On Lying With Confidence
LLMs are like their makers; they're charlatans who lie about profits where none exist, only losses, debt, and societal harm/disservice
Confidence in disinformation is often attributed to "sociopathic" (they have no agency) LLMs. Words like "think" or "estimate" or "guess" aren't used. Everything, even speculation made based on lousy statistical analysis of words (training set), is presented as an objective fact.
If LLMs were a person, it would be someone incapable of saying "I don't know" or "I'm not too sure"...
This is not an issue that can be fixed because LLMs lack awareness. They just spew out a stream (or "soup") of words. We're meant to think those things are "super intelligent" and blindly trust anything that comes out of them.
Therein lies another issue; when national leaders who are "Super Demented" start to demand that the disinformation gets labeled "Super Intelligence" and when GAFAM obeys the dictators du jour they will 1) adopt the misleading label that commands "authority" (so that people trust LLMs more than they trust domain experts, including medical doctors); 2) doctor the LLMs to present disinformation that favours the dictators.
What's the solution? Boycott LLMs. Do not use LLMs. Do not engage with sites or people who spread the nonsense of LLMs.
Is this doable? In my experience, sort of. Even just lessening the exposure the LLMs is good enough, better than nothing. Sooner or later the vast majority of LLM companies will be out of business. As recent bankruptcies show, the legal bills they receive (due to plagiarism, not just malicious output that causes people to kill themselves) - as well as secret settlements sold to the public as "partnerships" - render them untenable, obsolete, unsustainable.
LLMs are hype; the sooner the hype fades, the sooner they'll rebrand (e.g. "agents", "advanced", "generative", "super intelligence"). Those who participate in the hype (media like The Register MS) will have no credibility left and hence no audience. █