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Local LLMs versus offline Wikipedia

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Re: Local LLMs versus offline Wikipedia

#111

Post by WaxProlix »

troupo wrote: post #103
0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone should start a company selling USB sticks pre-loaded with lots of prepper knowledge of this type. In addition to making money, your USB sticks could make a real difference in the event of a global catastrophe. You could sell the USB stick in a little box which protects it from electromagnetic interference in the event of a solar flare or EMP. I suppose the most important knowledge to preserve is knowledge abo…

> Someone should start a company selling USB sticks pre-loaded with lots of prepper knowledge of this type. It amuses me to no end that people think civilization will collapse but they will still have access to robotics and working computers to peruse USB sticks at their leisure.

Many preppers work towards this goal so it's not unreasonable if you've already made the leap to 'something bad happened but I survived with my house/bunker/bug out bag/whatever'. I'm not really a prepper at all and even I've got a little solar capacity, batteries and such.

Re: Local LLMs versus offline Wikipedia

#112

Post by 0xDEAFBEAD »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #93
simonw wrote: post #4

This is a sensible comparison. My "help reboot society with the help of my little USB stick" thing was a throwaway remark to the journalist at a random point in the interview, I didn't anticipate them using it in the article! https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/07/17/1120391/how-to-r... A bunch of people have pointed out that downloading Wikipedia itself onto a USB stick is sensible, and I agree with them. Wikipedi…

Someone should start a company selling USB sticks pre-loaded with lots of prepper knowledge of this type. In addition to making money, your USB sticks could make a real difference in the event of a global catastrophe. You could sell the USB stick in a little box which protects it from electromagnetic interference in the event of a solar flare or EMP. I suppose the most important knowledge to preserve is knowledge abo…

BTW, just for some perspective here. According to Our World in Data, your annual probability of dying in a road accident might be on the order of 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 100,000:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-road-incident...

Compare with coronal mass ejection:

"In 2019, researchers used an alternative method (Weibull distribution) and estimated the chance of Earth being hit by a Carrington-class storm in the next decade to be between 0.46% and 1.88%.[45]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_mass_ejection#Future_r...

If we take that number at face value and annualize it, your annual risk of seeing a serious solar storm (power restoration could take months or years) is on the order of 1 in 1,000. 10-100x more likely than dying in a road accident.

So why is it that you wear a seatbelt, yet we're not prepping for a serious solar storm? Humans are much better at thinking about "ordinary" recurring risks like car accidents, than "extraordinary" civilization-scale risks.

Re: Local LLMs versus offline Wikipedia

#113

Post by soraminazuki »

redserk wrote: post #51
ranger_danger wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> LLMs will return faulty or imprecise information at times To be fair, so do humans and wikipedia.

It appears there's an expectation many non-tech people have that humans can be incorrect but refuse to hold LLMs to the same standard, despite warnings.

Well, even among tech people, equating the role of computers to be that of a crystal ball would've gotten anyone laughed out of the tech community a few years ago. Yet, here we are.

Re: Local LLMs versus offline Wikipedia

#114

Post by vlovich123 »

1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #105
gretch wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely sounds like a plausible and fun episode. On the other hand, real history if filled with all sorts of things being treated as a god that were much worse than "unreliable computer". For example, a lot of times it's just a human with malice. So how bad could it really get

"Definitely sounds like a plausible and fun episode." There were several original Star Trek episodes that explored this scenario. Not plausible. Actual. "So how bad could it really get" Watch Rodenberry's orginal Star Trek to get some ideas.

It’s important not to confuse entertainment with a serious understanding of the consequences of systems. For example, Asimov’s three rules are great narrative tools because they’re easy for everyone to understand and provide great fodder for creatively figuring out how to violate those rules. They in no way inform you about the practical issues of building robots from an ethical perspective nor in understanding the real failure modes of robots. Same with philosophy and self driving cars - everyone brings up the trolley problem which turns out to be a non issue because robotic cars avoid the trolley problem way in advance and just try to lower the energy in the system as quickly as possible vs trying to solve the ethics.

Re: Local LLMs versus offline Wikipedia

#115

Post by MangoToupe »

dcc wrote: post #7

One important distinction is that the strength of LLMs isn't just in storing or retrieving knowledge like Wikipedia, it’s in comprehension. LLMs will return faulty or imprecise information at times, but what they can do is understand vague or poorly formed questions and help guide a user toward an answer. They can explain complex ideas in simpler terms, adapt responses based on the user's level of understanding, and…

> You wouldn’t just have a frozen snapshot of knowledge, you’d have a tool that can help people use it, even if they’re starting with limited background.

I think the only way this is true is if you used the LLM as a search index for the frozen snapshot of knowledge. Any text generation would be directly harmful compared to ingesting the knowledge directly.

