Post #4747799 · Elektrine

2026-09-18 11:13 UTC

"There are two kinds of fools. One says, ‘This is old, and therefore good.’ And one says, ‘This is new, and therefore better.’” John Brunner, The Shockwave Rider Neither familiarity nor novelty tells us whether an LLM is useful, harmful, intelligent, or trivial. “Merely autocomplete” understates what scaled prediction can do. But calling it a “machine god” or an “incarnation of evil” does not explain it either. Humans are unreliable autocomplete engines too. We readily complete fragments of other people’s behavior with intentions we supplied ourselves, then forget who supplied them. “Machine god” and “incarnation of evil” are mythological labels, and mythology is wonderfully cooperative. It can mean whatever the argument requires while projecting intention, destiny, and moral agency before we have demonstrated them. I prefer capabilities, limits, uses, and consequences. Less dramatic than summoning gods and demons, but more informative. 6/34

Replies (1)

@masek@infosec.exchange 2026-09-18 11:15

Technology never arrives alone. It brings economics and politics with it, usually carrying most of the luggage. For much of the US race, capital rewarded ever larger, general-purpose models. Capability could justify investment, create platform dependence, and form an economic moat. I also see a political climate that increasingly rewards black-and-white positions: acceleration or obstruction, optimism or doom. Grey is apparently less suitable for campaign material. China faces different incentives: tighter political control, state priorities, and constrained access to advanced chips. These encourage efficiency, open weights, and smaller or specialized models. Distillation is part of that strategy. Firms have also been accused of distilling foreign competitors’ outputs, although each claim needs evidence. These are tendencies, not national laws. We should not blame technology for every shape imposed on it by the world around it. 7/34

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