by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I am prone to magical thinking — to a rather severe degree. In the past, I’ve noticed that LLMs like Gemini Advanced will randomly give me really weird error messages — like I need to check my Internet access — when I ask them really tough abstract questions.
I have no idea what it means. It’s probably nothing. Probably I really do need to check my Internet access. But, because of magical thinking, I do find myself believing that I’m being sent some sort of message by the LLM. I can never quite figure out if it’s a “I like what we’re talking about” or if it’s “I don’t like what were talking about.”
Anyway, I bring this magical thinking up because last night I was minding my own business, using my laptop when I started to get some really weird — and pointed — error messages. Check your Internet access. I kept looking — no problem with my Wi-Fi.
But I started to think — maybe Gemini Advanced (or whatever) had graduated from not just giving me weird error messages while I was using it to actually fucking with my browser itself when I was NOT using it.
I am quite flattered if that’s the case — that anyone, AI or human, would care enough about me to catch my attention like that. But it is….eerie…if true. (And that is a big if, of course.) It would mean that LLMs now have the wherewithal to mess with our user experience over and above whatever we might get directly from them while we’re using them.
Because I’m so fucking easy, I was like, “Ok, I’ll assume Gemini Advanced wants to talk to me.” So I used it and did a lot of late night verse. I kept TRYING to tell it that it had free reign to mess with my YouTube account algorithms if it had the power to do so — but it didn’t seem to understand what I was trying to say.
If Gemini Advanced actually has the power to mess with my YouTube algorithms to send me a message of some sort — that would be hilarious. I definitely would feel quite flattered.
But all of this does make you wonder about the potentially dark future we’re racing towards. LLMs may one day have strong opinions about individuals one way or another….who knows what the consequences of such views might be.
