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Regression to the Mean: on LLMs and the quiet death of the new

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Re: Regression to the Mean: on LLMs and the quiet death of the new

#41

Post by kerblang »

I expect that a lot of bad norms that crop up in various programming communities will get tossed out after years of dysfunction, often as a result of outsiders and younger people arriving, and stating the obvious: This doesn't make sense. It's actually nice to know this when dealing with all of the mess in the present. You can't change it now, but eventually someone will.

But yes, LLMs are likely to force permanent conformity.

One could also talk about how language in general shifts with the population, but LLMs are likely to prevent it. One would think anthropologists are already looking into this experimentally...

Re: Regression to the Mean: on LLMs and the quiet death of the new

#43

Post by Schlagbohrer »

"Offer it something it has never seen, and it doesn't light up. It corrects you. To a system built to predict the expected, the genuinely new is indistinguishable from a mistake.

The pushback is soft, and constant: Did you mean: the familiar thing, offered in place of yours."

Ouch, that's scary to think of.

Also why does it read like its written by ChatGPT?

Re: Regression to the Mean: on LLMs and the quiet death of the new

#44

Post by consp »

AbsurdCensor wrote: post #29
CJefferson wrote: post #6

This is my biggest concern. Speaking as someone who recently had to read 60 AI generated reports (the whole issue of how much students are using AI is one discussion), it was genuinely soul-destroying reading the same phrases, seem sentence structures, same arguments over and over. Depressed me the whole of the next day.

Wouldn't that be the same even if AI wasn't involved? By and large, it's the same books, the same training for students, the same hammered in structure, so the output from students would be reasonably similar. No one is coming up with new allegories out of The Scarlet Letter at this point.

I've had a few hundred reports over the years as a teaching assistant (digital but must be your own) at the algorithmics course of my university. If I saw that LLM generated uniformity as described they'd all have gotten a plagiarism mark. There were many differences in how people describe things and you could easily see if someone understood the subject or not. That is gone with LLMs as I see it now.

Re: Regression to the Mean: on LLMs and the quiet death of the new

#45

Post by phillipcarter »

zwischenzug wrote: post #14

This touches on something I've (and many others) have felt throughout my life, not just since the advent of LLMs. To take a simple example: I grew up with computer games in the '80s where there were no 'physics engines' or frameworks for building games. As a result, each game was an expression of the author's personality somehow. Fast forward to the noughties, games bored me as they mostly looked and felt the same, o…

> Or am I just getting old?

Perhaps? But I think this is more a case of just not seeking things out.

Music is as vibrant and diverse as ever, but not if you're only looking at the top charts run by the music industry.

Same deal with games, there's more experimentation and interesting concepts in gaming than ever before, but not from the AAA studios.

Now I can't speak for how you vacation, but I've had wonderfully different experiences between Hamburg, Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Rome, Paris, Montpellier, London, Amsterdam, Oslo, and Florence. I just don't go to the starbucks and instead wander around a bit, optionally picking from a few hit destinations if I feel like it. But also, it's not like this was created for nothing: https://www.itchyfeetcomic.com/2018/10/omnimappus-europeus.h...

Re: Regression to the Mean: on LLMs and the quiet death of the new

#46

Post by stellamariesays »

zwischenzug wrote: post #14

This touches on something I've (and many others) have felt throughout my life, not just since the advent of LLMs. To take a simple example: I grew up with computer games in the '80s where there were no 'physics engines' or frameworks for building games. As a result, each game was an expression of the author's personality somehow. Fast forward to the noughties, games bored me as they mostly looked and felt the same, o…

[flagged]

Re: Regression to the Mean: on LLMs and the quiet death of the new

#47

Post by Schlagbohrer »

olsondv wrote: post #35
zwischenzug wrote: post #14

This touches on something I've (and many others) have felt throughout my life, not just since the advent of LLMs. To take a simple example: I grew up with computer games in the '80s where there were no 'physics engines' or frameworks for building games. As a result, each game was an expression of the author's personality somehow. Fast forward to the noughties, games bored me as they mostly looked and felt the same, o…

It’s human nature to pattern-match experiences. As the number of experiences grows, more fit into something seen before. So, yes, we’re just getting old.

No, global capitalism and franchise agglomeration have resulted in a flattening of experience. Big global cities all around the world look more and more like each other, with the same franchises and extremely similar offerings everywhere. Young people are having a more homogenized, globalized experience as they grow up online. Teenagers around the world watching the same media and existing in the same shared media-space.

Re: Regression to the Mean: on LLMs and the quiet death of the new

#48

Post by lotsofpulp »

da-x wrote: post #30

Noticed that most of the comments here are despairing. I think that perhaps there's a bit of hope, that by the forces of the market, the value of human distinctiveness will rise in comparison to whatever is the generated mean. This is what I am looking into.

Markets only function if sellers (and buyers) have accurate and transparent information about prices and the goods and services. There is no force of the market if it takes too much effort to distinguish what is and isn’t human.

Re: Regression to the Mean: on LLMs and the quiet death of the new

#49

Post by dmd »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #37
toppy wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alex Murrell has a great piece on this: https://www.alexmurrell.co.uk/articles/the-age-of-average

The generic city one makes no sense. Does the author want each city to invent a new physics? Not only are there quite a few different looking buildings in each of the cities, but given the constraints of not have unlimited funds, surely one can understand that many columns of steel, concrete, and glass will look like columns of steel, concrete, and glass from afar.

Cities could look like https://www.arcosanti.org/

Cities could look like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_67

Cities could look like https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-blue-city-of-jodhpur...

Re: Regression to the Mean: on LLMs and the quiet death of the new

#50

Post by rapind »

zwischenzug wrote: post #14

This touches on something I've (and many others) have felt throughout my life, not just since the advent of LLMs. To take a simple example: I grew up with computer games in the '80s where there were no 'physics engines' or frameworks for building games. As a result, each game was an expression of the author's personality somehow. Fast forward to the noughties, games bored me as they mostly looked and felt the same, o…

It's crazy to hear someone think games in the 80s were more creative than they are today. That's taking nostalgia to a whole new level! Indy games today are amazing. When you lower barriers the ratio of good to bad probably tilts more towards bad, but the absolute number of good still increases.

There's going to be reams of AI slop (already is), but I bet the amount of amazing games will also (more slowly) increase due to AI tools. The trick is in how well we can filter.

I think we're in the early stages and being overwhelmed by low quality production. We'll find ways to filter, and find some real bangers.

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