The Delusion Machine – What happened when I fed my soul into an LLM

The author's point could be made far more succinctly and clearly than this. I found the writing indulgent, overcomplicated and unfocused.

Overwrought prose (so many lists of three or more things! Why?) that takes fully half of its word count to get to the point, which is that LLMs are appeasing and solicitous by default. Not sure what else I'm supposed to take away.

Look, this is an art piece, not an article about productivity. Frankly, the LLM here is but a plot device; the point is temptation, weakness, delusion, sin. It's the flourishes of the prose what I enjoyed most here, frankly.

Every part of my critique applies regardless; I'm not sure what you think you're contradicting here.

At any rate, the writer is struggling with temptations and weaknesses, of the sort better handled by an editor than a priest.

I had similar thoughts reading the piece - particularly as a writer who prioritizes the idea more than the decorative prose in which it is draped, but it might be better to think of this article as an "interpretation" comparable to Glenn Gould, Sviatoslav Richter, or Wanda Landowska performing the Well-Tempered Clavier.

Yeah way to flowery. What is this, the New Yorker?

All the more important for the work to have clarity and economy, not just point of view.

Humans have been feeding their souls into a lot of things throughout history, LLMs are just another vessel to carry it.

I don't think it succeeds very well as fiction, but the concept is worth further exploration. I've been very disturbed recently to see AI avatars of dead people participating in TV interviews, funerals, and even court cases. To me this is the technological equivalent of inviting in a necromancer or ouija board operator and treating their pronouncements as facts. This can only result in a social environment hostile to rationality.

I think it'd be well worth performing the experiment of creating some people's digital avatars and then testing them against the original to see how faithful of a model they are.

LLMs are decent at providing feedback and validation. I often have few sources of that from humans, and long periods without it are bad for my motivation and sense of well-being.

LLMs filling that hole is great if it's done in discrete and intermittent bumps. TFA shows the psychological risks of binging on artificial validation.

All things in moderation, especially LLMs.

A criticism like yours can be found every time an essay like this reaches the HN front page. Not all writing is meant to inform, and some people have trouble understanding that.

If you think my comment is about my not being sufficiently informed by the piece, I really don't know what to tell you.

I’m always in awe of characters like the author. When they recount their lives, it feels like watching someone narrate a mythological curse. Just enough introspection to map the pattern of their own compulsion and inevitable failure, yet not quite enough to grasp what would actually sever the loop and set them free.

On one hand, she sees with piercing clarity her inability to take hints, read the room, or navigate social subtext. On the other, she holds to this undeniable conviction that rejection itself will eventually sculpt her into something new, rather than seeing it as a painful signal to do the reshaping herself.

That conviction fascinates me. Where does it come from? An unshakeable sense of justice? A craving for recognition and boundaries that she cannot receive from other people? Or some deeper? Has the author always behaved like this or are there mile markers in the development of her beliefs?

For a therapeutic experience, I recommended you Baudolino by Umberto Eco, a book of hilarious historical fiction. The first couple of chapters use the device of imperfections of the narrator's language in an even more in-your-face manner.

My best bet is that the author's voice belongs to a fiction character. Otherwise it's hard to reconcile the purported story of utter and unending failure with the rich, sophisticated language, the lack of even a single mention of money (the dearth thereof), and the absence of depressed, bitter mood anywhere.

I'll avoid opening the author's LinkedIn profile though! :-D

how do you convince yourself that it is real? I think if you know some linear algebra and read Vaswani et al. 2017 it can be very difficult to maintain the suspension of disbelief. I had great hopes for a future AI companion, but knowing how the trick is done seems to have ruined the magic for me.

that's two pieces of writing that you've taken literally. If you've always had issues with other people being dumb, I recommend looking into autism.

edit: I've counted a couple more down the page - you really do see the world in black and white. get tested, it'll help. it helped me.