Post

I am close to tears; they listened and made an english version apache.be/2025/10/24/b... @apache.be you rule 🖤

Katrien Beuls: "When ChatGPT launched at the end of 2022, the then rector, Rik Van de Walle, swiftly announced that students could use the chatbot for their master's thesis. A bad move. Or at least the beginning of a lot of trouble.” apache.be/2025/10/24/b...

> “These systems will never be able to think and provide reliable information with the current approach to AI”, says Steels. And that current approach is focused on so-called large language models (LLMs). apache.be/2025/10/24/b...

"It’s a belief eagerly embraced by the capitalist system, with venture capitalists at the forefront. If such a god can be created, and if you can gain a monopoly on it, then you not only have the prospect of great wealth, but also a great deal of power." apache.be/2025/10/24/b...

Wim Vanderbauwhede: “You give an input and it ‘guesses’ the answer a user would want to get, based on the input and the data it was trained on. The ‘machines’ don’t think; they generate something plausible, something that seems acceptable.” apache.be/2025/10/24/b...

Wim Vanrie: “This involves detailed reading of philosophical and moral science texts, recognising, analysing and forming arguments, seeing and expressing conceptual connections, etc. Generative AI is a shortcut that is detrimental to developing these skills.” apache.be/2025/10/24/b...

“The advice is ingrained with the optimism that this technology will only get better. It’s the same story the AI companies are telling: with more computers and more data, all will be fine. That’s bullshit. This is and will always be a statistical, associative machine.” apache.be/2025/10/24/b...

“Writing prompts isn’t a skill, it’s something you can learn quickly on the job if necessary. I don’t believe translators in training should learn how to prompt. To the contrary: they will be the ones that have to clean up the badly translated texts AI produces.” apache.be/2025/10/24/b...

“The solution certainly won’t come from AI; on the contrary, this only magnifies the problem. Moreover, correcting the errors of AI will cost us loads of time and effort. But once the cat’s out of the bag…” apache.be/2025/10/24/b...

There is a fundamental misunderstanding between translation for the moment or for the record. If you need to know what the menu says, quick & dirty AI translation is fine. If you own a restaurant, you should absolutely not let AI translate your menu unsupervised!

A nit in this part (maybe lost in translation): plagiarism isn't a legal matter (at least in most countries), but one of scholarly misconduct/deception. I would argue the models are inherently copyright infringement (the legal issue) because models manipulate expression, not ideas.

Also, fair use *does* apply widely in science, but LLM output does not come with attribution, much less epistemically-correct attribution. It's hard to justify why it should be fair use under a sober understanding of what LLMs do.

The figure above is from this paper, which offers excellent coverage of the legal landscape, but under the (IMO incorrect) hypothesis that LLMs are manipulating ideas rather than expression. doi.org/10.2139/ssrn... Short 🧵 on fair use/copyright if LLMs are understood to only manipulate expression.