Hard To Keep Up

Yesterday there was an interesting article on LLMs that had "bullshit" in its title, so of course I had to post about it, but I was busy & couldn't get to it.

Today, another interesting post exposing LLM bullshit. Then another. So the title was going to be "Trilogy". But then yet another post came out. It is getting really, really hard to keep up.

Posting more frequently is supposed to be good for your blog, but I think that 2025, with dozens & dozens of "Bullshit Apocalypse" posts, is going to blow away the # of posts in this blog for any year, going back to its inception in 2003.

1. From 404 Media:

   Researchers Jailbreak AI by Flooding It With Bullshit Jargon

   So bullshit generators are susceptible to attack by floods of bullshit? Shocker.

   Hmmm, could this be another flavor of Bullshit Contagion? Where contact with bullshit winds up creating more bullshit?

2. Another blockbuster from Gary Marcus:

   Botshit Gone Wild

   He starts by including the precis of this scholarly paper:

   Beware of Botshit: How to Manage the Epistemic Risks of Generative Chatbots

   I would posit that "Epistemic Risks" === "Bullshit Apocalypse".

   He then conflates "botshit" with my hero Cory Doctorow's "enshittification":

   Over time, botshit (arguably a byproduct of the process Cory Doctorow has called enshittification) has become more and more abundant.

   He details a total of 8, count 'em, 8, tales of LLMs going off the rails or otherwise causing chaotic bullshit.

3. This is just bizarre:

   Adding a feature because ChatGPT incorrectly thinks it exists

   My feelings on this are conflicted. I’m happy to add a tool that helps people. But I feel like our hand was forced in a weird way. Should we really be developing features in response to misinformation?

4. An op-ed today's Lexington Herald-leader:

   There is no such thing as artificial intelligence

   This is an interesting proposed terminology change.

   In lieu of "artificial intelligence," I propose a more accurate, ethical, and socially responsible name: "pattern engine". Early computers, which would find mathematical differences, were called "difference engines." This name adequately recognized the reality of the machine at hand. "AI"s are indeed engines, and engines made for aggregrating patterns and sorting data into statistical correlations. They are, truly, engines that sort things into patterns and product outputs based on the statistical weight of what has been sorted.

   Yeah, good luck getting the hype-masters at "AI" companies, all hoping for that unicorn, to use better language. They have shown a completely consistent pattern of using misleading & hyperbolic verbiage, why would they change?

The Bullshit Apocalypse is not "coming". The Bullshit Apocalypse is here and now.

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Here's the home page/directory for my posts on Bullshit.