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Comment by EbEsacAig

16 hours ago

> We are in the process of giving up our own moral standing in favor of taking on the ones imbued into LLMs by their creators. This is a worrying trend that will totally wipe out intellectual diversity.

That trend is a consequence. A consequence of people being too lazy to think for themselves. Critical thinking is more difficult than simply thinking for yourself, so if someone is too lazy to make an effort and reaches for an LLM at once, they're by definition ill-equipped to be critical towards the cultural/moral "side-channel" of the LLM's output.

This is not new. It's not random that whoever writes the history books for students has the power, and whoever has the power writes the history books. The primary subject matter is just a carrier for indoctrination.

Not that I disagree with you. It's always been important to use tools in ways unforeseen, or even forbidden, by their creators.

Personally, I distrust -- based on first hand experience -- even the primary output of LLMs so much that I only reach for them as a last resort. Mostly when I need a "Google Search" that is better than Google Search. Apart from getting quickly verifiable web references out of LLMs, their output has been a disgrace for me. Because I'm mostly opposed even to the primary output of LLMs, to begin with, I believe to be somewhat protected from their creators' subliminal messaging. I hope anyway.

> It's not random that whoever writes the history books for students has the power, and whoever has the power writes the history books.

There is actually not any reason to believe either of these things.

It's very similar to how many people claim everything they don't like in politics comes from "corporations" and you need to "follow the money" and then all of their specific predictions are wrong.

In both cases, political battles are mainly won by insane people willing to spend lots of free time on them, not by whoever has "power" or money.

  • How exactly do you think these insane people are able to spend that much time and also have enough of an audience to sway anything?

    • Mostly by being retired. Boomers with 401ks are not generally what people mean by "power and money".

> That trend is a consequence. A consequence of people being too lazy to think for themselves. Critical thinking is more difficult than simply thinking for yourself, so if someone is too lazy to make an effort and reaches for an LLM at once, they're by definition ill-equipped to be critical towards the cultural/moral "side-channel" of the LLM's output.

Well, no. Hence this submission.