LLMs cannot think, they just guess with some magic with the help of things like softmax (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softmax_function), that makes it seem intelligent.

We aren't enslaved or at any risk just yet with this form of "thinking machine", but we do need to culutrally and emotionally come to terms with them.

Let's not have any other "jihad" just yet, there's plenty of other jihads going on right now.

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thih9 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Note that the article doesn’t say that AI itself would do the enslavement; on the contrary:

> With the rise of AI came the rise of a technocratic class that created and controlled these machines, leading to oppressive structures over knowledge and the economy.

It also quotes Dune, where it is said more directly:

> Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.

	▲	willis936 34 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		I really despise when the term technocrat is misused. It has a very specific meaning in politics and is nowhere near "broligarch", "plutocrat from the tech industry", or any of the thousand different, legitimate ways to describe what people sometimes mean when they mistakenly say "technocrat". How can a political opinion be taken seriously when this extremely basic level of literacy on the topic is missing?

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khafra 36 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

When "guess with some magic" can solve long-standing problems in mathematics that no human had been able to, it seems fair to ask whether it's approaching risky levels of intelligence.

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endymion-light 20 minutes ago | parent [-]

I mean we've been using technology to solve long-standing problems in mathematics that no human had been able to do for years. Is Deep Blue sentient because it can beat any human at chess?

	▲	ainch 4 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Deep Blue's strength was leveraging massive compute to execute a task-specific, human-written algorithm. The problems which LLMs are tackling don't elude mathematicians because they require too much number-crunching, but because they demand creative problem solving. The latter seems more profound, even if it doesn't imply sentience.

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keiferski 41 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Man it annoys me to no end that this basic fact is so under discussed.

It’s as if calling something AI is all that’s needed to justify it being the same thing as Skynet, Dune automation, Terminators, Neuromancer, and every other cultural trope using the label of AI.

The ultimate fact is that LLMs are a pretty powerful technology that has little to nothing to do with most fictional depictions of intelligent machines.

Sloppy thinking all the way down.