Post

Simon Willison
@simonwillison.net

Being a computer scientist who refuses to find anything about LLMs interesting right now is a bit like being a geneticist who refuses to find anything interesting about the recently opened Jurassic Park

foxyoreos (they/them, commissions open)
@foxyoreos.bsky.social

Simon, refusing to find anything interesting about the recently opened Jurassic Park and just staying home and boycotting the entire thing would unquestionably be the smartest thing that any geneticist could do in any of those movies if they wanted to avoid dying horribly.

foxyoreos (they/them, commissions open)
@foxyoreos.bsky.social

So I guess the question is.. if you stand by the analogy... why are you interacting with AI the way you're interacting with it? Like, again, it's not so much that the analogy itself is bad, it's more just like.. it feels like you haven't thought about what this would imply for you.

foxyoreos (they/them, commissions open)
@foxyoreos.bsky.social

The part of this that's really weird is that you're making an analogy where fully boycotting the entire park is unquestionably the smart move.. but you're not boycotting the park! Does being self-aware about the raptors you're playing with stop you from getting eaten by them?

Simon Willison
@simonwillison.net

In this analogy I'm very much the geneticist who gets so excited to see actual living dinosaurs that I go ahead with it despite understanding that there's a good chance that they will eat me

Simon Willison
@simonwillison.net

(To be clear though gh I'm not an AI-will-kill-us-all doomer, my position is more that this technology isn't going to be un-invented so a reasonable reaction is to try to maximize the positive effects and minimize the negative)

foxyoreos (they/them, commissions open)
@foxyoreos.bsky.social

But you do know that's the opposite of the moral of Jurassic Park. The whole point of the movie is that the tech isn't inevitable, it is possible to ignore, it's not ultimately world-changing, and that trying to "maximize the positive effects" is hubris that gets you eaten by a T-Rex.

Simon Willison
@simonwillison.net

Though I should point out it's possible to think "wow, that's interesting, also there's no way I would set foot anywhere near that place"