we love google (and LLMs)

  • xantoxis@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Sorry, I didn’t know we might be hurting the LLM’s feelings.

    Seriously, why be an apologist for the software? There’s no effective difference between blaming the technology and blaming the companies who are using it uncritically. I could just as easily be an apologist for the company: not their fault they’re using software they were told would produce accurate information out of nonsense on the Internet.

    Neither the tech nor the corps deploying it are blameless here. I’m well aware than an algorithm only does exactly what it’s told to do, but the people who made it are also lying to us about it.

    • barsoap@lemm.ee
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      4 months ago

      Sorry, I didn’t know we might be hurting the LLM’s feelings.

      You’re not going to. CS folks like to anthropomorphise computers and programs, doesn’t mean we think they have feelings.

      And we’re not the only profession doing that, though it might be more obvious in our case. A civil engineer, when a bridge collapses, is also prone to say “is the cable at fault, or the anchor” without ascribing feelings to anything. What it is though is ascribing a sort of animist agency which comes natural to many people when wrapping their head around complex systems full of different things well, doing things.

      The LLM is, indeed, not at fault. The LLM is a braindead cable anchor that some idiot, probably a suit, put in a place where it’s bound to fail.