alt Hacker NewsI agree.
This Robin Williams monologue nails exactly why LLMs make us so uneasy.
They speak fluently and confidently about experiences it’s impossible for them to have. They can’t taste a strawberry or do any of the things Robin Williams names.
There are a number of people building these machines who literally believe the machines will replace us and because they will be more powerful than us so nothing meaningful will be lost.
They need to watch this clip.
Even though they probably still won’t understand it.
Replies
>They speak fluently and confidently about experiences it’s impossible for them to have.
But they're echoing these things from people who really have.
The key is to not forget that LLMs are just next-generation search engines, instead of anthropomorphizing them to be "speaking agents". The natural language IO interface is just a side effect.
LLM's now do speak from experience... when it comes to operating a computer!
And yet the monologue is a complete work of fiction, a script delivered by a talented actor that we still find moving. So what are these authentic experiences to you, or does it not matter if we can’t tell the difference?
This is literally an argument for why people will remain important.
Because people are the stakeholders and the tasters and the feelers.
AI is just another tool, albeit an unusually fascinating one.
> people building these machines who literally believe the machines will replace us and because they will be more powerful than us so nothing meaningful will be lost
I have a pet theory on why that's the case and why this monologue fits so well. I think there's a variety of conditions, from straight up sociopathy, to Will's type of CPTSD, autistic masking, and probably a hell of a lot more that makes a person experience life on a level that's closer to an LLM than a healthy normal human being, where every interaction is essentially fake and acted out almost mechanically without any genuine connection ever occurring. Doubly so with ever decreasing local communities and online isolation.
So from that point of view, it's hard to see what would be lost because for them it doesn't exist anyway. Tech augmented generational trauma on steroids.
They saw it, understood it perfectly, laughed at it, and continue fucking over humanity.
It's a movie. The whole thing is fiction. Robin Williams memorized the whole monologue, or was reading que cards.
ChatGPT has taken to saying things like “What I would do now is…” or “if I were you I’d…”.
I know these are figures of speech, but it reminds me that this thing doesn’t do anything, it doesn’t learn anything, it can’t try anything and find out. And yet it uses speech patterns drawn from real humans who can and do all those things.