This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
That's a long list you've got there, but it includes things that LLMs have not made any useful contributions to (e.g. teaching, physics, chemistry), things that are obviously frivolous (e.g. cybersex, playing video games), things that LLMs are fundamentally untrustworthy with (e.g. legal contracts, most analyses), and things that LLMs are just plain terrible at (e.g. fiction, image generation), so... yes, besides those things. I think that was a long list of nonsense intended to overawe, rather than a serious discussion of what these bots are able to do.
I think there are some use cases for LLMs, but overall much less than their boosters think. When the general public rejects this technology as not useful for them, the general public is mostly correct.
This is exactly the problem. What we are talking about is public opposition to data centres, which, as Sun discusses, is predicated at least in part on the judgement that bots are not particularly useful. If 'AI' companies want to earn the public trust, they need to demonstrate both their trustworthiness and the usefulness of their products, and thus far they are failing at both those tasks. Sneering at the peasants is certainly not going to help them in these tasks.
Fiction is middling at best but LLMs (or adjacent technologies) are now pretty great at image generation. perhaps a bit narrow but the six-fingered hand is a thing of the past, and text is more or less solved on top models.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link