Notices by Thomas 🔭🕹️ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io), page 9

@codinghorror If communication doesn’t need to be precise, it’s meaningless.

@codinghorror Communication needs to be precise because when you conflate hypotension with hypertension people die. (Actual example that Google search did.)

@codinghorror You perhaps do. But 99.99% of people using these tools don’t.

@codinghorror clearly, the people who need to make summaries

@codinghorror I just don’t see how this is better than search engines we already had. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@codinghorror I disagree. Google Chrome was made with one single purpose in mind: create a monopoly on the Web.

Microsoft may have tried too, but failed.

@codinghorror People for the most part don’t choose their tools based on how well they work; this is true even for people who have a free choice of tools.

I think this boils down to what designers call “sufficing”, just pick the first thing that probably works, which often is something they’ve heard about from others.

Most people then will stick with stuff even if it demonstrably doesn’t work (or at least doesn’t work well) for them.

@codinghorror You can’t hack yourself to magically change how they work—they will always be inaccurate and make things up. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@codinghorror Just like with other generative outputs, in summaries LLMs often omit important things and also often confabulate things that aren’t there.

LLMs don’t (and can’t) understand what they’re summarizing. They’re purely statistical and just happen to sometimes make passable summaries but often they don’t (this is also true for e.g. when they’re used for translations).

@stroughtonsmith I wouldn’t be so mad about their shit if there was some other companies trying to make something that’s better, but no, they’re even worse

Bragging about how many Substack newsletters you’re subscribed to is definitely a choice

"How can you get more accurate answers from an LLM?” is like asking "how can you get more love from a prostitute?"

That's just not the service provided.

who the fuck needs all these summaries

Just fwiw the best way to exclude your open source code from being ingested for "AI" training is to load it up to the motherfucking brim with fucking 4-letter word comments #fuck /* fuck */

Little update: the meds they gave him made him feel _much_ better and he started to eat well again so we should be able to get his weight up (he got really skinny).

We won't know if it's cancer or not for a while, but if it is we will definitely not try to draw it out with any painful and unlikely to work therapy for it and instead make sure he feels well.

average desert clouds

@wiredfire it’s never about viewpoints, it’s literally always about stuff like “are trans people allowed to live” and “should we genocide a people” and “is climate change real”

@rakslice they insisted for decades on “decorum”

Send your good thoughts to Watson, who is now an older cat and has pancreatitis and possibly cancer. Here’s a photo of when we got him long ago.

@troglobit you should read the articles, because they’re actually forcing you to use AI