Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world

thebullshitmachines.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 652 posts

Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world

#21

Post by XorNot »

KronisLV wrote: post #11

This is a pretty admirable goal! I'm saying this unironically, but I wish there were courses on looking at information critically and more in how to have a healthy and safe life in the modern day world (including things like data security, how to deal with social media etc.) that would be taught to everyone in schools/colleges/universities. In my country, there are still public announcements about not trusting random…

Most scam prevention fails though because the world is full of exceptions.

Like it's mind-blowing to me that charities still call you and ask for credit card details over the phone and this is like...a legitimate way to go about things.

Or that any government agency calls you and doesn't just leave a verifiable number to call the operator back on.

Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world

#22

Post by anon373839 »

joshdavham wrote: post #16

Do you feel that you may be being a bit provocative by calling LLM's 'bullshit machines'? I understand the frustration as I've been bullshitted by these models just as much as the next programmer, but surely with recent advancements in RAG and reasoning, they're not just 'bullshit machines' at this point, are they?

“Bullshit” actually means something:

> In philosophy and psychology of cognition, the term "bullshit" is sometimes used to specifically refer to statements produced without particular concern for truth, clarity, or meaning, distinguishing "bullshit" from a deliberate, manipulative lie intended to subvert the truth.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit

It’s really an ideal term to describe what LLMs do.

Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world

#23

Post by nonrandomstring »

KronisLV wrote: post #11

This is a pretty admirable goal! I'm saying this unironically, but I wish there were courses on looking at information critically and more in how to have a healthy and safe life in the modern day world (including things like data security, how to deal with social media etc.) that would be taught to everyone in schools/colleges/universities. In my country, there are still public announcements about not trusting random…

We do that, and have been doing it since 2013. I organised a schools outreach visit just last Friday for 12-14 yo. It's called "digital self defence". We even have public money from our NCSC (UK whitehat intelligence outreach).

As with TFA (Bergstrom and West) teaching sceptical inquiry and critical thinking is a major part. We have to undo a lot of nonsense that they've already been exposed to... much of which is marketing bullshit and misinformation for social control.

Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world

#24

Post by Angostura »

I just wanted to thank you. I have only looked at the first two lessons so far, but this is an extraordinary piece of work, in its message’s clarity, accessibility and the quality of analysis. I will certainly be spreading it far and wide and it is making me rethink my own writing.

Impressed with the Shorthand publishing system too. I hadn’t come across it previously

Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world

#26

Post by BrenBarn »

joshdavham wrote: post #16

Do you feel that you may be being a bit provocative by calling LLM's 'bullshit machines'? I understand the frustration as I've been bullshitted by these models just as much as the next programmer, but surely with recent advancements in RAG and reasoning, they're not just 'bullshit machines' at this point, are they?

Yes, they are.

Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world

#27

Post by teknopaul »

LLMs pattern match, they say something that sounds good at this point but with no notion of correct. copilot is like pair programming with a loud pushy intern that has seen you write stuff before didn't understand it, but keeps suggesting what to do anyway. some medium sized chunks of code can be delegated but everyline it writes needs careful review.

Crazy tech, but companies are just wring to be trying to use LLMs as any kind of source of truth. Even Google is blind enough to think that aí could be used for search results, which are memes they are soo bad. And they won't get better. They just become more convincing

Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world

#28

Post by immibis »

joshdavham wrote: post #16

Do you feel that you may be being a bit provocative by calling LLM's 'bullshit machines'? I understand the frustration as I've been bullshitted by these models just as much as the next programmer, but surely with recent advancements in RAG and reasoning, they're not just 'bullshit machines' at this point, are they?

It is literally a machine that says what you want to hear. Was anyone in this thread around for Talk to Transformer? Remember the unicorns demo? They may have now figured out how to wrangle the technology so it's more likely to spit facts, but it's still the same thing underneath.

Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world

#29

Post by teknopaul »

teknopaul wrote: post #27

LLMs pattern match, they say something that sounds good at this point but with no notion of correct. copilot is like pair programming with a loud pushy intern that has seen you write stuff before didn't understand it, but keeps suggesting what to do anyway. some medium sized chunks of code can be delegated but everyline it writes needs careful review. Crazy tech, but companies are just wring to be trying to use LLMs…

Not important once has copilot ever suggested a correction, found a bug, noticed a typo, prompted for a better solution, which is what any human pair programmer would do. It's a tool. But thinking ng it's like a "copilot" marketing as such is fundamentally missing the point. It won't get better untill people recognise what it _can't_ do as much as what it appears it can do.

Re: Modern-Day Oracles or Bullshit Machines? How to thrive in a ChatGPT world

#30

Post by abmmgb »

Your site looks cool! Nice topic!

Some of them just try to predict the most likely next word.

With reasoning and pause for thought they are becoming more capable.

Most likely there is a big element of hype but the way you use them can make them really useful and accelerate your work.

I recommend the CoIntelligent book for newbie like myself.

Post reply on HN