• mad_lentil@lemmy.ca
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    17 hours ago

    Most people agree that there are legitimate applications for LLM technology, like in the medical field. This comes up every single thread.

    Then you have trillions of dollars of investment on the promise of eroding worker power, and letting capital enunciate itself without labour. That’s what it’s essentially all for.

    The “legitimate” uses of the technology are not even a passing concern for investors except insofar as they can point to it to excuse their grift.

      • mad_lentil@lemmy.ca
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        12 hours ago

        Like medical research, discovering drugs, folding proteins. There’s also evidence they can be used to help analyse x-rays.

          • mad_lentil@lemmy.ca
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            7 hours ago

            Rightrightright, I mean they can help with that stuff by churning though large sets of data or by statistical analysis to look for early signs of cancer, etc.

            I’m not a researcher and I don’t use them myself, but I know a thing or two about how LLMs work. Could be you could school me though if you know a lot.

            • Homosexual sapiens@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              7 hours ago

              I’m just saying the models used in medical imaging and protein folding, to use your examples, are not LLMs, but very different dedicated medical imaging models or protein folding models. Still falls under the overarching umbrella of AI/ML, but not really any more relevant to language models. LLMs also aren’t a very relevant tool for big data or statistical analysis. Even with an agent harness, they could be used to write scripts that a human could also write, but couldn’t directly do any sort of reliable statistical analysis.

              • mad_lentil@lemmy.ca
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                6 hours ago

                Oh OK I wasn’t aware of that. Actually I wondered as I was writing my comment how an LLM would compare to more tightly fitted model.

                Well there goes my one example. Is there anything they’re legitimately good for? I’ll admit they seem good at finding “fuzzy” connections, and their text and image generation capabilities are impressive even if they aren’t my cup of tea—mostly because of the externalities.

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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      13 hours ago

      You say most people believe this, but I see many people every day for weeks now claiming Linux is vibecoded now. Why? Three stories: 1) months ago LLM use was not outright banned in kernel development 2) Linus admitted to using LLMs in an experimental branch to find and patch bugs 3) a recent shift in attitude happened, toward LLM-driven PRs because there were too many, and the reaction from Linus and the other maintainers was to raise the bar for submitting PRs to reduce the chance of slop wasting people’s time.

      All of this was a series of level headed responses and course corrections which at no time was indicative of anything more than LLMs are useful sometimes. Yet people all over Lemmy are saying shit like “Linux is all in on vibecoding”. Besides that issue, I’ve seen and been involved in many conversations where idiots will say that any use of AI is super unethical and unacceptable. The binary thinking on this issue is strong on here.

      • mad_lentil@lemmy.ca
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        12 hours ago

        Ah well I agree I would Linux love maintainers to take a more principled stance against LLM contributions given all the negative externalities of the technology as it exists today.

        there’s a strong case to be made that there is no way to use the current “frontier” models ethically because of how they were trained and who their patrons are. I would love to see that acknowledged.

          • mad_lentil@lemmy.ca
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            9 hours ago

            What makes you think that? I am on no side. I’m just trying to be objective. Everything I said is factually borne out afaik.

            Also

            you are on the side of

            binary thinking

            Lol now you’re just playing with me, very funny ;p

            • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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              9 hours ago

              You thought you were being subtle but if your response to an extremist viewpoint is “yes they make a good point” you’re not getting it but you do seem to want to definitely take a side.

              “I’m just being objective but your point isn’t worth addressing while the thought process you take issue with is totally valid”

              • mad_lentil@lemmy.ca
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                7 hours ago

                I’m not trying to be subtle, I’m trying to be open. Clearly we’ve each got our opinions and I think I’ve been very upfront with mine. You’re right I don’t think being against this technology qualifies as an “extremist” position anymore then being against cloud computing or Nvidia are extreme takes.

                Anyway you didn’t even try me. I’m elsewhere in this thread talking about the legitimate uses for LLMs. Not everything is as black vs white, clanker vs luddite, as you’re making it.

                • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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                  7 hours ago

                  Yes being so against a technology that you will spread lies about it makes one an extremist. Siding with that… Whatever. Have fun with that. I won’t be seeing anymore of this from you.