> History is therefore a constant act of reinterpretation and triangulation, which is something that LLMs, as linguistic averaging machines, simply cannot do.
Well-put
Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi
21–30 of 88 posts
Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi
#22> One, there is no way LLMs in their current state are capable of replacing human translators for a case like this. And two, they do make the job of translation a lot less tedious. I wouldn't call it pleasant exactly, but it was much easier than my previous translation experiences On the other hand, one day they will replace human beings. And secondly, if something like transalation (or in general, any mental work) b…
Technically modern LLMs are handicapped on translation tasks compared to the original transformer architecture. The origami transformer got to see future context as well as past tokens.
Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi
#23> Still, without AI a story like this would have taken me several weeks to translate and polish, instead of one afternoon. I don't understand this. It's only six thousand words and it's the polishing that takes the time. How would it have taken weeks to do the initial draft?
The translated story is full of implicit cultural references. If the author have used AI to clarify some references about what the story was about, it could explain the vast time saving.
Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi
#24> There can be no objective story since the very act of assembling facts requires implicit beliefs about what should be emphasized and what should be left out. History is therefore a constant act of reinterpretation and triangulation, which is something that LLMs, as linguistic averaging machines, simply cannot do. Yeah, no. I find it funny how everyone from other specialties take offence when their piece of "advance…
Oh, data gods! Oh, technocratic overlords! Milords, shant though giveth but a crumb of cryptocurrency to thy humble guzzler?
Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi
#25AI represents a move to the massive centralization of information into a few sources. History (or it's "interpreters") should never be in the hands of these few powerful entities aligned with even more powerful governments.
AI is the perfect propaganda technology.
I don't believe the current race to build AI is actually about any productivity gains (which are questionable at best).
I believe the true purpose of the outsized AI investments is to make sure the universal answer machine will give answers that conform to the ideology of the ruling class.
You can read hints of that in statements like the Trump AI Action Plan [0], but also things like the Llama 4 announcement. [1]
[0] "Ensure that Frontier AI Protects Free Speech and American Values" - https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Americ...
[1] "It’s well-known that all leading LLMs have had issues with bias—specifically, they historically have leaned left when it comes to debated political and social topics. This is due to the types of training data available on the internet." https://ai.meta.com/blog/llama-4-multimodal-intelligence/
Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi
#26> they are acts of interpretation that are never recognized as such by outsiders
And that is exactly why translators are getting replaced by ML/AI. Companies don't care about quality, that is the reason customer support was the first thing axed, companies see it only as a cost.
Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi
#27> There can be no objective story since the very act of assembling facts requires implicit beliefs about what should be emphasized and what should be left out. History is therefore a constant act of reinterpretation and triangulation, which is something that LLMs, as linguistic averaging machines, simply cannot do.
This exactly why tech companies want to replace those jobs with LLMs.
The companies control the models, the models control the narrative, the narrative controls the world.
Whoever can get the most stories into the heads of the masses runs the world.
Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi
#28AI represents a move to the massive centralization of information into a few sources. History (or it's "interpreters") should never be in the hands of these few powerful entities aligned with even more powerful governments.
AI is the perfect propaganda technology. I don't believe the current race to build AI is actually about any productivity gains (which are questionable at best). I believe the true purpose of the outsized AI investments is to make sure the universal answer machine will give answers that conform to the ideology of the ruling class. You can read hints of that in statements like the Trump AI Action Plan [0], but also thi…
The fact that it can both displace vast amounts of labor and also control information for people who won't bother with primary sources anymore is what explains (for me) the endless funding and desperation to make it happen.
Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi
#29> The deeper risk is not that AI will replace historians or translators, but that it will convince us we never needed them in the first place.
I think the bigger danger would be that they'd lose the unimportant grunt work that helped the field exist.
Fields need a large amount of consistent routine work to keep existing. Like when analog photography got replaced by digital. A photo lab can't just pay the bills with the few pro photographers that refuse to move to digital or have a specific need for analog. They needed a steady supply of cat pictures and terrible vacation photos, and when those dried up, things got tough.
So things like translation may go that way too -- those that need good quality translation understand the need very well, but industry was always supported by a lot of less demanding grunt work that now just went away.
Re: Facts will not save you – AI, history and Soviet sci-fi
#30> One, there is no way LLMs in their current state are capable of replacing human translators for a case like this. And two, they do make the job of translation a lot less tedious. I wouldn't call it pleasant exactly, but it was much easier than my previous translation experiences On the other hand, one day they will replace human beings. And secondly, if something like transalation (or in general, any mental work) b…
Technically modern LLMs are handicapped on translation tasks compared to the original transformer architecture. The origami transformer got to see future context as well as past tokens.
Okay, but I'm not really concerned with the state of the art now with any specific technology, but what will be the state of the art in 20 years.