I’m starting to like my “monkeys with typewriters” analogy more and more….I'm sure LLMs and AI can be useful in many contexts. I'm just skeptical of when people treat them as oracles. I also don't think you should assume that any LLM of me accurately represents my thoughts. You are just getting a word vending machine with my avatar. pic.twitter.com/VCWa4rMgZg
— derek guy (@dieworkwear) February 12, 2026
And “word vending machine” is a remarkably useful metaphor.
Finding, more and more, that Google's "AI" returns nothing more than the common received wisdom NO MATTER HOW BLATANTLY WRONG THAT IS AND UNSUPPORTED BY THE EVIDENCE, along with its potential to generate lies and porn, I'm worried that it will further canonize that blatantly wrong common received POV.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was teaching, I assigned a research paper, and told the students not to rely on Google and keyword searches. In vain, if course.
DeleteI just saw that DOGE used Chat to look for DEI in medical research grants. You can imagine how well that worked. Monkeys at typewriters would be more reliable.