this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2025
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

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[–] HedyL@awful.systems 24 points 3 days ago (2 children)

And then we went back to “it’s rarely wrong though.”

I am often wondering whether the people who claim that LLMs are "rarely wrong" have access to an entirely different chatbot somehow. The chatbots I tried were rarely ever correct about anything except the most basic questions (to which the answers could be found everywhere on the internet).

I'm not a programmer myself, but for some reason, I got the chatbot to fail even in that area. I took a perfectly fine JSON file, removed one semicolon on purpose and then asked the chatbot to fix it. The chatbot came up with a number of things that were supposedly "wrong" with it. Not one word about the missing semicolon, though.

I wonder how many people either never ask the chatbots any tricky questions (with verifiable answers) or, alternatively, never bother to verify the chatbots' output at all.

[–] dgerard@awful.systems 22 points 3 days ago (3 children)

AI fans are people who literally cannot tell good from bad. They cannot see the defects that are obvious to everyone else. They do not believe there is such a thing as quality, they think it's a scam. When you claim you can tell good from bad, they think you're lying.

[–] sturger@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)
  • They string words together based on the probability of one word following another.
  • They are heavily promoted by people that don't know what they're doing.
  • They're wrong 70% of the time but promote everything they say as truth.
  • Average people have a hard time telling when they're wrong.

In other words, AIs are BS automated BS artists... being promoted breathlessly by BS artists.

[–] diz@awful.systems 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

They're also very gleeful about finally having one upped the experts with one weird trick.

Up until AI they were the people who were inept and late at adopting new technology, and now they get to feel that they're ahead (because this time the new half-assed technology was pushed onto them and they didn't figure out they needed to opt out).

[–] HedyL@awful.systems 7 points 2 days ago

Up until AI they were the people who were inept and late at adopting new technology, and now they get to feel that they’re ahead

Exactly. It is also a new technology that requires far fewer skills to use than previous new technologies. The skills are needed to critically scrutinize the output - which in this case leads to less lazy people being more reluctant to accept the technology.

On top of this, AI fans are being talked into believing that their prompting as such is a special “skill”.

[–] HedyL@awful.systems 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

That's why I find the narrative that we should resist working with LLMs because we would then train them and enable them to replace us problematic. That would require LLMs to be capable of doing so. I don't believe in this (except in very limited domains such as professional spam). This type of AI is problematic because its abilities are completely oversold (and because it robs us of our time, wastes a lot of power and pollutes the entire internet with slop), not because it is "smart" in any meaningful way.

[–] fullsquare@awful.systems 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

but that's how it was marketed as to people that buy it. doesn't matter that it doesn't work

[–] HedyL@awful.systems 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

This has become a thought-terminating cliché all on its own: "They are only criticizing it because it is so much smarter than they are and they are afraid of getting replaced."

[–] paequ2@lemmy.today 15 points 3 days ago (1 children)

never bother to verify the chatbots’ output at all

I feel like this is happening.

When you're an expert in the subject matter, it's easier to notice when the AI is wrong. But if you're not an expert, it's more likely that everything will just sound legit. Or you won't be able to verify it yourself.

[–] HedyL@awful.systems 12 points 3 days ago

But if you’re not an expert, it’s more likely that everything will just sound legit.

Oh, absolutely! In my field, the answers made up by an LLM might sound even more legit than the accurate and well-researched ones written by humans. In legal matters, clumsy language is often the result of facts being complex and not wanting to make any mistakes. It is much easier to come up with elegant-sounding answers when they don't have to be true, and that is what LLMs are generally good at.