Notices by William Pietri (williampietri@sfba.social), page 2

LLMs don't actually know anything. https://futurism.com/therapy-chatbot-addict-meth 2/

Time to start a series of posts on how LLMs don't actually know anything! https://thetrek.co/they-trusted-chatgpt-to-plan-their-hike-and-ended-up-calling-for-rescue/ 1/

LLMs don't actually know anything. 4/

LLMs don't actually know anything. https://www.nationalobserver.com/2025/06/17/news/alltrails-ai-tool-search-rescue-members
3/

LLMs don't actually know anything! https://gizmodo.com/rfk-jr-says-ai-will-approve-new-drugs-at-fda-very-very-quickly-2000622778

I love this. We don't have to have a master plan to do something meaningful.

One of the weird things about hype bubbles is the way something goes from world-changing to forgotten. Apple's Vision Pro, one of the many waves of 3D hype going back to the 1850s, is just on the cusp of that. I saw a lot of people talking it up, often heatedly, but I haven't seen a single admission of error, a single lesson learned. Which means we're no more prepared for the next hype wave.

@kims Congrats on escaping!

What would your dad do with the left-handed vegetable peelers?

@cwebber You mean decent-ralized, like making them decent? I hear Bluesky is making use of AI moderation plus libertarian market incentives, so I'm sure they're much more decent than this place.

Chicago's turnout was huge! We marched around and the crowd was many blocks long. The age range was very broad, too. I saw so many signs I loved! #HandsOff #chicago #Illinois

Hard same.

I didn't realize there were any blockchain fans left! They may be few in number but they are as tiresome and blockworthy as they ever were.

In the 15+ years people have been promoting blockchains, this flowchart remains undefeated.

@jzillw
Oh, totally agreed. The whole alpha-nerd thing is just toxic masculinity in different, less fashionable clothing. But there were a lot of entirely decent nerds too. For me part of what changed with the rise of the tech bros was that the increasing social power of tech created huge rewards for being awful.
@cstross

@cstross Very interesting! I've often thought that the religions I admire in the abstract turn out to be just as terrible in practice if they end up socially dominant. I suppose that applies to 90s nerd culture just as well.

If Meta is trying to suppress a former employee's book, seems like something I should read. I just bought a copy.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/12/arbitrator-prohibits-meta-whistleblower-from-promoting-tell-all-book.html

This was totally a shock to me. Care of community is almost a reflex for me, and the pandemic really shook my faith. I spend a lot of time thinking about what it would take to create communities where mutual care is the default.

So what I am seeing in DOGE is the confluence of two kinds of aggressive ignorance. It's a bunch of mouthy white dudes who are used to jumping in, performing genius, and fucking with things they don't understand. Things they won't ever understand. And those dudes, having never experienced the sting of consequences, can even conceive that there might be a problem.

7/

Both computers and finance are pervasive technologies. So much of our society makes use of both of those, and much else can easily be cast into those terms. That can easily make those skills seem universal.

2/

I've been thinking about the shitshow that is DOGE, and I see two kinds of professionalized arrogance: tech and MBAs. A thread!
1/