This Needs Fixin'

The Minions taking over the U.S. government have been connecting a Large Language Model (LLM), referred to as an “A.I.” by people who don’t know what words mean, to various government databases.

This is truly History’s Stupidest Coup.

I have mentioned this before, but never really delved into it: LLMs are not A.I., A.I. is not real and not understanding that leads to some very foolish places.

I don’t need to do a full writeup on just WTF is up with generative systems like ChatGPT, because Colin Fraser has already done that so you should just go read those:

• ChatGPT: Automatic expensive BS at scale
• Welcome To Hell, OpenAI
• Who are we talking to when we talk to these bots?
• Generative AI is a hammer and no one knows what is and isn’t a nail
• Hallucinations, Errors, and Dreams

TLDR version: unless you have some urgent need for vast amounts of plausible-sounding text (and no interest in logical structure, truth values, factual accuracy or even basic sense at a scale larger than a paragraph) then these things are not really useful at all.

And this is the system Musk is wedging into our government.

He genuinely seems to think that this is an improvement, which frankly demonstrates that he doesn’t understand LLMs or government enough to be allowed anywhere near either.

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