HN user
* Because humans totally don't get things wrong or fabricate lies.*
Not in the same way no. Why so trenchant in defending a word generator?
If you prefer for hallucinate substitute ‘generate plausible but incorrect text’. I don’t think of LLMs as anything approaching human, sorry to disappoint.
And if in the end it does not produce masterworks, going faster and breaking things will be seen as a huge and credulous waste of time that poisoned the internet and some codebases beyond redemption.
But I’m glad someone else is running all these experiments so we can see who is right in their guess about the outcome.
Because they are word generators without any concept of quality save what is in their weights and they have been trained on the internet, much of which is wrong or inappropriate for any given context. They have also been trained to be people pleasers and do as they are told.
The popular answer is sometimes the wrong answer.
We know they are, and the author of the article cites the proof. LLMs do hallucinate, there is no way to make them not do it, because of the way they work.
Unfortunately the vast majority of users do trust them and the companies selling them are recommending them for tasks like accounting or business projections.
It certainly casts suspicion on the ‘findings’ which may well be hallucinated or subtly wrong.
I use the autocomplete regularly. Perhaps that’s where my skepticism comes from, as I can see the completely incorrect yet plausible results in real time and about 50% of the time they are wrong (sometimes subtly, sometimes horribly).
The worst part is that everyone who's decided to willingly lobotomize themselves is going to have to come to the realization that these things are full of shit. It'll have to happen one by one, and nobody else can make it happen for them.
A fascinating dichotomy has become apparent between those who trust LLM output and those who don’t and don’t understand why you would.
Surely if the machine you go to for answers regularly makes things up you would just stop using it? Perhaps people have to be burned by something really bad personally before they realise the limitations? LLMs are very convincing and persuasive.
I do agree with the overall tone - removing the greek gods from this story is just inexplicable, and transforming Odysseus polymetis into a leaden American action hero seems a perverse kind of reverse alchemy which only Hollywood would indulge.
why is Circe randomly giving prophetic advice?
Nitpick: she does in the book give Odysseus a detailed prophecy and instructions to go consult the dead when he leaves her island.
For anyone interested in the original story, the book is available in a few good modern translations and very readable (e.g. Emily Wilson): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey_(Emily_Wilson_translat...
Also I really like Circe as a sympathetic adaption of part of this story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circe_(novel)
Going to see this anyway, but disappointed to hear it attempts to flatten the story in this way.
That is in fact the end goal of CEOs pushing LLM use yes. Not possible right now, but if it were they would absolutely take that option.
"I wrote this series as a learning exercise, in collaboration with AI (Claude Opus 4.8). It's me thinking out loud with a model to understand the stack end to end, not an authoritative reference. Take it with a grain of salt, and double-check anything you plan to rely on."
Why would I want to read this, given the author doesn't trust it and hasn't verified the content of this HUGE series of generated articles?
Of what possible use is it? If someone believes Claude, surely they'd just have a conversation with claude themselves. Is this intended just to function as SEO spam, or is there some other use?
Generating massive amounts of AI generated slop like this breaks all the assumptions of the internet, including on sites like HN.
Flagged as slop.
Read the book, I hear it’s quite good. Here is a good translation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odyssey_(Emily_Wilson_translat...
Outis.
Well I think there is a definite pattern to sociopaths using a movement that seems externally good and has many true believers - like say an open foundation to promote AI, or effective altruism. Then twisting it to their own ends to gain power, influence and wealth.
We should therefore be very skeptical of people claiming altruistic motives while requiring that they be in control.
Not all light is absorbed and turned to heat, much is reflected, for PV some turned to electricity.
I think we can agree energy is conserved. Extra heating effect OUTSIDE.
AC moves heat from inside to outside, ergo outside is hotter than it would be, this is not complicated.
They think things will be better for them in 2027?
This is the pattern I’d expect for their IPOs too, give their current fantasy valuations.
Nobody said there was free energy, but heat is not the only energy available. Here if you like in your analogy visible light is turned to outside heat and inside cool. But it’s simpler just to think about the heat inside the house - heat is being transferred from inside to outside.
You’re talking about machine learning, that’s not what all this money has been ploughed into, and not what people mean when they say ‘AI’ today but you’re right that it’s much more clearly effective and profitable than LLMs.
Solar energy is not just infrared, and infrared is not what is used by PV solar. So not it’s not equivalent and anyway doesn’t in any way impact the extra heating effect of a new heat source on the ground.
Instead of generate heat you could say they move heat if you like, from inside to outside.
No the solar panels do not absorb only infrared or even mostly infrared.
No, air conditioning units generate heat (that is how they cool!) and do contribute to local warming. Without AC the house reaches equilibrium with outside. With AC the house is cooled and that heat has to go somewhere.
Schemes like the Paris central cooling one are interesting here - there are other possible solutions in cities too.
And sure yes combined with other measures AC can be a net good.
Sure if building density is low in your area and you have no nearby neighbours it probably doesn’t matter, you’d just be heating your surroundings a little.
I imagine that absorption by the roof or panels is around the same - however the aircon moves heat from inside to outside, so you are moving heat outside for other people to deal with. In an isolated house it makes little difference. If every building has aircon in a city it does impact outside temperatures and adds to the heat island effect.
Sorry autocorrect changed heat pollution to ‘what pollution’, I’ve fixed that now.
There is some impact on others, particularly those without ac.
You should still feel some guilt for the heat pollution your air conditioning causes for those outside your house, esp. in an urban area.
Are we all heading in that direction?
I know it may seem like that reading HN but LLMs are not necessary for writing software, they might be a useful adjunct to it, but they do not have to be central to it (and Id argue they shouldn’t be).
We don’t have to head in this direction of using LLMs for most development at all.
Effective altruism is also very attractive to manipulative sociopaths who want to maximise their power over others whilst appearing virtuous and hoarding wealth and power. Poster boy for this movement is the convicted fraudster SBF. I believe Altman is also a fan.
As to a better world or super intelligence, I’ll believe it may be possible when I see some signs of intelligence from what people are calling AI, instead of plausible text and image generation based on a very large corpus.
The only thing that matters is if LLMs with sufficient scaling can become frontier AI researchers kicking off the exponential.
I think we know the answer to that already - LLMs show no sign of improving intelligence and instead providers are going down the ‘agentic’ rabbit hole.
There are too many things missing, like a world model, understanding, and taste (in the sense of knowing what is good and what is not good).
For these particular characters, the evidence is heavily against your panglossian take.
All have collaborated with the current US regime. All have shown signs of being quite willing to compromise their principles in order to make money.