this post was submitted on 16 Mar 2026
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Fuck AI

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"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"

A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.

AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.

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[–] WatDabney@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 4 hours ago

fancy autocomplete

I hadn't thought of it that way specifically, but not only is it fairly accurate - I'm willing to bet that the similarities aren't coincidental. LLMs are almost certainly evolved in part (and potentially almost entirely) from autocomplete software, and likely started as just an attempt to make them more accurate by expanding their databases and making them recognize, and assess the likely connections between, more key words.

tokens

That's an important clarification, not only because they process more than words, but because they don't really process "words" per se.

And personally, I've been more impressed by other things they've accomplished, like processing retinal scans and comparing them with diagnoses of diabetes to isolate indicators such that they can accurately diagnose the latter from the former, or processing the sounds that elephants make and noting that each elephant has a unique set of sounds that are associated with it, and that the other elephants use to get its attention or to refer to it, which is to say, they have names. (And that last is a particularly illustrative example of how LLMs work, since even we don't know what those sounds actually mean - it's just that the LLMs have processed enough data to find the patterns).