A perfect time for LLMs to show up and do the same. The subreddit simulators were hilarious because of the unusual ways they would perform but a modern LLM is a near perfect approximation of the average HN commenter.
I would have assumed that making LLMs indistinguishable from these humans would make those kinds of comments less interesting to interact with but there’s a base level of conversation that hooks people.
On Twitter, LLM-equipped Indians cosplay as right wing white supremacists and amass large followings (also bots, perhaps?) revealed only when they have to participate in synchronous conversation.
And yet, they are still popular. Even the “Texas has warm water ports” Texan is still around and has a following (many of whom seem non-bot though who can tell?).
Even though we have a literal drone, humans still engage in drone behaviour and other humans still engage them. Fascinating. I wonder whether the truth is that the inherent past-replication of low-temperature LLMs is likely to fix us to our present state than to raise us to a new equilibrium.
Experiments in Musical Intelligence is now over 40 years old and I thought it was going to revolutionize things: unknown melodies discovered by machine married to mind. Maybe LLMs aren’t going to move us forward only because this point is already a strong attractor. I’m optimistic in the power of boredom, though!