[Discuss] LLMs and AI

[markw at mohawksoft.com]

> On 1/29/26 12:28 PM, markw at mohawksoft.com wrote:
>> Anyone want to discuss?
>
> We are in a *very* interesting time.
In many ways.
>
>
> These things can't "think", but what they can do anyway can still be
> very impressive.

Yes, thank you. I am so sick and tired of people saying these things are
intelligent.

My favorite example is a squirrel with 8g of brain that uses less than a
watt can out think an LLM that boils a lake.

>
> These things are very dangerous; lonely, vulnerable, suggestible people
> are being destroyed.

Please elaborate.
>
> These things are turning the economics of the web upside down; web sites
> with good content are losing ad revenue, new crappy web pages made by
> LLMs are flooding the web.

Agreed, AI slop

>
> These things got better by training on more and more data, but they have
> run out of data, worse, coming models are going to be poisoned by
> training on their own terrible output.

exactly.
>
> These things will make us intellectually lazy unless we are extremely
> careful, latter-day Luddites are going to get their revenge as they will
> still be able to think.

I don't think these LLMs are dangerous in an of themselves, but the
fiction of intelligence is dangerous.

>
> These things are very well suited to programming, particularly in Rust,
> because the compiler is to strict about so much.

I'm not a fan of rust.
>
> These things don't scale, the "transformer" innovation that made them
> possible does not scale.
>
> These things got me fired, in fact, I am pretty sure ChatGPT devised how
> to decide who to dump when my employer did a massive layoff.

Yes, that is a problem.

>
> There things are turning the labor market upside down, junior level
> positions are are being eliminated, the pipeline for creating senior
> positions is broken.

This is true. I'm kind of selfishly glad that I am at the end of my
career, I'm not sure it has a future.
>
> And, there will be a crash, the hype is not justified. There is no way
> it could be.

Certainly innovation will take a huge hit.
>
>
> -kb, the Kent who has learned a lot about these things, and is full of
> opinions, more everyday.
>
>