Anyway, in the long term the problem isn't the factual/fictional distinction problem, but the loss of sources that served to produce the text to begin with. We already see a small part of this in the form of dead links and out-of-print extinct texts. In many ways LLMs that generate text are just a crappy form of wikipedia with roughly the same tradeoffs.

Re: Local LLMs versus offline Wikipedia

#116

Post by MangoToupe »

jack_pp wrote: post #75
progval wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An unreliable computer treated as a god by a pre-information-age society sounds like a Star Trek episode.

Remember the first time you touched a computer, the first game you ever played or the first little script you wrote that did something useful. I imagine this is how a lot of people feel when using LLM's especially now that it's new. It is the most incredible technology ever created by this point in our history imo and the cynicism on HN is astounding to me.

> It is the most incredible technology ever created by this point in our history imo and the cynicism on HN is astounding to me.

TBH, I still think LLMs have a long way to go to catch up to the technology of wikipedia, let alone the internet. LLMs at their peak are roughly a crappy form of an encyclopedia. I think the interactivity really warps peoples perspective to view it as more impressive, but it's difficult to piece together any value as a knowledge-store that is as impressive as clicking around the internet from 20 years ago. Wikipedia has preserved this value the best over the years. It's quite frustrating how quickly obviously LLM-generated content has managed to steal search results with super-verbose content that doesn't actually provide any value.

EDIT: I suppose the single use case of "there's some information I need to store offline but that won't be on wikipedia" is a reasonable case, but what does this even look like? I don't use LLMs like that so I can't provide an example.

Here's an example: I was trying to figure out details about applying to a visa last week in a certain country. I googled the problem I was having, and the top five results or so were pages that managed to split the description of the problem I was having into about 5 sections of text, and introduced the text indicating that there should be a solution (thereby looking to search results like I might find the solution if I clicked through), but didn't provide any actual content indicating how to approach the problem, let alone solve it. And, of course, this is driving revenue to some interest somewhere despite actively clogging up the internet.

Meanwhile, the actual answer was on another country's FAQ—presumably written by a human—on like page three of the search results.

At least old human-generated content would waste your time before answering your question, aka "why does this recipe have a 5000 word essay before the ingredient list and instructions" problem.

Re: Local LLMs versus offline Wikipedia

#117

Post by matsemann »

fumeux_fume wrote: post #66
simonw wrote: post #4

This is a sensible comparison. My "help reboot society with the help of my little USB stick" thing was a throwaway remark to the journalist at a random point in the interview, I didn't anticipate them using it in the article! https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/07/17/1120391/how-to-r... A bunch of people have pointed out that downloading Wikipedia itself onto a USB stick is sensible, and I agree with them. Wikipedi…

Of course that’s angle they decide to open the article from. That they feel the need to frame these tools using the most grandiose terms bothers me. How does it make you feel?

I was once interviewed by my country's biggest paper about "strava art" I make, aka biking/running with a gps logger in order to create some kind of figure on the map.

It was edited into this video about people drawing dicks on maps using this technique. Aka the intro was loads of penises on maps, and then "someone that enjoys making this kind of art is Mats here" and then the video interview started. When they ask why I "make this kind of art" I answered because it's nice for the motivation and makes me run longer routes. They then overlaid a growing "longer" text as a dick joke.

Now, the theme was anyways a silly one, so I don't mind. But made me realize how easy it is to edit stuff to suit what they want to show, no matter the context.

* I do admit I have also ran a penis, so it's not entirely incorrect. But all questions in the interview was in a general context and didn't know this was gonna be the angle.

Re: Local LLMs versus offline Wikipedia

#118

Post by Dylan16807 »

0xDEAFBEAD wrote: post #104
troupo wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Someone should start a company selling USB sticks pre-loaded with lots of prepper knowledge of this type. It amuses me to no end that people think civilization will collapse but they will still have access to robotics and working computers to peruse USB sticks at their leisure.

It depends on your collapse threat model. In any case, my assumption is that serious preppers already have EMP-shielded laptops and solar panels for a SHTF scenario. And serious preppers are probably doing some datahoard as well. The point is that there are economies of scale in the datahoard. Most of the work of datahoard is identifying data worth hoarding, setting up your scripts, monitoring your webcrawler, etc. O…

Nuclear EMP is a big risk to all electronics in a huge area. Solar EMP is millions of times weaker and measured in volts per kilometer. Anything unplugged or even just off-grid won't notice. Even on the grid the biggest risk isn't really the extra voltage on long wires but that some big transformers and other equipment are too noise intolerant and magnify issues.

Re: Local LLMs versus offline Wikipedia

#119

Post by saddat »

I had this thought that for hypothetical Voyager 3 mission , instead of a golden disc , a LLM should be installed . Then, a very simplistic initial interface could be described , in its simplest for a single channel digital channel, then additional more elaborated ones . Behind all interfaces there could be a LLM responding to provided input , and eventually reveal humanities knowledge
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