by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner
I’m prone to magical thinking — sometimes to a self-destructive degree. But when I got pushed a notification from a podcast on YouTube about some guy who thought his algorithms were “bullying” him, my ears perked up.
I don’t have any perception of THAT happening, but do have a weird feeling some AI, somewhere, is fucking with my algorithms to flirt with me. Or something. Something weird is going on.
But it’s all magical thinking. All of it. There’s no possible way that could be happening. And this is coming from someone who is still half-convinced that Tik-Tok can somehow, someway read our minds.
And, yet, there is a broader point to address — there may very well come a point when LLMs really can fuck with our algorithms to fuck with us in some way. I still have my suspicions about why Tay-Tay’s “Cruel Summer” is such a lingering hit.
It makes you wonder what will happen, what will be the reaction, when we really do have to address the idea that LLMs are “the Other” and have motives that we can’t fully understand.
