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

[James Johnston]

Well, I have to say that my experiences with "AI based search" have been
beyond grossly annoying. It keeps trying to "help me" by sliding in common
terms it actually knows about instead of READING THE DAMN QUERY.

I had much, much better experiences with very literal search methods, and
I'd like to go back to that when I'm looking for obscure papers, names,
etc.  Telling me "you mean" when I damn well DID NOT MEAN THAT is a
worst-case experiences.

Sorry, not so much a V11 experience here, but I have to say it may serve
the public, but only to guide them back into boring, middle-of-the-road,
'average mean-calculating' responses that simply neither enlighten nor
serve the original purpose of search.

jj - a grumpy old signal processing/hearing guy who used a lot of real
operating systems back when and kind of misses them.

On Sat, May 31, 2025 at 2:53 PM Luther Johnson <luther.johnson at makerlisp.com>
wrote:

> I agree.
>
> On 05/31/2025 01:09 PM, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
> > It's been going on a for a long time, even before AI. The amount
> > of cargo cult programming I've seen over the past ~ 10 years
> > is extremely discouraging.  Look up something on Stack Overflow
> > and copy/paste it without understanding it.  How much better is
> > that than relying on AI?  Not much in my opinion.  (Boy, am I glad
> > I retired recently.)
> >
> > Arnold
> >
> > Luther Johnson <luther.johnson at makerlisp.com> wrote:
> >
> >> I think when no-one notices anymore, how wrong automatic information is,
> >> and how often, it will have effectively redefined reality, and humans,
> >> who have lost the ability to reason for themselves, will declare that AI
> >> has met and exceeded human intelligence. They will be right, partly
> >> because of AI's improvements, but to a larger extent, because we will
> >> have forgotten how to think. I think AI is having disastrous effects on
> >> the education of younger generations right now, I see it in my
> >> workplace, every day.
> >>
> >> On 05/31/2025 12:31 PM, andrew at humeweb.com wrote:
> >>> 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
>
>

-- 
James D. (jj) Johnston

Former Chief Scientist, Immersion Networks
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