| ▲ | imiric 6 days ago | |
> The sooner people stop worrying about a label for what you feel fits LLMs best, the sooner they can find the things they (LLMs) absolutely excel at and improve their (the user's) workflows. This is not a fault of the users. These labels are pushed primarily by "AI" companies in order to hype their products to be far more capable than they are, which in turn increases their financial valuation. Starting with "AI" itself, "superintelligence", "reasoning", "chain of thought", "mixture of experts", and a bunch of other labels that anthropomorphize and aggrandize their products. This is a grifting tactic old as time itself. From Sam Altman[1]: > We are past the event horizon; the takeoff has started. Humanity is close to building digital superintelligence Apologists will say "they're just words that best describe these products", repeat Dijkstra's "submarines don't swim" quote, but all of this is missing the point. These words are used deliberately because of their association to human concepts, when in reality the way the products work is not even close to what those words mean. In fact, the fuzzier the word's definition ("intelligence", "reasoning", "thought"), the more valuable it is, since it makes the product sound mysterious and magical, and makes it easier to shake off critics. This is an absolutely insidious marketing tactic. The sooner companies start promoting their products honestly, the sooner their products will actually benefit humanity. Until then, we'll keep drowning in disinformation, and reaping the consequences of an unregulated marketplace of grifters. | ||