[TUHS] On the unreliability of LLM-based search results (was: Listing of early Unix source code from the Computer History Museum)

[andrew at humeweb.com]

generally, i rate norman’s missives very high on the believability scale.
but in this case, i think he is wrong.

if you take as a baseline, the abilities of LLMs (such as earlier versions of ChatGP?) 2-3 years ago
was quite suspect. certainly better than mark shaney, but not overwhelmingly.

those days are long past. modern systems are amazingly adept. not necessarily intelligent,
but they can (but not always) pass realistic tests, pass SAT tests and bar exams, math olympiad tests
and so on. and people can use them to do basic (but realistic) data analysis including experimental design,
generate working code, and run that code against synthetic data and produce visual output.

sure, there are often mistakes. the issue of hullucinations is real. but where we are now
is almost astonishing, and will likely get MUCH better in the next year or three.

end-of-admonishment

	andrew

> On May 26, 2025, at 9:40 AM, Norman Wilson <norman at oclsc.org> wrote:
> 
> G. Branden Robinson:
> 
>  That's why I think Norman has sussed it out accurately.  LLMs are
>  fantastic bullshit generators in the Harry G. Frankfurt sense,[1]
>  wherein utterances are undertaken neither to enlighten nor to deceive,
>  but to construct a simulacrum of plausible discourse.  BSing is a close
>  cousin to filibustering, where even plausibility is discarded, often for
>  the sake of running out a clock or impeding achievement of consensus.
> 
> ====
> 
> That's exactly what I had in mind.
> 
> I think I had read Frankfurt's book before I first started
> calling LLMs bullshit generators, but I can't remember for
> sure.  I don't plan to ask ChatGPT (which still, at least
> sometimes, credits me with far greater contributions to Unix
> than I have actually made).
> 
> 
> Here's an interesting paper I stumbled across last week
> which presents the case better than I could:
> 
> https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-024-09775-5
> 
> To link this back to actual Unix history (or something much
> nearer that), I realized that `bullshit generator' was a
> reasonable summary of what LLMs do after also realizing that
> an LLM is pretty much just a much-fancier and better-automated
> descendant of Mark V Shaney: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_V._Shaney
> 
> Norman Wilson
> Toronto ON