Category: Digging for Courage

I have very little direct experience with language modeling apps. My instincts quickly recognized that my interactions with this tech was damaging to my spirit. Since stepping back, I have learned a lot about  “Artificial Intelligence.” These Large Language Models (LLMs) aren’t the popularly understood “thinking” machines from movies and contemporary discourse. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is what the industry refers to when discussing a properly “thinking” machine. As far as I know, this does not yet exist. I use quotes around “thinking” because these engineers do not know what that word means. Philosophers have been wrestling with the concept of conciousness for as long as…well…we don’t know how long. The tech industry is investing a witheringly small amount of philosophical energy. I’m glad. I don’t want them to figure this out and I suspect that it is an impossible feat.

Back to LLMs. These are complex modelling programs, they do not value truth. Their job is to make the best guess at producing a result that pleases the user. It acquires from each question,  and “learns” to refine the language as you refine your inquiry.

It’s a very clever conman that gets the answers right most of the time.

It’s similar to the problem with tests. Being a good test taker doesn’t mean you have mastered the material, it means you have learned the game of the test. I was a smart kid, but I realized that once I mastered the concept of tests, I could turn down my brain power and coast through school.

LLMs are mastering the test, but they have no way to master the material.

“These models acquire predictive power regarding syntax, semantics, and ontologies inherent in human language corpora, but they also inherit inaccuracies and biases present in the data they are trained on.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model

I’m a fundamentally optimistic person. I’ve had a lot ton of harrowing events turn out to be benefits and I’ve listened to a ton of doomsayers who turn out to be wrong.

Several interactions with young people have got me slightly pessimistic about the direction of our culture (hold on for the silver lining, I cannot help myself).

A few months ago I was at a bookstore looking for material by Carl Jung. I was unsure if he would be in Philosophy, Psychology, or Religious Studies. When I asked an employee, he had no idea who I was talking about. He wasn’t a kid, certainly well enough into his 20s to have heard the name of the second most famous psychologist of the 20th century, yet he struggled to understand the mere spelling of the name.

I wrote this off at the time. I’m a weirdo and I know Jung was largely ignored for Freud in my schooling. I thought he was experiencing a resurgence in popularity, but what do I know of modern trends?

A couple months later I was at a library and my son was interested in reading The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka. Libraries sometimes separate Literature, Fiction, and Paperback Fiction in ways that I don’t understand, so I inquired at the reference desk. Again I was met with ignorance. Neither the title nor the author seemed familiar to the employee.

Yesterday, I was looking for books by and about Desmond Tutu at another library. This time, a young lady at reference didn’t seem to recognize that I was saying a name, answering, “Oh, what’s that?”

I’ll grant that I’m not familiar with his work, but I knew the name and his fight for equality in South Africa.

I don’t expect most people to be aware of these important figures, but the employees of book stores and libraries should have a foundational education when it comes to general literature.

This is one of my problems with the “Banned Book” craze. When an institution decides to use one book, many others must be excluded. Scarcity of space, time, and resources requires choices.

Our educational institutions are excluding deep, important texts. Without knowledge of the texts that have shaped our civilization, we become ignorant of ourselves.

Here’s the good news. These institutions are crumbling under their own incompetence. People are asking, “Why didn’t I learn that?” Independent thought and action is on the rise. Through home education, students can forge their own paths and avoid the mind numbing propaganda of a failing empire.