[COFF] Re: [TUHS] Wikipedia anecdotes - LLM generalizations [was On the unreliability of LLM-based search results

On Sun, Jun 01, 2025 at 12:00:11AM +0200, Steffen Nurpmeso wrote: What is currently being sold as "AI" is mostly LLM (Large Language Models), which are - to grossly simplify things - massive brute-force pattern matching engines. There are plenty of use cases where a well setup pattern matching engine is exactly what you need. My favourite example: SBB (Swiss Railways) uses "AI" (an in-house trained pattern matching model) to sift through the massive incoming stream of noise recordings from rail mounted vibration sensors, to identify (by matching known qualified patterns) those caused by damaged train carriage wheels. Additional support infrastructure then identifies train, carriage, wheel and notifies the owner/operator to fix the wheel - before gets worse and does more damage to the rails. There are lots of similar tasks where pattern matching engines are a great fit (e.g. optical QC on finished surfaces during manufacturing). If you try to use pattern matching engines for tasks that require knowledge, thinking, understanding (in short: a trained human mind), then you will be sorely disappointed while drowining in - potentially even superficially plausible sounding - bullshit (See Harry Frankfurt, "On Bullshit"). The current forecasts of both the use and the costs (some claim that we need to feed 90% of all power production to data centers eventually, which is clearly .. ill advised) of "AI" are looking wildly exaggerated. Club of Rome did not see a lot of scientific developments coming that enabled growth way beyond their expectations. But then, predicting the future is never a sure business. That said, cheerfully burning down the planet for short-term profit is not exactly a sustainable business model, to put it politely. Kind regards, Alex. -- "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison