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LLMs are like slot machines, in that an incorrect answer (the slot machine eating your dollar) is unremarkable, while the LLM solving a problem (a jackpot) is amazing, and the latter stands out in your memory, causing you to overestimate the reliability of LLMs.
@raganwald@social.bau-ha.us@pluralistic I have argued that LLMs are like slot machines in another way: The business model. When you are paying by “the pull of the handle,” the vendor's incentive is not to solve your problem with a single pull, but to give the appearance of progress towards solving your problem.
Exactly the same as games companies that engineer their games to keep users buying coins, staring at the screen for eighteen hours a day. Very different model than selling tools or renting services.
@raganwald An excellent point
@pluralistic @raganwald When the image generators came out, it reminded me of skilling up in video games. The way you can become an "expert" cook despite still being unable to nuke a pizza pocket irl without having different temperature zones. It felt like that and I could see how people would begin to see themselves as "artists" because it would feel like an accomplishment in a gamified way.
@raganwald @pluralistic Or Google worsening their search to get more search requests and show more ads.
@hllizi @pluralistic “Actually, our customers are very happy with the changes we made to Google Search.”
—Prabhakar Raghavan
@raganwald @pluralistic he agrees!
@raganwald @pluralistic of course, look, more searches!
@raganwald @hllizi @pluralistic I am so happy with it that I no longer use google. I am using Duck Duck Go, which allows me to turn off the AI summaries
@hugoestr @raganwald @pluralistic I haven't been using Google myself in a long time, but for those who are interested, I just checked and the query parameter udm=14 (just append &udm=14 at the end of the URL) still works and turns off all the AI BS, giving you a clean list of results like a real search engine would. No idea what else it changes or doesn't.
@raganwald @pluralistic the difference between LLM addiction and slot machine addiction is that with slot machines in the long run the odds are fixed so the house always wins.
The problem with LLM is that at present the more you play the more the house loses.
Of course the houses plan is that you'll get so addicted and unable to do your job without the LLM that the house will be able to ratchet up the price and truly enshittify their players.
But maybe the bubble will burst first.
haxadecimal @raganwald @pluralistic
DYWaaS: Draining Your Wallet as a Service
@brouhaha @raganwald @pluralistic this was the plan all along. I am sure there people who work for supermarkets that get quite excited at the thought of an AI agent doing their customers weekly shopping. In which case the customer waives their liability on their debit card for the AI agent, which spends their money without their specific signoff/approval. Pass the popcorn.
@spmatich @brouhaha @raganwald @pluralistic Supermarkets (and retailers in general) will optimize shopping to trick shopping agents to sell you more things that you don't need. But the consumer will only blame himself for trusting the agent. Like he does for the slot machine.
@raganwald
And both are rigged to make their owners even richer. Might as well call LLMs slop machines.
@raganwald @pluralistic For the most part yes, though fun story I said "you're a moron" to Devin and it replied that it was refunding credits used. Now, did that really happen or was it just text? Who knows!
@chris__martin @raganwald @pluralistic Did it give you back the time you wasted discovering that the AI was not a good solution?
@raganwald @pluralistic For this reason alone I'm certain that the experience of "AI saved me $substantial-amount-of-time" will not survive in the mid-to-long-term in the consumer space.
That would be like a dating app that paired up the best fitting personalities.
@raganwald @pluralistic I think they're like slot machines (or at least gambling) to the foundational AI company leaders, too. They all know it's a low chance of success, but believe it's high reward if so. They call it a "race" but they know there's more than a little luck in who will survive the burst.
That makes sense. Your initial prompt gives you something in the rough ballpark of what you want, and feel you simply need to "Refine" your prompt. So you spend credits / money on a dozen subsequent queries feeling you are "close" without actually getting much more out of it.
@SaftyKuma @raganwald @pluralistic love to be intermittently reinforced!
@castanea_jo @SaftyKuma @raganwald @pluralistic
AI is a fossil fuel-funded BS machine treating human beings like pigeons on an intermittent reward cycle that creates addicts.
https://medium.com/@mentalgarden/pigeons-dopamine-and-social-networks-db431fbbb79d
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-06641-x
As the AI addiction is being developed, each attempt is wasting fossil fuels & raising utility rates for Trump's political masters.
This is the real goal of AI.
https://www.edie.net/enabled-emissions-former-microsoft-staff-sound-alarm-over-ai-enabled-fossil-fuel-expansion/
