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NortySpocktoday at 5:05 PM1 replyview on HN

One mental model I have with LLMs is that they have been the subject of extreme evolutionary selection forces that are entirely the result of human preferences.

Any LLM not sufficiently likable and helpful in the first two minutes was deleted or not further iterated on, or had so much retraining (sorry, "backpropagation") it's not the same as it started out.

So it's going to say whatever it "thinks" you want it to say, because that's how it was "raised".


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user_7832today at 6:46 PM

Fully agree. I wonder in the long term how this will show up. Will every business/CEO do more of what he/they anyway want to do, but now supported by AI/LLMs?

The possibilities in "dangerous" fields are a bit more frightening. A general is much more likely to ask ChatGPT "Do you think this war is a good idea/should I drop a bomb", rather than an actually helpful tool - where you might ask "What are 5 hidden points on favor of/against bombing that one likely has missed".

The more you use AI as a strict tool that can be wrong, the safer. Unfortunately I'm not sure if that helps if the guy bombing your city (or even your president) is using AI poorly, and their decisions affect you.

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