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The LLMentalist Effect (2023)

235 points · 309 comments · jalev

  1. bonoboTP · · focus · HN ↗
    I don't care if it's "intelligent", I don't care if it "has a mind". I don't care if it is "really reasoning", I don't care if it "understands". I don't care if it is "sentient" or "conscious".

    None of this matters for the practical outcome.

    You'd think that this has been understood over the last 4 years, but apparently it keeps circling back to this.

    [Edit: I see that it was written back in 2023. Then (2023) should be added in the submission title]

    If it generates functional output that works, then it works. And it works. It's not a psychic's con when it outputs Lean-verified proofs. It isn't a con when it can find and exploit zero-days.

    The OP is still in the "denial" phase. Most I see are already in "anger" (a blurry fury against everything AI-shaped, from vague reasons piling on all "bad stuff" political reasons they already hated before) or "bargaining" (mathematicians scrambling to come up with a new definition of their job and retcon that it was always the main part anyway). A few are already in "depression" and feel like spectators on the Titanic, and the tiniest sliver is at "acceptance" with some kind of well-informed plan for their future.

    1. zkry · · focus · HN ↗
      > The OP is still in the "denial" phase.

      This was written in July 2023. ChatGPT was released November 2022. No matter your views on AI, surely you can't blame the OP for writing this after a few months ChatGPT was released.

      1. bonoboTP · · focus · HN ↗
        Apologies. The title should be amended with (2023). In this case it is an interesting snapshot of the zeitgeist back then and we can see how well it panned out and whether anyone involved has updated on new info.
        1. woah · · focus · HN ↗
          For some reason the anti-AI camp ping pongs between different and often mutually incompatible arguments at lightning speed. The "AI is fake" argument has been completely forgotten at this point.
          1. senordevnyc · · focus · HN ↗
            Nah, you still see those people posting here, saying that LLMs are useless for coding. I have no idea what they’re on about at this point.
          2. bigbadfeline · · focus · HN ↗
            > For some reason the anti-AI camp ping pongs

            Is the anti-AI camp with us in the room right now? Or is it a crude strawman to summarily denigrate any objections to certain features of current AI?

            AI isn't some homogeneous mass, it can have good and bad sides, and it's always amendable to improvement. Treating the current state of AI as the only possible hides the very idea of improvement.

            > between different and often mutually incompatible arguments at lightning speed.

            Of course - there's no homogeneous AI camp either, but there are bot farms, sh^t-posters and sh^t-posting bot farms, different entities with different opinions should not be mistaken for a single stream changing at "lightning speed".

          3. Yizahi · · focus · HN ↗
            You are confusing multiple people making multiple different arguments, and those people your are talking about often aren't articulate enough about their ideas.

            There are many mutually independent opinions about AI from IT crowd.

            - AI is extremely useful for many individuals.

            - AI is extremely damaging to our society as a whole.

            - AI companies possibly may be (or at least were) deep in red and possibly would require bailing out.

            - AI is not going anywhere.

            - A person can use AI extensively AND genuinely hate it and forecast general economic slump because of it at the same time.

            And likely many other ideas in the same vein. And by the way, I'm not here saying that I'm anywhere good about describing the issues about AI, those items above are just some examples to illustrate the scope of opinions.

            My point is that you can't just take one single argument from a big group of people, deconstruct it (correctly or incorrectly, it doesn't matter) and then claim that ALL arguments of such big group of people are false. It's not a constructive dialog.

            PS: also despite the accusations of goal-post shifting, a vast majority of opinions here on HN didn't actually change over the past few years.

          4. watwut · · focus · HN ↗
            A person accirately describing highly hyped project is ... a person accurately describing flaws of that thing.
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