> He invested a lot of his own life on a promise that didn't pan out

So did the people who built Deno

Is this any different than people who believe random things they read on sketchy news sites or social media?

Yes, somehow. I have been dealing with an awful lot of people who basically have what are theoretically logic degrees who suddenly just take LLMs at face value, or quote them to me like that actually means anything. People I formerly thought were sane.

I don't mean to put words in your mouth but from what I've seen, in person but mostly online, but the "problem" (and I put that in quotes because I don't even know what to call it... it seems deeper than a mere "problem") is that they quote them as if they are autonomous, sentient beings.

The problem is that LLM output looks like a human conversation. People believe it.

Which is more believable?

“The sky is filled with a downpour of squealing pigs. Would you like me to suggest the best type of umbrella?”

“Sky pigs squealing”

I am not sure I would even say "believe", I would think of it more as short-circuiting our critical thinking. I think it taps into something at the core of our tribal instincts. It was famously present in even basic systems like Eliza. And it's not just machines... The same tricks are used by conmen, politicians, and psychopaths, which is more negative than I intend. Even with good intentions and positive outcomes, I feel we need to remember that we drive it, not the other way around.

People just don't like to be played for fools. Perhaps us giving into this is progress? I'd give a big ol' "fuck you" to anyone who claims it is, but I'm also pretty old.

Some of this might depend on the source.

I’ve seen some people quote AI like you’re saying. However, when I preface something with “ChatGPT said…”, my intention is to convey to the listener that they should take it with a grain of salt, as it might be completely bull shit. I suppose I should consider who I’m talking to when I make that assumption.

it’s a slightly orthogonal problem to using the active voice of “XYZ says…”, it’s treating the text continuation engine as an “other” that may know better than they do, playing into sci fi conceptions of AI having its personal positronic brain or whatever, having its own ideas and deciding to carve a horse out of driftwood.

It’s not quite anthropomorphizing either that’s the issue, need a word for “treating it as tho it were a machine conscious that exists alongside humanity*”, how does cyborgropomorphizing sound

   * and not merely a markov chain running in Sam Altman’s closet

You might consider prefixing with 'ChatGPT claims…' as a clearer expression of uncertainty.

Surely the correct conclusion is to question the value/veracity of those degree issuing institutions and rituals?

And if you previously were unaware of the insanity and irrationality passing under the surface of such human activity, I guess it can come as a bit of a shock :)

>take llms at face value

It happened with science, politics, traditional media, history books, "good engineering practices" applied to IT, OOP,tdd,DDD,server side rendering, containerization... Literally every bullshit shilled to the moon is accepted without second guessing and you would be without a job, in an asylum, for questioning 2 of them in a row.

Why is it different now? EVERYTHING is bullshit, only attention matters. And craftsmanship.

and ruthless efficiency

I don't think this has anything to do with sanity. This has to do with people for seeking self confirmation instead ot disproval.

For pretty much everything there is a conspiracy theory out there claiming the opposite, and these types usually started out searching the internet for someone else who believes the same that they did at the time.

But, as we all know, this technique will eventually lead to overfitting. And that's what those types of people have done to themselves.

Well, and as lack of education is the weakness of democracy, there's a lot of interested parties out there that invest money in these types of conspiracy websites. Even more so after LLMs.

Whoever controls the news controls the perpetual presence, where everything is independent of the forgotten history.

Yes, I think AI bots are more compelling to some people. They break the concept of judging information by its source because they obscure the source. But at the same time they are trained on a lot of reputable sources and can say a lot of very smart things, just at other times they say complete BS. But they are really good at making things sound plausible, that's essentially how they work after all.

I would argue for many people social media and news aggregators do the exact same thing. People site Instagram or TikTok as the source of their data in the same way others site ChatGPT

Many go one step fewer and just take the headline title as the source…

Or worse, the refactored headline by whatever news outlet comes to them.

Absolutely. These things are marketed from virtually everyone, from people that are historically considered experts and/or authoritative, as such.

With their phd level intelligence, right? But they don't have emotion, no responsibility, no consequences whatsoever if anything bad happens.

They're your own, personal Jesus. Someone to hear your prayers, someone to care.

Reach out and touch faith.

There is a tendency for people to treat LLMs as oracles rather than token predictors. My guess is because they can answer in seeming technical fashion about a wider range of topics than your typical human. You can take these same people, who say have zero understanding of geopolitics, and they’ll apply a layer of (often misused) skepticism when confronted with information that doesn’t conform to existing beliefs.

That’s just what I’ve seen at a personal level though.

In what world does China have a non-imperialist foreign policy?

For example, China operates 1 foreign military base, in Djibouti. How many do you think the U.S. has in the South China Sea alone?

Beyond that, how many people has China killed in foreign military conflicts in the past 40 years? How many foreign governments have they overthrown?

Instead of all this, they’ve used their resources not only to become the world’s economic superpower but also to lift 800 million people out of poverty, accounting for 75% of the world’s reduction during the past 4 decades. The U.S. has added 10 million during that same time period.

why use 40 years as the example? its a pretty convenient framing to exclude the foreign governments its toppled. eg. tibet.

the government in exile remains the government in exile.

youd have some standing if china dropped control over its imperial holdings, rather than pretend theyre part of china

Historically speaking, he's right. China has never had an expansionist foreign policy.

Tibet, the Philippines, and Taiwan would like to have a word, not to mention Chinese military action in support of its North Korea puppet state, and wars with Vietnam and India.

Are you serious? Don't you know how many wars did China wage? It tried to assimilate Vietnam for 1000 years. The last large scale war against Vietnam was just 1979. In fact, China had started war with all its neighbors, with no exception.

Do me a favor and name one single country didn't have war with any of its neighbor.

