The biggest risk of large language models is that they may bury us in lies

I think this will rapidly accelerate a set of closely related trends that were rapidly growing in the internet: curation, trust, and reputation.<p>In a world with the massive aggregating ability of google, amazon, Facebook, etc, we&#x27;ve become deprived already of truth. Whether its the alto-junk filling up search results, fake reviews on cheap knockoffs on amazon, or the latest mis-information campaign on Facebook, it becomes hard to sort through the endless options (curation), trust the reviews, and find reliable sources.<p>People already search <i>on reddit</i> for some review, because they don&#x27;t trust Amazon reviews, but what happens when reddit becomes GPT playgrounds? You&#x27;ll see a further rise in organizations that either sell Curation (Target, Costco), reputation (Apple App Store) or sell Trust (Consumer Reports, Wirecutter). People flock to influencer YouTubers for product reviews, because its harder to fake, and people will build new business around such solutions.

Something to keep in mind with this article (and the myriad of other articles like it): the author has a psych background, not an engineering background. He&#x27;s worked as a consultant, not an engineer. He has a lot of things to say about AI<p>He calls for changes in AI, but never does he talk about concrete implementation (in this article or elsewhere). People like the author of this article, let&#x27;s call them &quot;thought leaders&quot;, what are they actually good for? What do they build? It seems like all they can do is make noise and spend money

&gt; Systems like ChatGPT are enormously entertaining and even mind-bogglingly human-sounding, but they are also unreliable and could create an avalanche of misinformation.<p>It sounds like it could be used as a “flood the zone” machine in some ways, and led me to wonder whether this capacity was a feature or a bug.

Lies are just a special case of an uncountable infinity of impossibilities. It will only make humans who lie have an existential crisis. People who believe in a consistent world can carry on normally.

3500 years ago, the Assyrians and Babylonians made it policy to always lie (propagandize) about their victories. They had no official losses, they only won closer and closer to home...<p>There is nothing new under the sun.

A cheap way to replace politicians.

How models like GPT-3 could accelerate the production of misinformation, and what we might do about it

&gt; they may bury us in [the wrong people&#x27;s] lies<p>Fixed the headline.

Truth itself is an imaginary construct. All animals are evolved to survive not to seek truth. “Truth seekers” are performing in a status game with the objective to prove genetic strength to prospective mates (however unsuccessful that quest might be). Even if we could know the truth, it would be a waste of valuable resources that could be better spent elsewhere.

We’ve been in a post-truth society for some time now. Anything that makes it easier to lie is a positive in my book. Society needs to accept that we’re well past the time where information can be trusted. Either we adapt or die.<p>One thing that helps me is to understand that I really don’t need to know the truth. I wake up. I see my family. I watch my daughter smile. I enjoy the company of friends. I drink a nice glass of wine. What value does the “truth” have in my daily life? Most of the time, what is true and what is lie only comes up in a political discussion, and it almost always is unpleasant.