alt Hacker News> I have more meaningful intellectual conversations with LLMs in a given day than in a month on social networks
Social media felt this way in the early days, too.
> they almost never feed me misinformation (and never deliberately)
This is dangerously untrue. LLMs will deliberately tell you the things you want to hear. They even "call you out" in exactly the ways that are most palatable to you. There is ample evidence that LLMs can be biased. The ability to broadly influence individual opinions, without even needing bot accounts on social media is exactly one of the reasons so many people who want power/money are flocking to control these LLMs.
> so many of my interactions are with jerks
This is one of the ways that the LLMs are "scarier" and more powerful than social networks. Real people are more likely to be obviously pushing agendas or otherwised easily dismissed.
> LLMs are the ones getting better
Getting better at what? The things you list are exactly the things that make LLMS subtly powerful and far more dangerous that social media. It's the reach and anonymity of social media without needing to control a feed algorithm, deal with content or people that doesn't fit your agenda, or produce fake content that does.
Did you mean to say you feel LLMs will be made into an even worse replacement? Otherwise not clear on your "early days" point.
The second half of your second paragraph is also forward looking- as I said, LLMs would have to get orders of magnitude worse for this to be a concern versus social media. I am surrounded by people- smart, informed people- who were convinced by instagram or TikTok or whatever that Mitch McConnell was brain dead a few weeks back, despite their being wrong about Trump in the same way several times already. We're in a thread mentioning "all the negative externalities from AI development", and I just have to hope they're not talking about water usage and electric prices and silent-but-deadly infrasound because everybody inexplicably believes that those are real, serious concerns. LLMs aren't doing this! This is the status quo!
The chatbot I'm interacting with does not tell me the things I want to hear. This is just not true. I don't know how to convince you otherwise.
>Getting better at what? The things you list are exactly the things that make LLMS subtly powerful and far more dangerous that social media
? At not hallucinating, not being sycophantic, making good quality judgments, making good strategic judgments. The things I listed. I don't know how this connects with the rest of this paragraph.
My "agenda" is believing true things and not believing false things. Sorry, but if someone is opposed to this for me, they are not a person I'd like to speak with.