LLM Mindset Myth #2: AI is GOOD TO GO

Because Large Language Models (LLMs) are so impressive - even now, when still in their infancy, there is an already powerful and growing temptation to regard them as fully manifested, as having attained the full measure of their potential. This is simply not so. The reality that this technology remains quite new - a reality that necessitates keeping sight of a couple key ideas:

As with every tool or platform following its adoption and wide use, there will be a sometimes extensive Period of the Unresolved, during which its unseen problems and oddities make themselves gradually known to its users - problems that require fixing, oddities we must adapt to. Which brings up:

The still-emergent nature of our Relationship to the Technology. The introduction of any new tool into the way we do stuff necessarily involves becoming acquainted with its capabilities, gaining confidence in its use, and developing a (mostly ad hoc) “code of conduct” about it - beliefs about it, acknowledged or not, a set of rules we adopt, consciously or not, regarding it.

This last part is more consequential than you might think - as with any relationship, the one between people and LLMs will be shaped and even governed by thinking of which we’re not fully conscious, a kind of sub-cognition where beliefs and rules form. Now, before any of these become too entrenched, it is worth examining them and ensuring they’re as clear-eyed and intentional as we can make them.

In the literature of design ideation, there is a bedrock principle that applies to any project that demands answering two broad questions: 1) Should we choose NOT to make/implement this thing at all? And, 2) If the thing DOES exist, are we working to shape it in the smartest, most optimal way? In other words, once past the point where considering whether a thing should exist, what are we doing to make it better and more effective? This is where we are with LLMs - they undeniably exist, so instead of wringing our hands about whether or not they should BE, it is contingent upon us to understand the nature and scope of them, to develop methods and means for shaping them in productive ways, and noticing the ways they are shaping us.

Given the speed and complexity of LLMs, we succumb too readily to the idea that they are complete and fully robust, that the definitive versions of them are already upon us. This tendency is intensified by the pace at which LLMs have already winnowed their way into so many different aspects of so many of our processes. This misapprehension of their “completeness” is founded on the perhaps overly hopeful notion not only that LLMs are fully ready to assist us, and, more crucially, that we are fully ready to contend with the implications of LLMs upon our lives and work. Neither half of this notion is true - as in any relationship, there are kinks that need working out on both sides; we need to learn about each other for this to go well.

Assimilating any new product or platform into human work is almost never a plug-and-play, ready-from-the-jump proposition - doing so effectively entails careful planning, clear goals, iterative testing, and ongoing management. LLMs must remain subject to the same care and consideration as any other tool or platform.

It’s perhaps tempting to think “The technology must adapt to us.” This is true, certainly, but incomplete. Because equally true is “We must adapt to the technology.” Every innovation, even as it relieves us of the need to perform certain menial tasks or diminishes some of the low-level attention we must devote to something, carries with it newly minted obligations for us, the adoption not only of new procedures, but of new customs, the rise of a new idiom. Early in the life of any widely adopted innovation, people must collectively arrive at an agreed-to understanding of it, a shared sense of the thing - what’s “proper” and “fitting” in how we’re meant to use and relate to it. At the dawn of adoption of email, for instance, there was a prevalence of greater formality in language and tone (and length!) that carried over from earlier forms of correspondence. As we grew habituated to the form, we gained a clearer sense of how we were supposed to be using it - briefer, more direct, less genteel.

A consequence of any new technology, and dependable feature of the Period of the Unresolved mentioned above, is that there will always be some among us inclined to be unconvinced about its impacts, or even outright dismissive of it. “Internet? Psssh. That’s just for nerds.” At the dawn of the internet, this sentiment emerged as a trope right away - and, though it turns out obviously not to have been a defensible position, it was at the time a comprehensible one, in that we could be forgiven at the time for failing to see the seismic power and coming ubiquity of the technology. Likewise with LLMs, there are those who denigrate it as some parlor trick, some extension of our own laziness, some extraneous plug-in that performs no core function.

Conversely, there will be those during the Period of the Unresolved who will claim, just as wrongly, that we are witnessing the Final Grand Unifying Technology That Will Heal Our Wounded Hearts and Resolve All Conflict Ushering in Deathless Peace and Prosperity. Ridiculous. A tack hammer is ideal for certain tasks, but using it to play harpsichord would be reckless and dumb.

As with any new tool or technology whose legitimate uses are still making themselves known to us, its misuses will spring up in tandem. Along with naysayers, there will be those who will recognize illicit potential and will employ it to lie and steal. Our lack of familiarity will constitute grounds for exploitation until a pervasive sense of these potentials for misuse becomes widely known - in their earliest days, the various “Nigerian prince” scams were obviously far more effective than it’s possible for them to be today; because now we’re all on the lookout for such stuff, so they pose little credible threat.

The discernment we need - whether a technology is used for good or ill - can only develop over time and through use; familiarity, comfort, and savvy only result from experience and exposure.

The present moment we’re in with regard to LLMs remains deeply unreconciled - we have yet to hit upon a collective clearly defined sense of what these things are for, what they’re good at, what we need they meet. By the same token, we have yet to understand and develop our relationship to this technology.