I’m always shocked by how LLM illiterate professionals or even leading “science influencers” are.

…But I know why.

It’s on purpose

Literally everything about the most common (Big Tech) interfaces obfuscates everything about them, to the maximum degree, to present them as “sycophantic oracles” and maximize engagement. If that’s all one is exposed to, there is literally no way to get a cold ass bucket of water in the face by peeking under the hood.

It’s all very… anti science.

On a semi related note, see this absolutely unhinged but not wrong rant:

The Conspiracy Against High Temperature Sampling

https://gist.github.com/Hellisotherpeople/71ba712f9f899adcb08b94bce20d5397

It is related. Anyone, even Hank Green, will rely on AI more if they never get a chance to poke it and peel it apart.

Like, if I ware in charge of a university, I would mandate a course where everyone gets a untuned base model in raw completion mode, and gleefully watch the slow realization. “Wait… all “AI” is just this?”

I don't hate all LLMs/ML models/"AI".

I also don't use them. I also don't see a need to use them.

I work in tech and these "AI" things are little more than averaging the most common replies to a given input. Any question that's been asked, especially those that are asked often, is well suited for an LLM chat bot. That's good if you want a high level overview of a topic that you don't know much about. If you want accuracy, you'll need to dig a bit more, but overall, you'll get a relatively good idea of the answer you're looking for. That's enough for most people.

I'm crazy. I like to deeply understand everything, so the high level, lack of detail, finesse, and accuracy of LLM chat bots is unacceptable for me, so I trend towards doing my own research. If I use an LLM at all, it's just an augmented search engine. I'm more interested in its references than its response.

There's also something to be said about making short clips of impossible things that some smaller YouTubers are using "AI" models for. Things that would take a long time for a graphics artist to create, and an editor to composite. Stuff that a small time YouTuber can't really afford, but they can get good enough but clearly "AI" visuals to spice things up in their videos. The AI is just for display during transitions, it doesn't affect the content being made in any meaningful way. I've seen Paul Hibbert do this a lot and his production team from what I know is basically him and his wife. I'm not even sure if he has an editor, or if he does it himself. He'll go from a live shot of him talking about a product, do an AI transition, to another live shot of him continuing his discussion. Rather than a cut, or some kind of fade, wipe, or other simplistic transition, the generated images are of him, and only to add visual flavor. He also does some AI generated music stuff, which again, fair. He's not exactly a musician, and unless he has the money to hire a musician, he either uses AI for the funny transition music or he uses an unrelated and unlicensed (or open licensed) song.... It just adds flavor to his content, it builds on what he's creating, it doesn't shape what he's creating. All of his scripts sound genuine, not AI created, so everything should be fine.

That, to me, is a good use of AI as a tool.

There's too many bad examples for me to really cover them in any detail, but I'm sure everyone has seen the AI generated person being animated by AI, reading an AI generated script, using an AI generated voice sample. Even if the original source material is legit, is buried under so many layers of slop that I can't bear to watch it.

For me, it entirely depends on what he's using it for. It's entirely not about the fact that he uses it. I'll have to dig into it a bit to see what he's doing, but from the comments I've read so far, it seems like the answer to what he's using it for, is yes. He's using it for everything... Not ideal.

I was watching something last night about how high intelligence doesn’t mean superpowers, it simply means increased processing power. It means the ability to see more problems ahead, to ruminate, to worry about how to address them. It makes sense that a lot of people with high intelligence and compassion are anxious. Being able to foresee and worry about so many things stresses people out. Add in the limitations of being a human being with a finite capacity for doing things to address said problems, and well.

All of these very intelligent people being caught up in using AI because of the thought that it will increase their ability to get things done, be more productive, do ‘more and more,’ like Hank said, makes absolute sense.

It is unfortunately perfectly suited to people who feel they need to solve everything to find any kind of internal peace. The temptation to think that you are The One Who Can Use It Right To Help Save The World when everyone else is prone to succumbing to AI psychosis or simply being fed falsehoods and accepting them as presented… well, it results in things like this, doesn’t it?

He’s been obviously struggling since he got cancer. He’s in remission now and that’s great but I’ve been watching him slowly slip into PTSD. I have medical PTSD, I have cystic fibrosis and had a double lung transplant in 2014 and I see him devolving the same way I did. I’m literally two days away from getting out of an inpatient trauma treatment center that I’ve been at for a month because I didn’t take the medical PTSD seriously because I didn’t realize I needed to, I think he is in the same boat. I think he was already spread way too thin then cancer happened and he’s stuck in a hyper reactive state which is exhausting and eventually leads to the more classic PTSD symptoms and he’s probably turning to LLMs to try to keep up as the PTSD drains his batteries and he’s unaware of it. I hope he gets help soon and he doesn’t wait for it to get as bad as I did, PTSD kills if you let it get away from you.

Hank is a fucking loser.

This whole thing is so sad. Dude comes out with "I'm addicted to chatting with LLMs" and people pile on him for what? Not saving a glass of water while 100$ says all yall still eat meat and do a billion times worse than burning some LLM tokens? Disgusting responses all around.

In general the AI ludites are so tiring. I wish this energy would be spent on something actually impactful like murdering animals for entertainment - yes thats your cheese burger - but these addicts are quick to defend their own addiction while sneer at other significantly less harmful ones.

Gonna go burn more tokens just for your sake now.

A problem I have with gen AI is that is generates so much.

In an hour of work you can have a 200 page document about a subject you knew nothing of an hour before.

That's just too much to keep up with.

As someone who has also tried to intervene with a loved one who was a little too excited by llms, I'm glad that it's becoming more socially acceptable to talk about that kind of thing.

Hank has been an advocate for knowledge for far longer than LLMs have existed. His recent use of them is disappointing, but I fell like this does not discredit the work he has done throughout his career to push curiosity.

What he does next will be important and will decide how I interact with his content going forward. It seems like he is aware of his missteps and is looking to make a change.

I am not a perfect human and do not expect celebrities to be perfect at all times.