Post #188513

2026-01-30 19:27 UTC

The vendors WANT their #LLM toys to regurgitate whatever training information is crammed into them, even if the information is full of lies and propaganda (and systemic racism and bigotry), for the corporate bosses who are chiefly buying and using these things (and hoping to use #LLMs as infinite profit generators) want their "artificial intelligence" only to say and do that which is already consonant with the prejudices and intellectual defects which are typical of the #technology sector and its corporate leadership. In sum, @adafruit@fosstodon.org is a fool to entrust the design of a *scientific device* to an LLM, a device which freely confabulates truth and falsity together. How could adafruit EVER know the difference? The reason they're using the LLM in the first place is to AVOID thinking about these things. They want an automagic thingie which spits out code which they can automagically assume to be *good enough*—good enough to make a salable toy, one that fools its users and lulls them into a mere *feeling* of being trustworthy and scientific.

Replies (1)

@alyx_woodward@universeodon.com 2026-01-30 19:32

I point out that this same corporate culture which wants the users of #LLMs (at all levels, from corporate management to end-user consumer usage) NOT to think about how fundamentally untrustworthy "generative #AI" is—the same corporations who wish to blur the lines between truth and falsehood, and persuade people to accept all corporate doings as automatically trustworthy and authoritative—also has zero interest in giving the public truthful information about #globalwarming and the carbon cycle and everything else. In short, I think it's getting pretty close to *ridiculous* to entrust one's monitoring of atmospheric carbon dioxide, or any other important fact about the world, to the products of corporations—not without some independent means of verification and standardization.

Open ##188561