than that, and LLMs are around the level of humans, depending on the humans and the LLM.
- watwut 11mo ago
  When human makes a mistake, we call it a mistake. When human lies, we call it a lie. In both cases, we blame the human. When LLM does the same, we call it hallucination and blame the human.
  - raincole 11mo ago
    Which is the correct reaction, because LLM isn't a human and can't be held accountable.
- wat10000 11mo ago
  Programs can be very close to 100% reliable when made well. In my life, I've never seen `sort` produce output that wasn't properly sorted. I've never seen a calculator come up with the wrong answer when adding two numbers. I have seen filesystems fail to produce the exact same data that was previously written, but this is something that happens once in a blue moon, and the process is done probably millions of times a day on my computers. There are bugs, but bugs can be reduced to a very low level with time, effort, and motivation. And technically, most bugs are predictable in theory, they just aren't known ahead of time. There are hardware issues, but those are usually extremely rare. Nothing is 100% predictable, but software can get to a point that's almost indistinguishable.
  - stavros 11mo ago
    > Programs can be very close to 100% reliable when made well. This is a tautology. > I've never seen a calculator come up with the wrong answer when adding two numbers. https://imgz.org/i6XLg7Fz.png https://imgz.org/i6XLg7Fz.png > And technically, most bugs are predictable in theory, they just aren't known ahead of time. When we're talking about reliability, it doesn't matter whether a thing can be reliable in theory, it matters whether it's reliable in practice. Software is unreliable, humans are unreliable, LLMs are unreliable. To claim otherwise is just wishful thinking.
hunterpayne 11mo ago
Nit: no ML is deterministic in any way. Anything that is Generative AI is ML. This fact is literally built into the algorithms at the mathematical level.
- 1718627440 11mo ago
  First, they all add a source of randomness, and second deterministic according to the users model. A pseudo-random number generator is also deterministic in the technical sense, but for the user it isn't. When the user can't reason about it, it isn't deterministic to them.

dsr_ 11mo ago

There are two kinds of reliability: Machine reliability does the same thing the same way every time. If there's an error on some input, it will always make that error on that input, and somebody can investigate it and fix it, and then it will never make that error again. Human reliability does the job even when there are weird variances or things nobody bothered to check for. If the printer runs out of paper, the human goes to the supply cabinet and gets out paper and if there is no paper the human decides whether to run out right now and buy more paper or postpone the print job until tomorrow; possibly they decide that the printing doesn't need to be done at all, or they go downstairs and use a different printer... Humans make errors but they fix them. LLMs are not machine reliable and not human reliable.

anonzzzies 11mo ago
> . If the printer runs out of paper, the human goes to the supply cabinet and gets out paper and if there is no paper the human decides Sure, these humans exists, but the others, that I happen to encounter every day unfortunately, are the ones that go into broken mode immediately when something is unexpected. Today I ordered something they ran out of and the girl behind the counter just stared in The Deep not having a clue what to do now. Do or say. Or yesterday at dinner, the PoS (on batteries) ran out of power when I tried to pay for dinner. The guy just walked off and went outside for a smoke. I stood there with waiting to pay. The owner apologized and fixed it after a while but I am saying, the employee who runs out of paper and then finds and puts more paper in is not very ... common... In the real world.
- some_guy_in_ca 11mo ago
  Alignment problem? JK
- cwillu 11mo ago
  “You get what you pay for” applies in spades to customer-facing staff.
insane_dreamer 11mo ago
Or the human might take the printer out back with his buddies and smash it to bits ;)
- dsr_ 11mo ago
  Sometimes it's the only sane response.

afandian 11mo ago

I was brought up on the refrain of "aren't computers silly, they do exactly what you tell them to do to the letter, even if it's not what you meant". That had its roots in computers mostly being programmable BASIC machines. Then came the apps and notifications, and we had to caveat "... when you're writing programs". Which is a diminishing part of the computer experience. And now we have to append "... unless you're using AI tools". The distinction is clear to technical people. But it seems like an increasingly niche and alien thing from the broader societal perspective. I think we need a new refrain, because with the AI stuff it increasingly seems "computers do what they want, don't even get it right, but pretend that they did."

Lord-Jobo 11mo ago
We have absolutely descended, and rapidly, into “computers do whatever the fuck they want and there’s nothing you can do about it” in the past 5 years, and gen AI is only half of the problem. The other half comes from how incredibly opinionated and controlling the tech giants have become. Microsoft doesn’t even ALLOW consent on windows (yes or maybe later), Google is doing all it can to turn the entire internet into a chrome-only experience, and Apple has to be fought for an entire decade to allow users to place app icons wherever they want on their Home Screen. There is no question that the overly explicit quirky paradigm of the past was better for almost everyone. It allowed for user control and user expression, but apparently those concepts are bad for the wallet of big tech so they have to go. Generative AI is just the latest biggest nail in the coffin.
- ryandrake 11mo ago
  We have come a LONG way from the "Where do you want to go today?" of the 90s. Now, it's "You're going where we tell you that you can go, whether you like it or not!"
  - afandian 11mo ago
    Flash-backs to dial-up and making sure I had my list of websites written down and ready for when I connected.

deleted 11mo ago

[deleted]

philipallstar 11mo ago

> If we order by predictability: > Quick Sort > Brenda > Gen AI Those last two might be the wrong way round.

stavros 11mo ago

If you think programs are predictable, I have a bridge to sell you. The only relevant metric here is how often each thing makes mistakes. Programs are the most reliable, though far from 100%, humans are much less than that, and LLMs are around the level of humans, depending on the humans and the LLM.

watwut 11mo ago
When human makes a mistake, we call it a mistake. When human lies, we call it a lie. In both cases, we blame the human. When LLM does the same, we call it hallucination and blame the human.
- raincole 11mo ago
  Which is the correct reaction, because LLM isn't a human and can't be held accountable.
wat10000 11mo ago
Programs can be very close to 100% reliable when made well. In my life, I've never seen `sort` produce output that wasn't properly sorted. I've never seen a calculator come up with the wrong answer when adding two numbers. I have seen filesystems fail to produce the exact same data that was previously written, but this is something that happens once in a blue moon, and the process is done probably millions of times a day on my computers. There are bugs, but bugs can be reduced to a very low level with time, effort, and motivation. And technically, most bugs are predictable in theory, they just aren't known ahead of time. There are hardware issues, but those are usually extremely rare. Nothing is 100% predictable, but software can get to a point that's almost indistinguishable.
- stavros 11mo ago
  > Programs can be very close to 100% reliable when made well. This is a tautology. > I've never seen a calculator come up with the wrong answer when adding two numbers. https://imgz.org/i6XLg7Fz.png https://imgz.org/i6XLg7Fz.png > And technically, most bugs are predictable in theory, they just aren't known ahead of time. When we're talking about reliability, it doesn't matter whether a thing can be reliable in theory, it matters whether it's reliable in practice. Software is unreliable, humans are unreliable, LLMs are unreliable. To claim otherwise is just wishful thinking.

hunterpayne 11mo ago

Nit: no ML is deterministic in any way. Anything that is Generative AI is ML. This fact is literally built into the algorithms at the mathematical level.

1718627440 11mo ago
First, they all add a source of randomness, and second deterministic according to the users model. A pseudo-random number generator is also deterministic in the technical sense, but for the user it isn't. When the user can't reason about it, it isn't deterministic to them.