Post #3300644

2026-06-04 23:33 UTC

A tool has a deterministic outcome, you hammer a nail you know the outcome, you saw a board you know the outcome. No matter how many times you do the same process you know the outcome. Even dice have a boundary of outcomes you can understand. You give an AI the same string of prompts multiple times and you will get a different outcome each time. Whether its updates to the model or the fact AI’s own response contributes to its context which small changes will build up over time, there is no way of knowing what the outcome will be, how accurate it is, or how to recreate the same results (especially with multiple prompts involved). I wouldn’t call it a tool for that reason but maybe I am nitpicking here.

Replies (2)

@ejs@piefed.social 2026-06-05 02:20

Language modeling is equivalent to a dice roll (given a perfect random number generator). Setting the temperature to 0 removes all randomness from the output, meaning the model always selects the highest probability next word, and the model becomes 100% deterministic. That is, the output of a model is entirely predictable given temperature = 0, you know the model weights, and the seed/prompt. These technicalities aside, it’s true for both a dice roll event and a specific model/prompt event that, practically speaking, the outputs are treated as probabilistic despite being mathematically/technically deterministic: a human can’t predict with 100% accuracy the output of a die despite the theory (classical mechanics of die positioning, force, velocity, friction, …) proving determinism

Open ##3300643
@luciferofastora@feddit.org 2026-06-05 06:21

I’d say if a tool produces predictable results, even if not fully deterministic, it qualifies as a tool. It might not be right for jobs were precision is needed, but the current LLMs and GenAI are perfectly suitable for their primary purpose: Conning idiots into trading their skills and natural intelligence for a promise of convenience, scamming managers into fucking over employees for a promise of saving money, then pulling the rug, cashing in on the desperation of those who can no longer function without it, ruining a generation of students that don’t yet have the expertise to realise the full extent of the damage they’re doing to their own skills (including, as some other post brought up, the skill to not kill people with your MedGPT malpractice), causing unpredictable damage to a host of economies and industries, fucking over residents that don’t get a (democratic) say in whether they want to have a data center chugging their water supply, fucking up the climate, fucking the whole world… In short: LLMs and GenAI are a tool to sell our future for a quick buck we’ll never see.

Open ##3303428