In reply to MattyJ.

It would definitely get me to start looking!

In reply to MrAptronym.

I've quit jobs for less reason than that behavior.

In reply to The Orange Theme.

So what if a few hundred people die of dehydration. At least my hangnail was properly diagnosed.

In reply to jwz.

I see Atwood is still lost. Sadness.

In fits and starts I’ve been gradually developing a project that has the promise of cracking one of the hardest problems in my field, delivering almost magical results.  Lately when I describe it to anyone connected with Silicon Valley their response is always something like “what AI/ML/LLM platform are you using?”, as if that is now the only possible path for innovation.  (There is zero neural net nonsense in this project, but it does have a voracious appetite for raw data.)

It is awkward to know that if I get it up and running during these current times, I might have to sell it as “AI”, even if that means slapping on a nonfunctional ML package somewhere in the flow just to get the necessary other people interested.  

Thanks to my firm’s “AI initiatives”, I was told I should be using AI tools at work more. So I looked around to see where I could dump some slop, and ended up having AI write my annual “self-evaluation”. The bosses ate that shit right up.

In reply to Jeff Atwood.

well, we lost one more to the sycophantic llms apparently

In reply to jwz.

From my own personal reference... while I've only known a few reference (or other kinds of) librarians... so far as I'm aware... none of them was a crack dealer trying to get people addicted to using (interacting with, outsourcing their thoughts to, etc.) their 'services'

Where as the bots are obviously just glorified loot boxes

In reply to David Gerard.

I don’t have Bluesky so I’ll have to ask an AI agent to go look for me. 😂

In reply to Lee (Pilchard) Stacey.

thread of more https://bsky.app/profile/davidgerard.co.uk/post/3m2kj6tl3xk2h

In reply to Reijo Pitkänen.

A librarian will also be able to say 'I don't know, but I know where to look to help us find out.' and also 'That information isn't available in all the places I've looked. How important is it to you that I keep searching?'

so funny how literally the first response to this post confirms, that it is not only a joke, but also a very brutal truths.

In reply to jwz.

A librarian will say, "no".

An LLM will always give you enough of a vague answer to burn more tokens.

In reply to Mspong.

Now imagine being privy to conversations in which people ask "can I can this in my Instant Pot?" and others answer "Chat GPT says it's fine."

It's like they never even saw the South Park episode about Cartman's AI-powered Trapper Keeper. There's only one way this whole thing ends:

In reply to jwz.

very succinctly put

In reply to jwz.

I am a reference librarian and would be happy to go on any podcast and say that this is entirely accurate.

In reply to MrAptronym.

When a slopmonger tells you who they are, believe them.

In reply to jwz.

Ed Zitron is right. Ceterum censeo, LLMs esse delenda.

In reply to jwz.

It's like a reference librarian that steals books from other libraries and makes up references all the time lol.

In reply to xyhhx 🔻.

came to say the same!

my boss was in a meeting today talking about how obsessed she was with AI.

While someone was presenting an instrument comparison that they painstakingly put together over a week of direct work with manufacturers, she said 'That lines up with what the AI said'. And 'I could have the AI make a fancy table' and then 'You guys gather the information for the AI' I am glad I had my camera off.

❝ slopfondler ❞

👩🏾‍🍳💋

As an enthusiast of home canning and foraging for wild fungi, it amuses me how people who tremble in fear at the vanishingly small chance of botulism or misidentified mushrooms, will happily act on the advice of the lie machine. But then it's the same thing with store bought canned food which might be dented and old but the sense of authority that comes from commercial sale means it must be safe!

In reply to jwz.

"my brother in taxonomy" is a good one

"It's like having a reference librarian!"

My Brother in Taxonomy, it is the farthest thing from that.

A reference librarian is a person with feelings, motivations and ethics, who has a goal of helping you find the answer to your question.

The chatbot is a clockwork mechanism that extrudes text optimized to make you think your question has been answered.

It is also a machine built by fascists with the goal of creating a dependent, de-skilled, submissive populace and ending Democracy. HTH.

In reply to Jeff Atwood.

What if the nightclub adjacent space had reciprocal hours and made DIY batch deodorant soap and like, Vicks? Also you could shower in DSMO maybe? [Proud of how little sense the reciprocal hours thing made. Embarrassed the nonsense doesn't fund TCM uh, centers.]

In reply to jwz.

Slop talking

Dang are you buddies with the guy who gamified Q&A and then also gamified forums? Is he planning on gamifying AI?

I want to stop living in Interesting Times.