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We're losing our voice to LLMs

tonyalicea.dev

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Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#161

Post by dlisboa »

truelson wrote: post #64

It's still an editor I can turn to in a pinch when my favorite humans aren't around. It makes better analogies sometimes. I like going back and forth with it, and if it doesn't sound like me, I rewrite it. Don't look at social media. Blogging is kinda re-surging. I just found out Dave Barry has a substack. https://davebarry.substack.com/ That made me happy :) (Side note, did he play "Squirrel with a Gun??!!!") The de…

It's ironic that https://substack.com/@davebarry uses a lot of AI-generated imagery. Maybe the death of vision is not exaggerated.

I don't judge, I'm not an artist so if I wanted to express myself in image I'd need AI help but I can see how people would do the same with words.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#162

Post by trinsic2 »

IMTDb wrote: post #71
Lapel2742 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's how the algorithms promote engagement. They are destroying our democratic societies and should be heavily regulated. The same will become true for AI.

> should be heavily regulated. By who, exactly? It’s easy to call for regulation when you assume the regulator will conveniently share your worldview. Try the opposite: imagine the person in charge is someone whose opinions make your skin crawl. If you still think regulation beats the status quo, then the call for regulation is warranted, but be ready to face the consequences. But if picturing that guy running the sh…

By a not-for-profit community organization that has 0 connect/interest in any for-profit enterprising that represents the stable wellbeing of society with a specific mandate to do so.

Just like the community organizations we had that watched over government agencies that we allowed to be destroyed because of profit. It's not rocket science.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#163

Post by tucnak »

alt227 wrote: post #98
femiagbabiaka wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know that some folks dislike it, but Bluesky and atproto in particular have provided the perfect tools to achieve this. There are some people, largely those who migrated from Twitter, who mostly treat Bluesky like a all-liberal version of Twitter, which results in a predictably toxic experience, like bizarro-world Twitter. But the future of a less toxic social media is in there, if we want it. I've created my own f…

I personally dont feel like an ultra filtered social media which only shows me things I agree with is a good thing. Exposing yourself to things you dont agre with is what helps us all question our own beliefs and prejudeces, and grow as people. To me, only seeing things you know you are already interested in is no better than another company curating it for me.

> Exposing yourself to things you dont agre with is what helps us all question our own beliefs and prejudeces, and grow as people.

I have another wise-sounding soundbite for you: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." —Voltaire. All this sounds dandy and fine, until you actually try and examine the beliefs and prejudeces at hand. It would seem that such examination is possible, and it is—in theory, whereas in practice, i.e. in application of language—"ideas" simply don't matter as much. Material circumstance, mindset, background, all these things that make us who we are, are largely immutable in our own frames of reference. You can get exposed to new words all the time, but if they come in language you don't understand, it's of no use. This is not a bug, but a feature, a learned mechanism that allows us to navigate massive search spaces without getting overwhelmed.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#165

Post by rcxdude »

Aurornis wrote: post #148
Uehreka wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You get more of what you engage with. If you don’t want to hear a lot of Brexit talk, don’t engage with Brexit content. The algorithm doesn’t show you “more of the things you engage with”, and acting like it does makes people think what they’re seeing is a reflection of who they are, which is incorrect. The designers of these algorithms are trying to figure out which “mainstream category” you are. And if you aren’t…

> The algorithm doesn’t show you “more of the things you engage with”, That’s literally what the complaint was that I was responding to. You even immediately contradict yourself and agree that the algorithm shows you what you engage with > But you make one three word comment about Brexit and the algorithm goes up > Now your feed is trash forever, unless you engage with content from another mainstream category This is…

The issue is that it's not symmetric: the algorithm is biased towards rage-baity content, so it will use any tiny level of engagement with something related to that content to push it, but there's not really anything you can do to stop it, or to get it to push less rage-baity content. This is also really bad if you realise you have a problem with getting caught up in such content (for some it's borderline addictive): there's no tools for someone to say 'I realise I respond to every message I see on this topic, but really that's not good for me, please don't show me it in the first place'.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#166

Post by intended »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #122
vanviegen wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On HN everybody sees the same ordering. Therefore you get to read opinions that are not specifically selected to make you feel just the perfect amount of outrage/self-righteousness. Some of that you may experience as 'dubious political stuff' and 'patently incorrect takes'. Edit, just to be clear: I'm not saying HN should be unmoderated.

Yeah this is a critical difference, most of the issues are sidestepped because everyone knows nobody can force a custom frontpage tailored for a specific reader. So there’s no reason to try a lot of the tricks and schemes that scoundrels might have elsewhere, even if those same scoundrels also have HN accounts.

The front page is managed extensively on HN, so is this an argument for stronger moderation?

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#168

Post by nradov »

area51org wrote: post #142
Lapel2742 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's how the algorithms promote engagement. They are destroying our democratic societies and should be heavily regulated. The same will become true for AI.

We've seen what happens when we pretend the market will somehow regulate itself.

Just because the free market isn't producing results you like doesn't mean that more regulation would make it better.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#169

Post by amrocha »

rdtsc wrote: post #70
ricardo81 wrote: post #6

I deleted my Facebook account a couple of years ago and my Twitter one yesterday. It's not just LLMs, it's how the algorithms promote engagement. i.e. rage bait, videos with obvious inaccuracies etc. Who gets rewarded, the content creators and the platform. Engaging with it just seems to accentuate the problem. There needs to be algorithms that promote cohorts and individuals preferences. Just because I said to someo…

> I deleted my Facebook account a couple of years ago and my Twitter one yesterday. I never signed up for Facebook or Twitter. My joke is I am waiting until they become good. They are still shitty and toxic from what I can tell from the outside, so I'll wait a little longer ;-)

Your loss.

Twitter was an incredible place from 2010 to 2017. You could randomly message something and they would more often than not respond. Eventually an opportunity would come and you’d meet in person. Or maybe you’d form an online community and work towards a common goal. Twitter was the best place on the internet during that time.

Facebook as well had a golden age. It was the place to organize events, parties, and meetups, before instagram and DMs took over. Nothing beats seeing someone post an album from last nights party and messaging your friends asking them if they remember anything that happened.

I know being cynical is trendy, but you genuinely missed out. Social dynamics have changed. Social media will never be as positive on an individual level as it was back then.

Re: We're losing our voice to LLMs

#170

Post by anonymouskimmer »

grey-area wrote: post #151
randycupertino wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a weird LLM use instance happen at work this week, we were in a big important protocol review meeting with 35 remote people and someone asks how long IUDs begin to take effect in patients. I put it in ChatGPT for my own reference and read the answer in my head but didn't say anything (I'm ops, I just row the boat and let the docs steer the ship). Anyone this bigwig Oxford/Johns Hopkins cardiologist who we pay $…

The LLM may well have pulled the answer from a medical reference similar to that used by the dr. I have no idea why you think an expert in the field would use ChatGPT for a simple question, that would be negligence.

A climate scientist I follow uses Perplexity AI in some of his YouTube videos. He stated one time that he uses it for the formatting, graphs, and synopses, but knows enough about what he's asking that he knows what it's outputting is correct.

An "expert" might use ChatGPT for the brief synopsis. It beats trying to recall something learned about a completely different sub-discipline years ago.

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