Nine-dash line?

In what world does China have a imperialist foreign policy?

The one we live in, where they have control over a wide swathe of land mass through imperialism and have actively resisted relinquishing it?

The one we live in, where they are constantly surpassing international law in international waters in the South China Sea?

The one we live in, where they are constantly rattling sabers at South Korea and Japan when it comes to military expansion?

The one we live in, where they brutally cracked down on Hong Kong when they did not abide by the 50 year one country two systems deal, not even making it half of the way through the agreed period?

The one we live in, where there is constant threat to Taiwan?

It may have been a lazy post you're responding to, but anyone that is paying attention to this topic enough to talk about it is going to either say 'Of course China is imperialist, the same as every other global power' or take some sort of tankie approach to justify it.

I'm well informed on all of these but no, if we compare to other global power like US or Russia, or historically British, France, Spain, etc, China is 100% not an imperialist or colonialist, not by a large margin. Those issues are largely exaggerated by media and anyone had a decent exposure to history and international politics wouldn't say they are the same.

I disagree on China. What would you call China's behavior[1] in the South China Sea with regards to fishing vessels and other non-military boats?

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzZrcqf826E

Sure China has some disputes with neighboring country in South China Sea, the worst conflict they had is fishing boats running into each other. 0 death toll last time I checked. Meanwhile US killed at least 126 people with alleged drug strike in the Caribbean Sea since last year, WITHOUT trial. Anyone believing these're equivalent imperialism activity is hypocrite at best.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/boat-strikes-military-death-toll-...

There were deaths in these fishing incidents[1].

> Anyone believing these're equivalent imperialism activity is hypocrite at best.

In terms of equivalence, I would say based on their intentions they wish they could be more but would rather let the US burn it on the way down

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/03/asia/philippines-south-china-...

Are we just make accusations based on what could have happened? And Still no, day and night difference compared to any of those countries I mentioned

You're arguing that because of the English language name of it is the South China Sea that China owns it and their actions can't be imperialist?

Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam will all be happy to know that we've solved it - we can just abandon it all to China. Problem solved!

This is a silly argument. There are significant territorial disputes that China is extremely aggressive on, international tribunals have ruled them as violating international law in international waters and in sovereign waters of other nations, etc.

> What China is doing in the South China Sea? The South China Sea.

Sorry, did you mean East Vietnam Sea?

Obviously self defense with nobel peace price worthy restraint.

Considering it's PRC claimed territory. Literally 100% of PRC claims are inherited from ROC, i.e. PRC has expanded no claims, and actively settled 12/14 land borders (most on earth) essentially all with 50%+ concessions, i.e. PRC ceded more land in negotiations. That OBJECTIVELY, makes PRC the most benevolent rising power in recorded history. Any gov losing land to so many border settlements is committing treason. Also note PCA ruling is not international law, so what PRC does in SCS is not even legally wrong (as in they legally can't be wrong since UNCLOS cannot rule on sovereignty). Or that PRC was last to militarize SCS islands (except Brunai who is good boi), and PRC conceded ROC/TW's original 11dash to 9dash, which even in SCS disputes makes PRC the only party to have made concessions.

PRC is objectively the LEAST imperialistic rising power, by actual non retarded definitions, i.e. expanding on territories outside it's claims, that PRC didn't even make, but again inherited from ROC when UN recognition changed.

You forgot Tibet and the Uyghurs https://worldwithoutgenocide.org/genocides-and-conflicts/gen...

> where they have control over a wide swathe of land mass through imperialism and have actively resisted relinquishing it?

Was referring to Tibet.

The Uyghurs are also a major problem from a social perspective but not directly related to imperalism/expansionism/military industrial complex stuff.

Yes but the guy at the end of the street beats his wife too!

I can see the argument for Hong Kong. I don't agree, really, but I can understand it. Under the strictest of definitions, perhaps it isn't.

But Taiwan is very obviously a totally separate country no matter what fictions anyone employs. If you are trying to talk about the thin veneer of everyone going "Uh huh, sure, China, yep Taiwan is totally part of you, wink wink, nudge nudge" as somehow making China not imperialist when Taiwan basically lives under the perpetual threat of a Chinese military invasion and having their own democratic form of government overthrown and replaced with the CCP, then... I don't really know what to say.

I suppose we could argue about imperialism being more of an economic thing - in which case this all still holds up - China's investments in Africa are effectively the same playbook the US has run out in developing nations for years. The US learned it from prior imperialist nations but belts and roads is nearly a carbon copy of what the US has done in other places.

But let's look at what the original poster was actually talking about - saying that China is safe because they don't have a military industrial complex because they're not imperialist. The proper word to use, if we want to get down to the semantics of it all, would be expansionist - but it's still not true. China has the 2nd largest military industrial complex in the world, and the gap is shrinking every day between them and the US. And if you were to look at wartime capacity, where China's dual-use shipyards could be swapped to naval production instead of commercial, a huge portion of that gap disappears immediately.

But OpenAI has more serious competition than those others did when they were coming up. That puts pressure on them to figure out ads and they dragged their feet getting started

Same and honestly I haven't really missed my ChatGPT subscription since I canceled. I also have access to both (ChatGPT and Claude) enterprise tools at work and rarely feel like I want to use ChatGPT in that setting either

I do think this is going to be part of the solution to a lot of AI slop is adding small fees to do a thing

Who said "we have to tax them, or else they leave"? That doesn't seem to be what anyone is saying. The issue is that this group is threatening to leave if they are taxed.

I agree you should want to avoid having an income disparity like this, but we are where we are. The goal of this tax is to help correct that disparity.

Not a legitimate goal. But yeah if the government needs revenue they should raise it.

The article is 9 years old so that may no longer be the case