Comment by thorum
2 days ago
I like this framing, but I don’t think it’s entirely new to LLMs. Humans have been building flexible, multi-purpose tools and using them for things the original inventor or manufacturer didn’t think of since before the invention of the wheel. It’s in our DNA. Our brains have been shaped by a world where that is normal.
The rigidness and near-perfect reliability of computer software is the unusual thing in human history, an outlier we’ve gotten used to.
“The rigidness and near-perfect reliability of computer software is the unusual thing in human history, an outlier we’ve gotten used to.”
Ordered approximately by recency:
Banking? Clocks? Roman aqueducts? Mayan calendars? The sun rising every day? Predictable rainy and dry season?
How is software the outlier here?
My point was more “humans are used to tools that don’t always work and can be used in creative ways” than “no human invention has ever been rigid and reliable”.
People on HN regularly claim that LLMs are useless if they aren’t 100% accurate all the time. I don’t think this is true. We work around that kind of thing every day.
With your examples:
- Before computers, fraud and human error was common in the banking system. We designed a system that was resilient against this and mostly worked, most of the time, well enough for most purposes even though it was built on an imperfect foundation.
- Highly precise clocks are a recent invention. For regular people 200 years ago, one person’s clock would often be 5-10 minutes off from someone else’s. People managed to get things done anyway.
I’ll grant you that Roman aqueducts, seasons and the sun are much more reliable than computers (as are all the laws of nature).
Isn’t technology the invention of more reliable and precise tools?
I've always viewed computers as being an obvious complement. Of course we worked so hard to build machines that are good at the things our brains don't take to as naturally.