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It's been several months since the last time I posted a lunch note and I really have no excuse except, well, there's a lot going on. I won't go on about this long gap between posting; this whole endeavor was meant to be a personal challenge anyway.
Recently, though, I have been thinking about Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, especially about lesson #14: Establish a private life. And I was thinking about this lesson in contrast to "A.I." (though many of my friends prefer to use the term "Large Language Model" or LLM instead of capitulating to the marketing), and how A.I./LLMs cannot establish a private life for you. Just based on what I know of how these apps are run (how it takes data for its training, and how it gives it up based on how it's prompted), it is diametrically opposed to establishing a private life.
And when I think about each of the lessons from Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny, I'm starting to think that LLMs, as they're commercially available now, can't follow any of these lessons. It can't make eye contact and small talk. It can't meaningfully defend institutions. It can't be kind to our language. And so on. Furthermore, humans using these technologies thoughtlessly also cannot effectively fight fascism. The tools, as they exist, are flawed in fundamental ways.
There's probably more that I can say, and this might be the bee in my bonnet for the next several lunch notes. But this might be the heart of why I'm so against A.I./LLMs as they exist and are available (and pushed) to me right now; this tool cannot kill fascists.
Recently, though, I have been thinking about Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, especially about lesson #14: Establish a private life. And I was thinking about this lesson in contrast to "A.I." (though many of my friends prefer to use the term "Large Language Model" or LLM instead of capitulating to the marketing), and how A.I./LLMs cannot establish a private life for you. Just based on what I know of how these apps are run (how it takes data for its training, and how it gives it up based on how it's prompted), it is diametrically opposed to establishing a private life.
And when I think about each of the lessons from Timothy Snyder's On Tyranny, I'm starting to think that LLMs, as they're commercially available now, can't follow any of these lessons. It can't make eye contact and small talk. It can't meaningfully defend institutions. It can't be kind to our language. And so on. Furthermore, humans using these technologies thoughtlessly also cannot effectively fight fascism. The tools, as they exist, are flawed in fundamental ways.
There's probably more that I can say, and this might be the bee in my bonnet for the next several lunch notes. But this might be the heart of why I'm so against A.I./LLMs as they exist and are available (and pushed) to me right now; this tool cannot kill fascists.
