Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by arduanika 902 days ago
Students are humans. LLMs are not. Machine "learning" is a metaphor, not what's actually happening. Stop anthropomorphizing, and show some loyalty to your species.
1 comments

Bizarre loyalty argument aside, why is it not learning? Can you quantify that statement?
The loyalty argument does sound somewhat bizarre, but I think the overarching point is about whether technology use benefits humans in society or not. We should not implicitly treat LLMs owned by corporations with the same rights as humans. LLMs without some form of legislation is looking like it will benefit corporations that are salivating at profits and the prospect of reducing or eliminating the number of creative workers they need.
Why would I want to quantify it? The burden of proof is on the thief.

I have a gadget that will, with some probability, steal your life's savings. It operates through a process that is analogous to a human chewing. When engineering it, we just say for simplicity that the gadget "chews". Of course, that's only a metaphor -- machines can't chew.

But (and here's where your argument gets ridiculous), unless you can quantify the fact that my gadget can't chew, then I will steal your savings. Good luck.

> I have a gadget that will, with some probability, steal your life's savings.

I can think of 2 instances of that machine already. the finance industry fees and an ex-wife.

Why can't machines chew? That's an even weirder analogy, it would be quite easy to make a machine that chews exactly like humans do.