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Works for me

💯

The carcinogens were the LLMs they made along the way.

This isnt great but sounds relatively uplifting for graphic designers and photography, that "oh shit" moment when a company realizes they're indistiguishable from digital vapor and are now looking over their shoulder in case a judge can't distinguish if they're a money laundering front Proof of life

And I think it will be the lawyers and courts that spearhead that walk back.

A former colleague posted on LinkedIn that ChatGPT 5 might be a better product but he was going to continue to use 4o because it had a “better tone” and he trusted it more and hoooo boy

even better to think about how even if we killed genAI and LLMs immediately, we'd probably be putting up with its tail effects for decades, remediating and rebuilding everything that ever used it, and probably also the TV commercials about class actions and such

"The hands on the watch go glow, glow, glow"

The US FDA banned thalidomide because of one FDA pharmacologist, Frances Oldham Kelsey, who saw early reports of birth defects and worked to stop approval. She ended up getting an award from JFK for her work.

what problem does an LLM solve one iota as well as asbestos solves the problems it solves

Unfortunately, I doubt the LLM era will inspire anything quite as interesting as Marvel's mid-century wave of asbestos-themed villains.

That’s a shit metaphor. We still don’t have fire-retardant material as effective as asbestos.

Thanks for articulating so clearly what I had been dimly starting to think too.

At least the ecological damage of the server farms will be easy to reverse. And hard drives and racks are gonna be CHEAP AS FUCK!

the asbestos rollback happened because the companies got sued, but if we end up with LLM's as our judges how's that gonna work..

Meanwhile all the original investors have cashed out and built their comfy bunkers in New Zealand to ride out the societal collapse.

I expect a lot of these vibe-coded systems are going to fail spectacularly, and as a former software developer I'll be roasting marshmallows on the fire.

Yup. I’m telling my independent design consultant friends to hang in there for the unfuckening work. The technology just doesn’t do the thing. It will take an annoyingly long time for some people to acknowledge this tho

Yeah or radium.

Asbestos has considerable utility though

And of course, decades spent trying to find and remove it all.

AI Overview: Yes, there are many ways to stop vaping. Some recommend switching to cigarettes—

It's already becoming so embedded it'll be a real task. Luckily it is unlikely to be literally cancerous if we miss some bits here and there.

The latest iteration of ChatGPT is already an "oh shit" walk back, they eliminated a lot of the emotional manipulation stuff and people are PISSED their AI pal has been stolen from them. I'm guessing it was an attempt to not get sued into the stratosphere when folks use it for terrorism or suicide.

It's not too bad of a metaphore. There will need to be expensive remediation efforts to take out the lies and half truths it will spread everywhere.

Oh dear yes.

Well, it’s pretty good to make the comparison to a carcinogenic. It just misses the parasitic part, but slop is a cancer that just keeps growing, displacing important sources of information in a way that can make critical parts of society no longer function.

yes

And like Krugman’s argument about breaking windows, economists will say the remediation will benefit economic growth.

Makes me want to look up some old letters-to-the-editor or wherever people did discourse when asbestos was being banned. Bet theres some disturbingly-current-sounding bad-faith concern trolling to be found.

and the worst people in the world will inherit dynastic wealth

That’s also a good example

How many people's brains will contract the analog for mesothelioma before they walk it back?

Just in time for all the asbestos lawyers to pivot to a new specialty.

This is a great comparison because when used correctly for certain applications, asbestos is useful as hell. There's a reason it was so widespread, it's one of the best fire resistant materials ever made. It's just, yknow, wildly toxic to human life, nbd.

School is covered in Asbestos is a sad and accurate metaphor

those must be the brand new currently unimaginable jobs sam altman was speaking of 🙃

I think the “oh shit” walk back will come when the market proves unwilling to cover the full cost of inference and the VC and big tech funding that currently covers it dries up. I don’t think people are willing to pay the real cost of these products.

Yes. I keep wondering, what pressing problem was Ai supposed to address? Who asked for f#cking Ai ?

Every large company already has warehouses full of the stuff and they NEED to shove it somewhere to recoup their FOMO induced investment

It’s the American way

The worst part is we already have studies about the detrimental health effects and they're still pushing.

At least removing LLM doesn't require a hazmat team.

And that only happens if you breathe it in when it’s disturbed, eg by ripping it out.

But yeah no microfibers that pierce live lung cells and damage DNA (which is how asbestos causes mesothelioma and other lung diseases)

Yeah @shappy.bsky.social and I straight up hit the same asbestos metaphor for LLMs as a workplace risk here: www.rawsignal.ca/newsletter-a...

[asbestos we can joke]

I think we’re there, or should be! with social media. Need to ban API access. It’s like a nuke. Potential to destroy mankind!

Only if our AI overlords will allow such a thing.

“This product contains tools known to the state of California to cause psychic harm and cognitive defects”

Except the entire stock market wasn’t propped up by inflated asbestos manufacturers.

And the effects rippled for generations. My high school closed down because of old asbestos in the building

you're more than right on that...YOU'RE EXACTLY RIGHT!

Current LLM adoption reminds me more of the Friedman doctrine, the one about management should maximizing shareholders wealth above all else. Society is still paying the price for it, and thanks to Trump and MAGA, the doctrine also making a comeback right now.

There's a horror movie in there, like "Session Nine" (the premise of which was an asbestos removal team goes into an abandoned insane asylum).

name a product being launched in the near future will still exist in five years

So we’re going back into another new shiny dev cycle where it’s going to be absolute shit code for several years, and then a resentful admission from non-technical dipshit managers that maaaaaybe the code that was written wasn’t very good and has an absurd amount of technical debt.

Ahh, yes. I remember Joni Mitchell singing “Wrestlers, wrestlers, put away your DDT.”

"We'll put filters on cigarettes and reduce the nicotine content just a little bit." (Time passes) "Fuck, everyone still died of cancer."

honestly feels good to me asbestos has its uses still i’m sure and also incentivizing against unnecessary usage will fund alternatives that minimize harm this is exactly what one should want with LLMs imho use them where they are fit for purpose and low harm obviate with alternatives elsewhere

I've seen someone else use this as a metaphor for AI but don't recall who offhand (likely it was you if you said this already a few months back)

already happening with covid denial they stopped testing to juke the stats and now everyone just has "summer flu" or some shit

"If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with LLMesothelioma, call now for a free legal consultation."

The first "oh shit" AI moment will be the brown-outs and black-outs when all the data centers they're building come online.

And gulags for its advocates. /s