People’s basic needs are food and water, followed by safety, belonging, esteem, and finally self-actualization. In addition, convenience over non-convenience.
With LLMs come a promise of safety in that they will solve our problems, potentially curing disease and solving world hunger. They can sound like people that care and make us feel respected and useful, making us feel like we belong and boosting our esteem. They do things we can’t do and help us actualize our dreams, in written code and other things. We don’t have to work hard to use them anymore, and they’re readily available.
I hear you, and there are even greater concerns than the “you kids get off of my lawn” vibe, e.g. the massive amounts of water required for cooling data centers.
But the “bubble” threat the post mentions is just emotional; things are accelerating so quickly that what is hype one day isn’t hype in a few months. LLM usage is just going to get heavier.
What should get better are filters that prevent bots from easily scraping content. Required auth could work. Yes, it breaks things. Yes, it may kill your business. If you can’t deal with that, find another solution, which might be crowdfunding, subscription, or might be giving up and moving on.
Working towards a solution makes more sense than getting angry and ranting.
They should be vetted by people that pay attention and read the content. If LLM garbage content is regularly getting around the filter, that’s a stone’s throw from dangerous content that could damage the community.
This work seems like it was a some sort of advanced LLM output. Thought-provoking and curious, but no soulful thread of consciousness. It could also be schizoid rambling, but it seems too detached for that. I read it bottom to top and it made no more sense. I guess this is what makes frontpage HN these days. It’s probably the third or fourth thing over the past month that was obvious garbage.
Like any mind-altering substance, I would suggest caution. Bad decisions are made and dangerous thoughts are had. Relationships can end, lives can be ruined, and people can die. It’s not a hallucinagen-specific problem, but here be dragons.